ok so we're going to start haha ok so
i'll also introduced so thank you for
being here we sort of underestimated how
many people would be interested in the
beginning we thought well will be filled
this room so we so I guess Norton is
important for you and I think in light
of what's happening also right now in
Quebec man in journalism it makes it the
coincidence is quite it's quite good so
my name is Christine Ross and i'm the
director of media at mcgill immediate
McGill is a hub of of interdisciplinary
research scholarship and public outreach
in each on issues of media technology
and culture and so for us it's really
interesting to bring Edward Snowden
tonight because in light of what we've
done in the last years and especially I
want to refer perhaps some of you have
seen the conference given by by Glenn
Greenwald and october twenty 2014
so when can we going greenwald is a
journalist who initially met with Edward
Snowden into the now famous hotel the
mirror hotel in hong kong hotel made
famous by laura twice citizen for and
who broke the story on American and
British global surveillance programs in
a series of articles published by the
warden in 2013 a series based on
classified documents from the national
security agency NSA a disclosed by
Edward Snowden so we're very very happy
to be able to secure follow-up to that
to that lecture and so we thank the
beaver brook Canadian foundation as well
as medial university for making this
event possible i also want to thank so
if you to pay media mcgills project
administrator for looking into the
huge number of details implied in the
organization of this event so the person
is going to be hosting this event
tonight is one of my colleagues her name
is Ella Coleman professor professor
Geller Coleman she holds the wolf chair
in scientific and technological literacy
here at McGill and so she writes she
researchers she teaches on questions of
hacking whistleblowing anonymous hoaxing
and even the ethics of hacking and so
she will be
she's a professor in the department of
art history communication studies and
also enter polity and so she will be
presenting Snowden because she is our
expert on these questions and just for
you to know the she will present Snowden
and then we'll have his presentation
will last about 15 minutes and then
double Q&A period of 30 minutes so we
ask that you please put your mobile
phones on silent mode and due to
restrictions or no the lifestream is not
possible my god
yeah so so now Bella will introduce an
inward students Norton
alright i think to start first i'm going
to just say how incredibly exciting it
is that so many students are here to
watch Snowden to hear about these issues
we were really blown away when we put up
the facebook page and within a week
there was 5,000 rsvps so clearly in many
ways Snowden needs no introduction and
that's because in 2013 he really shook
the world when he became one of the most
significant and famous with the blower's
of recent times because he revealed
numerous secret government surveillance
programs with huge implications related
to democracy in journalism but let me
introduce him in light of a major news
story that has shocked many of us here
in Quebec and by extension much of the
world so on monday lapresse broke a
story that one of its very own
journalist Patrick ligase had been under
police surveillance for many months
since we've learned that this is kind of
an epidemic
the police have been tracking a total of
six other journalists as well so even
though a judge approved the warrants for
the tracking a course of people
responded swiftly to denounce the spying
journalists the Prime Minister quebec
and even the police union have decried
it as a core threat to source protection
and thus the journalistic enterprise
which is one of the vital pillars of
democratic society so looming over this
news is a question was this kind of
one-time very particular event or a
single important example of a far more
systematic set of surveillance practices
well Edward Snowden's revelations
brought to light how pervasive this is
not just in the United States but the
participation of the United States 5 i's
partners including Canada and so doing
Snowden ignited a long-overdue debate
about the state of surveillance and he's
already influenced important you
initial decisions in the United States
and in the UK just last week british
courts ruled that some of its
government's bulk collection programs
which Snowden help reveal were in fact
illegal for amassing information about
its own citizens now one of the most
astounding and disturbing revelations in
the stoughton documents concerned
journalists some of these documents
showed that the GCHQ which is the
British equivalent to the NSA captured
and retained emails written by
journalists worse GCHQ officials deemed
investigative journalist as a threat
similar to hackers and terrorists so
blatantly targeting journalist at the
Montreal police did or petting them as
an enemy of the state as GCHQ did makes
pervasive surveillance so alarming
investigative journalists must be
granted the protection of the states and
the autonomy they need to accomplish
their watchdog role to coord privacy to
journalists is necessary but it is also
not enough everyone not just journalists
have the right to privacy and citizens
are if not more vulnerable at least as
vulnerable to these forces digital
communication is a critical component to
participation in a free and democratic
society advances in surveillance
technology are rapidly eroding
everyone's ability to participate safely
securely and privately these
technologies are betraying your identity
your location in your conversations
the process of criminalizing tools that
enhance your privacy or mandating
backdoors has a chilling effect on
everyone
more than anyone else Edward Snowden and
his willingness to come forward with
very concrete details about surveillance
has helped us grasp the bigger picture
has helped to sharpen our understanding
of the harms of pervasive surveillance
and help to see how new technologies
facilitate ubiquitous spine these issues
are vitally important and this is why I
want you to join me not just
in welcoming but in thanking Edward
Snowden for opening up the space to
discuss and debate these topics
ok
thank you
if I could say a few words to begin
first off thank you all for your
patience
tonight I did not know what time this
was going to begin either it's about the
315 am in moscow right now tonight and I
i want to say one more thing briefly
which is I understand there was a strike
I was not told that there was a strike
that was happening on today and this
caused a lot of trouble for all of you
who are online but I'd like to ask you
not to hold that against the protesters
because there's something that we need
to remember that I understand things got
heated you know words were exchanged and
this is the kind of thing that happens
in a democracy we have uncertainties we
have difficulties we have in
conveniences that these things are not a
weakness these things are strengths and
although again I understand these
individuals may have caused difficulty
it was for something that I think we can
all agree they must believe in very
strongly because it is very very very
hard and I know this better than most to
be the least popular person in the room
particularly when there are many more of
the others than there are of you so just
because I can't take a position on their
strike because i'm not familiar with
group i didn't know anything about this
i will say one thing that we can do to
help is just let everybody who's on the
livestream I hear what you in the
audience have already i think had to
confront which is the name of this group
I think it's the association of mcgill
university support employees and I think
