The Stranger Asks Glenn Greenwald About Microsoft, Snowden, and What to Fear Now

Journalist Glenn Greenwald will appear tonight at a sold out event at Town Hall to discuss his book, " No Place to Hide ," which expands on his series of reports on the NSA's massive Internet spying programs. Last week Greenwald spoke to me from Rio de Janeiro, where he lives.

So, I'm making this call on Skype. How much could the NSA know about me just based on the medium I'm calling you through?

Oh, they're completely in the system of Skype. I mean, they have virtually unfettered reign over Skype calls. Actually, one of the most interesting stories we did was about how easily Microsoft cooperated with the NSA to make sure that they had full reign with Skype.

The NSA could be listening in right now?

Well, I mean, you're an American citizen, I'm an American citizen, so theoretically they need a warrant. There's all kinds of ways around that, and it's certainly possible that they have a warrant to listen to my calls. But, it's not just the NSA. It's also the GCHQ and their other partners. So, even if the NSA can't, easily the GCHQ, the UK partner of the NSA, could be.

Speaking of all that, I should just make sure: Is it okay that I'm recording this for interview purposes?

You might as well join the party.



Glenn Greenwald

Well, there's very sophisticated and powerful forms of encryption that exist—both for the computer and for telephones—that I use. So I would never use an unencrypted telephone to have conversations that I thought were sensitive. I would always either use encrypted technology via the Internet or encrypted phone services—encrypted versions of Skype, essentially.

What's the scariest thing you've learned since meeting Edward Snowden? Is it something in the revelations that have come out so far, or is it something that you haven't yet published?

The scariest thing is the over-arching one, that the goal of the NSA really is captured by their "Collect it all" motto. That they're not interested in targeting specific people's communications for storage and analysis, they literally want to convert the Internet into [unintelligible, blame the NSA] where they collect and store all communication events by and between all human beings on the planet. Essentially, the total elimination of privacy in the digital age. Which is not hyperbole. It's just a literal description of their institutional goal as they conceive of it. And it's not just a theoretical goal. They're increasingly close to fulfilling that. And, you know, every other specific revelation has to be understood through that prism.

And you don't think their ambition has changed despite anything they may have said since the Snowden revelations?

I don't think their ambition has. I think there's a lot of pressure points now on their ability to achieve that, that obviously didn't exist a year ago. There's political pressure domestically, there's public opinion pressure, there are political movements that are bipartisan and trans-ideological around what the NSA can do. There's a lot of panic in the American tech community about what the impact of this surveillance state is likely to be on their future interests, because who would ever want to use Facebook or Google or Skype if they know they're collaborating with the NSA? I mean, the fact that you began the call worried about the privacy of your Skype is something that wouldn't have happened a year ago. So, there's pressure points from the American tech companies, there are pressure points from other countries trying to undermine US hegemony over the Internet, and then most of all there's the knowledge on the part of individuals of the extent to which their privacy is being compromised, which means individuals are now using encryption technologies and other forms of anonymity-providing tools that really do provide serious obstacles to the NSA's ability to spy. So, all of those are important pressure points. I don't think [NSA leaders] themselves are gonna unilaterally constrict what they view as their purpose.

You mentioned the tech companies. I've read about their attempts to push back. Do you feel like they've done enough to secure their systems against what the NSA and other agencies are wanting to do?

Well, I think it's important to begin with the premise that the tech companies don't care at all about their users' privacy. And they proved that by very eagerly cooperating with the NSA, far beyond what the law required, when they thought they could do it without anybody knowing about it. So, they have nothing but contempt and indifference toward the privacy of their users. And that includes, I would say, first and foremost, Microsoft. Although Facebook and Google are scarcely better. So, the situation that changed now is not because they've suddenly discovered a concern for privacy but because, as I said earlier, they're petrified that German, Brazilian, and Korean competitors are going to be able to convince ten-year-olds and twelve-year-olds to not use American tech companies on the grounds that they'll just give their data to the NSA... So, now these [American] companies are engaged in what seems to be a serious effort to prove to people that they are safeguarding their customers' privacy. They're putting up walls between their own data and what the NSA can get, they're revisiting the kind of cooperation that they were doing previously that they're not obligated under the law to do, so I think that it has changed the relationship between tech companies and the NSA in the direction of privacy protections. But only out of their self-interest, not because they have any belief in the value of protecting peoples' privacy.

You mentioned a number of times in the book that Edward Snowden had a fear all of this would be met with general indifference—and that you shared that fear somewhat at the outset. Do you think, in the end, that the reaction has been as strong as you and he would have hoped?

It's been universes stronger than what we a year ago hoped to achieve, even under our best-case scenario.

Are you still in touch with him?

Yeah, yeah. I just saw him in Moscow a few weeks ago... I communicate with him very regularly.

There's been a debate in the US about whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor. You obviously think he's done something heroic here by sharing the documents.

