This week, Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED2014 conference. His banner mantra for his talk “How to take back the Internet” ended with an interesting point/counterpoint proposition. Host Chris Anderson said: “If the NSA wants to respond, please do.”
So they did.
Richard Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director, joined the TED2014 conversation via video conference yesterday afternoon. During the conference, he addressed the questions posed from the Snowden conference about the balance between security and protecting privacy.
Chris Anderson started the conversation off with a shot, asking Ledgett to give a response to the Ed Snowden talk on Tuesday. So he did.
Host Chris Anderson asks questions of NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett during a TED2014 Talk. (Screen shot from TED2014)
“As has been the case in a lot of these discussions, there were some half-truths and some distortions in some of what Mr. Snowden said and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to address those,” Mr. Ledgett stated. “I think this is a really important national and international discussion that we’re having. It’s important that it be an informed discussion, and we want to inform with facts instead of conjecture and misinformation.”
Not mincing words and pleasantries, Anderson gets right down to business.
He pointed out that Snowden said he believes that as a contractor, the avenues that would have been available to him as an employee weren’t available. He also mentioned that there’s a track record of other whistle blowers like Drake and Drake being treated pretty harshly by some views. The third point Snowden made was that what he was taking on was not one specific kind of flaw that he had discovered, but programs that had been approved by all three branches of government.
“I mean, in that circumstance, couldn’t you argue that what he did was reasonable?” Anderson asked.
“No, I don’t agree with that,” Ledgett replied. “The actions that he took were inappropriate because of the fact that he put peoples’ lives at risk, basically, in the long run. I know there’s been a lot of talk in the public by Mr. Snowden and some of the journalists that say that the things that have been disclosed have not put national security and people at risk, and that is categorically not true. They actually do.”
When it comes to matters of the Constitution and government, Ledgett says that Snowden’s position as an expert on the subject is subject indeed. Specifically, when it comes to how the government should work for separation of powers, and the fact that the executive and the legislative branches have to work together, and they have checks and balances on each other, which works with the judicial branch, which oversees the entire process.
“I think there’s also an amazing arrogance to the idea that he knows better than the framers of the Constitution in how the government should be designed.”
Anderson asks for an example of how Snowden’s actions put people at risk.
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