How much surveillance can open societies tolerate? NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden addressed this question and more live at the Forum this Tuesday, and Daily Editor Skylar Li has the rundown for you.

It’s been six years since Edward Snowden leaked the US government’s mass wiretapping program, but encroachment on privacy is still far from losing relevance. We’re constantly reminded of our vulnerability by taped webcams, student IDs tracking our every move, and Instagram Explore pages curated a little too specific to our tastes. In Snowden’s words, the Internet has been “mutated from a cooperative, creative space into a commercial and competitive space”, where companies profit off intermediating as much human activity as possible (think GAFA.) However, while competition naturally disincentivizes corporations from exchanging data, the government can sift through your DMs on any social media platform they desire. To address this terrifying reality, the Knight First Amendment Institute, a Columbia organization supporting free speech in the digital era, invited Edward Snowden to speak via video conference on secrecy, surveillance, security, and his trajectory as a whistleblower. 

Following a brief introduction of interviewers Amy Davidson Sorkin, staff writer of the New Yorker, and Jameel Jaffer, Executive Director of the Knight Institute, the nearly full auditorium piped down in anticipation of the most wanted man in the world (and not in that way!). When Edward Snowden appears on the screen, streaming live from his Moscow sanctuary against a pitch-black background, I’m taken aback for a moment by the telescreen’s eerily dystopian effect. There’s no background noise, no object or source of light that could suggest his location. Donned in a sleek black suit and slick-backed hair, Snowden looks, in every way, a professional, even when making jokes about the current presidency; later, he cleverly dodged an audience question about his pick of successor for the White House (“If I endorsed someone, it would be used against them!”). His eloquent manner of speaking, combined with video clips and internet articles at the ready for citation, made the video conference almost seem pre-recorded. In reality, Snowden is just very, very well-prepared; in fact, booking fees for talks currently serve as his main source of income, although he decided to waive it for this forum (the Columbia clout serves!!). 

The hour-and-half conversation unwinds into a choppy back-and-forth between the three, covering topics from Internet anonymity to the motive behind his decision to expose the government. With an unproportionate number of questions to answer in such a short time, Snowden’s monologues were often cut off before questions were fully answered, making transitions abrupt. Here’s a run-down of the interview – note that these answers are summarizations and not an accurate script of Snowden’s words.

Q: Where are you right now?

A: Despite all the speculation going around, I’m in Moscow. After being isolated for so many years working in the CIA, it feels weird that being trapped in a form of exile that I didn’t choose for myself has made me more connected to the outside world through these public speaking opportunities. 

Q: Why did you enlist in the army after 9.11? And when did the mission of the government stop making sense to you? 

A: At the time, I was non-skeptical and supportive of any war the government waged because many men in my family were involved with the army. But it was when I started doing foreign service overseas and talked to many case officers that I began seeing contradictions between the value of what they’d been doing and the human cost of it. I was part of the problem at the time, so becoming skeptical of the system meant to become skeptical of myself – critiquing the government was to criticize myself. At the time, everyone was excited about Obama’s presidency, but the sad reality is that we didn’t end indefinite detention or legal authorization of military forces on US citizens. And when I recognized how the mass surveillance system was being implemented both domestically and globally, I began to think more about the system than the agency. 

Still, I was hesitant to speak up at first, because I was sheltered from the system by virtue of my position. When we look at how many respond to unconstitutional acts today, the natural response is usually cynicism. This is because when people feel a sense of cognitive dissonance, they seek a psychological shelter – the sense of cynicism that the system is just that way – and fall into complacency. For some time, I let it be someone else’s problem…until I eventually realized there are no heroes, only heroic decisions. We need to take risks or we will never achieve anything.

Q: The system was reviewed by executive agencies, officials, foreign surveillance, the court…why weren’t you satisfied?

A: Very few agencies really knew about it, and the ones that did were the most corrupted branches. The White House would begin these programs without the involvement of the congress, and piece by piece they would bring in selective members to let into the conspiracy. Even judges in the foreign surveillance court are all appointed by the same person. In essence, you have a structure of power over all of us that is entirely secretly controlled, in which citizens have no vote. If you reported anything, the government would argue it as a felony. I think that this kind of framework is a more serious matter than the surveillance itself. 

