♪♪
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-Forget the politics,
we have a national crisis.
We are at war.
There is no politics.
-So our news cycle is changing,
if not daily,
then hourly or by the minute.
And there's so much
information out there today,
and it's difficult to navigate
the waters of the news.
-Over 2,980 deaths.
-It was another rough day
for the financial markets.
-They're going to do
a 30-day extension.
-Over 4,700 deaths...
-...which means
another month of this.
-So one of the things
I want to do is
talk to some of the biggest
thinkers in the world and say,
"Hey, what are these problems,
and what are
the unforeseen consequences
of what's happening
in real time?"
-We have entered into
this next phase
that has required me,
under
the circumstances,
to advance
a proclamation
of a state of emergency
in the state of California.
-Now, one of the biggest
questions is,
all of these emergency measures,
all of the data collection
to sort of say,
"Well, what's happening
with the pandemic?"
have knock-on effects.
And I think one of
the greatest thinkers
around civil liberties
and these unforeseen
consequences
is Edward Snowden.
-This is the truth.
This is what's happening.
You should decide whether
we need to be doing this.
-So today we're going to
talk to him
about his thoughts
on the COVID virus
as well as, what does that mean
for our civil liberties?
Edward Snowden,
thanks for being here today.
-It's a pleasure to be with you.
-Let's just jump into it.
-Why does it seem like
we're so ill-prepared?
We're acting like COVID-19
is a never-seen-before virus
and that this is
just out of nowhere,
surprise, surprise.
You know, we had SARS,
we had MERS.
We've had these types
of things before,
and in fact, we knew
that we were going
to be having more of them,
yet we were not set up,
or it seems like
we were completely taken aback
that this is happening now
and is having, you know,
such a profound effect,
when, if you talk to any
epidemiologist or virologist,
they knew that
this was going to happen.
-There is nothing more
foreseeable
as a public health crisis
for, you know, again,
a world where we are just
living on top of each other
in crowded and polluted cities
than a pandemic.
And yeah, every academic,
every researcher
who's looked at this
knew this was coming.
And in fact,
even intelligence agencies,
I can tell you firsthand because
I used to read the reports,
had been planning
for pandemics.
And yet when we needed it,
the system has now failed us,
and it has failed us
comprehensively.
And the thing that I find
grotesque about this situation
is that now the people
who are being asked
to sacrifice the most
are the people
who are in the most
precarious positions,
who have the least to give.
We're constantly being told
we're the richest country
in the world.
But when people start
losing their jobs,
when rents become
difficult to pay
because there's no work for
any waitress in any restaurant
in New York right now,
where are our resources?
When our hospitals say
they need ventilators,
you know, where is
all this great technology
that's being used to surveil
everybody, you know,
down to the tiniest toenail
when we need it to create things
that actually save lives?
-In South Korea,
which has been successful
in at least flattening
their curve,
the government's been
sending text messages
to people who have come
into contact with people
that they know have COVID-19,
which means they know
who has COVID-19,
they know who they're meeting,
they know their
text message numbers.
They know how to get in touch
with them.
-The Korea Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention uses data
provided by local
telecommunications companies.
-Taiwan is doing
a "mobile fence," so-called,
where, if they know
you're infected,
they're going to put
a mobile fence around you,
and if you leave,
you're going to get in trouble.
If you leave your --
It's basically the --
your mobile phone
is your new ankle bracelet.
You know, we look
at what China did,
including welding
certain doors shut,
and we seem to be
sort of knee-jerk, ad hoc,
and we're, you know,
culturally we can't do this,
yet are our numbers
are through the roof.
So are autocratic regimes better
at dealing with things like this
than democratic ones?
-I don't think so. I mean,
there are arguments being made
that China can do things
that the United States can't.
Now, that doesn't mean
that what these autocratic
countries are doing
is actually more effective.
There are really only two things
that we know to be true.
One is that no one knows
the true number of infected
because we can only
in the absolute best case
know the confirmed cases
of people
that we've actually tested.
