<div dir="ltr"><div><div>you can also see the whole interview (undubbed) in English here:<br><a href="https://archive.org/details/snowden_interview_en">https://archive.org/details/snowden_interview_en</a><br></div>Best regards,<br>
</div>Lorena<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-01-28 Guru गुरु <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Guru@itforchange.net" target="_blank">Guru@itforchange.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Specially for those who believe (or rather, who would like others to
believe) that the status quo is to be preserved...<br>
<br>
Excerpt<br>
<b><br>
Mr Snowden did you sleep well the last couple of nights because I
was </b><b><br>
</b><b>reading that you asked for a kind of police protection. Are
there any </b><b><br>
</b><b>threats? </b><b><br>
</b><br>
There are significant threats but I sleep very well. There was an <br>
article that came out in an online outlet called Buzz Feed where
they <br>
interviewed officials from the Pentagon, from the National Security
<br>
Agency and they gave them anonymity to be able to say what they want
and <br>
what they told the reporter was that they wanted to murder me. These
<br>
individuals - and these are acting government officials. They said
they <br>
would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to
poison me <br>
as I was returning from the grocery store and have me die in the
shower<br>
<br>
<b>*But fortunately you are still alive with us.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Right but I'm still alive and I don't lose sleep because I've done
what <br>
I feel I needed to do. It was the right thing to do and I'm not
going to <br>
be afraid.<br>
<br>
<b>*Does the NSA spy on Siemens, on Mercedes, on other successful
German </b><b><br>
</b><b>companies for example, to prevail, to have the advantage of
knowing what </b><b><br>
</b><b>is going on in a scientific and economic world.*</b><br>
<br>
I don't want to pre-empt the editorial decisions of journalists but
what <br>
I will say is there's no question that the US is engaged in economic
<br>
spying.<br>
<br>
<br>
End excerpt<br>
<br>
Gurumurthy Kasinathan<br>
Director, IT for Change<br>
In Special Consultative Status with the United Nations ECOSOC<br>
<a href="http://www.ITforChange.Net" target="_blank">www.ITforChange.Net</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Source - <a href="http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277_page-1.html" target="_blank">http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277_page-1.html</a><br>
<br>
Snowden-Interview in English<br>
- 26.01.2014 23:05 Uhr - Autor/in: Hubert Seipel<br>
<br>
Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the documents about US mass <br>
surveillance. He spoke about his disclosures and his life to NDR <br>
journalist Seipel in Moscow. <br>
<br>
*"The greatest fear I have", and I quote you, "regarding the
disclosures <br>
is nothing will change." That was one of your greatest concerns at
the <br>
time but in the meantime there is a vivid discussion about the
situation <br>
with the NSA; not only in America but also in Germany and in Brazil
and <br>
President Obama was forced to go public and to justify what the NSA
was <br>
doing on legal grounds.*<br>
<br>
What we saw initially in response to the revelations was sort of a <br>
circling of the wagons of government around the National Security <br>
Agency. Instead of circling around the public and protecting their <br>
rights the political class circled around the security state and <br>
protected their rights. What's interesting is though that was the <br>
initially response, since then we've seen a softening. We've seen
the <br>
President acknowledge that when he first said "we've drawn the right
<br>
balance, there are no abuses", we've seen him and his officials
admit <br>
that there have been abuses. There have been thousands of violations
of <br>
the National Security Agency and other agencies and authorities
every <br>
single year.<br>
<br>
<b>*Is the speech of Obama the beginning of a serious regulation?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
It was clear from the President's speech that he wanted to make
minor <br>
changes to preserve authorities that we don't need. The President <br>
created a review board from officials that were personal friends,
from <br>
national security insiders, former Deputy of the CIA, people who had
<br>
every incentive to be soft on these programs and to see them in the
best <br>
possible light. But what they found was that these programs have no
<br>
value, they've never stopped a terrorist attack in the United States
and <br>
they have marginal utility at best for other things. The only thing
that <br>
the Section 215 phone metadata program, actually it's a broader
metadata <br>
programme of bulk collection -- bulk collection means mass
surveillance <br>
-- program was in stopping or detecting $ 8.500 wire transfer from a
cab <br>
driver in California and it's this kind of review where insiders go
we <br>
don't need these programs, these programs don't make us safe. They
take <br>
a tremendous amount of resources to run and they offer us no value.
