"You're going to make me blush," said Edward Snowden.

It was a little after 6 p.m., and the NSA whistleblower's face and shoulders were gazing out, billboard-sized, at hundreds of cheering young libertarians. Snowden was beamed in to talk to the largest-ever International Students for Liberty conference, newly relocated to Washington's largest hotel. Snowden, whose highest degree was a GED, was honored as an honorary alumnus of the eight-year old organization. For 15 minutes he restated a case against the surveillance state that had no rebuttal in the room.

"As they take the private records of all our lives, and they aggregate a dossier, how can that be said to be constitutional?" asked Snowden. "Why have we funding and instituting this system of mass surveillance of people in our country and people around the world if theres no track record that shows it works?"

https://twitter.com/0emilylyly/status/566385741350313984

As he honed in on his argument, Snowden tailored it to young libertarians -- most of them college students. "I think many of the people in this room take a more pro-liberty pro-rights perspective than others in the U.S. political agreement," said Snowden. "Theres an argument to be made that perfect enforcement of the law is not a good thing. In fact, its a very serious threat... law is a lot like medicine.When you have too much it can be fatal."

Alexander McCobin, the president of the Students for Liberty, posed a few friendly questions. First, did Snowden regret anything?

"Im concerned that wed be in a better place if Id come forward sooner," said Snowden. He described a conversation he'd had with Daniel Ellsberg, and how both of them came to regret how long it took them to produce their leaks. "He like myself couldnt get over the psychological burden of fear of lawbreaking," said Snowden.

In a small moment of irony, the Moscow-bound Snowden remembered how he'd talked to colleagues at the NSA, and found them quietly agreeing with his worries, but unready to expose the agency."We had more on Americans than we had on Russians, for example," he said. "Should we be focusing on ourselves more than we focus on our adversaries?"

After Snowden wrapped, a slightly smaller audience remained in chairs to hear former Texas Congressman Ron Paul chat with Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano and Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie.

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Edward Snowden and Ron Paul Kick Off Libertarian Student ...

Former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden has reunited with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

Edward Snowden, Citizenfour director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald have had a kind of reunion, their first time together publicly since clandestinely meeting in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013.

Snowden appeared on video link from Russia on Thursday, joining Poitras and Greenwald for a talk conducted by David Carr, shortly before the New York Times media columnist collapsed and died.

They spoke about the Oscar-nominated documentary, which chronicles Snowden's leak of National Security Agency documents.

Snowden said he initially refused Poitras' wish to film their encounter but she eventually convinced him.

He called the documentary "incredible," but regretted his presence in the film, comparing his analytical instruction to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

Snowden figures to be a conspicuous absence from the Academy Awards on February 22, at which Citizenfour is the favourite to win the documentary Oscar.

He said living in Moscow he's busier than he ever was as a National Security Agency employee, but life is more rewarding as he continues to speak out about governmental surveillance.

Snowden said he remains confused why the US revoked his passport midway in his initial flight from Hong Kong. He said his destination was Latin America, and claimed it would have been easier for the US to extradite him from there than from Russia, which has granted him asylum.

He said he has no regrets, even if some label him a traitor.

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Snowden reunites with doco maker

New York Times columnist David Carr, in his final public appearance, hosted a reunion of sorts with Snowden, protagonist of the film "Citizenfour," as well as director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald.

From left: Poitras, Snowden and Greenwald. The three talked Thursday about the state of surveillance and about "Citizenfour," Poitras' Oscar-nominated film chronicling their storied secret discussions in a Hong Kong hideout.The New York Times

It was just like old times, sort of.

On Thursday, NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden got together again with journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras to talk surveillance, reliving in a sense their now historic secret meeting two summers ago in a Hong Kong hotel room.

That first time around, Snowden handed the two a huge cache of top secret National Security Agency documents and asked them to let the public know about the NSA's gigantic and constitutionally questionable appetite for people's data. The meeting set off a chain of events that led to, among other things, consternation in Silicon Valley about the privacy of customer data; international outrage over tapped phones; high-profile reassurances from the president about agency reform; the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize (shared by Greenwald, Poitras and others); and, more recently, a nomination for an Academy Award.