And once you start to layer in
this autocratic,
or I would argue,
more authoritarian type
of policy structure,
what you end up seeing
is that instead of policy
being guided
by science and facts,
you begin to see things
like information releases
becoming political decisions.
Now, this is not new.
In fact, the Spanish flu
around 1918
did not actually originate
in Spain.
It was actually spreading
in World War I
through the trenches,
where everybody
was in terrible conditions.
But the militaries of the day
had imposed restrictions
on what the press could report
that could impact
the war effort.
And so Spain,
being a neutral country,
was publishing
what they were actually
seeing in their country.
And so we just presumed,
because they were the only ones
that were telling the truth,
that it came from them.
Now we're a little further ahead
than that today.
But that doesn't erase the fact
that people in power
who see that there is
a political advantage
to disguising
or concealing or massaging
or denying numbers
may choose to lie about it.
It's happened before and it's
almost certainly happening now.
-If you're looking
at countries like China,
which seems to have flattened,
how much can we trust that
those numbers are actually true?
-I don't think we can.
Particularly, we see
the Chinese government recently
working to expel
Western journalists
at precisely this moment
where we need credible
independent reporting
from this kind of region.
And then there's all of these
rumors and initial reports
that say things like, you know,
the number of urns shipments
for burials have
gone way up,
way beyond what you would expect
from the official numbers.
And the fact that we cannot
get independent verification
of the facts gives us reason
to doubt the official story.
And the reality
that we need to accept,
which is
an uncomfortable reality,
is that even in places
that are not autocratic regimes,
they're going to have
a second wave.
They're going to have
a third wave.
They're going to have
a fourth wave based on all of
the best medical analysis
that we have available today.
I think -- I was reading
a paper this morning
that was from,
I think, that the Chan School
of Public Health
at -- I think it was
Harvard University
that said pumping the brakes
is going to have to be
the new strategy.
-Which means we're at
the beginning of, as you say,
you know, second, third,
fourth waves of this coming.
And so all of these measures
are going to get more severe.
And what then happens
to civil liberties,
to privacy rights, to democracy?
I mean, what are the knock-on
effects that you can see?
-I mean, this is really
the central question
of this moment in history.
What we see is everyone
is fearful and hopeless
and so worried about today
that we have
really stopped thinking
about what tomorrow
will look like
as a result of the decisions
that we take today.
We've seen in countries
like Taiwan and South Korea
and spreading also
into more Western countries,
and of course,
in the United States,
where it has begun as well,
the tracking and monitoring
of the movements
of the whole
of the human population
through the movements
of our phones.
And it is, I think,
something that should
raise cause for concern,
because when we talk
about the applications,
and I'm sure we will,
they're saying they're using it
for contact tracing.
This person gets sick.
Where did they go?
Who may they come
in contact with precisely
so they can produce
these kind of text messages
that you describe?
On its face, it seems like
it might be a good idea.
There is, of course,
a natural presumed benefit here.
And yet, this level
of contact tracing,
this method of contact tracing
does not really work
on a pandemic scale.
-You know, we're declaring,
you know,
various states
of emergencies here and there,
but these have sweeping powers.
-What is being built is
the architecture of oppression.
♪♪
-So when we look at South Korea,
when we look at China,
when we look at, you know,
Taiwan, Singapore,
countries like this,
now America,
there's all of this data
being collected.
How are the government --
So when, in in South Korea,
I get a text saying,
"Oh, you met Joe Blow.
He might be infected.
You should, you know,
sequester yourself for 14 days."
How are they getting that data?
-[ Laughs ]
That's a good question.
I mean, that's really the one
that should make everyone
just look at their phone
and, you know,
sort of raise an eyebrow.
There are a number of ways that
you can track the location
of someone through their phone.
There are these cell phone
towers themselves,
but there's also
the wireless network
that you're connected to.
And then what other wireless
networks around you
that you're not connected to --
this you can think of as
what wireless networks
your phone can hear.