they're trying to get a fair wage or
something like that i'd encourage any of
you who are connected are impacted by
these employees their groups or their
efforts to please at least hear them out
and go look at the materials with that
said let's get into it
I'm not gonna give you a whole preamble
and go sort of through my background
because I think again
you guys have been waiting in line this
long we already know it but one of the
central questions is you know why did I
come forward why does it matter and how
does this impact the way we're living
now and I think the central Nexus that's
affecting everybody the most right now
particularly this current moment news is
the fact that we are all being watched
right regardless of whether doing
anything right or wrong and this is a
fundamental change in this is what drove
me forward
traditionally the work of intelligence
services the work of surveillance
agencies of police investigators had
always been particularly in specifically
targeted towards individuals who we had
probable cause that had been
demonstrated to a court were up to no
good
foreign spies no military units from
adversarial nations these were the guys
that we were watching but with the rise
of the internet right and advances in
our science our understanding of math
the way things are tied together the
communications network in the way of his
sort of swallow the earth radically
changed the dynamic now surveillance
technologies have outpaced Democratic
controls those things that we used to
enjoy a generation ago were primarily
the product of one particular
technological peculiarities which is
that surveillance was expensive
extremely so governments had to spend
extraordinary sums to track individuals
to know someone's location my involves
many teams of officers both in buildings
behind desks and so is out on the street
next working in shifts apologist we've
got somebody who just joined the stream
sure the University and this but it was
causing little echo alright we've got
that fixed i think yeah but so we had a
basically this dynamic where you had to
have whole groups of people tracking one
individual but no thanks to this rise in
technology that has been reversed in
tired now you can have one guy sitting
somewhere completely far away from the
target like myself at the NSA in Hawaii
who contract with extreme precision and
unimaginably large number of people
rather than having whole team's
following one person that I have one
person following whole groups hold
individuals and they don't have to be
connected in any way and this is means
for the first time in human history is
both technologically and financially
feasible for governments to tracking
store nearly complete records of all of
our lives and this is not science
fiction is happening now this is not a
black screen this is a the massive data
repository the NSA constructed this in
bluffdale arizona since been renamed to
the mission data repository because i
think they presume that massive data
repository probably wasn't the best
branding anywhere in the wake of the
things we 2013 but what does this
represent this represents that shift and
dynamic that we never knew what this
facility was doing never know why it was
created governments have not asked for
the permission of the public in order to
engage in these kind of operations
instead it deployed this kind of
capabilities in secret even when they
knew these programs were unlawful or
unconstitutional perhaps even because
they knew this and this effort has
enabled has been enabled because of
failures in our intended mechanisms for
constitutional oversight of our sort of
democratic societies
courts were unwilling to permit legal
challenges against the activities of
these spy agencies because they said
they were speculation they could say
well you can't prove you respond because
it's classified you don't have access to
documents or records
therefore we the cords even though this
could be a violation of your rights or
the rights of everyone in in the country
don't have a place in this debate
because first you have to establish the
facts we had a congress in the united
states that knowingly permitted national
security officials to brazenly lie to
the public without consequence or even
correcting the record this is a Senator
in the United States who is questioning
the most senior intelligence official in
the united states general james clapper
the Director of National Intelligence
and it is a felony to give false
testimony when you are sworn under oath
but that is exactly what happened in
2013 three months before i came forward
collect any type of data at all on
millions or hundreds of millions of
Americans no sir it does not
not wittingly there are cases where they
could inadvertently perhaps collect but
not not wittingly unfortunately that was
not true and this brings us to consider
sort of where does this leave us
because at the time that happened the
public had no idea what was lie
the senator asking the question did not
like the Director of National
Intelligence knew that it was a lot as
well apologize we've got someone else
has joined the stream
alright hopefully the university can get
that under control but the thing here is
all the powerful people moon
I knew this was alive but they didn't
correct the record they allow the public
to be deceived even though it was in
fact a crime the Director of National
Intelligence later admitted this was a
false statement saying it was what he
considered the least untruthful thing he
could say the time and too cute by half
but what does it mean in a democracy
where the very foundation of the
government the legitimacy of our system
is derived from the idea that we when we
cast our votes are providing consent for
the government to carry out these
policies consent as hopefully everyone
in this room can tell you is only
meaningful if it is informed i get the
feeling that we have a live stream
somewhere that is a displaying things
that are allowing people to join but i
hope that all of you who are joining
well atleast mute your microphone
thank you so much those who do let's see
yes whoever is a man do baby if you
could hide that URL that be helpful
although i think it's probably too late
for tonight so let's just try to push
through what this means right when the
executive abuses secrecy so we don't
know what's going on when the Congress
yeah miss who just joined if you can
please mute your microphone as well that
we really we don't need to hear your
vacuum cleaner
what this means is we're forced to rely
upon democracy safeguard of last resort
right that is the fourth estate meeting
our press in alliance with
whistleblowers who are more commonly
known as journalistic sources now
unfortunately we are today seeing the
ability of journalists operate free from
interference under threat and what are
traditionally considered sorry folks
that's what happens when we send it live
fabulous continue thank you if I could
ask the actual moderator just to confirm
do we have the live stream up or we're
ready to continue
yes we're ready to go OK and could you
tell me out where you lost me
you're talking about the branding no no
you did clapper okay well look guys
let's let's simplify this let's make
this a little more casual and hopefully
we can regain a little bit more time
from the University here since I know
you guys waited a long time for this
tonight and just make it a little bit
more casual because again nobody likes
speech was right
we're facing a big problem today right
we have powerful political forces that
are asking for more and more power more
and more authority they say we're facing
a time of extraordinary threat there are
now lone individuals these kind of super
criminals right like terrorists spies
and things like that who are totally
capable of destabilizing our entire
