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.
“The NSA is a capabilities-based organization,” Ledgett said. “We have seen targets in terrorism, in the nation state area, in smugglers of various types and other folks who have, because of the disclosures, moved away from our ability to have insight into what they’re doing. The net effect of that is that our people, who are overseas in dangerous places, whether they’re diplomats or military, and our allies who are in similar situations, are at greater risk because we don’t see the threats that are coming their way.”
Host Chris Anderson asks questions of NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett during a TED2014 Talk. (Screen shot from TED2014)
Moving forward, Anderson asks Ledgett to describe the Bull Run program that Snowden described, where it’s alleged that the NSA specifically weakened security in order to get certain types of access that Ledgett mentioned above. To counter this, Ledgett says that when foreign intelligence targets, working against the U.S. and our allies, uses things like global telecommunication systems, the NSA will need to have the capability to go after them.
“The controls are in how I applied that capability, not that I have the capability itself,” the deputy director explains. “Otherwise, if we could make it so that all the bad guys used one corner of the Internet, we could have a domain, badguy.com, that would be awesome and we could just concentrate all our efforts there. That’s not how it works. They’re trying to hide from the government’s ability to isolate and interdict their actions, and so we have to swim in that same space.”
“It sounds like what you’re saying is that when it comes to the Internet -at-large, any kind of strategy is fair game if it improves America’s safety,” Anderson responded. “I think this is partly where there’s such a divide of opinion; that there’s a lot of people in this room and around the world who think very differently about the Internet.”
Ledgett said that he shares the view of the utility of the Internet but says it goes beyond that, more toward global communications systems. The national and international conversation about this, he says is the one they want to participate in – and want people to participate in – in an informed way.
“There are things that we need to be transparent about,” he goes on to explain. “Our authorities, our processes, our oversight, who we are; we, NSA, have not done a good job of that and I think that’s part of the reason that this has been so revelational and so sensational in the media. Nobody knew who we were; we were the ‘No Such Agency’ the ‘Never Say Anything’.”
He referenced the meme-friendly NSA spoof logo – you know, the one of an eagle with headphones on – as the unfortunate sort of public characterization they aim to change.
“The American Constitution guarantees freedom from unreasonable search and seizure,” Anderson said. “How do you characterize the American citizen’s right to privacy? Is there such a right?”
“Yeah, of course there is,” Ledgett responded. “We devote an inordinate amount of time and pressure – inordinate and appropriate, actually, I should say – amount of time and effort in order to ensure that we protect that privacy and, beyond that, the privacy of citizens around the world. It’s not just Americans.”
In regards to the many law-abiding citizens who use the Internet every day, Ledgett mentions the president’s Jan. 17 speech, which laid out some additional protections. But what about foreigners, Anderson asks. Do they have any privacy rights?
“They do,” Ledgett said. “They do, in the sense of the only way that we are able to compel one of those companies to provide us information is when it falls into one of three categories: we can identify that this particular person, identified by a selector of some kind, is associated with a counterterrorist or proliferation or other foreign intelligence target.”
Anderson asked that, in terms of the threats that face America overall, where would terrorism rank? Ledgett said that he believes terrorism is still the number one threat to America. Anderson responded by saying that there any many people who disagree with that notion, citing the fact that, apart from 9/11, within the last few decades only 500 Americans have died from terrorism.
“The reason that there hasn’t been a major attack in the United States is not an accident,” Ledgett responded. “That’s a lot of hard work that we have done, that other folks in the intelligence community have done, that the military has done and that our allies around the globe have done.”
He says the numbers about these attacks often reported are just the the tip of the iceberg in terms of numbers of terrorist attacks. The NSA programs contributed to stopping 54 attacks;25 of those were in Europe and 18 of them occurred in three countries. When it comes to the two programs most mentioned – the Section 215 program, and the PRISM program (Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act) – the goal is to thwart terrorist attacks before they happen.
NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett answers questions during a TED2014 Talk. (Screen shot from TED2014)
“If you think about on television, you watch a murder mystery. What do you start with? You start with a body and then they work their way from there to solve the crime. We’re actually starting well before that, hopefully before there are any bodies, and we’re trying to build the case for who the people are, what they’re trying to do, and that involves massive amounts of information.”
After his talk earlier this week, several people asked Snowden what he thought of the NSA overall. According to Anderson, he was very complementary about the people who work there, said that it’s a really impassioned group of employees who are seeking to do the right thing and that the problems have come from just some badly conceived policies.
“Would you accept that at least, even if you disagree with how he did it, that he has opened a debate that matters?” Anderson asked.
“So, I think that the discussion is an important one to have,” Ledgett said. “I do not like the way that he did it. I think there were a number of other ways that he could have done that that would have not endangered our people and our — the people of other nations through losing visibility into what our adversaries are doing, but I do think it’s an important conversation. “
When Snowden ended his TED talk, Anderson offered him the chance to share an idea worth spreading. He offered Ledgett the same. Here’s what he had to say:
“Learn the facts. This is a really important conversation and it impacts not just NSA, not just the government: it’s you, it’s the Internet companies. I mean, the issue of privacy and personal data is much bigger than just the government. So, learn the facts; don’t rely on headlines, don’t rely on sound bites, don’t rely on one-sided conversations. So, that’s the idea, I think, worth spreading.”
Want more? Catch the full conversation here:
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Related material: Meet Becky Richards – The NSA’s New Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer
I Spy, No Lie - Interview with Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Cyber Command commander and National Security Agency director
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Jessica L. Tozer is a blogger for DoDLive and Armed with Science. She is an Army veteran and an avid science fiction fan, both of which contribute to her enthusiasm for science and technology in the military.
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