the rights of citizens
the future of the internet so i'd like
to welcome
to the ted stage the man behind those
revelations
ed snowden
ed is uh in a remote location somewhere
in russia
uh controlling the spot with from his
laptop
so he can see what the bot can see
ed welcome to the ted stage what what
can you see as a matter
of fact i can see everyone
this is amazing
um ed um
some questions for you you've been
called many things in the last few
months you've been called
a whistleblower a traitor
a hero what words would you describe
yourself with you know we everybody
who's involved with this
debate has been struggling over me and
my personality and
and what how to describe it but when i
think about it these
these this isn't the question that we
should be struggling with
who i am really doesn't matter at all
if i'm the worst person in the world you
can hate me
and and move on what really matters here
are the issues
what really matters here is the kind of
government we want the kind of
internet we want the kind of
relationship between people
and societies and that's what i'm hoping
the debate will move towards and we've
seen that increasing over time
if i had to describe myself i wouldn't
use words like hero i wouldn't use
patriot and i wouldn't use traitor
i'd say i'm an american and i'm a
citizen just like everyone else
so just to give some context to those
who don't know the whole whole story
this time this time a year ago you were
stationed in
hawaii working as a consultant to the
nsa you had as a sys admin you had
access to their systems and you began
revealing certain classified documents
to some hand-picked
journalists um leading the way to june's
revelations
now what propelled you to do this
you know when i was sitting in hawaii
and the years before when i was working
in the intelligence community i saw a
lot of things that had disturbed me
we do a lot of good things in the
intelligence community things that need
to be done and things to help everyone
but there are also things that go too
far there are things that shouldn't be
done and decisions that were being made
in secret
without the public's awareness without
the public's consent
and without even our representatives in
government having knowledge of these
programs
when i really came to struggle with
these issues
i thought to myself how can i do this in
the most responsible way
that maximizes the public benefit
while minimizing the risks and out of
all the solutions that i could come with
out of going to congress when there was
no
laws there were no legal protections for
a private employee
a contractor in intelligence like myself
there was there was a risk that i would
be buried along with the information and
the public would never find out
but the first amendment of the united
states constitution guarantees us a free
press
for a reason and that's to enable an
adversarial threats
to challenge the government but also to
work together with the government
to have a dialogue and debate about how
we can inform the public
about matters of vital importance
without putting our national security at
risk
and by working with journalists by
giving all of my information
back to the american people rather than
trusting myself to make the decisions
about publication
we've had a robust debate with a deep
investment by the government
that i think has resulted in a benefit
for
for every and the risks
that have been have been threatened the
risks that have been
played up by the government have never
materialized we've never seen
any evidence of even a single instance a
specific
form so let's um i'm comfortable with
the decisions
so let's let me show um the audience a
couple of examples of of
what you revealed if you can have a
slide up and ed um i don't know whether
you can see if you
the slides are here this is a slide of
the prism program
and um maybe you could tell the audience
what what that was
that was revealed the best way to
understand prison
because there's been a little bit of
controversy is the first talk about what
prison
is much of the debate in the u.s has
been about
metadata they've said it's just metadata
it's just metadata and they're talking
about a specific legal report
called section 215 of the patriot act
that allows sort of
uh warrantless wiretapping mass
surveillance of the entire country's
sort of phone records things like that
who you're talking to when you're
talking to them uh
where you travel these are all metadata
events
prism is about content
it's a program through which the
government could compel
corporate america it could sort of
deputize corporate america
to do its dirty work for the nsa
and even though some of these companies
did resist
even though some of them i believe yahoo
was one of them challenged them in court
they all lost because it was never tried
by an
open court they were only tried by a
secret court
and something that we've seen something
about the prism program that's very
concerning is
there's been a talking point in us
government where they said 15
federal judges have reviewed these
programs and found them to be lawful but
what they don't tell you
is those are secret judges
in a secret court based on secret
interpretations of law
that's considered 34 000
warrant requests over 33 years
and in 33 years only rejected 11
government requests
these aren't the people that we want
deciding what the role of corporate
america in a free and open internet
should be
now this this slide that we're showing
here shows the dates
in which different technology companies
internet companies
are um alleged to have have joined the
program and where data collection began
from them now they have denied
collaborate
collaborating with the nsa how
was that data collected by the nsa
right so the nsa's own slides refer to
