Edward Snowden spoke via satellite to an audience at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas earlier today. Here is the complete transcript of Snowden’s remarks, and here are Snowden’s thoughts on the lack of judicial and political accountability of U.S. public surveillance programs:
The key fact is accountability. We can’t have officials like James Clapper who can lie to everyone in the country. Who can lie to the Congress and face not even – not even a criticism, not even a strong worded letter. The same thing with courts. In the United States we have open courts that are supposed to decide and settle constitutional issues to interpret and apply the law. We also have the FISA court, which is a secret rubber stamp court. But they are only supposed to approve warrant applications. These (FISA court proceedings) happen in secret because you don’t want people to know, hey, the government wants to surveil you. At the same time, a secret court shouldn’t be interpreting the constitution when only NSA’s lawyers are making the case on how it should be viewed. Those are the two primary factors that I think need to change.
Fair enough. But what about mass surveillance in the private sector, like employee emails or casinos? Also, to whom is Mr Snowden himself accountable to?
prior probability 