societies ending our governments
collapsing our state's now there's no
real evidence that that's actually the
case but the politics of this fear I
have really reshape the way that our
laws being passed so we have to figure
out how to maintain a free society in
the context of an unlimited government
this we've seen in Canada through bills
such as c-51 and so on and so forth the
United States of course we had the birth
of mass surveillance on a truly global
scale at the UK is now passing what they
call the investigatory powers bill which
is really an unrestrained an
unprecedented intrusion into the private
lives of every citizen not only in their
country but everywhere else when we when
the government is presuming a trust in
the propriety of their actions that no
longer exists
this story about the Montreal police
spying on a journalist through their
phone in a very intense way for the
particular reason a specified reason of
uncovering the sources behind their
journalism is a radical attack on the
operations of the free
yes and speaking as one of the directors
the freedom of press foundation this
unsettles me not only on a personal
level but i think is something that
actually represents a threat to the
traditional model of our democracy can
we recognize or at least debate in a
reason way a new idea which is somewhat
radical which is that law is beginning
to fail as a guarantor of our rights it
is the lowest baller protecting the way
we operate the interactive interact with
one another because government has built
in so many mechanisms to get around
these things these restrictions when it
wants to that now the local police can
decide that they don't like a
journalists reporting they can go to a
justice of the peace and the just the
piece will quite happily say okay that
sounds great
look at the GPS on his phone figure out
everywhere he's traveling for everyone
who's communicating with no you can't
actually read his emails know you can
actually listen to his calls but you can
find out everyone he met with who he
called how long he was on the call with
and from this derive an extraordinary
understanding of how this individual
works and it wasn't just one it's now
expanding we're hearing six maybe
possibly more
and rather than the police chief saying
alright this was clearly something that
went too far and regardless of whether
or not i authorize this operation
I recognize that to restore trust i need
to reestablish the basis of
accountability that accountability that
is lost when our operations become
secret and for that reason i have chosen
to resign
we don't see the mayor calling for that
we don't see the local premier calling
for that that and it's this question
this dynamic where our governments are
increasingly invested with extraordinary
capabilities to peer into all of our
private lives
with very little interference whereas we
the public can know almost nothing about
how they operate this converts the
traditional dynamic of private citizens
and public officials into this brave new
world we're facing of private officials
in public citizens
alright so thank you so much for that
and actually i think this is really
great because over the last couple weeks
I was able to get a lot of really
amazing questions and so what we're
going to do is I'm going to ask one or
two questions and then we'll also take
questions from the audience so I'm going
to start with a question from Vincent
program preggers who is a member of
media Miguel board of trustees and he's
quite interested in ethics in journalism
and so this is how the question is
oriented given your status of a fugitive
in the eyes of the United States
government what ethical considerations
and or restrictions should guide the
media in the United States and elsewhere
around the world in reporting on you and
your story
are there different ethical guidelines
from country to country
what is your level of satisfaction with
such reporting on your story and has it
been equally fare from country to
country so it's a nice kind of
comparative Media question so take it
away so one of the things that I try to
be very careful about since jun 2013
when I first came forward was not
telling the media how to do their job I
worked very hard to make sure that i
wasn't in the decision that I didn't say
what was published or not
in fact this is something that not
everyone understands but the number of
documents that i published that I made
publicly available has been zero instead
i gathered inside the NSA what i believe
to be evidence of criminal activity
within the government and this wasn't
just in the United States government
this was the five eyes surveillance
alliance right this is a transnational
spying group consisting of the United
States the United Kingdom Australia New
Zealand and Canada
and this is of course why we have some
understanding of what was actually going
on behind the curtain in Canada about
the operations of their sort of
surveillance context and that is a
excuse me while I try to find the
reference for this hear something that
has actually been established in the
wake of 2013 with more scrutiny that
Canada actually has the weakest
intelligence oversight out of any major
western country
this was something that people didn't
really expect now they're not the most
aggressive of all countries they don't
have the largest scale but no one's
really watching there is no real
parliamentary understanding of what's
happening behind the door and this is
what allows them to engage in massive
sort of indiscriminate dragnet
surveillance that was affecting millions
of Canadians that was targeting for
example the app stores that you might
connect you with your phone's things
that have now been published and we can
now debate but prior to these
disclosures we didn't really know right
but here's the idea behind this
comparative Media question
this was my belief that these things
were violations of human rights of
written statutory laws or our basic
constitutional principles but what if I
was wrong what if I was sort of this
crazy radical and I had been in my head
so long you know working in these
intelligence places talking to my
co-workers that I just didn't have a
full understanding maybe I didn't see
the big picture if I publish these
things on my own i believe there was a
somewhat larger risk a greater risk
ah that I would go too far and so
because of this I chose instead to
replicate the system of checks and
balances in our government that had
unfortunately failed overtime to try to
restore that balance and the way that I
wanted to check myself was to instead
provide this archive of documents to
journalists who would then be required
by virtue of gaining access to this
archive to make an independent judgment
in every case for every story
not that it was newsy not that was
interesting
not that it was just a sexy story but it
was actually in the public interest to
know about the details of this operation
of that operation I why it matter what
was going on how it was being
accomplished and what this meant for our
rights now beyond this is an additional
safeguard to mitigate risks i wanted
these journalists to then go to the
government's who are actually carrying
out these operations in each case to
allow the government a chance to argue
that they didn't understand the stories
that maybe they had gotten the calculus
wrong maybe there was some details some
sentence in the story they would
actually put a human life at risk just
because it was like the you know
something that a journalist might not
recognize like the employee number of
somebody that's cafeteria worker
overseas but might actually be an
intelligence source could be recognized
by these documents and in every case
this was followed right the government
didn't get a veto they couldn't say you
