EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,264 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming) Joe Rogan Podcast,…
- ESEdward Snowden
(drumming) Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. (rock music)
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you again, man.
- ESEdward Snowden
Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's, uh, been like a year since we last talked.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's been like a year, believe it or not. You look exactly the same and the studio-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... looks exactly the same. You might be on another part of the world. No one knows.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, it's just, uh, my, my apartment that I rent. Y- you know, I, I don't like to give out a lot of information about where I'm at and that kind of stuff, so it's very small.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very smart.
- ESEdward Snowden
A plain wall that I've got the lights down low so it looks kind of a, a, a nice gray. At least I think it's nice.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it's beautiful.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It looks amazing. Uh, first of all-
- ESEdward Snowden
Thanks, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
... congratulations on the recent ruling. Was the Ninth District Court of Appeals?
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that what it was? It said that-
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what you exposed with the warrantless wiretapping was in fact illegal, and there are-
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... many people that are calling for you to be pardoned now.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, it's ... So much has happened. This ruling ... This is actually not the first time, um, the federal government has ... uh, or the appeals courts have struck down, uh, some of the federal surveillance programs as unlawful. Um, but this one is really important because it happened, uh, from an appeals court. It wasn't from a single judge. It was from, uh, uh, a panel of judges. Um, and what they had, uh, ruled was that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, uh, was, uh, illegal. And this is the very first, um, sort of mass surveillance program that, uh, I and the journalists, um, really, that the news was broken back in 2013. So, this is a huge victory for privacy rights. Uh, what it means is ... There was this provision, uh, of the Patriot Act. Like, remember the Patriot Act? Remember like (laughs) a zillion years ago?
- JRJoe Rogan
I do.
- ESEdward Snowden
Every, everybody was like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
... "Oh, Patriot Act, Patriot Act." Your friend, Alex Jones, you know, I think (laughs) he was worried about the Patriot Act.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a terrible name. The ... There's a real problem with that name.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Because if you're against the Patriot Act, it's like against babies. It's like, uh, like, uh, "This is the pro-baby act," but meanwhile, pro-baby act, they get to look through your email. You know what I mean? It's like the word patriot is attached to that in a very disingenuous way, like calling that the Patriot Act is, is ... I- i- it's really creepy that they can do that. It should have like a number, like Bill A1.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? You know what I'm saying?
- 15:00 – 30:00
Can I stop you…
- ESEdward Snowden
they are you, and then as if they have a higher level of privilege than you. They have system level privileges to change the phone's operation permanently, right? And this is... the problem is on the phone. You can replace the phone, right? Uh, and they'll lose access to that. But if they've already used that to gain the passwords that you use to access, you know, your iCloud or whatever when they have control of the phone, they've already got your photo roll, right? They've already got your contact list. They already have everything that you've ever put in that phone. They already have all your notes. They already have all your files. They already have everything that's in your message history, right? They can pull that out immediately. And now (laughs) because they have, uh, you know, all your contacts and things like that, they see that phone stop being active. Uh, they know you've changed your phone number. All they have to do is find the new phone number and then they can try to go after you again. The benefit is, uh, with that old style of attack, if you get that message and you don't click that link, you're, uh, somebody in a vulnerable class, right? You've had these kind of attacks against you before. It looks suspicious, you don't know who this person is, the number isn't right, something like that, and you save that link. You don't click the link, you don't do anything with that link, but you send it to a group like Citizen Lab, uh, they can basically use that link to basically use, uh, like a dummy phone, like a sort of a Trojan horse to go to the site that would attack your phone and catch it. And this is what the... the sort of, uh, process that all of their research is based on. There are other more advanced-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I stop you for a second?
- ESEdward Snowden
... types of attacks that actually don't have these defenses against them that are far more scary. Um, but the bottom line is... Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I stop you for a second? What is Citizen Lab?
- ESEdward Snowden
Huh?
