05/13/14 – Trevor Timm – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Got Trevor Tim on the line.
He writes for The Guardian, he works for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Where Glenn Greenwald and Dan Ellsberg and Edward Snowden and John Cusack also sit on the board of directors there.
Welcome back to the show Trevor, how are you doing?
Great, thanks for having me back.
Good, good, very happy to have you here, really appreciate your time on the show as always.
And I know you must be very busy today.
Today is Greenwald Day in America, it ought to be an official holiday I guess.
His new book's come out and it's got a ton of new stuff in it, and I don't have my copy yet.
But I guess, can you go ahead and tell us what are the biggest headlines coming out of Glenn Greenwald's new book?
Other than the fact, as we already discussed earlier on the show, that Glenn has posted all of the documents included in the book online for people to peruse.
Yeah, I mean I think this is first of all the most complete story yet of how Edward Snowden originally came to Glenn.
And how him and Laura Poitras ended up reporting the story of the decade.
I mean it's just a riveting read from the first chapter when you find out that Edward Snowden was first trying to contact him with a pseudonym and trying to get him to set up email encryption, which Glenn almost didn't do.
And then the fact that Glenn almost lost the story of the decade because he actually wouldn't set up email encryption or chat encryption.
But there's definitely new revelations in the book, including parts about how the NSA has intercepted internet routers and servers through the mail and then opened the boxes, put back doors in them, sealed them back up, and then sent them off to foreign customers.
Even a picture of NSA employees actually doing the breaking into the package, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's probably been the biggest headline so far.
But then there's just all sorts of new and interesting slides that show all of the things that the NSA will do to analyze the information coming in and just the enormous numbers of information.
I think one report said that a single unit inside NSA searched something like 97 billion emails and 124 billion phone calls.
So they collected that on that many just in a one-month period, and that was just only a single unit.
So it just goes to show you how enormous the surveillance state has really gotten.
And the fact that this was done in almost complete secrecy up until 10 months ago.
You know, it seems like if you just said to a real computer genius comic book guy kind of a character, like, hey, what is your absolute worst nightmare for the ultimate capability of the NSA?
What all they're able to get and how well they're able to process it all and that kind of thing.
It sort of seems like anything that that guy could...
And I picked someone like that because they know enough about computers to be able to imagine what to me is an unknown unknown, right?
To them could be a known unknown.
What kind of interception and deciphering capability can be applied to all that's intercepted and all that kind of thing.
It sort of seems like the ultimate lesson here is that anything that could be imagined on that level is what they're doing.
And if there's any news here, it's that surprise.
There's actually a limit to how far they can go in one circumstance or the other.
Otherwise, it sounds like every electronic communication on Earth belongs to them.
What am I missing?
Well, I mean, I don't think you're missing much.
I think that, you know, I thought you were going to say, come on, Scott.
I mean, I wish you were, but I think that the stories of the last 10 months have really changed the way that we see privacy on the Internet.
And the fact that not just the NSA is probably trying to invade our privacy, but intelligence agencies all over the world.
It just happens to be that the NSA has more money and more resources than most.
All right.
All right.
So now is there anything that really stood out at you so far?
Are you reading the book?
How far into it are you?
Anything that's really shocking to you?
I'm just a few chapters in.
You know, I think people who are, you know, pay attention to this story day to day, there might not necessarily be tons of new information in the book.
But the slides for people who have been following it closely are probably the most interesting part.
And like I said, you know, they go through all sorts of ways that they analyze and search this information.
Let me ask you this.
I've had a real hard time because I'm not a computer genius type at all.
I mean, the best thing I know about being a computer genius is how to get you on the show, if I'm lucky.
So I've had the hardest time understanding all this stuff.
I mean, in principle, OK, they tap the router.
I know what that means.
You know, they add a mirror to the fiber optic cable.
OK, that makes sense to me.
This kind of thing, breaking into this or that or tracking searches.
But when it comes to all the different code names and all the different methods and really how to categorize in my mind all the different programs and how they work together and that kind of thing, it becomes a very jumbled mess.
I can't do it.
But so the question then is when I'm done reading Greenwald's book, will I finally understand this stuff?
Like I finally have read enough of it that now I'll have a more coherent picture of what I'm looking at instead of just this jumble of threatening ones and zeros?
I mean, I think the code words confuse a lot of people, including the reporters.
