Citizenfour Page #7

I think the more public we are

out there too, like as journalists,

the more protection

that's gonna give as well.

Have you started to give thought to

when you're ready to come forward?

I'm ready whenever, um...

Honestly, I think

there's sort of an agreement

that it's not going to bias

the reporting process.

That's my primary concern at this point.

I don't want to get myself

into the issue

before it's gonna happen anyway,

and where it takes away

from the stories that are getting out.

We're talking about tens

of millions of Americans,

who weren't suspected of doing anything,

who were surveilled in this way.

Hold your thoughts for a moment.

I want to continue this conversation

because these are really important,

sensitive issues,

and the public out there

has a right to know what's going on.

This is CNN Breaking News.

Another explosive article

has just appeared,

this time in The Washington Post.

It's breaking news

and it reveals another broad

and secret US government

surveillance program.

The Washington Post

and The Guardian in London

reporting that the NSA and the FBI

are tapping directly

into the central servers

of nine leading Internet companies,

including Microsoft,

Yahoo, Google, Facebook,

AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

The Post says they're extracting audio,

video, photographs, emails, documents,

and connection logs that enable analysts

to track a person's movements

and contacts over time.

Let's discuss this latest revelation...

they're coming out fast. Bill Binney,

former official of the NSA

who quit back in 2001,

you were angry over what was going on,

you are known

as a whistleblower right now.

Bill, what do you think about

this Washington Post story?

Well, I assume it's just a continuation

of what they've been doing all along.

So you're not surprised.

Do you have any idea who is

leaking this information?

I don't know who leaked this.

I have no doubt that the administration

will launch an investigation,

not into who approved these programs

but into who leaked the information.

I'm not shocked

the companies are denying it,

- I don't assume...

- Do you believe them?

There may be some technical basis

on which they can say that

we are not actively collaborating

or they don't have what we consider

in our own definition

to be direct access to our servers

but what I do know is that I've talked

to more than one person

who has sat at a desk at a web portal

and typed out commands and reached

into those servers from a distance.

So whatever they want to call that,

that's what's happening.

Well, what I would call it

is the single biggest infringement

on American civil liberties

probably of all time, isn't it?

It's interesting, already

you have The New York Times

now today saying that the administration

has lost all credibility.

The New York Times

slammed President Obama for this,

and frankly I was used to that.

The New York Times

used to slam George Bush

for protecting the country

and for the steps he took.

I don't want us to drop our guard,

I don't want us to be struck again.

As we saw in Boston,

Anderson, people are willing

to sacrifice their civil liberties.

People sheltered inside...

How can you believe

in freedom, do you think...

I mean, try and play

Devil's Advocate for me,

when you have secret courts,

secret operations like PRISM,

secret investigations which go

into every spit and cough

of every American's lives,

without any member of the American

public knowing about it.

That's not freedom, is it?

In 2008, they eliminated

the warrant requirement

for all conversations

except ones that take place

by and among Americans

exclusively on American soil.

So they don't need warrants

now for people

who are foreigners outside of the US,

but they also don't need

warrants for Americans

who are in the United States

communicating with people

reasonably believed to be

outside of the US.

So again, the fact that there are

no checks, no oversight

about who is looking

over the NSA's shoulder,

means that they can take

whatever they want.

And the fact that it's all

behind a wall of secrecy

and they threaten people

who want to expose it,

means that whatever they're doing,

even violating the law,

is something that we're unlikely to know

until we start having real investigations

and real transparency into

what it is that the government is doing.

Glenn Greenwald, congratulations again

on exposing what is a true scandal.

I appreciate you joining me.

I just heard from Lindsay,

and uh, she's still alive,

which is good, and free.

My rent checks apparently are no longer

getting through to my landlord,

uh, so they said if we don't pay them

in five days we'll be evicted,

which is strange

because I've got a system set

up that automatically pays them.

Uh, so there's that,

and apparently

there's construction trucks

all over the street of my house,

so that's uh...

I wonder what they're looking for.

It is... uh, it is an unusual feeling

that's kind of hard to...

hard to like describe or...

or convey in words,

but not knowing what's going to

happen the next day,

the next hour, the next week,

it's scary,

but at the same time it's liberating.

You know, the, uh...

the planning comes a lot easier

because you don't have that many

variables to take into play.

You can only act and then act again.

Now all these phone calls

are being recorded digitally,

not for content

but for origin and destination,

now word the government is going

right into the servers

of these large Internet companies.

How does the government,

politically speaking,

make the argument that this is

essential to national security

and not a dramatic overreach

in terms of personal privacy?

It's difficult Matt, because,

as Peter was pointing out,

overnight we had an extraordinary,

late-night... close to midnight...

announcement and a declassification

from the Director

of National Intelligence.

They are scrambling.

The administration's already supported

strongly by leaders in both parties

from the intelligence committees.

GCHQ has an internal Wikipedia,

at the top secret,

you know, super classified level, uh,

where anybody working intelligence

can work on anything they want.

Yep.

That's what this is, I'm giving it to you,

you can make the decisions on that,

what's appropriate, what's not.

It's going to be

documents of different types,

pictures and PowerPoints,

Word documents, stuff like that.

- Um...

- Sorry, can I take a seat?

Yeah.

Sorry, I get you to repeat,

so in these documents they all show...

Yeah, there'll be a couple

more documents on that,

that's only one part though.

Like, it talks about Tempora

and a little more thing,

that's the Wiki article itself.

It was also talking about

a self-developed tool

called UDAQ, U-D-A-Q.

It's their search tool

for all the stuff they collect,

was what it looked like.

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