- JRJoe Rogan
Citizen Lab, you just said that.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, the Citizen Lab is the name of this research group at the university in Canada, uh, who basically studies, uh, state sponsored and corporate malware attacks, uh, against civil society. Um, it's run by... run by a guy named Ron Deibert, I believe. Uh, you guys will have to fact check me on that one. I think he just published a book, uh, actually, or is publishing a book a- about all of this. Um, but it's really... they are the- the world leaders, uh, in my opinion, in, uh, basically investigating these kind of attacks and exposing them and it's- it's true public service. Um, let's go back to that one thing. I asked you about warrants and you talked about the fact that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- ESEdward Snowden
... like, people could plant evidence on things and then get motivation, uh, or- or, um, rather they could show probable cause, right? To the court to then investigate you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
Um, and then they can get everything. And you said, you know, you thought that, uh, a warrant meant they can go and search your house, and this is, uh, the kind of thing that we, you know, modern people are used to thinking of in the context of a warrant. Cops go to a specific place, uh, looking for specific things, uh, that are elements of a crime. Now, you know, you- you've heard all these things where like cops find a way to like stop somebody and they l- like... or like, "Oh, I smell pot." Or whatever, and they try to, you know, toss their car or whatever, or plain sight doctrines where they open the door and the guy sits down and talks to them and they go, "Oh, you know, I see a- a bong or something." You know, "That's paraphernalia, you're going to jail." But, uh, until I think it was 1967, um-... warrants in the United States could only be used to gather two things. They were called the fruits and instrumentalities of a crime, uh, which meant even if the cops knew you did it, uh, even if the cops knew you, you know, rode the subway or worked for this company or whatever, they couldn't get all the company's records. Uh, they couldn't, if they existed, uh, get all the emails that you ever wrote. Um, they couldn't get your friend to turn over, like, an exchange of letters that you had with this person. The fruits of the crime were the things that they gained from it, right? If they robbed the bank, the cops could get the sack of money. The instrumentalities were the tools that were used, right? Like, if you, uh, used dynamite or a crowbar or a getaway car, they could seize all of those things. Uh, but the idea that the cops can get everything, uh, the idea that the FBI can get all these records, you know, all of these things, your, your whole history is very much a new thing. And nobody-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- ESEdward Snowden
... talks about that today. We, we just presume it's normal. We presume it's okay. Uh, but between 1967 and today, think about how many more records there are about your life and how things... like, how you live, private things about you that have nothing to do with criminality, and everything to do with the intimacy of, of who you are. A- and the fact that all of that now today is exposed, and not just to... Let's say you love the US government. Let's say, you, you know, you, you are, like, uh, throwing cookouts for your local police department, but every other government in the world too. Uh, and we really need to ask ourselves, how much information, uh, do the authorities of the day need to do their job? Right? How much do we want them to have? How much is proper and appropriately ne- and necessary? And how much is too much? And if we decide the cops shouldn't have this, if we decide the spies shouldn't have this, well, why in the hell should Facebook or Google or somebody trying to sh- sell you Nikes-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- ESEdward Snowden
... why should they have this?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Um, and what's the answer to that? (laughs) They shouldn't.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? But nobody wants to go backwards. Once you have gained a certain amount of access and you can justify that access, like, "We're stopping crimes," like the Patriot Act, and then which be- later the Patriot Act Two, which was even more overreaching. Once they have that kind of power, th- they never go, "You know what? We went too far. We, we have too much access to your privacy. And even if you've committed a crime, we shouldn't have unrelated access to all these other activities that you're involved in."
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, and I mean, that, that's exactly the thing about the whole SAVE THE PUPPIES Act, right? If it's got a name like that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
... you gotta be like, "No. There's... something doesn't smell right here."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
"This is, this is, this... There, there's something bad in this." And I mean, th- this... So this gets back to, uh, that, uh, initial topic of, uh, what, what did the court decide? Right? So we had the Patriot Act, and the Patriot Act was this giant law that had been wr- been written long before 9/11. It was just sitting on the shelf. Uh, and the Department of Justice, the FBI, they knew they couldn't pass this. They knew nobody would live with it, uh, because it was an extreme expansion of government authority. And then 9/11 happened, right? And that's really where it all started to go wrong. That's where we got the rise of this new authoritarianism, uh, that we see continuing in the United States today, right? Like, if you think and, you know, like, you have problems with what's happening under Donald Trump, but you also had problems under, like, what h- was happening with Obama and the expansion of the war on whistleblowing. Uh, you had problems with the way drone strikes were going out of control. You go, "Well, really, where did this all start?" Right? "Where did this start to go wrong?" Uh, personally, I think, uh, 9/11, uh, was where we made a fundamental mistake. And that was, we were so frightened in the moment because we had had such an e- extraordinary and rare terrorist attack, uh, succeed, which by the way could have been presen- prevented, uh, and I think we discussed this in the last, uh, episode. Um... The Congress, you know, they were... they were just terrified. They said, "Look, intelligence services, uh, cops, FBI, whoever, anything you want, blank check, here you go." That was the Patriot Act. And at the time, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, they were like, uh, "We are worried that this goes too far." Because God bless them, that's what the American Civil Liberties Union does. Uh, and one of the provisions that they had a problem with was this Section 215, (laughs) uh, of the Patriot Act, uh, uh, which I believe they were calling at the time the library records provision. Uh, and what it said basically, this tiny, little, little, uh, phrase, uh, in the law, said the FBI can basically get any records that it deems relevant to a counterterrorism investigation under a warrant. And the worst thing the ACLU could imagine was that these guys would go to the library and get what kind of books you're reading and like, "Oh, shock, horror." This is the worst thing these guys could do. Uh, and so they protested then. They lost. Um, and this passed and it went on. And lo and behold, 10 years later, uh, we find out in 2013, they had used, uh, this provision that people were worried about just going after individuals' library records, um, to instead get the phone records of not an individual, not a group, but everybody in the United States who was making calls on US telecommunications providers delivered to the NSA daily by these companies, right? So no matter who you were, no matter how innocent you were, the FBI was getting these because they said, "Well, every phone call is relevant to a counterterrorism investigation." And the court went, finally, you know, this is seven years after 2013...... they went, "Guys, that's too much. If your definition of relevance, uh, is basically anything, anywhere, all the time is relevant to a counter-terrorism investigation, the question is what then is not relevant? What is the limiting principle on this? What, where is the end?" Uh, and this is a very important thing because even if it's not enough, right, even if this doesn't shut down all the programs, the program was actually already stopped a few years ago because of previous court decisions and changes in law, um, the fact that the courts are finally, uh, beginning to look at these s- the, the impacts of these sweeping new technologies that allow governments to see all of these connections and interactions that we're having every day, uh, they're finally putting limits on it. Um, and that is, I think, transformative. Uh, it is the foundation of what we will see in the future will begin the f- be, be the first meaningful, uh, guarantees of privacy rights in the digital age.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now that you have been, uh, at least according to this court exonerated, or, or justified, what, what happens to you and what happens to what they've been doing-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and w- how, uh, how much of the brakes do they hit on this? Like how, what changes? Does anything change in the government's sweeping surveillance?