You know, the ProPublica reporters who reported that huge story about six months ago about the NSA trying to break common forms of encryption, talks about how he had to lock himself in a room basically for a month and a half just to figure out the language and the code words the NSA was using in these documents.
You know, it's almost like they are using a separate language when they talk about these things.
One part of the NSA refers to something under one code word that the other part of the NSA has a different code word for.
So I think it does get quite confusing for a lot of people, and I hope the book can clarify a lot of what's going on for people who might be confused.
All right, so Greenwald says in this new interview with GQ magazine that he's been saying that he's saving the best for last.
In this case, he compares it to a firework show and says, well, you know, I'm building up to the finale and that kind of thing.
Good old Glenn, I like that guy.
So the thing is, I like speculating, and you know what I think it is?
I think it is that the NSA knows everything about every senator and every former and or potential presidential candidate, any influential member of the House of Representatives, maybe even in the state houses and the state governors, that the NSA wages a full-scale information warfare operation against the elected Democratic representatives of the people of the United States of America in order to keep them all in line.
What do you think about that?
Well, you know, if that was true, it would be blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
The NSA likes to play on the very, very outer edges of the law, and they try to get secret reinterpretations of the law done by the FISA court, but they are very careful not to do anything blatantly illegal because they know once that happens, they'll be shut down.
And so they use these broad laws they get Congress to pass so they can do pretty much whatever they want on foreign soil and anything coming into the U.S. and then metadata in the U.S.
But if they actually have content of communications of U.S. senators or people running for office, then they're going to be in a lot of trouble.
And that's going to be the end of the NSA and criminal indictments.
So, you know, I can't comment on what the story could possibly be that Glenn is talking about, but if it's something like that, then it would be truly shocking.
Do you know what it is?
Or do you have a reasonable suspicion of what's the big deal?
You don't have to tell me, but just tell me if you think you know.
I mean, just what Glenn was talking about, actually, if you watch him on the Colbert Report last night, he talked about that it may have something to do with what the NSA is doing inside the United States.
But, you know, beyond that, I'm not really sure.
So we will see.
I wonder if this could relate back to that conversation on CNN that Greenwald was covering at The Guardian just before the Snowden leaks began to break, where that guy was talking about the Boston attack and saying we can go back and rewind all of this punk's phone calls and see who he was talking to and what he was doing.
And then the needle scratched off the record and everybody went, wait, what did you just say?
You can go back and, well, why would he be recording?
Are you saying you were recording him or are you saying you were recording everybody or what?
And then the answers stopped coming.
And then that story kind of died because, holy crap, the entire Snowden revelations started coming out.
It makes me wonder if that one country where they're intercepting all the phone calls was this one.
I mean, it's possible that that guy, first of all, we're not sure how credible that guy was in the first place, but it's possible he was talking about phone calls going into and out of the United States from certain countries because, like you said, we know that there's at least one country where they record all phone calls, so that means naturally that if somebody's calling the U.S. from that country, then that phone call is getting recorded.
Like I said, if they are recording completely domestic phone calls, that would just be an outrageous and unbelievable violation of the law and the Constitution and that people will go to jail or should go to jail immediately, if that's true.
Well, see, this is why I like talking to you.
You understand these issues so well and you have such a level head against all of my speculations, but that's part of having a government of basically total power and total secrecy where there's not much accountability beyond the public's imagination.
We don't really get to know what they're doing beyond what we can guess.
Anyway, thanks again for informing our opinion, Trevor.
Appreciate it.
No problem.
Thanks for having me.
Trevor Tim, everybody.
He's at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Guardian.
Phone records, financial and location data, PRISM, Tempora, X-Key Score, Boundless Informant.
Hey, y'all, Scott Warren here for offnow.org.
Now, here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the National Surveillance State.
Now, they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress.
And the courts, they betrayed their sworn oaths to the Constitution and Bill of Rights again and again and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
We've got to do it ourselves.
How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy, but the offnow project of the Tenth Amendment Center has gotten off to a great start.
I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their model legislation introduced all over the place in state after state.
I've lost count, more than a dozen.
You're always wondering, yeah, but what can we do?
Here's something, something important, something that can work if we do the work.
Get started cutting off the NSA support in your state.
Go to offnow.org.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast Peace Talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it, it's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
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