Former NSA employee Edward Snowden insisted that his actions had resulted in improving, not undermining, US national security, speaking via video link at the SXSW conference in Texas on Monday, and noted that, despite the personal cost, he would do the same again.
Snowden rejected claims that the leaked files were in the hands of Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies and noted that while working for the US government he saw violations of the US Constitution on a large scale. He also received praise from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web.
Responding to General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, who had said that his leaks had weakened US cyber defenses, Snowden spoke of improving national security and communications, not only for Americans, but for the whole world. "Once we are based on the same standards, we are based on our ability to trust our communications, and without that we have nothing.".
He also added that thanks to the safer communications that seem to result from his revelations, "the public, the government and every society in the world benefits.".
Regarding the issue of his files ending up in the hands of potential US adversaries, he stated categorically that "this has not happened and is not going to happen. If the Chinese government had suddenly learned everything that the NSA does, we would have noticed this difference". At the same time, he spoke of extensive US penetration of Russia and China, while launching an attack on both General Alexander and his predecessor, Michael Hayden, characterizing them as the two officials who have most damaged cybersecurity and by extension national security in the post-9/11 era, emphasizing offensive operations instead of cyber defense.
Continuing, he claimed that American intelligence agencies, despite making such great efforts in terms of mass data collection, are failing to identify would-be terrorists like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers blamed for the Boston Marathon bombings.
“We monitor everyone’s communications instead of just the communications of the suspects…if we hadn’t spent so much on mass surveillance, if we had followed traditional methods, we might have caught him.” He made a similar reference to the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane bound for Detroit in 2009.
Snowden referred to the model of oversight of the operation of US intelligence agencies, saying that it could work to guard against "overreach", but in practice it proved ineffective, as "the problem is when your supervisors are not interested in oversight". At the same time, he accused the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, of proving that officials "can lie to the country and to Congress and not face criticism".
He went on to claim that the US's behavior on online surveillance issues would simply encourage the rest of the world to do the same, putting the privacy of all citizens at risk. "If we don't resolve these issues, if we allow the NSA to continue without restrictions, every other government will take that as a green light to continue, and we don't want that," he said.
His message to tech companies like Facebook and Google was not that “you can’t collect any data” but that “you should only collect the data and keep it for as long as is necessary to run your businesses.”.
Addressing ordinary Internet users, he encouraged them to protect themselves from surveillance by encrypting both their hard drives and their online activity, describing encryption as “a defense against the dark arts of the digital world.” He also recommended anonymous Web browsing through the Tor system and urged developers to create more user-friendly secure communications tools. However, he pointed out that “if you are a target of the NSA, it’s game over unless you take really sophisticated technical measures to protect yourself.”.
Despite being unable to return to the United States, he said he had no regrets about his decision to carry out the biggest leak in US intelligence history. "Would I do it again? The answer is definitely yes. Regardless of what happens to me, it's something we had a right to know.".
Source: naftemporiki.gr