They <br>
go "we can modify these". The National Security agency operates
under <br>
the President's executive authority alone. He can end of modify or <br>
direct a change of their policies at any time.<br>
<br>
<b>*For the first time President Obama did concede that the NSA
collects </b><b><br>
</b><b>and stores trillions of data.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email,
make a <br>
purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card <br>
somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that
it's a <br>
good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you've never been <br>
suspected of any crime. Traditionally the government would identify
a <br>
suspect, they would go to a judge, they would say we suspect he's <br>
committed this crime, they would get a warrant and then they would
be <br>
able to use the totality of their powers in pursuit of the <br>
investigation. Nowadays what we see is they want to apply the
totality <br>
of their powers in advance - prior to an investigation.<br>
<br>
<b>*You started this debate, Edward Snowden is in the meantime a
household </b><b><br>
</b><b>name for the whistleblower in the age of the internet. You
were working </b><b><br>
</b><b>until last summer for the NSA and during this time you
secretly </b><b><br>
</b><b>collected thousands of confidential documents. What was the
decisive </b><b><br>
</b><b>moment or was there a long period of time or something
happening, why </b><b><br>
</b><b>did you do this?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
<font color="#cc0000"><i>I would say sort of the breaking point is
seeing the Director of </i><i><br>
</i><i>National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under
oath to </i><i><br>
</i><i>Congress. There's no saving an intelligence community that
believes it </i><i><br>
</i><i>can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be
able to trust </i><i><br>
</i><i>it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for
me there was </i><i><br>
</i><i>no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realisation
that no one </i><i><br>
</i><i>else was going to do this. The public had a right to know
about these </i><i><br>
</i><i>programs. The public had a right to know that which the
government is </i><i><br>
</i><i>doing in its name, and that which the government is doing
against the </i><i><br>
</i><i>public, but neither of these things we were allowed to
discuss, we were </i><i><br>
</i><i>allowed no, even the wider body of our elected
representatives were </i><i><br>
</i><i>prohibited from knowing or discussing these programmes and
that's a </i><i><br>
</i><i>dangerous thing. The only review we had was from a secret
court, the </i><i><br>
</i><i>FISA Court, which is a sort of rubber stamp authority</i><i><br>
</i><i><br>
</i></font>When you are on the inside and you go into work
everyday and you sit <br>
down at the desk and you realise the power you have - you can wire
tap <br>
the President of the United States, you can wire tap a Federal Judge
and <br>
if you do it carefully no one will ever know because the only way
the <br>
NSA discovers abuses are from self reporting.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>*We're not talking only of the NSA as far as this is
concerned, there is </b><b><br>
</b><b>a multilateral agreement for co-operation among the services
and this </b><b><br>
</b><b>alliance of intelligence operations is known as the Five
Eyes. What </b><b><br>
</b><b>agencies and countries belong to this alliance and what is
its purpose?</b>*<br>
<br>
The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War
II <br>
era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded
together <br>
to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering
<br>
infrastructure.<br>
<br>
So we have the UK's GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada's
C-Sec, we <br>
have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New
<br>
Zealand's DSD. What the result of this was over decades and decades
what <br>
sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't
answer <br>
to the laws of its own countries.<br>
<br>
<b>*In many countries, as in America too the agencies like the NSA
are not </b><b><br>
</b><b>allowed to spy within their own borders on their own people.