can't publish these stories but they
could say look this is dangerous or it's
not
and this is why in 2016 Bible the
government has never been able to show a
single case credible or incredible of
any evidence that indicates anybody came
to harm as a result of this reporting
now there's a second dynamic of this
this question which is screw the NSA
screw the reporting through all the
actual stuff that's going on about the
surveillance operations and what's going
on with me are people being fair to me
or they covering this way or that way
are some countries doing better some
countries been worse
and of course this is the case we have
seen in the majority of countries that
are not the United States they've done
public polling opinions and pretty much
universally people have a positive
opinion of what I did the United States
government of course has been running
very active smear campaign to reduce the
level of support for my arguments and
for this journalism ever since 2013 and
it has been to some extent effective not
fully actually there's a surprising
amount of support the three largest
human rights groups in the world
the ACLU or three leading groups the
American Civil Liberties Union Amnesty
International Human Rights Watch are now
actually petitioning the President of
the United States to drop what the media
calls his war on whistleblowers but
here's the central idea they're from my
perspective it doesn't actually matter
what people say about me i am the least
important part of this story and if
you're thinking about sort of me what's
happening to me what my future's look
like you're missing the larger question
which is what happens to all of us
well thank you for that very thoughtful
question what I'm going to do now is ask
one more question and then already
people are lining up or they're just
sitting on the stairs so lineup if you
have some questions
alright so I'm really am actually
excited about this question its by one
of my students erin go up there who like
Snowden is very much a passionate about
these issues he's an engineering student
here at McGill and I'm just gonna read
it because he wrote it very carefully
he says it's clear that intelligence
agencies interpret their legal mandate
expansively Michael hide in the former
director of the NSA famously said quote
give me the box you will allow me to
operate in i'm going to play to the very
edges of that box i will play very
aggressively in it
Canada's Foreign Intelligence Agency CSC
is similar
by exploiting the uncertainty in the
legal definition of metadata it can
quote incidentally collect troves of
personal data on canadians Canadian
domestic intelligence agency CSIS also
operates under a similar culture and he
gives another example and then goes on
to say under bill c-51 ceases expansive
capabilities were broadened even further
the only limits to their new and vague
disruption powers are that ceases cannot
willfully obstruct justice cause bodily
harm or violate sexual integrity and
promises
this is the only very detailed question
like this so there seems to be a culture
and intelligence agencies of working the
law to their purposes and pushing the
law to its boundaries intelligence
agencies don't ask what their
surveillance practices should be rather
they asked their surveillance practices
are allowed to be and then he says this
can create the appearance of lawfulness
which the government points to whenever
the activities of intelligence agencies
are challenged by the public but all it
does is subvert the law so here's the
question how do we ensure that
intelligence agencies interpret the law
not
just narrowly but in a way that is
reconcilable with what the public
reasonably expects when reforming our
intelligence agencies do we have to
abandon the premise that intelligence
agencies are committed to following the
law in a reasonable way so this is a
great question is a very complex
question one of the interesting things
is you the the question quoted Michael
Hayden former director of both the NSA
and the CIA which is a little bit of a
mistake because of course if you're the
head of the CIA and the NSA you are
literally a professional wire deception
is sort of your business so he has an
little bit of a checkered history
because he says a you know give me the
the lines the box and I'll play to the
edge get shocked my cleats but I won't
leave the field of play
unfortunately have documentary proof
that that's not the case he was actually
asked as director of the NSA in the post
9-11 period by the president the united
states through the vice president's
lawyer would he basically violate the
law there was a controversy where the
Attorney General the United States said
that the NSA's operations were unlawful
they could not be performed consistently
with the authorities that were provided
under the Constitution or statutes that
had passed authorizing the operations
and the president came to him through
these proxies and said would you go
ahead and continue spying on everyone
anyway even if the Attorney General is
against it and he said yes and this is
not you know this is not to beat up him
specifically because he's not so
important he's just one of a long line
of officials to do the same thing as you
mentioned happens across borders it
happens across cultures that happens
across languages
you're kidding yourself if you think
intelligence officials in France Germany
China Russia North Korea Iran you know
Brazil India aren't doing the same thing
this is how they operate so this means
the central premise of that question how
do we trust
and ensure that we can trust these
intelligence agencies and officials to
interpret the law fairly to operate
fairly and the answers you can but what
you can do is put processes and
structures in place where you don't have
to and this leads us to kind of the
failings of c-51 and be larger problem
of Canada's intelligence operated
apparatus where there is no oversight
that's meaningful
there are three main problems
fundamental problems with c-51 which the
current prime minister can correct me if
I'm wrong did campaign to reform and
unfortunately has not done so
most experts have studied this bill say
it actually can't be reformed in a
meaningful way as written it should be
repealed entirely and then a better
measure passed from scratch that loses
all the baggage but first off there's no
meaningful oversight there right
what would be meaningful oversight how
do you ensure that you don't have to
trust these intelligence officers and
the way you do that is you point a
judicial body some mechanism some
structure some commission that has
independent prosecutorial authority it
is mandated to perform a case-by-case
review of these intelligence agencies
these police agencies their use of
powers exceptional powers after the fact
of Investigation to ensure that no
illegalities occurred and if they did
occur they can prosecute on this basis
the only thing that will in a ensure
that these intelligence agencies or
police agencies or even corporations as
they gain access to these kind of mass
surveillance capabilities play fairly is
the threat of criminal sanction now this
means basically you don't get in the way
of the intelligence services saying look
you've got to go you know do all of
these things before you investigate this
person that person before you pull email
someone that you suspect is a terrorist
but you must know that in every case
we're going to have a judge and
prosecutor going through your decisions
after the fact and if you did break the
law you will be held to the account of
our laws in that case the second thing
is sharing without necessary necessity
transparency accountability right kids
services can now make available all of
the different information that they hold
about you and this can be things such as