it as direct
access what that means to an actual nsa
analyst
someone like me who's working as an
intelligence analyst uh
targeting you know chinese cyber actors
things like that hawaii
is the provenance of that data is
directly from their servers
it doesn't mean that there's a you know
group of company representatives sitting
in a smoky room with the nsa
paddling around and making backroom
deals about how they're going to give
this stuff away
now each company handles in different
ways some are responsible some are
somewhat less responsible
but the bottom line is when we talk
about how this information
is is given uh it's coming
from the companies themselves it's not
stolen from the lines
but there's an important thing to
remember here even though companies
pushed back
even though companies uh demanded hey
let's do this through a warrant process
let's do this you know where we actually
have some sort of legal review
some sort of basis for handing over
these users data
we saw stories in the washington post
last year that weren't as well reported
as the prism story
that said the nsa broke in to the data
center communications between
google to itself and yahoo to itself
so even these companies that are
cooperating in at least a compelled but
hopefully lawful manner with the nsa
the nsa isn't satisfied with that
and because of that we need our
companies to work very
hard to guarantee that they're going to
prefer
represent the interests of the user and
also advocate
for the rights of the users and i think
over the last year we've seen the
companies that are named on the prism
slides
take great strides to do that and i
encourage them to continue
what more should they do the
the biggest thing that an internet
company in america can do today
right now without consulting with
lawyers to protect the rights of users
worldwide
is to enable uh ssl or
sort of encryption web encryption on
every page that you visit
the reason this matters is today if you
go to look at a copy of 1984 on
amazon.com
the nsa can see a record of that the
russian intelligence service can see a
record of that the chinese service can
see the
record of that the french service the
german service the services of
andor they can all see it because it's
unencrypted
the world's library amazon.com
but not only do they not support
encryption by default you cannot
choose to use encryption when browsing
through books
this is something that we need to change
not just for amazon i don't mean to
single them out but they're a great
example
all companies need to move to an
encrypted
browsing habit by default for all users
who haven't taken any action or picked
any special methods on their own
that'll increase the privacy and the
rights that people enjoy
worldwide and come with me um to this
part of the stage
i want to show you the next slide here
this is a program called boundless
informant what is that
so i i've got to give credit to the nsa
for uh
for using appropriate names on this this
is one of my favorite nsa crypto names
uh boundless informant is a program that
the nsa hit from congress
the nsa was previously asked by congress
was there any ability
that they had to even give a rough
ballpark estimate
of the amount of american communications
that were being intercepted
they said no they said we don't track
those stats and we can't track those
stats we can't tell you
how many communications we're
intercepting around the world because to
tell you that would be to invade your
privacy
now i really appreciate that sentiment
from them but the reality when you look
at this slide is not only do they have
the capability the capability
already exists it's already in place
the nsa has its own internal data format
that tracks the both ends of a
communication and if it says
this communication came from america
they can tell
congress how many of those
communications they have today
right now and what boundless informant
tells us
is more communications are being
intercepted in americans of
in america about americans than there
are in russia about russians
i'm not sure that's what an intelligence
agency should be aiming
um there was a story broken in the
washington post again from your
data the headline says nsa broke privacy
rules thousands of times per year
tell us about that we also heard in
congressional testimony last year it was
it was an amazing thing for someone like
me who came from the nsa
who's who's seen the actual internal
documents knows what's in them
uh to see officials testifying under
oath that there have been no abuses
that there have been no violations of
the nsa's rules
when we knew this story was coming but
what's especially interesting about this
about the fact that the nsa has violated
their own rules their own laws
thousands of times in a single year
including
one event by itself one event out of
those 2776
uh that affected more than 3 000 people
in another event they intercepted all
the calls in washington dc by accident
what's amazing about this this report
that didn't get that much attention
is the fact that not only were there
2776 abuses
the chairman of the senate intelligence
committee dianne feinstein had not
seen this report until the washington
post
contacted her asking for comment on the
report
and she then requested a copy from the
nsa and received it
but had never seen this before that what
does that say about the state
of oversight in american intelligence
when the chairman of the senate
intelligence committee has no idea that
the
the rules are being broken thousands of
times every year
ed one response to this whole debate
is this it's why should we care about
all this surveillance honestly i mean
look if you've done
nothing wrong you've got nothing to
worry about
what's wrong with that point of view
well