Q: You gave journalists access to documents first. Why did you decide to let them sift through the information themselves? 

A: Think about it: what happens when an individual throws secrets up in the air? Many secrets are corrosive to our democracy, but some need to be concealed for logistic and tactical reasons. When I was gathering evidence on unconstitutional activity on part of the government, I was concerned that I would be overly radical and misinterpret something.  If I just took the information and put it online or to Wikileaks, that would’ve put me in the role of unilaterally considering what to declassify. But I wanted to try something conservative. I required the press to communicate with the government in case they had a valid argument against publication. It was a three-step system of checks and balances to lower the risks of putting the public in danger. 

Q: Why do you call yourself a whistleblower and not a leaker?

A: A leaker does not intend to reform, but discloses information to the benefit of the government, is formally unauthorized but never punished, and causes long-term harm to the public safety for policy benefit. The law has a definition for a whistleblower. But I argue that the law cannot tell us what is right or wrong, but what is legal and illegal. That’s why I see contention between the definition and reality of a whistleblower, because the government only endorses a whistleblower when they get to decide the outcome of their “exposing”. We all know that whistleblower protection acts have little effect. Even if you provide information to journalists, the government will arrest you if they disagree. At the court, the jury won’t listen to your motivations; they only consider if it is lawful, and not if it can be justified. 

Q:  Would you go to court in the US if you were allowed to state your motivations?

A: That’s what I’ve been demanding for years. But the government only responded that they would promise not to torture me. (laughs)

Q: What do you think of the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower controversy?

A: I see many interesting, unique characteristics in this case – this person is connected to the intelligence community and the VP, and their allegation is against an individual…this might be the first case where the whistleblowing process actually works. 

Q: Anonymity, which was possible in the early Internet era, is no longer achievable. What does that mean to you personally?  

A: In the early days of the Internet, all mistakes made where ephemeral, and you could outlive them with fake names. Now, we’ve lost our ability to forgive because the Internet doesn’t forget. People who are targeted for making similar mistakes being forming a community, which leads to self-radicalization and eventually, a larger movement. If people had a chance to walk away from their slip-ups, we would have a more civilized society. 

Q: What should citizens do to protect ourselves from mass surveillance?

A: Even if Trump has an epiphany overnight and becomes the greatest champion of human rights, none of his reforms will have meaning beyond the US. The internet is global. When you connect to Facebook, you could be connected to servers anywhere in the world. What we need to understand is that law has never been reliable in protecting human rights – consider past laws supporting slavery and the disenfranchisement of women. What we need is an ecosystem that involves encryptions and protocols to defend us against the government when the system of law is ineffective.

Q: Does the need to train machine intelligence justify data collection?

A: Even if you can derive insights from big data, it’s just like human experimentation…it doesn’t justify the cost. The conversation should actually be about how we want to do this: the easy and socially costing way, or the harder yet sustainable way? Just like climate change, we’ll have to face the costs eventually. 

Q: What would you say to someone who thinks the U.S. system can be used to benefit the world?

A:  The more connections you have with the average citizen, the more you are connected with morals. The higher up you are, the closer you are to general badness. The current system has taken young, idealistic people and changed them into tools. But what are the odds that you will reform the system, relative to the odds that the system will reform you? 

We are in a dark time and have been under the last two, maybe even five or ten presidencies. But in my experience, the government never reforms itself, and power never admits anything without a demand. It is actually the work of the people, NGOs, academia, companies that create capabilities for contribution. The essential caution is to write down what you believe in before you join one of these institutions, because the process of changing yourself at the whims of an institution happens in degrees, that you won’t realize it until years ahead.

Overall, the forum discussed little besides what has already been expressed in his memoir and other interviews. This hush-hush manner only exemplifies the level of secrecy and caution required in Snowden’s everyday life – after all, the NSA and CIA are very much still on his back. Despite these personal sacrifices, however, the palpable sense of certainty with which he spoke of his actions stirred the audience’s excitement. His unwavering patience toward questions, impassioned bursts of monologue, and refined rhetorics captured our attention, but what was most notable was his state of mind. Edward Snowden is, as far as I could tell, the rarest of whistleblowers: someone who was motivated purely by a commitment to his morality.

a powerful trio via Skylar Li