your health records right it doesn't
have to actually anything spooky they
cannot be traded among agencies even if
you're not related to some real
terroristic threat or anything like that
it's not very well limited and then
there's this larger question of the
criminalisation of speech right we
already see if it spying authorizations
legal authorizations sorry that weren't
intended to be used for spying in this
context or four surveilling people who
are not terrorists or real criminal
threats violent threats threats to life
and so on so forth are instead being
used repurposed for monitoring
terrorists things like are complying
terrorist forgive me
monitoring journalist or not the same as
terrorists despite what the GCHQ says
unless you work in intelligence agency
in case you might be worried about them
but the idea here is let's take that
example of the canadian journalist have
been spied on by the Montreal police we
have a new story saying that what
happened but we still don't actually
know under what legal authority occurred
there is a suspicion that this was
actually done under build c13 directly
from wrong
fact-check melodies that was actually
intended to be passed as a cyberbullying
that's how was branded was that actually
being used to collect communication
journalists with
c-51 all or any of these other legal
authorities well we don't know because
we have no idea what the government is
actually doing underneath that curtain
and that is not just a risk that is a
fundamental danger to the stability of
any open and liberal society suddenly we
have a set of rules for all of you in
the audience there's a set of rules that
can get whistleblowers and journalists
charge investigated by police but what
about when police break the wall
what about spies break the law suddenly
they're being held a very different
legal standard and they're entitled to a
veil of secrecy that inoculates them
against criticism and scrutiny that the
rest of us do not enjoy that is an
imbalance of power that is not only i
would say unwise but is actually
anti-democratic it is authoritarian
so go ahead and try
unlike what i just did keep the question
a bit short so we can get to others now
okay
forgive me to be clear I not getting the
audience audio it also if I could ask
Gabriel if you could repeat that for me
now can you hear me I can hear
ok so my question is that knowing that
most of those surveillance decisions are
made on the political level
do you have any comments on the current
presidential elections in the United
States
so this is a complicated question for me
because everybody's like you know who
should i go for should i look for what
do you think
and the reality here is there are two
reasons that I never answer this
question one is if you have to ask other
people you're not really appreciating
the burden and the value your opinion
your perspective the operation of
democracy don't look to others to tell
you to vote for look to you read about
these things
listen to the conversation make a
determination for yourself
the second thing here is a privacy
advocate the decision of who you vote
for right is something you should never
be made to answer and so I try to set a
good example there and not responding
what i will say is that I think it's
very disappointing in the long history
of American democracy where we are if
nothing else a very successful country
that we r hat going through an entire
election cycle where all we hear about
are the personalities of these
candidates insults that they throw
children but we have very little bit of
the Constitution and this reminds me of
a mistake that I made during the last
sort of change of power in the United
States from the bush administration's
the Obama administration he was a
president who campaigned on the idea of
ending the worst excesses of the Bush
administration he promised to hold
officials who had broken law who had
engaged in torture and so on so forth to
account to do investigations to hold
trials but as soon as he took office he
abandoned that promise saying we need to
look forward not backwards but every
investigation is necessarily
retrospective looking and if you say
that there can never be a look backwards
and official crimes what you're saying
is that there can be no accountability
for official crimes
he said he would end warrantless
wiretapping we weren't gonna do that
anymore and in fact he expanded it and
institutionalized it in many ways these
are disappointing things but when he
came to take office because he claimed
these things I believe that they would
happen i took him at his word and many
others did you know this is not to say
it's a terrible thing to have faith in
officials and belief in the power hope
but i think we all need to recognize
that we should be extraordinary cautious
about putting all of our hopes on
political candidates elected officials
because if we look at history their
promises very rarely equate to their
products and well you may appreciate one
candidate above the other the ultimate
answer to democracy here is that we
cannot rely on others to do the things
that we must do for ourselves and
ultimately if you want to build a better
country you're gonna have to do it
yourself
so we're going to take a question on
this side I'm gonna pose one more
question and then we'll go to you hear
me I can thank you okay my question is
are there any circumstances under which
it is fair for a country to engage in
mass surveillance of its people i think
this would be an argument of
utilitarianism right do the ends justify
the means
as long as they're beneficial this
ultimately gets to the question of
efficacy so we have a lot of evidence
that mass surveillance is actually not
very effective in the United States for
example in the wake of 2013 we had two
independent presidential commission
appointed to investigate the claims that
have been made by journalists these are
staffed with white house at lies right
not radical hippie reformists or
anything like that
they included officials such as the
former deputy director of the CIA so not
exactly what you would consider to be
friends of civil liberties and yet
despite having full access to classified
information being able to walk into the
FBI the NSA the Defense Intelligence
Agency and all these other areas that
are involved in the spine as I tell us
what's going on and having clearances to
actually see it they could not identify
a single instance in which the kind of
mass surveillance represented by the
warrantless wiretapping left metadata
program having us basically collecting
the call records of everybody in the way
that the Met Montreal police were using
yes this journalist but on a much
broader scale had never actually
resulted in a positive innocent it had
never made a concrete difference in the
outcome of any terrorism investigation
moreover it never even contributed to
the discovery of an ongoing plot but
what if it had this is very similar to
arguing what if torture effective what
if extrajudicial murder were
effective right we're talking about
assassinations here what is slavery were
a wonderful economic program it wouldn't
make it right
we have human rights for a reason right
and we protect these things and these
are policies that are promoted by these
same government's the United States of
course put forth the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights with the UN
which guarantees it right from the
arbitrary interference in your private
communications right it forbids math
surveillance so i would argue it's not a
question of can this thing be justified
in terms of efficacy or whatever but
it's do we want to live in a world
without human rights
i'm going to switch the gears a little
bit and ask a question from a PhD
student Isadora bore his monroy who's in