- ESEdward Snowden
It's, it's a great question. I mean, you would think, uh, when (laughs) you get a court, uh, not even a, a first-level court but an appeals court that looks at these issues, you know, they're talking about serious stuff, they're talking about counter-terrorism investigations, by the way, in the same thing, uh, in the same decision, they said, "The government has been arguing, you know, for 20 years now, these programs were saving lives. They were stopping terrorist attacks." They said, uh, you know, first they said mass surveillance had stopped 54 terrorist attacks in the United States. Then they dropped it to seven, and then they dropped it to one, and the one terrace attack, uh, or, uh, terrorist conspiracy, whatever, that they said it did stop was this case that was just decided, and the court found, and this is important, after looking at the cl- government's classified evidence, so this is not just the court deciding on their own, this is the government going, "Look, here's all the evidence that we have, the top secret stuff, the stuff that nobody can see, please don't, you know, say our program is ineffective or whatever." The court looked at it and they went, "Holy crap. It di- th- this invasion of hundreds of millions of Americans' privacy, uh, happening over the span of decades, did not make a difference in this case." They said even if, uh, or even in the absence of this program, if it hadn't existed, and if the government had never done it, uh, they still would've busted this ring because they were already closing in on them. The FBI already had all the evidence they needed to get a warrant to get the records through traditional means, uh, and the fact the government had been saying, Congress had been saying for years and years and years that this program was necessary, uh, the gover- the court says, "That was misleading." Which is legalese for saying the government's effing liars on this. Uh, so that raises the question of, okay, like as you said, well what now? How does this change everything? Well, it does mean the government has to stop doing this particular kind of program, uh, directly, but that program had already shut down. Um, and the government has a, a really great team of lawyers, uh, for every agency, right? The DOJ's got lawyers, the White House has lawyers, the FBI has lawyers, the NSA has lawyers, and the CIA has lawyers. Uh, and the only thing these guys are paid to do, all day, is to look at basically these legal opinions from the court that says all the ways the government broke the law and go, "Huh, is there any way we can just rejigger this program slightly, uh, so that we can dodge around that court ruling to go, 'All right, you know, uh, the abuses are still happening, but they're happening in a less abusive way.'" And, and then it's business as usual. Uh, so this is always the process, um, with the courts', uh, ruling against the government. This is not an exceptional, uh, thing in the case of, you know, it's NSA, it's CIA, what happens is when the government breaks the law, a- as the court has ruled them to do last week, there is no punishment, right? There is no criminal liability, uh, for all the bastards at the head of the FBI, the head of the NSA, um, who were violating Americans' rights for decades. Those guys don't go to prison, they don't lose their jobs, they don't even see the inside, you know, smell the inside of a courtroom, uh, where they're the ones wearing handcuffs. And because of that, it creates a culture of unaccountability, of impunity, right? Which means with each generation of government officials, they study this, they study the cases against them, they study where they won, they study where they lost, uh, and what they do is they try to create exactly what just happened, uh, which is a system where they can break the law for 10 years, you know, uh, 2001, uh, to 2013 basically, and no one even knows that it's happening. The classification protects that, right? Then eventually, it gets exposed. There's a leak, or somebody blows the whistle on it, right? Uh, it becomes a scandal, the government, you know, uh, they'll disown this program, they'll change the law there,
- 30:00 – 45:00
That's very disheartening. (laughs)…
- ESEdward Snowden
but somebody, like the ACLU, uh, will sue the government. And so the courts will finally, uh, be forced to look at these things. But the wheels of justice turn slow, right? The government will try to put the brakes on it. Um, the, uh, plaintiffs, uh, the civil society organizations that are suing will have to gather evidence. It's really difficult to do because the government's not providing anything, it's all classified. Uh, and then basically it takes another five years, another 10 years for the court to get to the verdict. And then we have it-... but then nobody goes to jail, right? Nobody actually faces serious consequences who is responsible for the wrongdoing and so the cycle continues. But having said that, like, it might feel disempowering, might- people might go, "Oh, we can't win," but this is in the context of a system where we lack accountability, where the government does have a culture of impunity. This is what winning looks like, because things do get better. The problem is, they get better by decades. They get better by half centuries and centuries. If you look at the United States, you know, 200 years ago, 100 years ago, things were objectively worse on basically every measure. The fact that we have to crawl to the future, uh, is a sad thing, when we know it could be fixed very quickly by establishing some kind of criminal liability for people like James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, who lied under oath to Congress and the American people, saying, "Exactly this program didn't exist. The NSA wasn't collecting any information on millions or hundreds of millions Americans," when in fact they were doing that every day. Uh, Obama did not fire him, right? (laughs) Obama did not charge him. Obama let him serve out the end of his days and then retire happily, but it's not an Obama problem, right? Uh, we see the same kinds of abuses happening under the Trump administration. We saw the same kind of abuses happening under the Bush administration, and the only way this changes, um, materially is if our government changes structurally, right? And, and that's kind of the issue that I think everybody in the country sees. When you look at the economy, when you look at all the struggle, when you look at all the class conflict and the divide and the political partisanship that's happening today, uh, the problem isn't right, uh, like about this law or this court ruling or this agency. Uh, it's about inequality of opportunity, of access, uh, even of privilege, right? I know people don't like talking about that. Uh, it's uncomfortable. People are like, "Oh my God, you know, are you, uh, like whatever." But the reality is, we have a few people in the country, you know, the Jeff Bezos, the Bill Gates, that own everything, like 10 people owning half the country, uh, and half the country owning nothing at all. Uh, and this, uh, applies to influence, right? Uh, when you have that kind of disproportionality, uh, of resources, you have that kind of disproportionality of influence. Your vote means less. Your ability to change the law means less. Your access to the courts means less. Uh, and that's how we end up in the situation where we are today.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's very disheartening. (laughs)
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs) Well, it doesn't have-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's-
- ESEdward Snowden
... to be because the important thing is we can change it.