I don't see how anybody can contest that. I mean, he knowingly risked life in prison. He was very lucky not to end up in US custody. That was the assumption we all had about what the outcome would be for him. He knowingly risked that, not for any personal gain or aggrandizement, not in order to benefit himself in any way, but simply to inform his fellow citizen of things that I think everybody, pretty much, thinks we're better off knowing about. I mean, I would love to meet the person who says, "I think it would be better if we had remained ignorant about all these things."

Were you surprised that he ended up in Russia?

I was surprised in the sense that that was never his intention... Probably he's surprised that he's in Russia as well... He ended up in Russia because the US forced him to be there by preventing him from leaving.

Do you support the movement to encourage President Obama to pardon Snowden?

I think there's no chance that'll happen.

But do you think that it should happen?

First of all, I don't even think there should be a question of a pardon because I don't think that he should be prosecuted or charged with a crime for what he did. Usually, when you pardon someone it's on the premise that they've been found guilty of some crime and need protection. I don't even think he should be at that point. But, certainly Obama himself has said on several occasions that the debate that we're having has made us stronger as a country. Well, if that's really true, how does it make any sense to take the person who started the debate and throw him into prison? I agree, the debate has made us stronger, which is exactly why Edward Snowden doesn't belong in prison.

Do you ever—say, when you're on long plane flights—think about what other applications there could be for all of this mental effort and amazing technology that's now been marshaled into a huge apparatus for eavesdropping?

I mean, it's really much easier to figure out how to safeguard communications from being invaded and surveilled and monitored than it is to figure out how to destroy privacy. And if the United States had devoted itself toward defensive measures to prevent the Chinese, and the Russians, and the Iranians, or hackers, or cyber-terrorists, or whatever villain they're fighting at the moment from invading our communications or those of our companies, the Internet would be a much safer place—and I do think about that. I don't think there's any good that comes from creating a vast, sprawling agency devoted to destroying privacy on the Internet.

You've been very critical, over many years, of mainstream media in the United States. I saw your exchange with Bill Keller, which was very interesting, and your response to Michael Kinsley's review of your book. It all made me wonder: Who do you enjoy reading among US journalists? What publications do you like to read, if any?

I think even at the outlets that I criticize most harshly—like The New York Times, or The Washington Post, or CNN—there are good journalists doing good journalism at all of those. I think the best journalist in the country is Jim Risen at The New York Times. And also Dana Priest at The Washington Post. Even though they work at horrible institutions, they are able to exploit the resources and platform that those institutions provide to do the kind of journalism that I think really fulfills the highest purpose of the profession. So it's not as though I think there aren't great journalists all over the place. I think there are. My critique tends to be institutional.

What about yourself? Do you ever think critically about your own journalism? I mean, you must. And do you ever look back on your own journalism and say, "Oh, I made a mistake"? If so, what's the biggest mistake that you've made?

Well, the way that I do journalism is really kind of unconventional in that I started at a time when kind of—i kind of grew out of this period where I wasn't really paying very much attention to politics. I mean, before I started working on politics I basically just read The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, the kinds of things that I thought educated, smart people read, and assumed what I was getting was basically the truth. And once I started focusing on political issues full-time, I realized how so much of what I thought was just kind of propaganda, and false, and I just kind of re-built my entire system of political impressions and perceptions and beliefs. So it's been this long process of reconstruction everything that I think politically. So, sure, there's a lot of things that I go back and look at. Especially in those earlier years, like 2006, 2007, 2008, when I thought the Democratic Party was much closer to what their branding and image was than what their actual reality is. You know, I've made a ton of different decisions in the last year reporting on the Snowden material that have been really difficult decisions that I could easily second-guess, you know, and say, "I should have done this differently, I should have done that differently." So, yeah, of course, it's a constant process of trying to check my own opinions, or false premises, or decisions that weren't the right ones journalistically, and definitely I have a lot of things like that.

You gave everyone a lot to be worried about. What are you worried about now?

I worry about the fact that i have this huge archive of material, much of which still hasn't been reported, that should be reported. And I worry about how I'm gonna get that reported relatively quickly so that the world can have knowledge that they should have, and have that factor into the debate... And I think there's this huge disconnect between public opinion and the way these systems continue kind of unmolested, and it's very anti-democratic and dangerous, and I am concerned about that a lot.

Your loyalty has been questioned by various people at various times throughout all of this. Here's a question that should nail down your loyalty once and for all. Who are you rooting for in the World Cup?

You know, I've been in Brazil for nine years, where soccer is a national religion. At the same time, I'm an American citizen and grew up in the US. Fortunately, I think the Brazilian team is so superior to the US that I'm not going to have any meaningful conflict. So, you know, I'll otherwise abstain from answering that. Very diplomatic of me.

Uncharacteristically diplomatic!

It's too much information to let somebody pigeonhole you. I try to avoid those things.