The Other Ed Snowdens: Inside the Mind of Two Privacy Whistleblowers

Note to Self

WNYC Studios

Self-improvement, Tech, Note, Npr, Education, Public, Wnyc, Manoush, York, To, New, Self, Radio, Business, Technology, Relationships, City, Society & Culture, Zomorodi, Newtechcity

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2014

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ed Snowden is not alone. And we're not talking about how his girlfriend has moved in with him in Russia. There have been a handful of other technologists who've taken a bold stand and faced off with the U.S. government to protect your privacy from mass surveillance. We don't yet know if it ends well for any of them.

Our two guests in this show each risked their livelihood by refusing to help the NSA or FBI snoop on Americans. Let's get to know them.

“This is our responsibility as Americans to speak out against something that we think is wrong because we are really setting the standard for future generations,” Ladar Levison.

Ladar Levison and William Binney both play a role in the Ed Snowden affair—and they each appear prominently in Laura Poitras' new documentary Citizenfour. Binney worked for the NSA for more than 30 years. He was an early architect of the NSA systems that were eventually used for mass surveillance on U.S. citizens. That wasn't how he intended his programming skills to be used, so he quit and cried foul. Without documents to prove it though, he was overlooked for years by the general public.

Ladar Levison built the encrypted email system Lavabit that Ed Snowden has said he used for private communications. Naturally, the FBI wanted to take a look at some of those messages. But rather than turn over the keys to his encryption—something that would have compromised all his clients, not just Snowden—Levison shut down his whole company in dramatic fashion. (He was on a previous episode of New Tech City while under a gag order about the case. Listen here.)

We wanted to find out who does something like that? Why take that stand? What's the motivation? The strategy? The fallout? We got the two men together for the first time and tried to understand the mindset of a privacy crusader. They have two very different strategies, but share one big sense of outrage.

Why not send this episode to that friend who doesn't care at all about privacy. See what they think. And please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

To listen, click the audio player above the image.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello friend, this is an episode of Note to Self, but from when we used to be called New Text City.
0:07.0	Same good content, just the old name. Enjoy.
0:10.0	When you collect this much content on the entire world,
0:14.0	you give the people who control that database the ability to paint anybody as a criminal.
0:21.0	From WNYC, this is New Text City, where digital gets personal. I'm a new summer roadie.
0:28.0	This week, well, it's confusing. I saw the movie Citizen 4.
0:34.0	It's that documentary by Laura Poitris about Ed Snow.
0:38.0	You know, the real Ed Snow behind the scenes,
0:41.0	the guy who seems like he's trying to be Jason Bourne when he censor these encrypted emails.
0:46.0	I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community.
0:50.0	I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk.
0:55.0	For now, know that every body you cross, every purchase you make.
0:59.0	You're hearing Laura Poitris reading one of those first emails that Ed Snow sent her.
1:04.0	That's the only time that you hear from her in the entire movie.
1:07.0	The hands of a system whose reach is unlimited, but whose safeguards are not.
1:12.0	And the best part of the film is those claustrophobic eight days in a Hong Kong hotel room,
1:17.0	with the on-the-run Ed Snowden and the hyped up Glen Greenwald
1:23.0	and the elder guardian journalist, you and McCaskill,
1:26.0	who kind of shows up in the middle of it all and is trying to catch up.
1:29.0	I don't know if you made me.
1:31.0	Sorry, my name is Edward Snowden. I go by head.
1:36.0	Edward Joseph Snowden is the full name.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.