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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: 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: 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
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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