New Snowden interview: NSA ‘collects all communications’ in United States

Image : screenshot Guardian’s interview

Madison Ruppert

In a newly released interview with the Guardian filmed June 6 and released today, Edward Snowden accurately predicts how the U.S. government will react to his move to leak information on the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs.

Snowden also makes it clear that “the NSA doesn’t limit itself to foreign intelligence.”

“It collects all communications that transit the United States,” Snowden said.

“There are literally no ingress or egress points in the continental United States where communications either enter or exit without being monitored, collected and analyzed,” Snowden said.

 

Indeed, as we now know, the NSA surveillance has been considerably more pervasive than the American people were led to believe.

This latest scandal has been characterized by the twisting of language and cleverly worded statements from all involved, leading most casual observers to be completely misled.

Even the NSA’s fact sheet contained significant inaccuracies, according to senators.

In the case of the collection of all U.S. phone records held by Verizon, Snowden said the NSA is “using an authority that was intended to be used to seek warrants against individuals and they’re applying it to the whole of society by basically subverting a corporate partnership through major telecommunications providers.”

“They’re getting everyone’s calls, everyone’s call records, and everyone’s internet traffic as well,” Snowden said.

“On top of that you’ve got Boundless Informant, which is sort of a global auditing system for the NSA’s intercept and collection system that lets us track how much we’re collecting, where we’re collecting, by which authorities and so forth,” Snowden continued.

“The NSA lied about the existence of this tool to Congress and to specific Congressman in response to previous inquiries about their surveillance activities,” Snowden said.

“Beyond that we’ve got PRISM, which is a demonstration of how the U.S. government co-opts U.S. corporate power to its own ends,” he said.

“Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA and provide the NSA with direct access to the back ends of the systems you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud and even just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life,” he said.

Interestingly, Snowden was able to perfectly predict what the U.S. government’s reaction to the release of the information would be.

“I think the government’s going to launch an investigation, I think they’re going to say I’ve committed grave crimes, that I’ve violated the Espionage Act,” he said.

“They’re going to say I’ve aided our enemies in making them aware of theses systems,” Snowden said. “But that argument can be made against anybody who reveals information that points out mass surveillance systems, because fundamentally they apply equally to ourselves as they do to our enemies.”

Snowden concluded by saying that anyone who opposes the type of world in which dragnet warrantless surveillance is the norm has an obligation to act in the way they can.

Many have taken his advice, as seen in the nationwide protests on the 4th of July.

Snowden said he tried to wait and “allow our leadership to correct the excesses of government when we go to far but as I’ve watched I’ve seen that it’s not occurring and in fact we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive.”

“And no one is really standing to stop it,” he said.

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This article first appeared at End the Lie. 

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on UCYTV Monday nights 7 PM - 9 PM PT/10 PM - 12 AM ET. Show page link here:http://UCY.TV/EndtheLie. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

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