it appears that he is embellishing on some of the info he says he has
"Meet The Press" Roundtable Reviews NSA Leaks, Intel Gathering Techniques | RealClearPolitics
andrea mitchell: one of the issues that i have with snowden that's really not resolved is how he had access to that court ruling on verizon, a fisa ruling, he had access to things that were not within his purview, and what he said in his interview with the guardian is that he could access anyone's emails including the president of the united states if he had an email address
michael hayden (bush cia and nsa): snowden's wrong, he could not possibly have done the things he claimed he was able to do in terms of tapping communications
mitchell: but general, snowden got into things that you had no idea he was getting into
hayen: well, i understand, but let...
mitchell: so how do you know he's wrong
hayden: well, one more point then, congressman, it's only terrorism, the only word you can access, the metadata, is through a terrorist predicate
congressman bobby scott (VA): well who... and where is that written?
hayden: it's in the court order, it's in the broad structure of the data
scott: but that part, that's how you get the data, and once the fbi has it they have practices, and then we asked the fbi director whether it's only used for terrorism and he said, "yes, only for terrorism," the attorney general gonzalez said, "well, we could use it for criminal investigations"
hayden: well, the only reason...
scott: you've got the information
hayden: now, now...
james risen (pulitzer prize winner, nyt, recipient and publisher of the jeffrey sterling leak about iranian nukes, sterling being one of the leakers obama's doj is prosecuting): the only reason we've been having these public debates, the only reason these laws have been passed, and that we're now sitting here talking about this is because of a series of whistleblowers, the government has never wanted any of this reported, never wanted any of it disclosed, if it was up to the government over the last ten years this surveillance infrastructure would have grown enormously with no public debate whatsoever, and so every time we talk about how someone is a traitor for disclosing something we have to remember the only reason we're talking about it is because of it
mitchell: general, one of the things that i think has been written about from both the left and the right, peggy noonan wrote about it this weekend, is that there is a lack of confidence in the government which has evolved over a variety of administrations, so when you say, "trust me, this data, the metadata are stored and we're not going to go into it unless there's a court order, unless it's because of a terrorist plot," and then if a judge orders that, it's then turned over to the fbi and then they can pursue and look at the context, so we've got the numbers, but we're not looking, we're not reading, but people no longer, after benghazi, after the irs certainly, and after a lot of other things, don't have confidence in their government, and that is leading to a disaffection and a disconnection and going forward is very troubling
risen: i'm sorry, one of the things that really i think concerns people is that you've created something that never existed in american history before and that is a surveillance state, the infrastructure that i'm basically using software technology and data mining and eavesdropping, very sophisticated technology to create an infrastructure that a police state would love, and that's what really should concern americans, is because we haven't had a full national debate about the creation of a massive surveillance state and surveillance infrastructure, that if we had some radical change in our politics could lead to a police state
david gregory: you know, when we talk about the politics of this, congressman, look at some of the well-known leakers or whistleblowers in our more recent history going back to the pentagon papers and daniel ellsberg and karen silkwood, jeffery wigand at the tobacco industry, bradley manning, julian assange, who in effect as a country do we like and who don't we like in this capacity?
scott: in this particular, the law on leaking classified information is murky, technically it's not against the law to release classified information if it doesn't do any harm, it is illegal to release information that's sensitive but not even classified if it does do some harm, and so the justice dept has the burden of proving that snowden's release caused some harm
risen: and i think one of the reasons that's happened and has repeatedly happened throughout the war on terror is that the system, the internal system for whistle-blowing, for the watchdog and oversight system, is broken, there is no good way for anyone inside the government to go through the chain of command and report about something like this, and so most whistleblowers, the only way they now have is to go to the press or to go to someone, go outside like snowden did, he chose people in the press to go to, he picked and chose who he wanted, but the problem is people inside the system who try to go through the chain of command get retaliated against, punished and they eventually learn not to do it anymore
mitchell: jim, i think they can go to congress, they can go to the intelligence committee, they can go to...
risen: if you go, if you're not in the intelligence community, if you're a low-ranking person in the intelligence community and you go to the congress, to the senate, or the house, you will be going outside the normal bounds of disclosure
