Courtesy of Mish.
Here’s an extremely interesting, educational, and important video interview with Edward Snowden on the right to privacy.
Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. “Your rights matter,” he say, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.” Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee.
Link if video does not play: Here’s How We Take Back the Internet
The interview is about 35 minutes long. Please play it in entirety. It will be worth your time.
It took me nearly two hours playing and replaying parts of the video to produce the following partial transcript.
Partial Transcript
Speaking about Dick Cheney, Snowden says “We should be suspicious about the same overblown claims about damage to national security from these kind of officials. But, But, let’s assume these people really believe it. I would argue they have a kind of 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 interest. Going to war with people who are not our enemies in places that are not a threat doesn’t make us safe. And that applies whether it’s in Iraq or on the internet.”
TED: It’s alleged that you have stolen 1.7 million documents. It seems only a few hundred of them have been shared with journalists so far. Are there more revelation to come?
Snowden: There are absolutely more revelations to come. Some of the most reporting to be done is yet to come.
TED: This is a story that for a lot of techies 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?
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