English subtitles for clip: File:PRISM - Snowden Interview - Laura Poitras HQ.webm

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My name's Ed Snowden, I'm 29 years old.

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I work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an
Infrastructure Analyst for NSA, in Hawaii.

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>> What are some of the positions that
you've held previously within

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the Intelligence Community?

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>> I've been a System's Engineer, System's
Administrator, Senior Advisor,

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for the, Central Intelligence Agency,
Solutions Consultant and

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a, Telecommunications Information System's
Officer.

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>> One of the things people are gonna be
most interested in,

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in, in, in trying to understand what, who
you are, and what you're thinking is?

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There came some point in time when you
crossed this line of thinking about being

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the [UNKNOWN] Whistleblower to making the
choice to actually become a Whistleblower.

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Walk people all through that decision
making process.

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>> When you're in positions of, of
Privileged Access, like

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a System's Administrator for these sort of
Intelligence Community and Agencies.

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You're exposed to a lot more information
on

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a broader scale than the average employee.

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And because of that, you see things that
may be disturbing.

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But over the course of a normal person's
career, you'd only see one or

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two of these instances.

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When you see everything, you see them on a
more frequent basis, and

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you recognize that some of these things
are actually abuses.

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And when you talk to people about them in
a place like this where this is the,

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the normal state of business.

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People tend not to take them very
seriously and you know, move on from them,

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but over time that awareness of wrong
doing sort of builds up, and

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you feel compelled to talk about it, and
the more you talk about it,

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the more you're ignored, the more you're
told it's not a problem.

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Until eventually you realize that these
things need to be determined by

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the public, not by somebody who is simply
hired by the government.

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>> Talk a little bit about how the
American Surveillance State

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actually functions that are, does it
target the actions of Americans?

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>> NSA and the Intelligence Community in
general is focused on

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getting Intelligence whenever it can by
whatever means possible.

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That it believes, on the grounds of sort
of self-certification,

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that they serve the national interest.

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originally, we saw that

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focus very narrowly tailored as Foreign
Intelligence gathered overseas.

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Now increasingly we see that it's
happening domestically.

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And to do that, they the NSA specifically
targets the communications of everyone.

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It ingests them by default.

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It collects them in its system, and it
filters them and it analyzes them and

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it measures them and it stores them.

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For periods of time, simply because that's
the easiest, most efficient, and

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most valuable way to achieve these ends.

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So while they may be intending to target
someone

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associated with a Foreign Government or
someone that they suspected terrorism.

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They're collecting your communications to
do so.

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Any Analysts at any time can target any
selector anywhere.

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Where those communications will be picked
up depends on the range of

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the Sensor Networks and the authorities
that, that Analyst is empowered with.

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Not all Analysts have the ability to
target everything.

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But I, sitting in my desk, certainly had
the authorities to, to wire tap anyone.

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From you or your accountant,

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to a Federal Judge to even the President
if I had a personal email.

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>> One of the extraordinary parts about
this episode is that usually about

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Whistleblower, do what they do anonymously
and take steps to remain anonymous for

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as long as they can, which they hope often
is forever.

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You, on the other hand, have decided to do
the opposite,

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which is to declare yourself openly as the
person behind these disclosures.

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Why did you choose to do that?

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>> I, I think that the public is owed an
explanation of the motivations behind

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the people who make these disclosures that
are outside of the democratic model.

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When you are subverting the power of
government, that's,

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that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to
democracy.

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And if you do that in secret consistently
you know,

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as the government does when it wants to
benefit from a secret action that it took.

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It'll kind of give it, it's officials a
mandate to go hey, you know,

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tell the press about this thing and thing,
so the public is on our side.

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But they rarely if ever do that when abuse
occurs.

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That falls to individual citizens.

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But, they're typically maligned.

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You know, it, it becomes a thing of these
people are against the country.

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They're against the government.

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But, I'm not.

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I'm, I'm no different from anybody else.

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I don't have special skills.

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I, I'm just another guy who sits there day
to day in the office,

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watches what happening, what's happening,
and goes.

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This is something that's not our place to
decide.

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The public needs to decide whether these
programs and policies are right or wrong.

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And I'm willing to go on the record to
defend the authenticity of them and

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say, I didn't change these.

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I didn't modify the story.

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This is the truth.

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This is what's happening.

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You should decide whether we need to be
doing this.

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>> Have you given thought to what it is
that the US

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government's response to your conduct is,
in terms of what they might say about you,

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how they might try to depict you, what
they might try to do to you?

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yeah, I, I could be you know, rendered
from the CIA.

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I, I could have people come after me or

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any of the their, their third-party
partners.

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You know, they would, they work closely
with a number of other nations.

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well, you know, they could pay off the
triads, or

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you know, any, any of their agents are
assets are.

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We;ve, we;'ve got a CIA station just up
the road in the,

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the consulate here in Hong Kong.

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And I'm sure they're gonna be very busy
for the next week.