my class on computer hackers and we
actually all went to see the Snowden
film this fall and most of us have also
seen Citizen for and so that I think
you're absolutely right that the
important issues are the issues and not
the person but the person has become
fodder for Hollywood and oliver stone
did present the issues in some very
interesting ways and this is a great way
to reach different publix and so she had
a question which I've actually thought
quite a bit about because in the movie a
bunch of the other techies working at
the NSA had reservations like you so
she's asking whether you know this is
actually accurate and it is striking
that while in some ways you are the most
famous whistleblower there have been
others such as William Binney and Thomas
Drake who have sounded the whistle so we
just like to hear a little bit more
about the kind of work culture at the
NSA or the the contracting corporations
and how people kind of express their
dissatisfaction or whether you kind of
thought of the problems in a kind of
siloed way and then just acted
independently
no absolutely i brought my concerns to a
lot of my different colleagues I brought
them to supervisors i showed them
specifically this slide are amongst
others it was actually not a slide at
the time it was ok it's not actually
displaying because it looks like looks
like my system is run out of memory to
display that now but it's a global heat
map of the NSA surveillance right this
was an interactive tool inside the
agency that said where we are collecting
the most communications right where were
ingesting the most emails the most phone
calls into our systems right text
messages your internet traffic google
searches things like that
I
and it showed that we were actually
collecting more American communications
then we were Russian communications and
I asked them you know is this what we
signed up for
is this what we were trying to achieve
and of course they said no you know that
doesn't seem right that's not really
accurate but they said hey look you know
what happens to people who rock the boat
and they specifically referenced people
like Thomas Drake of course was a very
famous case in this example but the idea
here is that yes every whistleblower
learns from the individuals who came
before I would not have been possible
without the examples of daniel ellsberg
of william binney of thomas strength of
chelsea manning because it is this
iterative understanding of our history
how the government operates how they are
likely to respond how you interact
successfully with journalists and
unsuccessful that informs your thinking
your method of operation your belief
that change can be achieved and I'm so
thankful for these people who came
before because they showed the yes the
NSA will retaliate the United States
government will retaliate
regardless of whether it's right or
wrong regardless of whether they have
any grounds of belief i knew i would be
charged with the espionage act despite
the fact that I was not a spy
I wasn't contacting foreign governments
I was contacting journalists because
this is what they did Thomas Drake who
did the same thing the government this
was a senior NSA executive for those who
are not familiar
I at the very top levels of the agency
in the wake of 911 who discovered the
more or less wiretapping program and a
privacy-preserving equivalent program
that the NSA killed and because they
suspected him of telling the media about
these programs even though he went
through proper channels he went to the
inspector general's he went to his
supervisors he went to the lawyers to
ask them sort of what
going on they destroyed him in
retaliation they didn't go look he went
through the process he did the right
thing he went to Congress to tell them
about what's going on
they said let's invite him as a spy
under the Espionage Act so he is
prohibited from telling the jury why he
did what he did the event Espionage Act
is one of the few laws in the united
states that guarantees you cannot
receive a fair trial and it's designed
that way intention that's trying to a
feature not a bug and if I had not seen
that I made it may have made less wise
decisions
so thank you for that and my man we
recognize that the technical staff i'm
going to reconnect this kind of looks
like you've lost video is real quick
i'll be back in about 30 seconds
thank you again so much that's like your
band the technical challenges
hello yes just to confirm i hired or
admitted that Michael hello can you hear
me I can thank you okay so my name is
Caesar razor I'm actually from brazil
i'm living in Canada 46 year and i have
a curious question for you and the facts
revealed back in 2013 by Glenn Greenwald
who's currently living in brazil brazil
was one of the counters and governments
that was being inspired by NSA recently
in Brazil massive corruption scandal
involving the Petroleum Company lead to
a massive protests and the impeachment
of the President Dilma Rousseff without
being yet directly involved in this
candle
do you believe that the USA using this
technology to drive minor democracies
and people who fought to empower
governor's that will benefit them this
is a foreign policy question right
more so than in intelligence question
but it does it does have a nexus is that
does connect but the answer here is when
we think about that example we just saw
right we're all these independent
commissions look at these masks around
programs and they found that they had no
benefit for counterterrorism you have to
think the NSA has a lot of really smart
people working there they have a lot of
very sophisticated top-level officials
and low-level law employees the line
workers so why are they running this
program if it doesn't benefit
counterterrorism operations and of
course the logical presumption v1 must
have benefits somewhere else and this is
the real story of master plans master
balance has never been established as
effective for counterterrorism write
these laws are always passed saying
they'll be used against terrorists but
the reality is they're used for other
things these programs were never about
terrorism
they're about power and when you think
about these capabilities when you think
about all the things that they're doing
when you think about what these
intelligence agencies do all day
there aren't that many terrorists who
are meaningful who represents a real
threat and they have all of these
specialists to work in other areas
what do you think these folks are doing
all day why do you think these
intelligence agencies exist if not to
apply these capabilities for what these
officials consider to be the national
interest much so we have time for two
more questions and what I'm going to do
is have the gentleman here on the right
ask a question and now and I was gonna
say we'll have one of the woman come
forward which we had to do that with a
glenn greenwald talk as well so why
don't we start with you and the woman in
the gray yeah come on forward
hi can you hear me I can first of all
thank you so much for staying up and
taking the time to talk to us
sorry my pleasure you guys have been
waiting a long time and my question is
mostly because most of the people that
are in the room and in the line and
watching from the livestream our
students here in montreal and my
question is basically what your vision
is in terms of us moving forward and
protecting civil liberties and freedoms
and democracies and then what are the
tangible things that you today can do to
minimize the risks especially because
we're the generation that's most
connected and that clicks I agree to the
terms and conditions faster than yeah
anyway that's my question
yeah you you know the main thing is that
you guys are already doing what so many
people have not invisible way right
youyou saw that line outside to talk