So the </b><b><br>
</b><b>Brits for example they can spy on everybody but the Brits but
the NSA </b><b><br>
</b><b>can conduct surveillance in England so in the very end they
could </b><b><br>
</b><b>exchange their data and they would be strictly following the
law.*</b><b><br>
</b><b><br>
</b>If you ask the governments about this directly they would deny
it and <br>
point to policy agreements between the members of the Five Eyes
saying <br>
that they won't spy on each other's citizens but there are a couple
of <br>
key points there. One is that the way they define spying is not the
<br>
collection of data. The GCHQ is collecting an incredible amount of
data <br>
on British Citizens just as the National Security Agency is
gathering <br>
enormous amounts of data on US citizens. What they are saying is
that <br>
they will not then target people within that data. They won't look
for <br>
UK citizens or British citizens. In addition the policy agreements <br>
between them that say British won't target US citizens, US won't
target <br>
British citizens are not legally binding. The actual memorandums of
<br>
agreement state specifically on that that they are not intended to
put <br>
legal restriction on any government. They are policy agreements that
can <br>
be deviated from or broken at any time. So if they want to on a
British <br>
citizen they can spy on a British citizen and then they can even
share <br>
that data with the British government that is itself forbidden from
<br>
spying on UK citizens. So there is a sort of a trading dynamic there
but <br>
it's not, it's not open, it's more of a nudge and wink and beyond
that <br>
the key is to remember the surveillance and the abuse doesn't occur
when <br>
people look at the data it occurs when people gather the data in the
<br>
first place.<br>
<br>
<b>*How narrow is the co-operation of the German Secret Service BND
with </b><b><br>
</b><b>the NSA and with the Five Eyes?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
I would describe it as intimate. As a matter of fact the first way I
<br>
described it in our written interview was that the German Services
and <br>
the US Services are in bed together. They not only share
information, <br>
the reporting of results from intelligence, but they actually share
the <br>
tools and the infrastructure they work together against joint
targets in <br>
services and there's a lot of danger in this. One of the major <br>
programmes that faces abuse in the National Security Agency is
what's <br>
called "XKeyscore". It's a front end search engine that allows them
to <br>
look through all of the records they collect worldwide every day.<br>
<br>
<b>*What could you do if you would sit so to speak in their place
with this </b><b><br>
</b><b>kind of instrument?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
You could read anyone's email in the world. Anybody you've got email
<br>
address for, any website you can watch traffic to and from it, any <br>
computer that an individual sits at you can watch it, any laptop
that <br>
you're tracking you can follow it as it moves from place to place <br>
throughout the world. It's a one stop shop for access to the NSA's <br>
information. And what's more you can tag individuals using
"XKeyscore". <br>
Let's say I saw you once and I thought what you were doing was <br>
interesting or you just have access that's interesting to me, let's
say <br>
you work at a major German corporation and I want access to that <br>
network, I can track your username on a website on a form somewhere,
I <br>
can track your real name, I can track associations with your friends
and <br>
I can build what's called a fingerprint which is network activity
unique <br>
to you which means anywhere you go in the world anywhere you try to
sort <br>
of hide your online presence hide your identity, the NSA can find
you <br>
and anyone who's allowed to use this or who the NSA shares their <br>
software with can do the same thing. Germany is one of the countries
<br>
that have access to "XKeyscore".<br>
<br>
<b>*This sounds rather frightening. The question is: does the BND
deliver </b><b><br>
</b><b>data of Germans to the NSA?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Whether the BND does it directly or knowingly the NSA gets German
data. <br>
Whether it's provided I can't speak to until it's been reported
because <br>
it would be classified and I prefer that journalists make the <br>
distinctions and the decisions about what is public interest and
what <br>
should be published. However, it's no secret that every country in
the <br>
world has the data of their citizens in the NSA. Millions and
millions <br>
and millions of data connections from Germans going about their
daily <br>
lives, talking on their cell phones, sending SMS messages, visiting
<br>
websites, buying things online, all of this ends up at the NSA and
it's <br>
reasonable to suspect that the BND may be aware of it in some
capacity. <br>
Now whether or not they actively provide the information I should
not say.<br>
<br>
<b>*The BND basically argues if we do this, we do this accidentally
</b><b><br>
</b><b>actually and our filter didn't work.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
Right so the kind of things that they're discussing there are two <br>
things. They're talking about filtering of ingest which means when
the <br>
NSA puts a secret server in a German telecommunications provider or
they <br>
hack a German router and they divert the traffic in a manner that
let's <br>
them search through things they're saying "if I see what I think is
a <br>
German talking to another German I'll drop it" but how do you know.