- JRJoe Rogan
S- can we though? I mean, like what can we do and what can anybody change at this point to stop this o- o- overwhelming power that the government has to invade your privacy and to, uh, w- all the things that you exposed. When you talk about how the particular program that was in place has been shut down, but all they do is manipulate it slightly, do it so that you can argue in court that it's not the same thing, that it is a different thing, come up with other justifications for it and withhold evidence and then drag the process out for years and years and years, and s- for you to be so optimistic is really kind of spectacular-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... considering the fact that you've been hiding in another country, allegedly. We don't even know. You might be in Ohio.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
We, we don't know. You know, we don't know. Like, but, but, but you were essentially on the lam f- uh, and for exposing something that has now been determined to be illegal. So you were correct. When you go back to Obama's Hope and, uh, what was his, uh-
- ESEdward Snowden
Hope and Change.
- JRJoe Rogan
... his, his website. Uh, Hope and Change. Hope and Change. A big part of Hope and Change was protecting whistleblowers. Do you remember that?
- ESEdward Snowden
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that was all deleted later.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Later on they were like, "Yeah, let's go back and take that shit out." We didn't know. I didn't know what it was like to actually be president back then. I was just trying to get in there. But the Hope and Change stuff was still there when you were being tried, was still there when they were chasing you and, and, and, and trying to find your location. When The Guardian article came out, the Hope and Change shit was still, still online.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, that's... The fact that you're so optimistic-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... even though you've been fucked over royally, I mean, you are, in my opinion, you're a hero.
- ESEdward Snowden
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
I really think that, and I really, and I really think that what, what you exposed is hugely important for, uh, uh, the American citizens to understand that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and these people had, uh, the ability to look into everything. And they j- still do. They have the ability to look into everything you're doing. And the fact that through these years, it literally stopped zero terrorist attacks. Zero. So this sweeping, overwhelming intrusion of your privacy had no impact whatsoever on your safety.
- ESEdward Snowden
Well, it wasn't about safety. It was about power, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- ESEdward Snowden
They, they told us-
- JRJoe Rogan
It was about power.
- ESEdward Snowden
... it was about safety. Uh, that was... uh, again, it's the Save the Puppies Act. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
... if you, uh, if you see government saying all these things are for safety, they're protecting you, and they never establish the efficacy of it, uh, the chances are they're, they're, it probably isn't effective. 'Cause, you know, the government leaks all the time. Um, you know, if they say, uh, "We saved this person. We did that." You know, uh, whenever they're being criticized, they go on TV and they very seriously go, "Oh, that's classified and, you know, we can't expose that" and you never hear of the successes we do because it's so important that they stay secret. Uh, look, I worked for the CIA, I worked for the NSA. That's bullshit. Um, (laughs) when they do something great, you know, it's on the front page of the New York Times by the end of the day because they're fighting for budget, they're fighting for clout, they're fighting for authority, they're fighting for new laws.... not constantly. Uh, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
So there are no real accomplishments that are in the shadows that they just don't tell us about.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
That's what I wanted…
- ESEdward Snowden
I did this, how, and- and what it meant. Uh, I didn't just reveal information. Uh, I gave it to journalists, right? Uh, these journalists were only given, um, access to the information on the condition that they would publish no story simply because it was newsworthy or interesting, right? They weren't gonna clickbait classified documents. Uh, they would only publish stories if they were willing to make an independent institutional judgment and stand by it that it was in the public interest that this be known, right? And then as an extraordinary measure on top of that, before they published the stories, right? And this is not me publishing things, putting them out on the internet or blog or something, which I could have done, would've been very easy. Uh, it's not me telling them what to write or not to write. They're, uh, doing this, The Guardian, The Washington Post, you know, Der Spiegel. Um, they are then going to the United States government in advance of publication and giving the government a chance, uh, an adversarial opportunity to argue against publication to go, "You guys don't get it. You know, Snowden's a liar. These documents are false." Or, "He's not lying, and yes, these are true, but these programs are effective, they're saving lives," whatever, "and here's what we can show you to convince you, please don't publish this or leave out this detail." And in every case I'm aware of, that process was followed, and that's why now, in 2020... Remember, we're seven years on from 2013. The government has never shown a single example of any harm that has come as a result of the publication, uh, of these documents back in 2013, the revelation of mass surveillance. And it's...
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what I wanted to bring up.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah. And I mean, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, please.