about surveillance the first thing and I
think one of the most essential things
you can do is all of these politicians
like to create
an appearance that no one cares about
privacy that no one cares that they're
being watched but we know this is not
the case you all are here
establishing this is not because the
very first thing that you should do is
argue whenever anybody brings that stuff
forward whenever anybody comes up with
that argument saying you know I don't
care because I've got nothing to hide go
wait wait wait wait
privacy isn't about something to hide
privacy is about something to protect
it's about protecting your rights
it's about protecting your sense of self
it's about protecting an open and
liberal society of free society where
you can be who you want where you can
think what you want where you can have a
private conversation between friends
between confidence where you can figure
out what it is that you actually believe
in privacy is the fountainhead of all
other rights it is the basis from which
the other rights derived their meaning
their value freedom of speech doesn't
mean very much if you can't figure out
what it is that you actually want to say
and instead have to repeat what other
people say what's popular because that's
the only thing that's safe to say if you
can immediately be separated and
prejudged because you're different
right that's what privacy is about
privacy is the right to the self
privacy is the right to be you and this
is you know coded all the way in our
language and you go down to you know
private property right this is not
popular with the nose and a very far to
the left but the idea here is that
privacy is the ability to have something
for yourself whether it's a home weather
it's a car whether it's a pencil whether
it is an idea whether it is a belief
right so when somebody says i don't care
about privacy because I've got nothing
to hide that's like saying that I don't
care about free speech because i have
nothing to say it's not about you it's
about everyone it's about all of us it's
about potential it's about possibility
it's about the foundation of everything
that we believe in that so many people
have fought and died for
and if you're not willing to stand up
for your own right to be you by you care
about what happens all you're saying is
that I'm willing to let everyone else
decide everything that affects my life
i'm willing to let other people decide
my future because i don't have any ideas
of my own
great question a great answer and we'll
turn it over for one last question
hydro- Tristano this question sort of
follows from the last one you said
earlier that surveillance technologies
have outpaced Democratic controls what
tools do you think you can build to
either improve these Democratic controls
are more more specifically tools to
empower people in the face of
government's lack of transparency like
software or otherwise
so this is a great question we could
talk about this for hours
unfortunately we don't have it so i'll
try to make it quick let's take a little
trip down recent memory to see if we can
contextualize this for people who aren't
so familiar wake of 2013 the President
of the United States trying to push back
against the belief in public
presentation that the NSA was conducting
mass surveillance tried to contextualise
things by saying what we're not actually
reading everybody's emails we're not
actually listening to everybody's phone
calls
we're just collecting them in case
they're interesting later we're just
putting the bucket we're just rifling
through we're not actually scanning them
you know we just want the safety measure
we don't want to miss anything
he's also talking about the distinction
between metadata vs content metadata for
those who aren't familiar with the
content of communications what you're
actually saying on the phone call what
you're actually writing in the body of
the email what you actually right inside
the facebook message metadata is one
step up from that and it has no
meaningful legal protections in our
current Western jurisprudence which is
the real danger because the government
holds that you don't actually own
records of your activities right you
only have a privacy interest in action
what you say but not anything that
anybody records about when you said it
how you said it how long it took you to
say things like that so when we talk
about that old school surveillance right
that used to be targeted you send a
private eye to follow people around and
they would see these people leave their
homes
they would write down what time of day
they got up where they left means of
conveyance they want this car had this
license plate number this is metadata no
legal protections for you go to the cafe
you meet with someone they couldn't sit
so close to you that they heard
everything you said because you go who
is this weirdo following me around but
they sit near enough to see who you met
with how long you were there you know I
and be able to sort of assess the
context of that relationship is this
someone that needs with all the time is
this lovers this is spouse you can tell
by the frequency of contact you can tell
by do they spend the night with each
other all the time and these things like
that
now they're doing that instantly for
everyone always because it's cheap it's
easy it's free by following your cell
phones right where's your cell phone
tonight
what other cell phones are around that
cellphone the laptop that you're using
right what networks does it connect to
every network adapter right whether it's
the Wi-Fi card with its the ethernet
port whether it's the radio in your
phone has what's called a you you would
or up a grid universally unique
identifier or globally unique identifier
write these you can think of them as
little trick tags that are burned into
the hardware of the device they can't be
changed on a permanent basis at least
without serious expertise and this means
that every time you connect to one of
these networks your device is different
from every other device in the world
could be connected to it there are
meaningful technical reasons for the
staff and write this wasn't a
surveillance scheme but a byproduct of
this is that suddenly the devices that
were designed to empower you can now be
used to disempower you that can be used
to make you vulnerable they can be used
to watch you and that is what's
happening
metadata in bulk this collection that's
happening with everyone and no court
needs to be involved because again they
say you don't own these records facebook
homes these records the cell phone
company owns this record of where your
cell phone went not you right
so they can do whatever they want with
it they can hand it to the government
voluntarily can provide a response to a
subpoena or a court order which is not
subjective right companies can turn over
things if the court says
we have probable cause to believe this
person's criminal what if they do it for
everyone all the time everywhere
what if the government cuts out the
middleman and start doing it themselves
by tapping the cross-border fiber optic
communications to connect for example
Canada to the United States or other
countries
well the problem is the internet doesn't
live in canada right the internet lives
all over the world so the minute your
communications go to Facebook or Google
or Yahoo or anything like this any major
service that was using you know you go
to iTunes that's creating a record that
these people now didn't have to go to
court to have on you now so again we
started dva but again it's a complex
question apologize for taking so long so
Obama is going well we're not reading
the content and that's because he didn't
want to have that conversation where it
goes but we are tracking basically
everything else when you have enough