You <br>
could say "well, these people are speaking the German language",
"this <br>
IP address seems to be from a German company to another German
company", <br>
but that's not accurate and they wouldn't dump all of that traffic <br>
because they'll get people who are targetes of interest, who are <br>
actively in Germany using German communications. So realistically
what's <br>
happening is when they say there's no spying on Germans, they don't
mean <br>
that German data isn't being gathered, they don't mean that records
<br>
aren't being taken or stolen, what they mean is that they're not <br>
intentionally searching for German citizens. And that's sort of a <br>
fingers crossed behind the back promise, it's not reliable.<br>
<br>
<b>*What about other European countries like Norway and Sweden for
example </b><b><br>
</b><b>because we have a lot of I think under water cables going
through the </b><b><br>
</b><b>Baltic Sea.*</b><br>
<br>
So this is sort of an expansion of the same idea. If the NSA isn't <br>
collecting information on German citizens in Germany are they as
soon as <br>
it leaves German borders? And the answer is "yes". Any single <br>
communication that transits the internet, the NSA may intercept at <br>
multiple points, they might see it in Germany, they might see it in
<br>
Sweden, they might see it in Norway or Finland, they might see it in
<br>
Britain and they might see it in the United States. Any single one
of <br>
these places that a German communication crosses it'll be ingested
and <br>
added to the database.<br>
<br>
<b>*So let's come to our southern European neighbours then. What
about </b><b><br>
</b><b>Italy, what about France, what about Spain?*</b><br>
<br>
It's the same deal worldwide.<br>
<br>
<b>*Does the NSA spy on Siemens, on Mercedes, on other successful
German </b><b><br>
</b><b>companies for example, to prevail, to have the advantage of
knowing what </b><b><br>
</b><b>is going on in a scientific and economic world.*</b><br>
<br>
I don't want to pre-empt the editorial decisions of journalists but
what <br>
I will say is there's no question that the US is engaged in economic
<br>
spying.<br>
<br>
If there's information at Siemens that they think would be
beneficial to <br>
the national interests, not the national security of the United
States, <br>
they'll go after that information and they'll take it.<br>
<br>
<b>*There is this old saying "you do whatever you can do" so the NSA
is </b><b><br>
</b><b>doing whatever is technically possible.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
This is something that the President touched on last year where he
said <br>
that just because we can do something, and this was in relation to <br>
tapping Angela Merkel's phone, just because we can do something
doesn't <br>
mean that we should, and that's exactly what's happened. The <br>
technological capabilities that have been provided because of sort
of <br>
weak security standards in internet protocols and cellular <br>
communications networks have meant that intelligence services can
create <br>
systems that see everything.<br>
<br>
*Nothing annoyed the German government more than the fact that the
NSA <br>
tapped the private phone of the German Chancellor Merkel over the
last <br>
10 years obviously, suddenly this invisible surveillance was
connected <br>
with a known face and was not connected with a kind of watery shady
<br>
terrorist background: Obama now promised to stop snooping on Merkel
<br>
which raises the question: did the NSA tape already previous
governments <br>
including the previous chancellors and when did they do that and how
<br>
long did they do this for?*<br>
<br>
This is a particularly difficult question for me to answer because <br>
there's information that I very strongly believe is in the public <br>
interest. However, as I've said before I prefer for journalists to
make <br>
those decisions in advance, review the material themselves and
decide <br>
whether or not the public value of this information outweighs the
sort <br>
of reputational cost to the officials that ordered the surveillance.
<br>
What I can say is we know Angela Merkel was monitored by the
National <br>
Security Agency. The question is how reasonable is it to assume that
she <br>
is the only German official that was monitored, how reasonable is it
to <br>
believe that she's the only prominent German face who the National <br>
Security Agency was watching. I would suggest it seems unreasonable
that <br>
if anyone was concerned about the intentions of German leadership
that <br>
they would only watch Merkel and not her aides, not other prominent
<br>
officials, not heads of ministries or even local government
officials.<br>
<br>
*How does a young man from Elizabeth City in North Carolina, 30
years <br>
old, get in such a position in such a sensitive area?*<br>
<br>
That's a very difficult question to answer. In general, I would say
it <br>
highlights the dangers of privatising government functions. I worked
<br>
previously as an actual staff officer, a government employee for the
<br>
Central Intelligence Agency but I've also served much more
frequently as <br>
a contractor in a private capacity. What that means is you have
private <br>
for profit companies doing inherently governmental work like
targeted <br>
espionage, surveillance, compromising foreign systems and anyone who
has <br>
the skills who can convince a private company that they have the <br>
qualifications to do so will be empowered by the government to do
that <br>
and there's very little oversight, there's very little review.<br>
<br>
*Have you been one of these classical computer kids sitting red eyed
<br>
during the nights in the age of 12, 15 and your father was knocking
on <br>
your door and saying "switch off the light, it's getting late now"?