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And that's, that's a fear I'll live under
for

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the rest of my life, however long that
happens to be.

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You, you can't come forward against the
world's most powerful

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Intelligence Agencies and be completely
free from risk because they're

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such powerful adversaries that, that no
one can meaningfully oppose them.

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If they want to get you, they'll get you
in time.

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But at the same time,

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you have to make a determination about
what it is that's important to you?

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And if living living living unfreely but
comfortably is something

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you're willing to accept, and I think may
of us are, it's, it's the human nature.

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You can get up every day.

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You can go to work.

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You can collect your, your large paycheck
for relatively little work.

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Against the public interest, and, and

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go to sleep at night after watching your
shows.

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But if you realize that that's the world
that you helped create, and

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it's gonna get worse with the next
generation and the next generation who

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extend the capabilities of this sort of
architecture of oppression.

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You realize that you might be willing to
accept any risk, and

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it doesn't matter what the outcome is so

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long as the public gets to make their own
decisions about how that's applied.

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>> Why should people care about
surveillance?

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>> Because even if you're not doing
anything wrong,

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you're being watched and recorded.

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And the, the storage capability of these
systems increases every year.

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Consistently by orders of magnitude, to
where it's getting to

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the point you don't have to have done
anything wrong, you simply have to

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eventually fall under suspicion from
somebody, even by a wrong call.

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And then they can use the system to go
back in time and scrutinize every

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decision you've ever made, every friend
you've ever discussed something with, and

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attack you on that basis to sort of derive
suspicion from an innocent life and

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paint anyone into context of a wrong doer.

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>> We are currently sitting in a room in,

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in Hong Kong of which is where we are
because you traveled here.

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Talk a little but about why it is that you
came here, and

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specifically they're gonna be people who
will speculate that what you

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really intend to do is to defect to the
country that many see as

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the number one rival of the United States
which is China.

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And that way you're really doing is
essentially seeking to

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aid an enemy of the United States,
with, which you intend to seek asylum.

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Can you talk a little bit about that?

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>> Sure.
So there,

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there's a couple of assertions in, in
those arguments that are,

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that are sort of embedded in the, the
questioning of the choice of Hong Kong.

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The first is that China is an enemy of the
United States.

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It, it's not.

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I mean, there, there are conflicts between
the United States government and

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the Chinese PRC government, but the, the
peoples inherently, you know,

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we, we don't care.

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We trade with each other freely, you know,

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we're not at war, we're not in armed
conflict, and we're not trying to be.

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We're, we're the largest trading partners
out there for each other.

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additionally, Hong Kong has a strong
tradition of free speech.

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People think oh, China, great firewall.

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Mainland China does have significant
restrictions on free speech.

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But the Hong Kong, the people of Hong
Kong.

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Have a long tradition of protesting in the
streets, of making their views known,

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that Internet is not filtered here, no
more so

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than any Western Government, and I believe
that the Hong Kong government is

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actually independent, in relation to a lot
of other leading Western governments.

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>> If your motive had been to harm the
United States and help its enemies is, or

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if your motive had been personal material
gain, were there things that you could

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have done with these documents to advance
those goals that you didn't end up doing?

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>> Oh, absolutely.

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I mean, an, anybody in the positions of
access with the take,

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technical capabilities that I had.

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Could, you know, suck out secrets, pass
them on the open market to Russia.

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You know, they always have an open door,
as we do.

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I had access to, you know, the, the full
rosters of everyone working at the NSA,

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the entire intelligence community.

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And undercover assets all around the
world.

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The locations of every station.

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We have what their missions are, and so
forth.

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If I had just wanted to harm the US, you,

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you know, that, you could shut down the,
the Surveillance System in an afternoon.

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But that's not my intention, and I, I
think for anyone making that argument,

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they need to think, if they were in my
position and you know,

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you live a privileged life, you, you're
living in Hawaii in paradise and

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making a ton of money.

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What would it take to make you leave
everything behind?

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The, the greatest fear that I have
regarding the outcome for

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America of these as closures, is that
nothing will change.

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People will see in the media all of these
as closures.

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They'll know the lengths that the,

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the government is going to grant
themselves powers, unilaterally,

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to create greater control over American
Society and Global Society.

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But they, they won't be willing to take
the risks necessary to stand up and

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fight to change things,

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to force their representatives to actually
take a stand in their interests.

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And the months ahead, the, the years
ahead, it's only gonna get worse

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until eventually there will be a time
where policies will change.

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Because the only thing that restricts the
activities of

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the surveillance state are policy.

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Even in our agreements with, with other
Sovereign Governments,

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we consider that to be a stipulation of
policy rather than a stipulation of law.

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And because of that, a new leader will be
elected, they'll flip the switch say that

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because of the crisis, because of the
dangers that we face in the world,

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you know, some, some new and

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unpredicted threat we need more authority,
we need more power.

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And there will be nothing the people can
do at that point to oppose it.

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And it'll be Turnkey Tyranny.