NSA Public Trust Issues Stem From Leaders, Not Staff, Says Snowden
Former NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden said it's the bosses at his former employer and not rank-and-file employees who abused the public trust with widescale government surveillance. His remarks came via teleconference during a privacy symposium at Harvard University Friday. The…
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Internet was designed to promote surveillance, said security specialist Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, sparking a conversation on whether it was possible to have an Internet and maintain privacy at all. Schneier said the public should not have been surprised they were being watched. John DeLong, director of commercial solutions at the NSA, who was director of compliance while Snowden worked there, made a rare public appearance for an employee of that agency. He said the NSA was authorized to collect the information that it had gathered from the American public. “Protecting privacy today is more an art than a science,” DeLong said. “The science and engineering of privacy [is] the key challenge of our time.” Snowden, who spoke via a live video feed from Moscow, said the "NSA is virtually unregulated." He said NSA employees are "not bad people" but "a culture for impunity develops.”