Did <br>
you get your computer skills from that side or when did you get your
<br>
first computer?*<br>
<br>
Right I definitely have had a ... shall we say a deep informal
education <br>
in computers and electronic technology. They've always been
fascinating <br>
and interesting to me. The characterisation of having your parents <br>
telling you to go to bed I would say is fair.<br>
<br>
*If one looks to the little public data of your life one discovers
that <br>
you obviously wanted to join in May 2004 the Special Forces to fight
in <br>
Iraq, what did motivate you at the time? You know, Special Forces, <br>
looking at you in the very moment, means grim fighting and it means
<br>
probably killing and did you ever get to Iraq?*<br>
<br>
No I didn't get to Iraq ... one of the interesting things about the
<br>
Special Forces are that they're not actually intended for direct
combat, <br>
they're what's referred to as a force multiplier. They're inserted <br>
behind enemy lines, it's a squad that has a number of different <br>
specialties in it and they teach and enable the local population to
<br>
resist or to support US forces in a way that allows the local
population <br>
a chance to help determine their own destiny and I felt that was an
<br>
inherently noble thing at the time. In hindsight some of the reasons
<br>
that we went into Iraq were not well founded and I think did a <br>
disservice to everyone involved.<br>
<br>
*What happened to your adventure then? Did you stay long with them
or <br>
what happened to you?*<br>
<br>
No I broke my legs when I was in training and was discharged.<br>
<br>
*So it was a short adventure in other words?*<br>
<br>
It's a short adventure.<br>
<br>
*In 2007 the CIA stationed you with a diplomatic cover in Geneva in
<br>
Switzerland. Why did you join the CIA by the way?*<br>
<br>
I don't think I can actually answer that one on the record.<br>
<br>
*OK if it's what you have been doing there forget it but why did you
<br>
join the CIA?*<br>
<br>
In many ways I think it's a continuation of trying to do everything
I <br>
could to prosecute the public good in the most effective way and
it's in <br>
line with the rest of my government service where I tried to use my
<br>
technical skills in the most difficult positions I could find in the
<br>
world and the CIA offered that.<br>
<br>
*If we go back Special Forces, CIA, NSA, it's not actually in the <br>
description of a human rights activist or somebody who becomes a <br>
whistleblower after this. What happens to you?*<br>
<br>
I think it tells a story and that's no matter how deeply an
individual <br>
is embedded in the government, no matter how faithful to the
government <br>
they are, no matter how strongly they believe in the causes of their
<br>
government as I did during the Iraq war, people can learn, people
can <br>
discover the line between appropriate government behaviour and
actual <br>
wrongdoing and I think it became clear to me that that line had been
<br>
crossed.<br>
<br>
*You worked for the NSA through a private contractor with the name
Booze <br>
Allen Hamilton, one of the big ones in the business. What is the <br>
advantage for the US Government or the CIA to work through a private
<br>
contractor to outsource a central government function?*<br>
<br>
The contracting culture of the national security community in the
United <br>
States is a complex topic. It's driven by a number of interests
between <br>
primarily limiting the number of direct government employees at the
same <br>
time as keeping lobbying groups in Congress typically from very well
<br>
funded businesses such as Booze Allen Hamilton. The problem there is
you <br>
end up in a situation where government policies are being influenced
by <br>
private corporations who have interests that are completely divorced
<br>
from the public good in mind. The result of that is what we saw at
Booze <br>
Allen Hamilton where you have private individuals who have access to
<br>
what the government alleges were millions and millions of records
that <br>
they could walk out the door with at any time with no
accountability, no <br>
oversight, no auditing, the government didn't even know they were
gone.<br>
<br>
*At the very end you ended up in Russia. Many of the intelligence <br>
communities suspect you made a deal, classified material for Asylum
here <br>
in Russia.*<br>
<br>
The Chief of the Task Force investigating me as recently as December
<br>
said that their investigation had turned up no evidence or
indications <br>
at all that I had any outside help or contact or had made a deal of
any <br>
kind to accomplish my mission. I worked alone. I didn't need
anybody's <br>
help, I don't have any ties to foreign governments, I'm not a spy
for <br>
Russia or China or any other country for that matter. If I am a
traitor <br>
who did I betray? I gave all of my information to the American
public, <br>
to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If
they <br>
see that as treason I think people really need to consider who do
they <br>
think they're working for. The public is supposed to be their boss
not <br>
their enemy. Beyond that as far as my personal safety, I'll never be
<br>
fully safe until these systems have changed.<br>
<br>
*After your revelations none of the European countries really
offered <br>
you asylum. Where did you apply in Europe for asylum?*<br>
<br>
I can't remember the list of countries with any specificity because
<br>
there were many of them but France, Germany were definitely in there
as <br>
was the UK. A number of European countries, all of whom
unfortunately <br>
felt that doing the right thing was less important than supporting
US <br>
political concerns.<br>
<br>
*One reaction to the NSA snooping is in the very moment that
countries <br>
like Germany are thinking to create national internets an attempt to
<br>
force internet companies to keep their data in their own country.
