Snowden Explains Exactly How the US Government Can Get Access to Private Images
Snowden Explains Exactly How the US Government Can Get Hold of their Private Images
The former NSA contractor whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking to John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, said that the American public don’t understand what ‘bulk government surveillance’ actually means – or how it could affect them in their daily lives.
The files Snowden exposed, some of which it has now become clear he had not read completely, revealed mass US government surveillance programs, and meant he had to flee the country to seek refuge in Russia to avoid being prosecuted.
So Last Week Tonight host John Oliver asked his special guest, Snowden, to explain it to them using a metaphor they’d all understand – the concept that intelligence officers could be intercepting private naked images taken on their phones, or “dick pics”, as they're more widely known.
“The good news is that there's no program named the 'dick pic' program. The bad news... they are still collecting everybody's information, including your dick pics,” Snowden said. “If you have your email somewhere like Gmail hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or anytime it crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database.”
He went on to discuss the PRISM program, which is how the government “pull your junk out of Google, without Google's involvement”. It also collects data from Facebook, Apple and other big companies.
However, Snowden was adamant that Americans shouldn’t stop sharing private information “because of a government agency somewhere that’s doing the wrong thing”. “If you sacrifice your values because you're afraid, you don't care about those values very much.”
And recently the laptop used to store top-secret documents leaked by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has gone on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The device was smashed apart under the instructions of British intelligence officials. It is part of a wider exhibit exploring freedom of speech and Internet security.