metadata you don't need content metadata
is a proxy for content because machines
can analyze it in a way that content
can't metadata is creates perfect
records of private lives now even if you
believed him turned out that was not
true he said we're not rifling through
people's opinions but we found out just
last month that in fact yahoo one of the
major Internet companies had decided
beyond what the law required that they
would scan all of their customers emails
on behalf of us intelligence now they
could have contested this in court but
they chose not to because they thought
it would be secret and that nobody would
find out this is a danger of having
companies that store enormous amounts of
data on their customers if you build it
they will come
now let's contrast that to a messenger a
nap right free smartphone called signal
it's on iOS it's on Android
ideologically encrypted calls and
encrypted text to avoid this kind of
thing right if you want to send photos
to somebody and you don't want
the Canadian government or anybody else
to see it even just your internet
service provider
you've got to encrypted well the FBI
came after them saying we want to know
what one of your users is doing signal
went instead to a civil liberties
organization the ACLU and they fought in
court what they could they found out
that they couldn't resist the order
which is ok you know they've got no
legal recourse there but they said what
if we fight the secrecy bored what if we
fight for the right to tell people that
happened and there they won and here's
where it gets interesting
they did cooperate with the FBI they had
to they had little choice but because of
the design of their service this is the
actual records all of the records that
they handed over to the FBI the
government redacted but we know based on
the operation what it was the account
number on the left is the phone number
that the government already had because
the government said you know we want you
to look at this number and the only
information that this company held was
when the account was created the date in
the last time that connected because
they were tracking who you're calling
with this they weren't tracking what
you're doing with this because it wasn't
necessary for the operations of the
business
this gives us an idea of framework of a
safer world particularly for journalists
and individuals who have a a real need
right not just a right space need but a
profession need perhaps a safety based
me because if you're a journalist in
Beijing and Moscow or somewhere else and
the government can see who you're
contacting that could actually get
people jailed killed worse we need to do
a paradigm where all of our
communications are encrypted by default
now what is encryption mean for for
those who don't understand that mass
surveillance problem with the metadata
that we talked about earlier
the problem is when you think about the
internet how it actually works outfits
together when you send a text message
when you send a facebook message
how does that actually get from your
phone to the other person's phone right
what's going to travel over this
no man's land of the internet all of
these systems that are physically
connected right the fiber-optic cables
to satellite links all the radio hops
the microwave connections you don't see
any of this it just happens right but
it's there and all of those people in
the middle have a chance to look at that
communication if it's an SMS write a
normal text messages that you sent it's
completely unencrypted anybody in the
middle can read what is that can store
what it is they can save what it is the
same thing for normal emails that are
sent unencrypted web traffic that's not
https at the front of the bar right
that's just HTTP that's unencrypted so
nobody can see that but if you encrypt
it now suddenly all they have is
metadata they can actually read that
interior transmission what this means is
the government have been exploiting this
property to collect all of that stuff
for free as your communications cross
the internet electronically naked
encryption allows us to armor our
communications to walk through that
dangerous Valley and get to the other
side with some dignity left intact
that's the first thing that we need to
establish to protect the content of our
communications the second thing which is
a much more difficult problem maybe
because you're students you can research
this problem and find a way to fix it
permanent wood is how do we protect the
fact that the communication occurred at
all in the first place the metadata
right there's what you said and then
there's also the fact that you said
something at all
can we protect the fact that you called
your mother your boyfriend your
girlfriend your professor whatever you
called a hospital
you called an abortion you called up
political group you called a church any
connection where you spend your money
how you do it where you travel when you
cross the border right now we're living
lives of unparalleled vulnerability to
power we live in a very safe time let's
make no mistake about that right
everybody plays of the threat of
terrorism but if you look at any metric
of mortality
look at any metric of quality of life
we're doing pretty good relative to
historic circumstances yet at the same
time our ability to resist powerful
institutions be they corporate be the
governmental has never been less than it
is today because their powers throughout
history have been very closely connected
to ours right when people only had
muskets the government had to be pretty
careful when people only had horses
there's only so much they could do when
you have one side that has the largest
surveillance machine that has ever been
completed for a global basis in the
history of humanity and they had the
exclusive use of it and we on the other
hand have smartphones that are saying
everywhere we go all the time every
purchase would make every website we
visit we need to think about what that
means it means we are creating permanent
records of our daily activities that
could be used for purposes that we will
never know and have no say in we have an
obligation and we have a right to change
the game and say yes if governments if
courts want to monitor criminals they
can do so they can go to a judge they
can say this is the evidence that we
need to monitor this individual but the
days where they could monitor everyone
everywhere all the time simply what the
government calls by means of bulk
collection which is the government
euphemism for masturbation teens they
say we just want to collect everything
in store in case we want a search later
those days are numbered we are going to
move towards a freer and fairer future
rather than simply the one that has
already been laid out for us we are at a
decision point and we could have a very
dark future or very bright future but
the ultimate determination of which fork
in the road we take won't be my decision
but it won't be the government's
decision it will be your generations
decision and I'm looking forward to
seeing what it is that you guys actually
decide
so this is a perfect and notes in place
to end from dystopian realism of the
present two possible utopia of the
future and what I'd like to do is
actually first think the beaver brook
foundation for making this possible and
I'd also like to thank Snowden and the
audience
and everyone is standing up right now
thank you so much for your patience
tonight I know we had some difficulties
both in getting everybody in the room
getting the technology working but this
is an example of how you know if we have
a little bit of patience if we deal with
a little bit of inconvenience we can
make things happen and so thank you so
much and I hope that next year I hope
that next year I'll be able to see you
in person