Does <br>
this work?*<br>
<br>
It's not gonna stop the NSA. Let's put it that way. The NSA goes
where <br>
the data is. If the NSA can pull text messages out of
telecommunication <br>
networks in China, they can probably manage to get facebook messages
out <br>
of Germany. Ultimately the solution to that is not to try to stick <br>
everything in a walled garden. Although that does raise the level
of <br>
sophistication and complexity of taking the information. It's also
much <br>
better simply to secure the information internationally against
everyone <br>
rather than playing "let's move the data". Moving the data isn't
fixing <br>
the problem. Securing the data is the problem.<br>
<br>
<b>*President Obama in the very moment obviously doesn't care too
much </b><b><br>
</b><b>about the message of the leak. And together with the NSA they
do care </b><b><br>
</b><b>very much more about catching the messenger in that context.
Obama asked </b><b><br>
</b><b>the Russian president several times to extradite you. But
Putin did not. </b><b><br>
</b><b>It looks that you will stay to the rest of your life probably
in Russia. </b><b><br>
</b><b>How do you feel about Russia in that context and is there a
solution to </b><b><br>
</b><b>this problem.*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
I think it's becoming increasingly clear that these leaks didn't
cause <br>
harm in fact they served the public good. Because of that I think it
<br>
will be very difficult to maintain sort of an ongoing campaign of <br>
persecution against someone who the public agrees serve the public
interest.<br>
<br>
<b>*The New York Times wrote a very long comment and demanded
clemency for </b><b><br>
</b><b>you. The headline "Edward Snowden Whistleblower" and I quote
from that: </b><b><br>
</b><b>"The public learned in great detail how the agency has
extended its </b><b><br>
</b><b>mandate and abused its authority." And the New York Times
closes: </b><b><br>
</b><b>"President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way
to end Mr </b><b><br>
</b><b>Snowden's vilification and give him an incentive to return
home." Did </b><b><br>
</b><b>you get a call in between from the White House?*</b><b><br>
</b><br>
I've never received a call from the White House and I am not waiting
by <br>
the phone. But I would welcome the opportunity to talk about how we
can <br>
bring this to a conclusion that serves the interest of all parties.
I <br>
think it's clear that there are times where what is lawful is
distinct <br>
from what is rightful. There are times throughout history and it
doesn't <br>
take long for either an American or a German to think about times in
the <br>
history of their country where the law provided the government to do
<br>
things which were not right.<br>
<br>
<b>*President Obama obviously is in the very moment not quite
convinced of </b><b><br>
</b><b>that because he said to you are charged with three felonies
and I quote: </b><b><br>
</b><b>"If you Edward Snowden believe in what you did you should go
back to </b><b><br>
</b><b>America appear before the court with a lawyer and make your
case." Is </b><b><br>
</b><b>this the solution?*</b><br>
<br>
It's interesting because he mentions three felonies. What he doesn't
say <br>
is that the crimes that he has charged me with are crimes that don't
<br>
allow me to make my case. They don't allow me to defend myself in an
<br>
open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to
<br>
their benefit. The espionage act was never intended, it's from
1918, it <br>
was never intended to prosecute journalistic sources, people who are
<br>
informing the newspapers about information that's of public
interest. It <br>
was intended for people who are selling documents in secret to
foreign <br>
governments who are bombing bridges who are sabotaging
communications <br>
not people who are serving the public good. So it's I would say <br>
illustrative that the president would choose to say someone should
face <br>
the music when he knows the music is a show trial.<br>
</div>
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