- ESEdward Snowden
It's unscientific, uh, but I've seen polls run (laughs) on Twitter, uh, very recently, uh, in the last few weeks when this pardon question came out, uh, where 90%, like 90-plus percent of people were in favor of a pardon, and that's crazy. Uh, even in 2013 when we were doing well, you know, it was like 60%, um, in favor among young people, uh, but it was like 40% for older people. But that's because the government was on TV every Sunday, you know, bringing these, uh, CIA suits going, uh, who were there with their very stern f- faces going, "Oh, this caused great damage and it cost lives," and everything like that. But those arguments stop being convincing when seven years later, after they've told us, uh, the sky is falling, the atmosphere never catches fire, right, the oceans never boil off, we're still alive. Uh, and I- I think people can see through that. And that was... Uh, again, this... Exactly what you said, people don't know this history, uh, that- that 10% who are against it, uh, and actually a lot of the 90% who are even in favor of it, um, they don't know the details. It wasn't well covered by the media at the time. It was all about, this person said that, that person said that, is it true, is it false? You know, sort of, uh, they were playing on character, they were trying to make a drama out of it, and that's a big part of why I wrote Permanent Record. Uh, and it's been tremendously gratifying to see people connect to it. And actually this... I- you know, I mentioned it, uh, we talked on- on Twitter when we were talking about the possibility of having this conversation, and I was like... I looked back at our first conversation we had, and it's had like 16 million views, man. That's from a three-hour conversation, uh, and like se-
- JRJoe Rogan
And then probably an equal amount of people just listened to it in audio.
- ESEdward Snowden
Right. And that- that was just for one clip on YouTube. There were smaller clips of like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
... talking about cell phone surveillance, and that was like another 10 million views. 77,000 comments. Uh, the book on Amazon has thousands of reviews. Uh, it's got a 4.8 rating, which, uh, like, by the number of people and how it's rated, that's one of the best autobiographies according to ordinary people, the audience, in like years. And to see that after these years of attacks, uh, to me is evidence that despite all these news guys, uh, at night going, "Well, Senator, you know, uh, no one really cares about privacy these days. These kids with their Facebooks and their Instagrams." Uh, you know, people do care.... what they're actually feeling is kind of what you got to earlier, with, like, this sensation that nothing changes. Like, even when we win, we lose. But the thing is, you've got to have a broader view of time. You've got to look at the sweep of history, uh, rather than the atmosphere of the moment, because right now, yes, things are very bad. And even if you love Donald Trump, 'cause I know some of your viewers do, uh, you've got to admit, a lot of things in the world suck right now. A lot of things in the country suck right now. But the thing is, they only get better if somebody does the hard work to make them better. And there's no magic wand, there's no happy ending, right? Life is not that simple. But together, we can make it better, and we do that through struggle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you, uh... Uh, has there been any discussion about someone pardoning you? Has there been... I mean, this was the question initially that led to this, but I wanted you to expand on what, what actually went down. But has there been any discussion about you being pardoned or someone using you as, like I said, a p- a political chess piece? Because, uh, th- it, you, it would be a smart thing, and if anybody has had a problem with the intelligence community, it is Donald Trump.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs) Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, he's the only president in our r- in any memory that has had open disagreements and been openly disparaging of the intelligence community.
- ESEdward Snowden
Well, that's not true.
- JRJoe Rogan
If he's j-
- ESEdward Snowden
There was JFK, but (laughs) that didn't go very long.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that's right. (laughs) I forgot about that. Good point. Yeah, that d- that went terrible for him.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, for Trump, for Trump, it actually seems to be a positive in some strange way. Um, if anybody is going to pardon you, I would imagine that would be the guy.
- ESEdward Snowden
U- so this idea of, like, the political bargaining chip, uh, has actually been used in different way.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
Uh, there was the idea, um... And it's funny, because this was actually promoted by all of these, like, CIA deputy directors and whatnot, who were responsible for these abuses of Americans' rights, uh, who were writing opinion pieces in the newspaper. And they were like, you know, "What if, uh, Vladimir Putin, you know, sends Snowden to Trump as, like, an inauguration gift? Wouldn't that be terrible for him?" (laughs) And they were like, "Hint, hint." You know? Um, but I don't think w- when we talk about this stuff, uh... I, I don't think there's anything I can do to control it. One of the things people have asked is, like, would I accept a pardon, uh, from Donald Trump? And I think that misapprehends, uh, what a pardon is and how it works. A pardon's not a contract. A pardon is not something that you agree to. Uh, a pardon is a constitutionally, uh, enumerated power. Um, I think it's Article II, Section 2. Um, where... The reason that it exists, uh, is basically a check on the laws and the judiciary, uh, where the laws as written, uh, become corrosive to the intention of them. And this is something that, that I think actually is meaningful. And, you know, people are like, "Are you gonna ask, uh, Donald Trump for a pardon?" Uh, and the answer is, is no. Um, but I will ask for a pardon for Terry Albery, and Daniel Hale, and Reality Winner, and all the other American whistleblowers who have been treated unfairly by this system. The, the whole thing that brought this up was two weeks ago, some journalist, uh, asked, uh, the president, like, "Oh, oh, you know, what do you think about Snowden? Are you gonna pardon him?" And he s- said, he seemed to be thinking about it. Uh, he heard I had been treated very unfairly. (laughs) That's accurate, um, because it's impossible to get a fair trial, uh, under the Espionage Act, which is what I've been charged under. And every American whistleblower, uh, since Daniel Ellsberg in the 1970s has been charged under this law, the Espionage Act, which makes no distinction between someone who is stealing secrets and selling them to foreign governments, which neither I nor any of these other people have done, and giving them freely to journalists to advance the public interest of the American people rather than the private interest of these spies, you know, in- individually. Uh, and this is the kind of, uh... This is the kind of circumstance for which the pardon power exists, where the courts, uh, and judges, uh, will not or cannot, um, end a, a fundamentally