And so these wireless network
identifiers are then collected
and they're mapped out
against GPS,
and then they know
if you can see mom's Wi-fi
and neighbor Ted's Wi-fi
and the library Wi-fi
all at the same time,
you have to be within range
of these things.
It becomes a proxy for location.
Now that we know
all of our phones
can and are being tracked
at all times
just by being turned on --
The phone companies have it
at a bare minimum.
Facebook probably has it.
Google probably has it.
Apple probably has it.
And many, many other companies
you've never even heard of
that run ad networks.
What this really means
in a France or a United States
is they go, "Well, look,
we're aware of privacy concerns,
so what we're going to do
is we're going to depersonalize
this information,
we're going to 'anonymize' it,
and we're not going to
look at individuals.
We're going to look at the flows
of movement of these phones.
Right? We're not looking
at one phone.
We're looking at the aggregate
movements of phones."
The problem is, if you're not
tracking one infection
or 100 infections,
but you're tracking
100,000 infections,
contact-tracing quickly
becomes useless.
And more, the precision
of location information
is either so rough
that it is largely useless,
which is the case
if we're talking about
the cellphone networks,
the cellphone towers
you're near,
to very, very precise
location information,
in which case this information
when you're applying it
at scale,
cannot be anonymized
in a meaningful way.
And then there's
this big question of,
well, where does all
that information go?
How is it controlled?
Who's it being used --
It's information about me.
I should have
some influence over it.
I should have control over it.
But unfortunately,
in the United States,
to a large degree, you don't.
There is no basic privacy law
in the United States.
We need to be able
to make sure
that the brakes
that are being pumped
are on the pandemic
rather than on our society.
-You know, it seems
that this is
maybe the greatest question
of the modern era
around civil liberties,
around the right to privacy.
Yet no one's asking
this question.
We really don't hear
a lot about it.
And so now this is
probably the largest societal
zeitgeist change to,
"Yes, have the information
because we have
to stop this thing."
You know, we're declaring,
you know,
various states of emergencies
here and there.
But these have sweeping powers.
So we're sitting here in America
quarantined and saying,
"Okay, what does this mean
going forward?"
-When I think
about the future,
when any of us look
at where this is heading,
we need to think about
where we've been,
and sadly, these kind
of emergency powers
that are born out of crises
have a perfect history
of abuse.
I mean, down the board,
whenever you look
at these things,
the funniest part about it
in a dark way
is that the emergency
never ends.
It becomes normalized.
When you talk about
mass surveillance,
the Bush-era warrantless
wiretapping program,
only part of it was shut down,
and it's rolled over
and it's rolled over
and it's rolled over.
And we've performed things
at the edges,
but the basic practices
of what was supposed to be
a stopgap emergency,
which was in response
to another stopgap emergency,
was which was, of course,
the legacy of 9/11
and the Patriot Act.
And we are still today
engaged in the same wars
that we declared
nearly 20 years ago
that we have not managed
to escape.
You know, we had,
as a result of 9/11,
the rise
of the nuclear Iran
because their counterbalance
in Iraq was ruined.
We saw authoritarianism begin to
creep across Western societies,
places we wouldn't expect,
like Hungary and Poland.
As authoritarianism spreads,
as emergency laws
proliferate,
as we sacrifice our rights,
we also sacrifice
our capability
to arrest this slide into a less
liberal and less free world.
Do you truly believe that when
the first wave, the second wave,
the 16th wave
of the coronavirus
is a long-forgotten memory,
that these capabilities
will not be kept,
that these data sets
will not be kept?
Will those capabilities
begin to be applied
to small-time criminality?
Will they begin to be applied
to political analysis?
Will they begin to be applied
for doing things
like performing a census?
Will they be used
for political polling?
No matter how it is being used,
what is being built is
the architecture of oppression.
And you might trust
who is dealing with it,
you might trust
who runs it.
You might go, "You know, I don't
care about Mark Zuckerberg."
