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Snowden Spills: Infamous Whistleblower Opines On Spycraft, AI, And Being Suicided
from ZeroHedge:
Edward Snowden has finally laid it all out – documenting his memoires in a new 432-page book, Permanent Record, which will be published worldwide on Tuesday, September 17.
Meeting with both The Guardian and Spiegel Online in Moscow as part of its promotion, the infamous whistleblower spent nearly five hours with the two media outlets – offering a taste of what’s in the book, details on his background, and his thoughts on artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and other intelligence gathering tools coming to a dystopia near you.
While The Guardian interview is ‘okay,’ scroll down for the far more interesting Spiegel interview, where Snowden goes way deeper into his cloak-and-dagger life, including thoughts on getting suicided.
First, The Guardian:
Snowden describes in detail for the first time his background, and what led him to leak details of the secret programmes being run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s secret communication headquarters, GCHQ.
He describes the 18 years since the September 11 attacks as “a litany of American destruction by way of American self-destruction, with the promulgation of secret policies, secret laws, secret courts and secret wars”.
Snowden also said: “The greatest danger still lies ahead, with the refinement of artificial intelligence capabilities, such as facial and pattern recognition.
“An AI-equipped surveillance camera would be not a mere recording device, but could be made into something closer to an automated police officer.” –The Guardian
Other notables from the Guardian interview:
- Snowden secretly married his partner, Lindsay Mills, two years ago in a Russian courthouse. They met when he was 22 (14 years ago) on the internet site “Hot or Not,” where he rated her a 10 out of 10 and she rated him a (generous) eight.
- He freely moves around Moscow, riding the metro, visiting art galleries or the ballet, and meeting with friends in cafes and restaurants.
- The 36-year-old lives in a two-bedroom flat on the outskirts of Moscow, and derives most of his income (until now) from speaking fees – mainly to students, civil rights activists and others abroad via video chat.
- Snowden is an “indoor cat by choice,” who is “happiest sitting at his computer late into the night, communicating with campaigners and supporters.”
- At a training school for spies, Snowden was nicknamed “the Count” after the Sesame Street character.
The Der Spiegel interview, meanwhile, is way more interesting… For example:
“If I Happen to Fall out of a Window, You Can Be Sure I Was Pushed.”
Meeting Edward Snwoden is pretty much exactly how children imagine the grand game of espionage is played.
But then, on Monday, there he was, standing in our room on the first floor of the Hotel Metropol, as pale and boyish-looking as the was when the world first saw him in June 2013. For the last six years, he has been living in Russian exile. The U.S. has considered him to be an enemy of the state, right up there with Julian Assange, ever since he revealed, with the help of journalists, the full scope of the surveillance system operated by the National Security Agency (NSA). For quite some time, though, he remained silent about how he smuggled the secrets out of the country and what his personal motivations were. –Spiegel Online
Select excerpts via Der Spiegel (emphasis ours):
***
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Snowden, you always said: “I am not the story.” But now you’ve written 432 pages about yourself. Why?
Edward Snowden: Because I think it’s more important than ever to explain systems of mass surveillance and mass manipulation to the public. And I can’t explain how these systems came to be without explaining my role in helping to build them.
DER SPIEGEL: Wasn’t it just as important four or even six years ago?
Snowden: Four years ago, Barack Obama was president. Four years ago, Boris Johnson wasn’t around and the AfD (Germany’s right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany) was still kind of a joke. But now in 2019, no one is laughing. When you look around the world, when you look at the rising factionalization of society, when you see this new wave of authoritarianism sweeping over many countries: Everywhere political classes and commercial classes are realizing they can use technology to influence the world on a new scale that was not previously available. We are seeing our systems coming under attack.
DER SPIEGEL: What systems?
Snowden: The political system, the legal system, the social system. And we have the proclivity to think that if we get rid of the people we don’t like, the problem is solved. We go: “Oh, it’s Donald Trump.
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