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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

Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
CSPAN2 05/24/2014
Greenwald: the same kinds of fear-mongering is hauled out over and over and over again going all the way back to the 1971 leak of Daniel Ellsberg when he leaked the Pentagon Papers and informed the American citizenry that the government was systematically lying to them for years about the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg was my childhood hero. I actually have had the honor of becoming friends with him and colleagues with him. I serve on a board with him. And I’ve had the opportunity to talk with him because he’s become the leading most vocal defender not just of Edward Snowden but Chelsea Manning and other courageous whistleblowers in the last 10 years. And the reason he said he does that and he's devoted to doing it even though he's now 83 is because he said that every single thing that they say about Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning every single thing was said about me.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
KNTV 05/28/2014
Williams: In his recently published book "No Place to Hide" Greenwald describes that moment he first met Snowden in Hong Kong. What did you make of him? Greenwald: The initial impression was one of extreme confusion. Because I was expecting to meet somebody in his 60s or 70s, someone very senior in the agency because I knew almost nothing about him prior to our arrival in Hong Kong. Snowden: It was a really intimidating moment. You know, it was the most real point of no return because the minute you start talking to a journalist as an intelligence officer, on camera, there's really no going back from that. That's where it all comes together.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Greenwald: The Obama Administration has been saying for years but certainly over the last year. You need not worry, this spying is completely legal and constitutional. And yet, every time the ACLU and other groups and other people have sued to get a ruling on whether or not this really is legal and constitutional, the Obama Justice Department goes into court and raises a technicality and says they can't prove they were subjected to the spying and therefore they have no standing to actually sue because we all do it in secret and nobody can prove they were spied upon. And the courts throw the case out. The five right wing judges on the Supreme Court last year accepted the Obama DOJ argument and threw those cases out. Now these people have proof that they were subjected to the spying and I think you’re going to see lawsuits now claiming that the spying framework is in fact unconstitutional.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: Remember when the Russians granted him asylum a year ago they cited two different grounds. One was that there's no legal basis to turn him over to the U.S. because the U.S. and the Russians don't have any extradition treaty which is a ground the U.S. has cited numerous times when refusing to turn over accused criminals to the Russians who were on U.S. soil. And secondly that he faced persecution. That he'd be put into a cage for the next several decades by virtue of his whistleblowing activities which are heralded around the world. Neither of those two grounds has changed in any way. The Russians have indicated very strongly publicly and in other ways that they intend to extend his asylum and so I think the chances that Mr. Snowden will end up in U.S. custody and anything resembling the near future is very, very low. Basically nonexistent.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: He definitely faces persecution. If you look at what even leading journalists have said over and over over the last five years it's the climate in the United States under the Obama administration is unprecedentedly hostile to the news gathering process. Sources are prosecuted more vindictively and aggressively under the Espionage Act than at any time in American history. The problem, Ronan, is that if he were to come back and face trial he would be barred from raising the defense he wants to raise which is that he was justified in revealing this information. His conviction would be essentially guaranteed. It's not really a fair trial.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: Unfortunately, the Obama administration has dredged up this 1917 statute called the Espionage Act which was enacted under Woodrow Wilson as a means to criminalize those who were against the U.S. involvement in World War I. And it's an incredibly broad statute that allows the U.S. government to punish virtually anybody who takes action or discloses information that the United States government doesn't want disclosed. And in the post 9/11 era federal courts have continuously said that the defense that most whistleblowers want to raise which is, yes, I disclosed this information but doing so is justified because it revealed serious wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government that should never have been kept secret in the first place, is not a defense. They are literally not allowed to utter that defense. And I think reform of that law to make it a law that reflects our current values and that gives whistleblowers a fighting chance in court is a crucial first step.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: Just think about the -- what this means. These are the people in Congress who are supposed to exercise oversight over the CIA, the people who appropriate their budgets and who are supposed to ensure that they are abiding by the law. And the CIA just cavalierly invaded the privacy of their communications illegally and then the director of the CIA, John Brennan misled the public and lied and denied that it ever happened only for it to turn out that it did. Think about what that says about what the U.S. intelligence community is willing to do with their surveillance capabilities, how cavalier they are about breaking the law. If they are even willing to invade the communication of the Senate which is investigating them. This is not just some sort of aberration. This is why secret surveillance is so dangerous because inevitably it gets abused in the most extreme ways possible.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: (I think all countries that have) said that they have benefited greatly as a result of his revelations which certainly includes Germany but it also includes France and Spain and Brazil which is where I currently am and where I live, have the not just moral obligation but the legal obligation to protect his rights, even if it means risking some tension with the United States, exactly the way that he risked his own material self-interest in defense of their rights. And I do think it's appalling to watch these governments who have benefited so much from his revelations who are now able to protect the privacy not just of their leading government officials but of their populations as a result of what he did turn their back on him and not protect his rights, which is why Russia is the place that he continues to be. So I do think there's some real debate in places like Germany, Brazil and other places about the prospect that he could be granted asylum. I'm not so sure it won’t happen. But I think the fact it hasn't after a year is sort of shameful.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder The Intercept
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Greenwald: The United States relies an its ability to go around the world claiming it stands for democracy and condemning tyranny. We love to talk about Vladimir Putin and all his oppressive measures. And yet here's probably if not the most brutally oppressive, one of the most brutally repressive regimes in the world, Saudi Arabia, and the NSA in 2013 established a cooperative relationship with their most extremely oppressive agency, the Ministry of Interior, where we provide training and technology to teach them how to better surveil their citizens. Why should that possibly be something we as Americans are comfortable with, having our government aid this brutally repressive ministry within this horribly repressive regime. I hope shining a light on it causes a debate about whether that's what we want to do and whether the U.S. government rhetoric about believing in democracy and spreading freedom and all of that has any authenticity at all.
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Glenn Greenwald
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 05/07/2015
Wagner: I have to ask because of Edward Snowden's involvement in all of this, have you spoken to him about the decision by this New York Federal Court? Greenwald: I have. And he is thrilled about it. I think it's really important to note, I found it notable that you asked Senator Wyden whether this vindicates Mr. Snowden and he evaded your question completely. It is true that Senator Wyden has gone around for years trying to start a debate but didn't tell the American people about what the government was doing. So we couldn't debate it. It took Edward Snowden to come forward and he came forward in large part because he heard Director Clapper, the Senior U.S. National Security official tell the senate and the American people falsely that the government was not doing exactly the program that the court today said was illegal. So to have an appellate court, the first time an appellate Court looked at the legality of the program, come out and decisively and unanimously say that it's illegal, of course is very gratifying.
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