so the first thing is you're you're
you're giving up your rights you're
saying hey you know i don't
think i'm gonna need them so i'm just
gonna trust that you know
let's get rid of them it doesn't really
matter that you know these guys are
going to do the right thing
your rights matter because you never
know when you're going to leave them
beyond that it's a part of our cultural
identity not just in america
but in western societies and in
democratic societies around the world
people should be able to pick up the
phone and to call their family people
should be able to send a text message to
their loved ones
people should be able to buy a book
online they should be able to travel by
train they should be able to buy an
airline ticket
without wondering about how these events
are going to look
to an agent of the government possibly
not even your
government years in the future how
they're going to be misinterpreted and
what they're going to think your
intentions
we have a right to privacy we require
warrants to be based on probable cause
or some kind of individualized suspicion
because we recognize that trusting
anybody any any government authority
with the entirety of human
communications in secret and without
oversight is simply too great a
temptation to be ignored
some people are furious at what you've
done i heard a quote recently from
dick cheney who said that um
julian assange was a flea bite uh
edward snowden is the lion that bit the
head off the dog
he thinks you've committed one of the
worst acts of betrayal
in american history what would you say
to people who think that
dick cheney is really something else
thank you
i think it's amazing because at the time
julian assange was doing some of his
greatest work
uh dick cheney was saying he was going
to end governments worldwide
the skies were going to ignite and the
seas were going to boil off
and and now he's saying it's a fleet
bike so we should be suspicious about
the same sort of overblown claims of
damage to national security
uh from these kind of officials but but
let's assume let's assume that these
people really believe this
i i would argue that they have kind of a
narrow uh
a narrow conception of national security
the prerogatives of people like dick
cheney
do not keep the nation safe the public
interest
is not always the same as the national
electricity
going to war with people who are not our
enemy
in places that are not a threat doesn't
make us sick
and that applies whether it's in iraq or
on the internet
the internet is not the enemy our
economy is not the enemy
american businesses chinese businesses
in any any other world
any other company out there is a part
of our society it's a part of our
interconnected world there are
ties of fraternity that that bond us
together and if we destroy these bonds
by
undermining the standards the security
the
the manner of behavior that nations and
citizens
all around the world expect us to abide
by
but um you know it's alleged that you
you've stolen
uh 1.7 million documents it seems only a
few hundred of them have been shared
with
journalists so far are there more
revelations to come
there are absolutely more revelations to
come i i don't think there's any
uh any question that some of the most
important
uh some of the most important reporting
to be done
is yet to come
well let me come come here because i
want to ask you about this particular
revelation come
and uh take a look at this i mean this
is this is a story which i think for a
lot of the techies in this room is the
single most
shocking thing that they have heard in
the last few months
it's about a program called bull run
could you explain what that is
so bull run and this is again where
we've got to thank uh we've got to thank
the nsa for their
candor
this is a program named after civil war
battle
the british counterpart is called
edgehill which is a uk civil war battle
and the reason
that i believe they're named this way is
because they target our own
infrastructure their programs through
which the nsa
intentionally misleads corporate
partners
they tell corporate partners that these
are safe standards they say hey
we need to work with you to secure uh
secure new systems but in reality
they're giving bad advice to these
companies that makes them degrade the
security of their services
they're building in back doors that not
only the nsa can exploit
but anyone else who has time and money
to research
and find it can then use to let
themselves into the world's
communications
and this is really dangerous because if
we lose
a single standard if we lose the trust
of something like
ssl which was specifically targeted by
the bull run program
we will live in a less safe world
overall we won't be able to access our
banks
and we won't be able to access
commerce without worrying about people
monitoring those communications of
subverting them for their own
and do those same decisions also
potentially
um open america up to cyber attack from
other sources
absolutely uh one of the problems uh one
of sort of the the
dangerous legacies that we've seen in
the post 911 era
is that the nsa has traditionally worn
two hats
they've been in charge of offensive
operations that is hacking
but they've also been in charge of
defensive operations and traditionally
they've always prioritized defense over
offense
based on the principle that american
secrets are simply worth more
if we hack a chinese business and steal
their secrets
if we hack a government office in berlin
and steal their secrets
that has less value to the american
people
than making sure that the chinese can't
get access to our secrets
so by reducing the security of our
communications
they're not only putting the world at
risk they're putting america at risk in
a fundamental way because
intellectual property is the basis the