unfair and abusive, uh, circumstance in the United States, either because they're, uh, fearful of being criticized of soft on terrorism or whatever, uh, or because the law prohibits them from doing so. The, the problem with the Espionage Act is it means you can't tell the jury why you did what you did. You cannot mount what's called a public interest defense where you say, "Hell yeah, I broke the law. Uh, I took a classified document and I gave it, uh, to the journalist, and the journalist published it, and then it went to the courts, and the court said, 'This guy was right. The government was breaking the law.'" In the courts, if I were, you know, in, in prison today, uh, as Reality Winner is in prison today, or rather Daniel Hale, uh, who revealed, uh, government abuses related to the drone program, or Terry Albery, who, uh, r- revealed, uh, problems with, uh, racial policies in the FBI, how they were being abused... Um, when these guys are on trial, all of that stuff is forbidden from being spoken. Uh, Daniel Ellsberg's lawyer, uh, asked Daniel Ellsberg, "Why did you do it?" In court, in open court, under oath, you know, "Why did you publish or provide a journalist the Pentagon Papers?" And the prosecutor said, "Objection, objection, he can't say that." And the judge said, "Sustained. Fine, he can't say it." And his attorney looked at the judge like he was crazy and said, "I've never heard of a trial where the jury is not allowed to hear why, uh, a defendant did what they did." And the judge said, "Well-... you're seeing one now. And this is why the pardon power exists.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus. Well, that's what so creepy about something like the espion- Espionage Act. If, if you can't even establish a motive, you can't even explain that you were doing this for the American people, that there's a real precedent that should be set for, for this kind of thing, especially in, in regards to what you're being charged with, which has now been determined that you were exposing something that was in fact illegal. Eh, and this is-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, it's, it's-
- ESEdward Snowden
Hard to believe, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
... it's an incredibly un-American thing. It's, it's very un-American. It really is.
- ESEdward Snowden
Uh, but this is...
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's disturbingly so.
- ESEdward Snowden
I, I mean we see these kind of injustices happening in the United States every day and it's not about the Espionage Act specifically. I mean, you see it with drug charges, you see it with civil forfeiture, uh, asset forfeiture, where like, you know, they take-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Mm. …
- ESEdward Snowden
be killed. John Bolton at least said I should be killed. Um, and, you know, I, I, I think when this conversation first came up a couple weeks ago, Mike Pompeo probably hi- hid every pen in the White House, uh, because he's trying to make sure things like this don't happen. I think there are a lot of people, uh, who try and control the president. But this whole question about, you know, uh, what's right for me, uh, what's right for the president in terms of political advantage, uh, is, is the wrong question. This is why I haven't been advocating for pardon. I didn't ask for a, a pardon from Obama. Um, I did ask for a pardon for Chelsea Manning, uh, which we didn't get, but we did get clemency, uh, and that's an important thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- ESEdward Snowden
Uh, because what we need i- is we need for pardons to be made not as a question of political advantage, uh, but as a decision taken on, uh, to further the public interest. And this is why I say pardon, you know, all of these previous whistleblowers, uh, uh, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Terry Albury, Reality Winter, Daniel Hale. There are many names. Daniel Ellsberg, right? He wasn't convicted, so he got out. But these people deserve recognition as the patriots who stood up and took a risk for the rest of us, uh, that they are. Look at the, the current cases, right, that don't even require an exercise of the pardon authority.... no. But Julian Assange, right now, today, is in court in the UK fighting an extradition trial to the United States. For those who don't remember, this is the guy who's the head of Wikileaks, right? Uh, and he really fell out of favor in 2016 because, uh, he published the Hillary emails and everything like that, or Podesta emails. Um, but he's not being charged for that. Uh, the extradition trial has nothing to do with that. Actually, the US government, uh, under William Barr, right, the current attorney general, uh, is trying to extradite this guy and put him in prison for the rest of his life for the best work that Wikileaks ever did, that has won awards in every country basically around the planet, including the United States. Uh, which is the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, right? Uh, detainee, uh, records in Guantanamo Bay. Uh, things that are about explicit war crimes and abuses of power, uh, torture and people who were killed who shouldn't have been killed, uh, violations of use of force protocols and all of these things, right? Uh, and this could all be made to go away if William Barr, the attorney general, simply dropped the charges, and he should. Why isn't he?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, Julian Assange has literally been tortured. I mean, the guy was locked in that embassy for how many years with no exposure to daylight, just completely trapped, and we've seen videos of him skateboarding around the, the embassy. I mean, it looks like he's going crazy in there, and, uh, now, he's in jail and on trial. Uh, the, the whole thing is... i- it's so disturbing because wha- uh, you know, when it, when it boils down to, like, what, what did he do that is illegal, what did he do that, uh, people disagree with, that people in the United States disagree with in terms of the citizens... Well, he ex- he exposed hor- horrific crimes. He exposed things that were, uh, deeply... uh, that were... that, that the United States citizens are deeply opposed to. And the fact that that is su- something that you, in this country, can be, uh, prosecuted for, g- that they would try to extradite you an, an drag you from another country, they, they'd kick him out of the embassy and bring him back to the United States to try him for that. W- it seems like we're talking about some kangaroo court.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It seems like we're talking about some, some dictatorship where, you know, you, you have these, uh, w- no protection of freedom of speech, no protection under the First Amendment, no, no protection under the, the rights of the press. It just... it's so disturbing that there are workarounds for our Constitution and our Bill of Rights that are, uh... w- that we all just agree to, just accept that this is happening. There's no riots in the streets for this. There's no... n- no one's up in arms that they're trying to extradite Julian Assange. No, no, no one... I mean, it's not in the news. Y- like, for whatever reason, the mainstream news has barely covered it over this, uh... the... his current court proceedings in the, in the UK.