But someone else will have
this data eventually.
Some other country
will have this data eventually.
In your country,
a different president
will have control
of this data eventually,
and someone will abuse it.
Now, could China use it for
something interesting to them?
Yes. And what happens
when they abuse it?
And I believe they already have.
You know, they're they're
running internment camps
in China.
And these practices,
when they don't get pushback,
when they don't get
condemnation,
when they don't face sanction,
this will become normalized
and it will spread.
And we'll face them in Russia.
We'll face them in Iran.
And then we'll face them
in Poland,
we'll face them in Hungary,
we'll face them
throughout Europe.
We will face them
in the United States
because we will face them
everywhere.
♪♪
-This is a pivotal moment.
-It is.
-And why is nobody
talking about this?
-Because we're scared.
♪♪
-We've talked about, this is,
let's say, the first wave.
And until there's
a functioning vaccine,
there's going to be more waves.
There's going to be
more pandemics.
I mean, this is just the way
it's going to go.
So if there's going to be more
waves of COVID-19, and in fact,
more waves of other pandemics
going forward,
then theoretically there
will be more information,
more information collected,
more information shared.
This is the "new normal."
This is just -- it's not
going to get better.
This is just it.
This is a pivotal moment.
-It is.
-And why is nobody
talking about this?
-Because we're scared.
If we work together,
if we think that how we can
protect ourselves,
our families, our communities,
our hospitals, if we think about
how we can work
together internationally
to overcome this,
as our weeds peak in different
places at different times,
we cooperate,
we can start to get this space
to think not about
addressing the symptom
of our overcrowded
and unequal world,
which is this virus that has
spread across borders instantly.
When you look at
what's happened,
when we have
this health crisis,
and it very quickly morphed
into an economic crisis
and then very quickly
became a financial crisis,
you see all the governments
of the world leap into action.
And it's interesting that you
see the majority of this money
go not to the public,
not to hospitals,
but to businesses,
loans to the groups
and corporations
that actually created
the systemic problems
that were exacerbated
by this sudden sharp decline.
But we need to remember
that this virus will pass,
but the decisions that we make
today in this atmosphere
will last.
We will have to live with them
and our children will have
to live with them.
All of our posterity will.
It's not just about America.
It's not just about your city.
It's about everywhere.
Because these systems,
if we do not change them,
they're going to make decisions
for us on an automated basis
to determine who gets a job,
who gets a home,
and who does not.
♪♪
-So we seem to be heading
into this uncharted territory.
And I wanted to ask you,
you know, step back,
take some time.
What should we be
thinking about?
What should we be
concentrating on?
-One of the things
that strikes me is
this sensation that this is,
you know,
a bolt out of the blue,
it couldn't have been prevented,
it couldn't have been resisted,
it couldn't have been imagined
that this would come to pass,
this global pandemic.
When you think about
the average American,
you know,
they go to work every day.
They spend ten hours
at the office, in the car,
away from their family,
away from their home.
And by the end of the day,
they've got no space to think.
And now all of us collectively
at the same time
has been forced into a global
sabbatical all around the world,
which is an extraordinarily
rare event in history.
We are at one of
the only moments
that will be in our lifetimes
where the system is so stressed
and so overextended
and the leadership
so clearly out of its league
that we have the ability
to make not reformative changes,
but revolutionary changes,
that we can actually change
the functioning of society,
that we can actually change
the structure of the system
that controls
and influences our lives --
the way that we are
being monitored,
the way that we're being
tracked.
Because these systems,
if we do not change them,
will not simply be used
to monitor our health.
They're going to make decisions
for us on an automated basis
to determine who gets a job,
who goes to school,
who gets a loan,
who gets a home,
and who does not.
And we today are being asked
in a moment
of extraordinary fear,
"What do we want
these systems to look like?"
And if we don't make
that decision ourselves,
it will be made for us.
-Edward Snowden,
thank you for your time today.
-Thanks so much, Shane.
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