foundation of our economy
and if we put that at risk through weak
security we're going to be paying for it
for years
but they've made a calculation that it
was worth doing this
as part of america's defense against
terrorism
surely that makes it a price worth
paying
well when you look at the when you look
at the results
of these programs stopping terrorism
you'll see that
that's unfounded uh and you don't have
to take my word for it because
uh we've had the first open court
the first federal court that's reviewed
this uh outside of sort of the secrecy
arrangement
called these programs orwellian and
likely unconstitutional
the congress who has access to be
briefed on these things and now has the
desire to be has produced bills to
reform it
and two independent white house panels
who reviewed
all of the classified evidence said
these programs have
never stopped a single terrorist attack
that was imminent in the united states
so is it really terrorism that we're
stopping
do these programs have any value at all
i say no
and all three branches of the american
government say no as well
i mean do you think there's a deeper
motivation for them than the war against
terrorism
i'm sorry i couldn't hear you say again
sorry do you think there's a deeper
motivation for them other than the war
against terrorism
yeah the the bottom line is that
terrorism has always been what we in the
intelligence world would call
a cover for action uh terrorism is
something that provokes an emotional
response that allows people
to rationalize authorizing uh
powers and programs that they wouldn't
give otherwise
the bull run and edge hill type programs
the nsa
asked for these authorities back in the
1990s they asked the fbi to go to
congress and make the case the fbi went
to congress and did make the case
but congress and the american people
said no they said it's not worth the
risk to our economy they said it's worth
too much
damage to our society to justify the
gains
but what we saw is in the post-9 11 era
they use secrecy and they use the
justification of terrorism
to start these programs in secret
without asking congress without asking
the american people
and it's that kind of government behind
closed doors that we need to
guard ourselves against because it makes
us less safe and it offers no value
okay come with me here for a second i've
got a more personal question for you
um speaking of terror um
most people would find the situation
you're in right now um
in russia pretty terrifying um
you obviously you know you heard what
happened
what the treatment that bradley manning
got chelsea manning us now is
and um there was a story in buzzfeed
saying that there are people in the
intelligence community who want you dead
how how are you coping with this are you
how are you coping with the fear
you know it's it's no mystery that
there are governments out there that
want to see me um
i've made clear again and again and
again that i go to sleep every morning
thinking about what i can do for the
american people
i don't want to harm my government i
want to help my people
the fact that they are willing to
completely ignore due process
they're willing to to declare guilt
without ever seeing a trial
these are things that we need to to work
against as a society and say hey this is
not appropriate
we shouldn't be threatening disciplines
we shouldn't be criminalizing journalism
and whatever part i can do to see that
end
i'm happy to do despite the risks so i'd
actually like to get
some feedback from the audience here
because i know there's widely differing
reactions to edward snowden um suppose
you had the following two
choices right you could view what he did
is fundamentally a reckless
act that has endangered america
um or you viewed it as fundamentally a
heroic act that will
um work towards america and the world's
long-term
good those are the two choices i'll give
you
um i'm curious to see who's willing to
vote with the first of those
that this was a reckless act
there's some hands going up some hands
going up
it's it's hard to put your hand up when
uh the man is standing right here but
i see them
um and uh who who goes with the second
choice the fundamentally heroic
and and i think it's true to say that
there are a lot of people who didn't
show a hand and i think i think
um are still thinking this through
because it seems to me
that the debate around you doesn't split
along traditional
political lines it's not left to right
it's not really about pro-government
libertarian
or not just that part of it is almost a
generational
issue you're part of a generation that
grew up with the internet
and it seems as if you you become
offended at almost a visceral level
when you see something done that you
think will harm the internet
i mean is that is there some truth to
that
it is you know i
i think it's very true this is not a
left or right issue
you know our basic freedoms and when i
say our i don't just mean americans i
mean people around the world
it's not a partisan issue these are
things that all people believe
and it's up to all of us to protect them
and to people who have seen
and enjoyed a free and open internet
it's up to us
to preserve that liberty for the next
generation to enjoy and if we don't
change things
if we don't stand up to make the changes
we need to do
to keep the internet safe not just for
us but for
everyone we're going to lose that and
that would be a tremendous loss not just
for us but for the world
well i have heard similar language
recently from the founder of the
worldwide web who i actually think is
with us so tim berners-lee tim would
actually would you like to come up and
and um say do we have a microphone for
tim
which camp are you in by the way um um
traitor
hero i have a theory on this but uh i've
