Edward Snowden: What Changed Your Mind on Leaking? — Transcript

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1. 0:01[Music]
2. 0:02what I wanted to do here Ed I wanted I
3. 0:04wanted to bring this um towards the
4. 0:07freedom of expression theme now so
5. 0:09secrecy is a barrier that prevents free
6. 0:11expression and there was a time when you
7. 0:14were uh very much at least as alleged in
8. 0:17articles that identify you as a guy who
9. 0:19used the handle the true hooa on uh the
10. 0:23RS Technic board you were a guy who
11. 0:25thought that if someone spilled a
12. 0:26classified secret they ought to be shot
13. 0:28in their personal regions
14. 0:30uh what what what did you what did you
15. 0:33believe then and what changed your mind
16. 0:36sort of in a nutshell about this I think
17. 0:39there's there's a lot to this so we're
18. 0:41talking about alleged internet postings
19. 0:43which uh even if they were me uh and
20. 0:46there are a lot of indications to say
21. 0:48that's probably the case uh I couldn't
22. 0:51actually own them because then I'm
23. 0:53encouraging everybody in the world to
24. 0:54basically be held to an account of
25. 0:56things that they were posting under a
26. 0:57pseudonym uh as sort of an anonymous
27. 1:00identifier which is really a core
28. 1:02concept of privacy but for the sake of
29. 1:04argument let's presume that's exactly
30. 1:06what I said and I think it wasn't
31. 1:08actually the personal reasons I think it
32. 1:10was alleged that it said leakers should
33. 1:12be shot in the
34. 1:14balls and this actually is sort of an
35. 1:16indicator of what I said before that I
36. 1:18really was a True Believer in government
37. 1:20I didn't have any skepticism at all
38. 1:22because it came down to tribal identity
39. 1:24right it comes down to what do you
40. 1:26believe in how do you identify
41. 1:28yourself and the language of the
42. 1:33National Security State as we may say uh
43. 1:36is the language of Good and Evil uh it's
44. 1:39about good people and bad people uh it's
45. 1:41about the Nation versus the
46. 1:44adversary
47. 1:46and when you are brought into a position
48. 1:49of sort of classified access you believe
49. 1:52that all of those people in the media
50. 1:54all of those protesters that are out on
51. 1:55the street all of the people who are
52. 1:57complaining about the intrusiveness
53. 2:00about of surveillance about the
54. 2:01violation of their civil liberties in
55. 2:02this context or that context uh they
56. 2:06simply don't understand what you
57. 2:09understand because you have access to
58. 2:10knowledge and information that they
59. 2:12don't
60. 2:13have but I came to learn that even
61. 2:16within the intelligence agency uh you
62. 2:19don't get the whole picture uh in fact
63. 2:22the most controversial programs are the
64. 2:26ones that are reviewed with the least
65. 2:28scrutiny because they're known to the
66. 2:29fewest amount of people and this reaches
67. 2:32a point