- ESEdward Snowden
Well, I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that, uh, they see Julian Assange... uh, by this "they," I mean the, the... a lot of the mainstream media, the broadcast outlets... a- as a partisan figure. Now, and it's really sad because the most dangerous thing about the charges against Julian Assange, uh, is if they extradite Julian Assange, if Julian Assange is convicted, uh, he's charged under the Espionage Act, the same act that I'm charged under, the same thing that all these whistleblowers are charged under, but he is not a source. The way as abusive as these Espionage Act charges, uh, have run in the last 50 years, uh, is the government had this... sort of a quiet agreement. They never charge the press outlets. They never charge the New York Times. They never charge the Washington Post. Uh, they don't charge the journalists. They charge their sources. Uh, they charge the Chelsea Mannings, right? They, they charge the Edward Snowdens. They charge the Thomas Drakes, the Daniel Ellsbergs. But the press, they're left alone. They are breaking that agreement with the Julian Assange case. Uh, Assange is not the source. He is merely a publisher. He runs a press organization. People are like, "Oh, Julian Assange is not a journalist. He's not whatever." There is no way you can make that argument in court in a way that will be defensible, particularly given what we've talked about with the government and how careful they are to avoid prior, uh, court precedents and to work around it and create, you know, obscure legal theories, uh, that are legal fictions. Everyone knows they're a lie. Everyone knows these theories are false. But under the law, you know, they bend just enough that they can pass the argument through and get the conviction they want. You cannot convict Julian Assange, the chief editor and publisher of Wikileaks, uh, under the Espionage Act without exposing the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, you know, CNN, Fox, whoever, uh, to the same kind of charges under this president and every coming president. And I think people don't think about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
That, that is disturbing. You know, a- another thing that's dist-... well, there's many things that are disturbing about this case, but another thing that's been disturbing was he was a guy who the left supported up until 2016-
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then it became inconvenient.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? I mean, people-
- ESEdward Snowden
When he was dragging Bush, it was great. Then when he's dragging-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
... Hillary and Clinton, it's not so great.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Right. When, when the, the footage was revealed from the, uh, uh, uh, I, I believe it was a helicopter that sh-
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it was, uh, collateral murder.
- ESEdward Snowden
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Remember that video that was put out?
- ESEdward Snowden
Collateral murder in Iraq.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ESEdward Snowden
Uh, it was a-
- JRJoe Rogan
They-
- ESEdward Snowden
... an Apache helicopter in Iraq firing on two Reuters journalists-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
... uh, who were embedded-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
... with, like, local militants or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Exactly. Um, the... that was the left's... he was the darling of the left. I mean, they were all, "Free Julian Assange." And it's just... it's so interesting how that narrative can shift-... so completely to, all of a sudden, he's a puppet of Russia. And that's what it became in 2016. And that propaganda stuck and people who were pro-Julian Assange before, now all of a sudden, I- I've, I've seen these people say, "Fuck Wikileaks," you know, and, "Fuck Julian Assange. Like, that guy, he's a puppet of Russia." I'm like, like, have y- how much have you looked into this? It's amazing how that kind of propaganda, when you just get, uh, the surface veneer of the, the, the, the, whatever the narrative they're, it is they're, they're trying to push, how well it spreads, that all these people who were these educated left-wing people now all of a sudden were anti-Wikileaks. And I'm like, do you not remember how this whole g- thing got started? It was the Iraq War, which we all opposed. Do you not remember this whole bullshit lie about the weapons of mass destruction that got us into this crazy war? And then, then Julian Assange and Wikileaks exposed so much of this. And yet, here we are in 2016, it turns up on its head and now he's a puppet of Russia and, and Wikileaks is bad because inconveniently, the information that he released damaged Hillary Clinton's campaign.
- 1:15:00 – 1:23:10
(laughs) …
- JRJoe Rogan
because it's a slippery slope. If you decide that someone has views that are opposite of yours and they bother you, those views bother you, and you could do whatever you can to get them off of a platform, it's very dangerous, because someone from the right who gains power or someone from an- a- a- opposing party that gains power, if they get into a position of power in social media, if they own a gigantic social media company like Twitter or YouTube and they decide, in turn, to go after people that agree with your ideology, well, then we have a freedom of speech issue and you're sup- you're literally supporting the suppression of freedom of speech if you're supporting deplatforming people on social media. And I've always thought that the answer to someone saying something you disagree with or something, someone saying something you vehemently oppose, is a better argument.
