Edward Snowden: Leaker, Saviour, Traitor, Spy?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last June, Edward Snowden, a man still in his twenties with, as he put it, "a home in paradise", went on the run. He took with him vast amounts of secret information belonging to the US government's security services.
Snowden holds libertarian - or anti-statist - views. He believes the American government's pervasive surveillance activities which he revealed break the law but are also morally wrong.
In Britain, "The Guardian" newspaper published the classified information Snowden had obtained. This seemed odd. Editorially, it was not sympathetic to Snowden's anti-state nostrums. But, on privacy grounds, it agreed with him that it was inherently wrong for democratic governments to spy on their citizens online. Furthermore, it argued that governments should not decide for themselves when and how they would do their surveillance.
It is this political alliance between the libertarian right and the liberal left - which are normally opposed to one another - which David Aaronovitch investigates in this programme.
He explores, in a detailed interview with the editor of "The Guardian", Alan Rusbridger, why the newspaper published the secret information. Are states threatening citizens' privacy in the cyber age? Or is it in fact governments which are more vulnerable than ever before to the unauthorised disclosure of their secrets?
What secrets is the state itself entitled to keep from its citizens and from potential enemies? And who decides that question?the security services, Parliament or the government? Or the press and the whistle-blowers? Alan Rusbridger claims his newspaper can properly adjudicate what should and should not be published about state secrets. But how does he justify that apparently self-serving argument?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
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| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.2 | Thank you for downloading this edition of Analysis from the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | I'm David Erronovich and in this programme I'm asking in the light of the Edward Snowden's surveillance affair |
| 0:45.6 | what secrets is the state itself entitled to keep and who decides. |
| 0:50.3 | Last June, a man, not yet out of his 20s with, as he put it, a home in paradise, went on the run. |
| 0:58.0 | He took with him huge amounts of secret information belonging to his country's security services. |
| 1:04.0 | Into the new pantheon of digital mega whistleblowers, |
| 1:08.0 | Edward Snowden followed his compatriot Bradley Manning, |
| 1:11.0 | the army private who now wishes to be known as Chelsea, and who in 2010 provided |
| 1:16.2 | WikiLeaks and others with more than 700,000 classified diplomatic and military communications. |
| 1:24.4 | At a press conference held at Moscow Airport in July, Sloden made a claim to the world about what he, |
| 1:30.3 | as a data analyst with the National Security Agency could do. |
| 1:34.0 | I also had the capability without any warrant of law |
| 1:38.0 | to search for, seize, and read your communications. |
| 1:42.0 | Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's |
| 1:48.1 | fates. It is also a serious violation of the law. |
| 1:54.1 | Naturally, what he had to say raised an immediate and angry furiori about surveillance, what |
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