NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden weighs in on a Trump presidency

EXILED NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden weighs in on what many people see as the ‘disaster’ of Trump running the world’s largest surveillance program.

The man with his finger on the button. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania walk with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Picture: Alex Brandon

EXILED whistleblower Edward Snowden has weighed in on the significance of Donald Trump being at the helm of the incredibly powerful cyber security and spy apparatus of the US.

There have been plenty of concerns raised by the impending presidential power of Donald Trump but live video cross Friday morning the former NSA contractor said the fight against indiscriminate mass surveillance is bigger than Donald Trump.

It’s important to remember, “we are never more than a single election away from a change in government, form a change in policy, from a change in the way the powers we have constructed are used,” he said.

“What we need to start thinking about is not how do we defend against a President Donald Trump, but how to we defend the rights of everyone, everywhere, without the regard to jurisdictions.”

The first question put to Snowden came rather appropriately from Phil Zimmerman who created PGP — one of the original encryption schemes for e-mail which was actually used by Snowden to initially contact journalists to reveal the NSA mass surveillance programs.

He was asked about his thoughts on Donald Trump becoming the commander-in-chief.

“I try not to look at this as a situation of a single election or a single president,” he said. “Because we see these things ... these threats coming from across the world.”

He pointed to increased government surveillance in Russia and China. Chine recently adopted new cyber security laws which strengthen censorship and enforce companies to support state surveillance requests. The Chinese government said it was modelled on similar US policies.

“Now suddenly they (the US government) can’t criticise these other governments for doing these things. And this is a problem.”

Snowden during a live video conference this morning.

“If you say that mass surveillance is fine as long as the courts are involved then Kim Jong-Un in North Korea goes ‘oh, this is fabulous because I have courts too and they’ll be happy to sign anything I put in front of them.’”

The reality of a Trump presidency has sparked major fears in the US over encryption and surveillance.

Time magazine has said surveillance programs under Trump would be a “disaster” and called on Obama to declassify and dismantle “as much of the federal government’s unaccountable, secretive, mass surveillance state as he can — before Trump is the one running it.”

But Snowden told the audience they should be cautious about putting too much faith or fear into one elected official.

“The internet has enveloped the globe ... but this fabric of communication that was intended to empower citizens and communities is increasingly used to disempower them” by companies and governments, he said.

“What if we changed it so it was protected by default ... This election reminds us that we have that duty.”

Snowden said he sees a growing trend in authoritarian politicians who have the attitude that if we have the power to do something, we should.

“The problem is we then stop thinking about wrong and right. Instead we focus on can and cannot,” he said. “I think these are civic dangers to everyone.”

To turn the tide of privacy abuses and indiscriminate surveillance, people need to make it an important issue.

“If we want a better world we should not hope for an Obama or fear a Donald Trump but rather we should build it ourselves,” he urged the audience.

When asked about what he thought a Trump presidency meant for his situation of currently seeking asylum in Russia, Snowden was quick to deflect the question and said the issue at hand was much bigger than his personal fate.

Donald Trump has said a lot of things that should be taken with a large grain of salt, but in the past he has shown surprising support for Snowden’s situation.

All I can say is that if I were President, Snowden would have already been returned to the U.S. (by their fastest jet) and with an apology!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2013

WHAT ABOUT PREVENTING TERRORISM?

One questioner asked Mr Snowden how governments are meant to fight the threat of terrorism without the help of mass surveillance.

The exiled 33-year-old said governments need to rely on targeted surveillance and obtain warrants to do so based on intelligence and evidence.

He pointed to the Boston Marathon bombing as among the many examples of when mass surveillance did nothing to prevent the attack.

“That was the height of American mass surveillance,” he said. “They were collecting the phone calls of everyone, they were collecting the internet activities of everyone and it did not stop that attack. It did not stop that attack even though we had been specifically warned by foreign intelligence services that these individuals were associated with terrorism.”

The teens responsible for the bombing were by no means clever criminals who used encryption or sophisticated methods to carry out their plan but intelligence officials had no idea it was coming.

“It’s because when you collect everything, the communication of everyone in a nation, you understand nothing. You get drowned in so much information that you can’t find what’s relevant,” Mr Snowden said.

“What I detest most is indiscriminate surveillance.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan shows President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania the view of the inaugural stand that is being built and Pennsylvania Avenue. Picture: Alex Brandon