In 2001, the "September 11" terrorist attack caused the entire United States to tremble. The biggest shock to the US government is that the terrorists who planned the attack came to the United States in a legal capacity, learned to fly, communicated with ordinary telephones and ordinary Internet emails, and finally successfully organized and carried out this terrorist attack. of.
On October 26, 2001, U.S. President George Walker Bush signed and promulgated a bill of Congress-the "Patriot Act." This bill expands the authority of the US police agency for the purpose of preventing terrorism. According to the content of the bill, the police agency has the right to search phone calls, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other types of records. Under normal circumstances, it gives the government greater powers to collect information on suspects. If the government has reason to suspect that you are involved in a crime or terrorist incident, they can collect a lot of information on you. It is only for individual ones.
"In less than a week after 9/11, the NSA decided to monitor everyone in the United States. Then they began to obtain telecommunications records, and then expanded to other information. As far as I know of companies such as AT&T, they provide 300 million every day 2 Ten million records. This project called Stellar Wind will be re-authorized every 45 days. We call the authorized organization the YES Committee."
In 2006, technician Mark Klein revealed that NSA eavesdropped on AT&T in San Francisco, and Internet customers Jewel and others sued NSA for this. Many years later, the case is still at the preliminary stage of litigation. The government defendant representative from the Ministry of Justice believes that this litigation does not require a federal court to hear it, given that the two major departments of the legislative and executive departments can provide better supervision opportunities and methods. To solve the problems caused by the so-called nationwide surveillance policy in these cases, the defendant believes that there will be a risk of leaking confidential information in the proceedings. As the NSA director said, this is bound to seriously damage the disclosure of national security information.
On August 1, 2007, Obama explained his reasons for running for president and why he wanted to change the current way of doing things: you cannot ignore the law because of inconvenience. This is not the original us. We must once again set an example for the world and prove to them The law is not at the mercy of stubborn rulers.
Since 2011, NSA has built the world's largest intercepted communications information storage station in Bluffdale, Utah.
In 2012, the US NSA Director Keith Alexander answered the question at the Congressional hearing:
"Has the NSA intercepted U.S. citizens' phone conversations, Google search records, SMS records, Amazon shopping records, and bank records?"
"No."
"What kind of consent does the NSA need to intercept communications from American citizens?"
"In the United States, this is the responsibility of the FBI. Foreign actors in the United States are also the responsibility of the FBI. However, the FBI can cooperate with the NSA or other authorized intelligence agencies. But to collect information on this scale in the United States, we must obtain court approval. The permission is authorized by the court. We have not been authorized, and we have not conducted information collection."
Statement by the Director of the National Intelligence Agency at the Senate Hearing in 2013:
"Has the NSA collected information on millions or billions of Americans?"
"No."
"There's none?"
"It's not deliberate. Sometimes, some information may be collected inadvertently, but there is no deliberate collection of information."
On June 3, 2013, Snowden met with reporters and American documentary film director Laura Portas, Guardian columnists Glenn Greenwald, and Evan McAskil at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong. Laura Portas set up a camera to film the incident for 8 days.
"My name is Edward Snowden. I am 29 years old. I work for the Hawaii National Security Agency's contractor-Booz Allen Consulting. I have worked as a system engineer, system administrator, CIA senior consultant, and solution consultant in an intelligence agency. , Telecommunications information system officials."
"For system administrators or infrastructure analysts like me, our access authority is a little higher than that of ordinary NSA employees. The authority passwords of ordinary NSA employees are called TS SI TK and GEMA. These are symbols of top secrets. Talent-KeyholeGema. They are all related to the mission core of the National Security Agency. If you are a system administrator, you can get a special access permission called PRIVAC. No matter what your position level is, you can access the information of each permission ."
Snowden became the first public informant.
"News reports must not be biased. I don't want to make myself the center. This will divert the public's attention."
"As for whether to publish my identity, it is up to you to decide how to publish it. My personal wish is that you directly say that I am the person who leaked the secret. No one, including my most trusted confidant, understands my intentions. Because I let them be suspected. It is very unfair to them. Only you can stop this. You want me to be nailed to the cross instead of protecting me as an informant."
"This matter matters to everyone. I am not afraid of them. They can shut up other people, but it's useless to me. If no one does this, then I will come forward. Hope to kill me. Xia Minghan, and later generations."
"I know the risks. If you get arrested, you will be arrested.
No matter what happens to you, you and Glenn will continue to report. "
"Why do you want to do this? For me, in the final analysis, it is a balance between state power and people's resistance. You know that policy is the only thing that can limit state power. If we are changed, then we have no way to resist. It's impossible to resist government agencies and people with powerful authority, even the most mediocre people in it."
"Because of the psychological expectation that people may be being monitored, their thoughts are restricted and speech becomes cautious. Rather than making me and other people like me bear the pain of being restrained in thought, I would rather bear it personally. I am personally very happy if I can contribute to the benefit of others due to the disaster of prison or other bad results."
"The Obama administration has turned away from the promises it made. It not only cut corners, delayed actions, and even broke its promise in fulfilling its promises. Looking at the drone images has strengthened my determination. These unmanned surveillance drones are actually always following someone. The killing machines behind them have always been near someone's home. The files you receive will be video files of one or more drones monitoring different countries."
