\u2022 Whistleblower patches in to Texas conference from Russia
\n\u2022 Snowden insists leaks have strengthened national security<\/i><\/p>\n
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower whose unprecedented leak of top-secret documents led to a worldwide debate about the nature of surveillance, insisted on Monday [10 Mar 2014] that his actions had improved the national security of the United States rather than undermined it, and declared that he would do it all again despite the personal sacrifices he had endured.<\/p>\n
In remarks to the SXSW culture and technology conference in Texas, delivered by video link from his exile in Russia, Snowden took issue with claims by senior officials that he had placed the US in danger. He also rejected as demonstrably false the suggestions by some members of Congress that his files had found their way into the hands of the intelligence agencies of China or Russia.<\/p>\n
Snowden spoke against the backdrop of an image of the US constitution, which he said he had taken an oath to protect but had seen \u201cviolated on a mass scale\u201d while working for the US government. He accepted praise from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, accorded the first question via Twitter, who described him as \u201cacting profoundly in the public interest\u201d.<\/p>\n
The session provided a rare and extensive glimpse into the thoughts of Snowden, granted temporary asylum by Russia after the US revoked his passport. He struck back strongly against claims made again last week by the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, that his release of secret documents to the Guardian and other outlets last year had weakened American cyber-defences.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese things are improving national security, these are improving the communications not just of Americans, but everyone in the world,\u201d Snowden said. \u201cBecause we rely on the same standard, we rely on the ability to trust our communications, and without that, we don\u2019t have anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added later that thanks to the more secure communication activity that had been encouraged by his disclosures, \u201cthe public has benefited, the government has benefited, and every society in the world has benefited\u201d.<\/p>\n
Snowden rejected claims that potential adversaries of the US, such as Russia and China, had obtained the files he had been carrying. \u201cThat has never happened, and it is never going to happen. If suddenly the Chinese government knew everything the NSA was doing, we would notice the difference,\u201d said Snowden, noting that US infiltration of Russia and China was extensive.<\/p>\n
He sharply criticised Alexander and Michael Hayden, his predecessor as NSA director, as the two officials to have most \u201charmed our internet security and actually our national security\u201d in the era since the September 11 terrorist attacks by \u201celevating offensive operations\u201d over cyber-defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are the one country in the world that has a vault that is more full than everyone else\u2019s, it doesn\u2019t make any sense to be attacking all day and never defending your vault,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it makes even less sense when you let the standards for vaults worldwide have a big back door that anyone can walk in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old also claimed that by spending so much effort on harvesting communications data en masse, US security agencies were failing to pick up would-be terrorists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers alleged to have bombed last year\u2019s Boston Marathon, who had been previously flagged to the US as a cause for concern by Russian authorities. \u201cWe are monitoring everyone\u2019s communications rather than suspects\u2019 communications,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t spent so much on mass surveillance, if we had followed traditional patterns, we might have caught him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snowden also pointed to the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d who attempted to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The US failed to intercept him despite several opportunities, including a warning from his father to US officials in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
An audience of 3,500 packed into an auditorium in Austin applauded several of Snowden\u2019s answers to questions from a pair of onstage moderators and others submitted through Twitter. Despite a glitchy and intermittent video link that he said was running through seven proxies, Snowden looked relaxed and confident.<\/p>\n
He said that while the US has \u201can oversight model that could work\u201d to guard against excess by intelligence agencies, in reality it had proved ineffectual. \u201cThe problem is when your overseers are not interested in oversight,\u201d he said, and \u201cchampion the NSA instead of holding them to account\u201d.<\/p>\n