The last item was in part the reason for the reunion, where, this time around, Snowden couldn't be present in the flesh but instead beamed in on a live feed from Russia, where he's been holed up since the document handoff. Poitras famously filmed the initial encounter, with the UK's Guardian news site publishing a short video interview with Snowden when he revealed himself as the source of the leaks. In the film "Citizenfour" -- named for an alias used by Snowden -- Poitras taps previously unseen footage to chronicle the exchange and the surveillance-related circumstances surrounding it. Some have pegged the film as a shoo-in for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars on February 22.

In anticipation of that event, The New York Times' TimesTalks series played host to the three on Thursday, for a discussion of the film and the present state of "the surveillance state." (The roundtable marked, sadly, a final public appearance by moderator and Times media columnist David Carr, who died of a heart attack later in the evening.)

One thing the discussion brought home is how remarkable the film is, simply from a historical standpoint. After all, regardless of how one views the leaking of government secrets, we don't have film of Deep Throat giving Woodward and Bernstein the scoop about Watergate; we don't have footage of Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers. But in "Citizenfour," we see Snowden in the act of handing over the classified material and explaining various aspects of it. The Hong Kong footage is a fascinating look, in more or less real time, of the events and people behind the countless brief news stories we might have read on the leak, the many sound bites we might have heard.

"I don't think there's any film like it," Snowden said. "It's very rare to get some kind of record like this."

One reason is perhaps obvious. In a remark that got a laugh from the crowd, Snowden said that when Poitras initially asked if she could film the goings-on, he said no "for a number of reasons, not the least of which is when you're involved in an action which is very likely to get you indicted, you typically don't have a camera rolling in the room." But, he said, Poitras was "good about not taking no as an answer."

Continued here:
Edward Snowden talks 'Citizenfour' with Poitras, Greenwald

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama went to Silicon Valley today to call for more cooperation between private companies and the government when it comes to defending against cyber-attacks.

In the wake of major hacks against health insurer Anthem and Sony Pictures, the president told executives they need to share more information.

But todays summit also comes amid growing tensions between tech companies and the administration over privacy and civil liberties, a point the president acknowledged.

BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States: In all our work, we have to make sure we are protecting the privacy and civil liberty of the American people. Now, we grapple with these issues in government.

We have pursued important reforms to make sure we are respecting peoples privacy, as well as ensuring our national security. And the private sector wrestles with this as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Several CEOs of top tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo!, didnt attend, reportedly over anger and disappointment about a lack of reform in the governments broad surveillance programs.

The revelations about the governments reach are the subject of a documentary nominated for an Academy Award.

Jeffrey Brown picks it up from there, part of our series the NewsHour Goes to the Movies.

EDWARD SNOWDEN, Leaked Details of U.S. Surveillance: My name is Edward Snowden. I go by Ed. Edward Joseph Snowden is the full name.

JEFFREY BROWN: The documentary Citizenfour brings us into a Hong Kong hotel room as former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden reveals secrets that would make for blockbuster headlines beginning in June 2013: the large-scale collection of phone and Internet data by the U.S. government.

Original post:
Watching Snowden’s pivotal moments in ‘Citizenfour’

Fri Feb 13 13:33:39 EST 2015

Oscar-nominated documentary "Citizenfour" follows Snowden as he takes a risk in exposing NSA spying to the U.S. public.

NYT David Carr at 'Citizenfour' TimesTalk

Just hours before his sudden death on Thursday, February 12, beloved New York Times media columnist David Carr moderated a TimesTalk interview at the New School with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Edward Snowden, who appeared via satellite from Russia. The discussion centered around their Oscar nominated documentary "Citizenfour."

"There's something about the way you made that movie and what it reveals that makes it a little hard to sleep," Carr told Poitras at the beginning of the discussion. "Part of it is the realization that we live inside a turnkey security apparatus. It's also the technique of filmmaking."