"The United States has a facility somewhere in the world that was jointly built by the NSA and other governments to intercept all communications. As long as there is information to be transmitted, the content of communications can be extracted automatically without the need to lock the target. Other people search for your communication records by specific keywords. This system also has an additional future search mode. If the search information entered at this moment matches the object at some point in the future, you can immediately search for the target and report that you are talking to someone else To communicate."
"SSO is a special message processing group. Its function is to passively collect network information. It includes domestic and international networks in the United States. The XKeyscore deep dive project, which is a front-end system, is used by analysts to analyze the collected network information. Through this, you can perform rewind search and real-time search. In 2011, each device equipped with this system can monitor 1 billion phones and networks at the same time. Their collection speed can reach 1 billion bytes per second. Such machines have 20 units."
CNN TV News: The British "Guardian" reported that the US court secretly authorized the National Security Agency to collect daily communication records of millions of customers of the US mobile operator Verizon. This is a program used by the government to collect information on all Americans.
CNN TV News: The Washington Post and The Guardian reported on another surveillance program of the US government: the National Security Agency NSA and the FBI directly access Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL The central servers of nine major Internet companies such as AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple collect data. The Post says they collect voice, video, photos, emails, documents, and connection logs. According to these analysts, they can grasp a person’s whereabouts and social interactions. Condition.
Headline news on June 10, 2013: The whistleblower who exposed the National Security Agency's monitoring of phone calls and intercepting Internet information, former CIA employee Snowden appeared in front of the camera today. Snowden said that the ever-expanding power of the National Security Agency made him fearful, and he was very determined to disclose documents. These documents not only exposed multiple organizations monitoring telephone records, but also revealed...
Snowden also exposed the Tempora wiretapping program of the British government GCHQ. GCHQ obtains information from fiber optic cables that transmit international telephone and network information, and shares a large amount of personal information with the NSA.
Snowden had been communicating with Laura Potas through encrypted emails before the meeting. To prevent eavesdropping during the meeting, Snowden used pillows to block the door of the room; to prevent peeping, he used a cloth cover made of shading cloth to operate the keyboard; the Internet phone in the hotel room has a built-in microcomputer, even if the handset is broken, you Conversations can also be conducted through the Internet. So as long as the phone line is plugged in, it can be tapped. (Resolutely unplug the telephone line.)
With the help of human rights lawyer Jonathan Mann, Snowden applied to the United Nations for refugee status. The head of the United Nations Office for Refugees in Hong Kong said that Snowden has the right to enjoy the protection of the United Nations Refugee Agency.
On June 21, 2013, the US government charged Snowden with three felony counts, two of which were based on anti-espionage laws, and requested Hong Kong to extradite Snowden.
Two days later, WikiLeaks arranged for Snowden to leave Hong Kong to seek political asylum.
Snowden tried to transfer from Russia to Ecuador to seek political asylum, but Moscow airport officials said they could not help him with the transfer because the US government had cancelled his passport, so he was trapped at Moscow airport.
On July 20, 2013, the British government forced the Guardian to destroy files related to the British intelligence agency’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) that Snowden provided to reporter Evan McAss in Hong Kong.
After more than a year of temporary asylum in Russia, Snowden obtained a three-year residence permit in Russia.
In July 2014, Snowden's long-standing girlfriend Lindsay Mills came to Moscow to accompany him.
So far, Sloten lives in Moscow.
Snowden's wish is to live in a country with a high degree of privacy.
In Berlin, Germany, an international group of lawyers gathered to discuss Snowden’s legal status. Attorney BEN WIZNER from the American Civil Liberties Association said: “Due to public interest leaking secrets to the media and selling secrets to foreign forces for private interests, both There is no distinction in the counter-espionage law. Therefore, according to the counter-espionage law, the leaked information itself should not be concealed and cannot be a defense. The leaked information is for the public interest to seek reform, and it cannot be a defense. Even if a court decision is met, The information leakage project is illegal or unconstitutional, and it still cannot be a defense."
At the hearing of the surveillance incident of the US National Security Agency in the Brazilian Senate, the Guardian reporter Glenn Greenward said: “Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the reason the United States has defended its actions is to protect the people in the name of national security. In fact, on the contrary, many documents are not related to terrorism and national security, but are related to competition between countries and the industrial, financial, and economic issues of enterprises."
The documentary film director Laura Portas is a standard "dissident" in the United States. After 9/11, she filmed the American trilogy: "My Country", "The Oath", "The Fourth Citizen" Citizenfour. In 2006, after filming the movie "My Motherland" about the Iraq War, Patrice was included on a secret all-day watch list by the United States. Her ticket was printed with the mark "SSSS" (Secondary Security Screening Selection). In order to prevent the film footage she shot from being confiscated during the US border inspection, she chose to move to Germany.
The film won the best documentary feature film at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015.
"Unrestricted secret policies pose a huge threat to democracy."
"A country has secret courts, secret investigations, and monitors the calls of every American, but American citizens know nothing about it. This is the biggest violation of American citizens' freedom and rights."
"The balance of rights between citizens and the government has become the ruler and the ruled, but it should actually be the relationship between the elected and the voters."
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