- ESEdward Snowden
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what they are, it's supposed to be.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's supposed to be you should expose the problems in what they're doing, and I'm seeing so many people, particularly on the left, that are happy when people get deplatformed and people that just are, just are contrary to their perspective, contrary to their ideology, and it's, it's, I think it's very dangerous and it's too easy. It's too easy to accept. It's t- and this, this goes back to what you're saying, this partisan viewpoint that we have today, fiercely, rabidly partisan in a way that I've never seen in my life.
- ESEdward Snowden
Yeah, I, I think the, uh, question of deplatforming, this is one of the- the central issues of our time that's really overlooked and it's underappreciated. Uh, so many people on both sides, uh, are in favor of this, uh, when it's somebody they don't like, right? Uh...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
The central issue is this. Do we want companies deciding what can and cannot be said? Do we want governments deciding what can and cannot be said? Um, if the answer is yes, (laughs) uh, it is a very different kind of society than what we have had traditionally. I do think we need to understand, uh, where this impulse came from, um, how it came to be, and why it seemed reasonable, and a lot of people forget this. Uh, and it came from ISIS. Uh, if you remember, the Islamic State was all over YouTube, they were all over Twitter, they were all over Facebook, and they were literally burning people alive in cages, they were beheading people, you know, pushing people off buildings, just horrible stuff. Um, and that raises a tough question for a lot of these companies. Now, it's very easy to make the argument that, all right, this is a direct call for violence, this is literally, uh, supporting terrorism, um, and as a private company, we have no obligation to let people use our platforms. Therefore, we're closing their accounts, right? We're shutting this off, we're erasing it, we can do whatever we want, it's our- our website. Don't like it? Leave. Um, constitutionally, there's no, uh, freedom of speech issue, uh, implicated there because the constitution, uh, restrains the federal government and the state governments, uh, in- in certain circumstances, not private companies. But, uh, once that precedent had been established, uh, that they would do this for ISIS, they started going, "Well, what about these other people? Uh, what about these things that could be construed as calls to violence? Okay, what if they're not violence at all? Uh, what if it's harassment? What if it's abuse? What if it's racism? What if it's, you know, criminality? What if it's drug culture? What if it's pornography? What if it's whatever?" Uh, and there will always be more what ifs and the categories of prohibited speech will constantly expand. So we need to ask ourselves, well, who is best placed to make those decisions about what can and cannot be said? Uh, traditionally, uh, the access to broadcast was limited. You had radio, you had TV. If you didn't have that, you had the soapbox on the corner, right? Uh, or the local university, uh, the coffee shop, and somebody owned those places, uh, or somebody ran those places. Uh, you know, the college president would say, "This c- person would be invited to speak, this person wouldn't be invited to speak." Um, and I- I actually think it's right and proper, uh, for people to be able to protest speakers, to say, "This person shouldn't speak, uh, at our college," but I think the college itself, the institution, has to be willing to make value judgments about why they invite certain people to speak. Uh, and if that person's a very unpopular speaker, if that person is, uh, representing a viewpoint that is not well-supported by the college, uh, if it's not necessarily what students want to hear-... uh, but the administration believes, like the faculty believes, uh, that it's something students should hear. Isn't that why we have universities? We don't go to class-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ESEdward Snowden
... to learn, you know, n- necessarily like ... You don't go to a literature course to read the things that you want to read. You just go home and read those yourself. Uh, you go to study a curriculum to something else. You want to benefit from the experience from the perspectives of others. The question that people have is, how does this expand into the wider audience, right? What happens when you move beyond universities? What happens when you move to news broadcasts? What happens when you move to the internet? What happens when everyone everywhere can broadcast? And this is where I think things get really tricky. Um, not, can people say what they want? Uh, as long as they're not advocating violence or whatever, I don't think this should be a difficult issue. Um, but this gets complicated when you th- have things like YouTube's, uh, next video suggestion algorithm. Because the idea of universal, uh, speech, universal ability to broadcast is exactly as you said. Well, what is the counter for this? You've got freaking Nazis on the internet, and I'm not talking like a whatever, the guy's got a Trump sticker on his truck. I'm talking goose stepping, you know, swastika bearing, actual freaking Nazi. Um, you have those people out there on the internet calling for violence, calling for all these terrible things, and normally the way you deal with this, even in the case of something like ISIS, you drag them onto the platform. You discredit their ideas before the world, because if you don't, if you drive them underground, if you make them, you know, this, this faction that's, you know, uh, hanging out at a, a radical mosque, uh, or, you know, they're hanging out at the hardware store if they're freaking Nazis or whatever. Uh, there are, uh, places where you create its own community that is sheltered from other perspectives, that's sheltered from other ideas, and that is where extremism thrives, where it cannot be challenged, uh, where it cannot be exposed, uh, for what it really is. But when you've got YouTube going, "Oh, you like Nazi A? How about Nazi B? How about Nazi C?" Right? These people never get exposed to counter speech, and this is where things get tricky.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, i- it also gets tricky when you decide that someone is saying something that's offensive and you remove them from the platform and then you open the door for other things being offensive, things that maybe aren't offensive to you. And the, the, the slope gets slippery, and then you have wrong speak, you have, you have newly dictated language that you have to use. You have new restrictions on ideologies, things you're not allowed to espouse. I mean, uh, Twitter will ban you for deadnaming someone. They will ban you for life, meaning if you transition to be a woman and you call yourself Edwina and I call you Edward, you, I will be banned for life with no recourse, which is c- madness. It's mad, 'cause I can call you fuck face-
Episode duration: 2:28:40
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