Poitras was already several years deep into making a film about surveillance in a post-9/11 world when she began receiving mysterious emails from someone calling himself "citizen four." This man was Snowden, who had also reached out to The Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald, whose childhood hero was Daniel Ellsberg, had been naturally eager to break the story. Snowden was ready to blow the figurative whistle and reveal to the U.S. public the covert ways in which their government was spying on them. As a private security contractor for the National Security Agency, Snowden was in a position to leak highly classified information about the government's surveillance programs to the media.

Greenwald journeyed with Poitras to Hong Kong to meet with Snowden, and the result is a nail-biting thriller that takes place in Snowden's hotel room over a period of eight days. Poitras' camera captures Greenwald's careful unveiling of the NSA scandal and the backlash that followed. Both "Citizenfour" and Edward Snowden's revelations have shifted global consciousness. The underlying message seems to be the importance of awareness and action; if we value our rights, we can make an impact.

Here are some of the highlights from the discussion:

"It's not a film about me. It's a film about us," Snowden said. Appearing via satellite to participate in the TimesTalk, Snowden has a patient, boyish face. He was vehement about drawing attention away from himself, not wanting to "be" the story. Instead, Snowden made sure to mention an Ecuadorian government member who was punished for helping him. Greenwald described Snowden's only fear when they were on the verge of revealing the NSA dirt: that no one would care. Snowden worried more about the American public looking upon the story with apathy than he did about the unraveling of his own life. Greenwald clearly admires this selflessness, describing the whistleblower as "fearless." Snowden expressed humbly that he was incredibly satisfied to be a part of something larger than himself.

Carr asked Greenwald how he remained so calm throughout the film, in spite of the enormous risks they were taking. "I masked my anxiety well," Greenwald laughed. A clip from "Citizenfour" was projected over Snowden's satellite face, featuring one of the funniest and tensest moments in the film. A fire alarm goes off as Snowden and Greenwald sit talking in Snowden's hotel room; it stops; then goes off two more times. Suspicion and paranoia mount each time it rings. Snowden grows nervous, and although Glen coolly suggests it might just be a test of the alarm system, his face is increasingly somber. Snowden explained his response during the scene was plenty justified; if they were going to arrest him, they wouldn't barge into his hotel room. Instead, they'd find another excuse to draw him out.

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'Citizenfour' Team Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras Talk to the Late David Carr (Video)

The shockwaves generated by Edward Snowden's revelations of the close collaboration between US tech giants such as Microsoft and Apple and the NSA are still reverberating through the industry. Those disclosures, together with related ones such as the involvement of the NSA in industrial espionage, as well as the asymmetric nature of US law when it comes to gathering data from foreign individuals, present something of an open goal for non-US technology companies - or so one might have thought.

On the face of it, then, it is surprising that non-US technology firms and others that can distance themselves from the US law are not proclaiming this fact more loudly. After all, there must be a considerable number of organisations that would dearly love to locate their data as far away from the attentions of the NSAas possible.

Perhaps the lack of fanfare is merely a reflection of the relative sizes of the marketing budgets available to the US tech giants and local contenders; or perhaps the shock of Snowden has yet to translate itself into meaningful action, making such messaging premature.

Can of worms?

Or maybe the alternatives to the US cloud giants are simply wary of making bold promises that may later come back to bite them. Analyst Clive Longbottom of Quocirca certainly believes that organisations need to be very careful about seeking to differentiate themselves from others on the basis of the leaks.

"In my view, trying to market off the back of Snowden would be opening a can of worms," Longbottom said. "To every possibly positive marketing message there will be a few sensible contradictions. 'Hey, we have no back doors on our system!' - bet you use equipment at the hardware level from vendors who Snowden implicated in such backdoors. 'Hey, we're open source, so it's all OK!' Sure - the NSA has never infiltrated any open source group and built in back doors through such means."

Despite the possible "worms", however, there are some companies thatare using the revelations to set themselves apart. One is security firm F-Secure, which is actively involved in promoting privacy via collaboration with pressure groups such asDon't Spy on Us and the Open Rights Group and which uses its very Finnish-ness as an asset.

