Edward Snowden Quotes
Let's put it this way. The United States government has assembled a massive investigation team into me personally, into my work with the journalists, and they still have no idea what documents were provided to the journalist, what they have, what they don't have, because encryption works.
Snowden, Edward. Keynote Address. South by Southwest Interactive Festival, 10 Mar. 2014, Austin, TX.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. Laura Poitras, the journalist, was not accused or suspected of anything. However, on the belief, that Snowden might have given her some classified material, the American government prevailed upon the British to seize her personal computer. Snowden made the programs public as the highest level intelligence officials were lying to Congress about them. The position of the US Government was that Snowden had violated American Law. Others praised him for revealing illegal activities in which the government was engaged and was lying about including to the Congressional oversight committees. Snowden repeatedly outsmarted the government and ended up getting asylum in Russia. In the case of the computer material, he had encrypted the material using “strong encryption” which most computer experts believe is impossible even for the best code breakers and computers to crack. See {628105} . In this quotation he argues that all journalists should use strong encryption on ALL of their notes and other materials that they receive from confidential sources. Government officials had tried to keep strong encryption secret even though it was invented by a private scientists with no government support or involvement. They failed, but have been trying to find a way to defeat strong encryption since. Ironically, most non-technical private individuals and companies do not use it even though it is quite easy and the software is free. Editors and publishers are ambivalent in that they could not comply with court orders or show them to employees even though it is their own property if the individual reporter or the source did not want them to.
The FBI had obtained a court order requiring apple to write software that could hack into a person's iPhone. Apple, with most other hi-tech companies in support, filed a motion with the court opposing the order. The FBI shortly thereafter withdrew its request for the order saying that they had found other solutions, when they had originally told the court that there were no other solutions.
Edward Joseph Snowden is a former computer intelligence consultant who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
