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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: I think he (Edward Snowden) certainly accomplished a shift in consciousness globally around what states are capable of doing, what intelligence agencies are capable of doing. so I think he's raised that awareness. And I think he’s also, one of his main goals was that he felt that these things, that we live in a democracy, we have a rule of law and a constitution and there were things happening in secret that the public should know about.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
WHYY 10/25/2014
Film clip from CitizenFour-MacAskew: What’s the next step. When do think you’ll go public? Snowden: I think it's pretty soon. I mean, with the reaction, this escalated more quickly. I think pretty much as soon as they try to make this about me, which should be any day now, I'll come out just to go, hey, you know, this is not a question of somebody skulking around in the shadows. These are public issues, these are not not my issues. These are everybody's issues and I’m not afraid of you. You're not going to bully me into silence like you've done to everybody else. And if nobody else is gonna do it, I will. And hopefully, when I'm gone, whatever you do to me, there will be somebody else who will do the same thing. It will be the sort of internet principle of the hydra. You can stomp one person but there’s gonna be several more of us.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: Every story goes through, we contact the government, confrontation with the government saying, this is what we intent to publish, do you want to comment on it and do you have any concerns about what we're publishing? And in terms of stories that I've worked on, I'm trying to think -- there were some redactions of stories that I've worked on that have happened because the government made a persuasive argument that they should be redacted, but in general, you know, these decisions are made in newsrooms, The Guardian, The Times, The Post. Rose: These decisions are made in newsrooms all over the country, had nothing to do with Edward Snowden. Poitras: Sure, right, this is the process. So everything has gone through that kind of a process. In terms of harm, I’ve not seen any. We have been careful in terms of the reporting that we've done.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Rose: They'll argue that somehow people will know what sources they have, not in terms of individuals, but they will know their means and that that somehow will result in them having to go through a process of having to redo whatever means they had of spying on enemies of the state, so to speak. Poitras: I mean, in response, I would say -- I mean, there are stories, I've worked on, a couple stories, and I’ve been based in Berlin doing the reporting and there are two stories that talk about one of the things they're doing in terms of targeting. But they've gone and targeted engineers at telecoms, so the people who are sort of the keepers of the passwords and sort of the gateways into the telecommunication systems. And we have documents that show actual names of people who work for Belgian Telekom and also in Germany where you actually have the names of engineers. These are people not suspected of anything.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: The only reason that you see G.S.H.Q which is a British Intelligence Agency and the N.S.A. are interested in is because these people are, you know, an access point to get to their networks. And, yeah, I have published those kinds of stories and it does reveal that they're doing something, so if you have an individual goes to their LinkedIn page and then the GCHQ or N.S.A. will send back a malicious piece of software which will then infect the engineer's computer. And then they go and type in their password and then the GCHQ or N.S.A. has their password. To me this is something that’s happening in allied countries, this is in Europe. I think this kind of reporting should happen and I think that there should be questions about the extent of these technologies.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: I’ve been working on post-9/11 stuff for a long time and I think one of the dilemmas I've seen is a lot of the policies we're engaging in, I would argue they don't necessarily make us safer. If you look at the Iraq war which I’ve documented, you know, I think that we're seeing now some of the unintended consequences of that occupation and what happened and the kind of instability in the region. So I think that I'm not fully convinced that the security that the government says that they're providing in these policies for citizens are any safer.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: I believe that what The N.S.A. is doing is a threat to democracy. Rose: What it continues to do? Poitras: What it continues to do is a threat. In terms of my profession as a journalist, if the government can find out who I'm talking to, then how can I protect the source, you know? And I think that -- and it's not just me. There are many, many –
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Poitras: We're seeing more change in the technology companies and in our government in the sense that the tech knoll companies realize that the customers do want to be able to communicate privately and they want to build tools that will satisfy that. So I think we're going to see more and more technology companies coming forward and offering ways to encrypt communication. I also think there's a movement of the free software movement that have been building these tools for over a decade.
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Laura Poitras
Documentary Filmmaker and Co-Founder of The Intercept
WHYY 10/25/2014
Rose: The head of the F.B.I. said on “60 Minutes”, you know, that they were very concerned about the fact that, you know, these things -- that they had no access. They didn't have the encryption code. Poitras: I have a lot of friends who are cryptographers. Their argument to that is the idea of backdoors, backdoors creates insecurity for everyone. So if you have a system that has back doors, where governments can get in, it's naive to think only the U.S. government can break those back doors, that other governments can break them and that you create a system, an internet that's insecure by design and there are a lot of people who think that's a very dangerous way to go.
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Eric Holder
Attorney General
FOXNEWSW 11/02/2014
Kurtz: Well, turns out Attorney General Eric Holder has some second thoughts about the administration's assault on the press. Capehart: What's the one decision you made that you wish you could do over again? Holder: I think about the subpoena to the Fox reporter, Rosen. I think that I could have been a little more careful in looking at the language that was contained in the filing that we made with the court. He was labeled as a co-conspirator. Kurtz: But it wasn't a subpoena. This was secret surveillance that involved reading James Rosen’s e-mail and that of his family without his knowledge. A subpoena you can go to court and oppose. Look, I'm glad that Holder is finally admitting that this was a flat out mistake to go after our own James Rosen. And the same applies to the surveillance of Associated Press reporters. Slapping that label, co-conspirator on a journalist who is doing his job was an atrocious lack of judgment. And I for one hope it never happens again.
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