"Finnish culture is very much about privacy. Freedom of speech is written into their constitution so the technology is built with the idea that people are anonymous and data is protected," said Allen Scott, F-Secure's managing director for UK and Ireland.

Scott acknowledged the dangers of over-promising on the issue, saying that any organisation promoting itself as ethical will become a target for attackers trying to prove it wrong.

"This is the sort of thing that has to be built into your company at an R&D level and a board level. If you're going to say that you're 100 per cent anything you're already open to ridicule. If you say the safest company in the world people try to hack you."

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The privacy differential - why don't more non-US and open source firms use the NSA as marketing collateral?

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ASK EDWARD SNOWDEN! - Cry Of Fear Gameplay! - Video

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou on Edward Snowden: He Will Not Get a Fair Trial
http://democracynow.org - In a broadcast exclusive interview, Democracy Now! interviews John Kiriakou, a retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture. In 2007, Kiriakou became the first...

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CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou on Edward Snowden: He Will Not Get a Fair Trial - Video

Adam Berry

Filmmaker Laura Poitras accepts the Carl von Ossietzky journalism prize on December 14, 2014 in Berlin.

Edward Snowden's decision to release explosive revelations and his own identity were captured by American film-maker Laura Poitras for new feature documentary Citizenfour. She talks to Steve Dollar.

Nothing in her career as a documentary film-maker could quite prepare Laura Poitras for an encounter in a luxury hotel room in Hong Kong in June 2013. It was there, amid absolute secrecy and after months of encrypted communications, that she met Edward Snowden. The once-anonymous contractor for the National Security Agency was about to become the world's most famous whistleblower, leaking classified documents that exposed the unprecedented global and domestic reach of the agency's surveillance programmes.

"Being in the hotel room, I had an experience I had never had before," says the director of feature documentary Citizenfour. "There were things I filmed that I couldn't remember that I filmed, and I saw them later in the footage. I just blocked them."

Although she remains behind the camera, Poitras was joined in the sessions by journalists Glenn Greenwald - to whom Snowden had likewise reached out and the film-maker had persuaded to participate - and Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian. They would become the conduits for the release of Snowden's explosive revelations. "There's a conversation when Glenn talks to Snowden about coming forward, and the camera goes back and forth, and I actually didn't remember I filmed that, and for me it's the most powerful scene in the film," says Poitras, 52.

In the scene, Snowden insists he will go public as the source of the NSA leaks that the journalists will release regardless of the consequences. It's a palpably electric sequence, which would be the core of any fictional drama. In this case, though, the action is perilously real, and the camera isn't only capturing a historical event, it's part of the making of it.

"The choice that he's making could end his life," Poitras says. "I've worked in war zones with bombs going off, and I know, 'OK, that's the moment'. I know that's the one where all the emotion is contained. In this case, my brain, whatever those defences were, just blocked it out. I felt we were in a state of free fall, not knowing what kind of landing we'd encounter."

When Citizenfour, which takes its title from a codename used by Snowden to identify himself to Poitras, begins screening today it will introduce audiences to a mild-mannered and quick-witted computer expert who is variously considered a traitor or a hero but whose image has been inevitably distorted by much of the news media.

"I think there's enough evidence on the table [that] you can make your own decision," says Poitras, whose measured approach frames in intimate and vulnerable terms what might have been sensationalised. "We wanted not to be influenced or feed into the frenzy around us, but stay true to material and the human drama. It's really about Snowden and what he chose to do."

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Watching the whistleblower: Behind Edward Snowden doco Citizenfour

Senator Scott Ludlam presents CITIZENFOUR in Sydney
CITIZENFOUR, by Laura Poitras, is the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Review of CITIZENFOUR, and details of Senator Ludlam #39;s other Sydney event - THE MEANING OF METADATA ...

By: Cathy Vogan - Artist

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Senator Scott Ludlam presents CITIZENFOUR in Sydney - Video