given much longer a
longer uh explanation answers that
question
but uh here if i have to make the the uh
choice between the two and um ed you
you've i think you've read
uh the proposal that sir tim's talked
about about a new
magna carta to take back the internet is
that something that makes sense
absolutely i mean my generation i grew
up
not just thinking about the internet but
i grew up
in the internet and although i never
expected to uh
to have the chance to defend it in such
a uh
such a direct and practical manner and
to sort of embody it
in this unusual uh almost avatar manner
i think there's something poetic about
the fact that one of the sons of the
internet
has actually become close to the
internet
as a result of their political
expression and i believe
that a magna carta for the internet is
exactly what we need
we need to encode our values
not just in writing but in the structure
of the internet
and it's something that i hope i invite
everyone in the audience
not just here in vancouver but around
the world
to join and participate in do you have a
question for
ed well it's the uh two questions a
general question
can you still hear us yes
so if so from the 25 years
sort of step back stepping back and
thinking uh
what would you think would be the best
that we could achieve
from all the discussions that we have
about the uh
about the web we want you know i
when we think about in terms of how far
we can go
i think that's a question that's really
only limited by what we're willing to
put in
i think the internet that we've enjoyed
in the past
has been exactly what we as a
as a not just a nation but as a people
around the world
need and
by cooperating by engaging not just the
technical parts of society but
as you said the users the people around
the world who
contribute through the internet through
social media who just check the weather
who rely on it every day as a part of
their life to
champion that we'll get not just the
internet we've had
but a better internet a better now
something that we can
use to build a future that'll be better
not just than what we hoped for but
anything that we could have imagined
it's um it's 30 years ago that ted was
founded in 1984.
um a lot of the conversation since then
has been
along the lines that um actually george
orwell got it wrong
it's not big brother watching us we
through the power of the web and
transparency are now watching big
brother
your revelations kind of drove a stake
through the heart of that rather
optimistic
view um but you still believe there's a
way of of doing something about that and
you do too
right so there is a there is
an argument to be made that the powers
of big brother have increased enormously
uh there was a recent legal article
at yale uh that established something
called the bankston
sultani principle which is that our
expectation of privacy
is violated when the capabilities of
government surveillance have
become cheaper by an order of magnitude
and each time that occurs we need to
revisit and rebalance our privacy
properly
now that hasn't happened since uh the
government's
uh surveillance powers have increased by
several
magnitude and that's why we're in the
problem that we're in today
but there is still hope
because the power of individuals have
also been increased by technology
i am living through that an
individual can go head to head against
the most powerful adversaries and the
most
powerful intelligence agencies around
the world
and win and i think that's something
that we need to take hope from and we
need to build on
to make it accessible not just to
technical experts but to ordinary
citizens around the world
journalism is not a problem
communication is not a problem
and we should not be monitored in our
everyday activities i'm not quite sure
how you shake the hand of a
of a bot but i imagine it's um
this is the hand right here nice to meet
you
and i i hope my beam looks as nice as my
view of you guys
thank you thank you tim
i mean that the new york times recently
called for an amnesty
for you uh would you welcome the chance
to come back to america
absolutely i mean there's there's really
no question
the the principles that have been the
foundation of this project
have been the public interest
and the principles that underlie
the journalistic establishment in the
united states and around the world
and i think if the press is now
saying we support this
this is something that needed to happen
that's a powerful argument but it's not
the final one
and i think that's something that the
public should decide
but at the same time the government has
hinted that they want some kind of deal
uh that they want me to sort of
compromise the journalists with which
i've been working
to come back and i want to make it very
clear
that i did not do this to be safe i did
this to do what was
right and i'm not going to stop my work
in the public interest
just to benefit myself well in the
in the meantime um courtesy of the
internet and this technology
um you're here back in north america not
quite the us
canada um uh in this form how
i'm curious i mean how does that feel
canada is different than what i expected
it's a lot warmer
at ted the mission is ideas were
spreading
if you could encapsulate it in a single
idea what is your idea worth spreading
right now at this moment
i would say the last year has been a
reminder
that democracy may die behind closed
doors but we as individuals are born
behind those same closed schools and we
don't have to give up
our privacy to have good government
we don't have to give up our liberty to
have security
and i think by working together we can
have
both open government and private lives
and i look forward to working with
everyone around the world to see that
thank you very much thank you
you