There is an entire genre of YouTube videos devoted to an experience which I am certain that everyone in this room has had. It entails an individual who, thinking they're alone, engages in some expressive behavior — wild singing, gyrating dancing, some mild sexual activity — only to discover that, in fact, they are not alone, that there is a person watching and lurking, the discovery of which causes them to immediately cease what they were doing in horror. The sense of shame and humiliation in their face is palpable. It's the sense of, "This is something I'm willing to do only if no one else is watching."
Na YouTubu obstaja cel žanr videov, posvečenih izkušnji, ki jo je brez dvoma imel vsak v tej sobi. V takšnem videu posameznik, v prepričanju, da je sam, počne nekaj ekspresivnega — poje na ves glas, zapeljivo pleše, počne kaj igrivo seksualnega — nakar ugotovi, da v bistvu ni sam, da ga nekdo skrivaj opazuje. Ob tem odkritju povsem zgrožen takoj preneha s svojim početjem. Na njegovem obrazu se jasno vidi občutek sramu in ponižanja. Občutek, da bi to stvar počel samo pod pogojem, da ga nihče ne gleda.
This is the crux of the work on which I have been singularly focused for the last 16 months, the question of why privacy matters, a question that has arisen in the context of a global debate, enabled by the revelations of Edward Snowden that the United States and its partners, unbeknownst to the entire world, has converted the Internet, once heralded as an unprecedented tool of liberation and democratization, into an unprecedented zone of mass, indiscriminate surveillance.
To je glavna tema dela, s katerim se intenzivno ukvarjam zadnjih 16 mesecev — vprašanje o pomenu zasebnosti, ki zdaj nastopa tudi v kontekstu svetovnih razprav, zahvaljujoč razkritjem Edwarda Snowdena, da so ZDA in njeni partnerji brez vednosti ostalega sveta spremenili internet iz orodja brez primere, ki je nekoč obetalo osvoboditev in demokratizacijo, v cono masovnega, nekritičnega nadzora, kot ga še ni bilo.
There is a very common sentiment that arises in this debate, even among people who are uncomfortable with mass surveillance, which says that there is no real harm that comes from this large-scale invasion because only people who are engaged in bad acts have a reason to want to hide and to care about their privacy. This worldview is implicitly grounded in the proposition that there are two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people. Bad people are those who plot terrorist attacks or who engage in violent criminality and therefore have reasons to want to hide what they're doing, have reasons to care about their privacy. But by contrast, good people are people who go to work, come home, raise their children, watch television. They use the Internet not to plot bombing attacks but to read the news or exchange recipes or to plan their kids' Little League games, and those people are doing nothing wrong and therefore have nothing to hide and no reason to fear the government monitoring them.
V tej razpravi pogosto nastopa mnenje tudi med ljudmi, ki niso naklonjeni množičnemu nadzoru, da takšen obsežen vdor ne povzroča resnične škode, saj imajo razlog za skrivanje in željo po zasebnosti le ljudje, ki počnejo kaj slabega. Tak pogled izhaja iz posredne predpostavke, da na svetu obstajata dva tipa ljudi, dobri in slabi. Slabi ljudje načrtujejo teroristične napade ali so nasilni kriminalci in imajo razloge za skrivanje in željo po zasebnosti. Po drugi strani dobri ljudje hodijo v službo, se vrnejo domov, vzgajajo otroke, gledajo TV. Interneta ne potrebujejo za načrtovanje napadov, ampak za branje novic, izmenjavo receptov ali organiziranje tekem za otroško ligo. Ti ljudje ne počnejo ničesar narobe in zato ničesar ne skrivajo in nimajo nobenega razloga za strah pred nadzorom s strani vlade.
The people who are actually saying that are engaged in a very extreme act of self-deprecation. What they're really saying is, "I have agreed to make myself such a harmless and unthreatening and uninteresting person that I actually don't fear having the government know what it is that I'm doing." This mindset has found what I think is its purest expression in a 2009 interview with the longtime CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who, when asked about all the different ways his company is causing invasions of privacy for hundreds of millions of people around the world, said this: He said, "If you're doing something that you don't want other people to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Ljudje, ki to dejansko govorijo, so udeleženci skrajnega dejanja samorazvrednotenja. Kar resnično pravijo, je: "Pristal sem na to, da postanem tako neškodljiva in dolgočasna oseba, da me resnično ni strah, če vlada ve, kaj delam." Mislim, da je ta miselnost najbolj prišla do izraza v intervjuju z direktorjem Googla Ericom Schmidtom iz leta 2009. Na vprašanje o številnih načinih Googlovega vdiranja v zasebnost več sto milijonom ljudi po svetu je odgovoril, "Če delaš nekaj, za kar nočeš, da izvejo tudi drugi, mogoče tega sploh ne bi smel delati."
Now, there's all kinds of things to say about that mentality, the first of which is that the people who say that, who say that privacy isn't really important, they don't actually believe it, and the way you know that they don't actually believe it is that while they say with their words that privacy doesn't matter, with their actions, they take all kinds of steps to safeguard their privacy. They put passwords on their email and their social media accounts, they put locks on their bedroom and bathroom doors, all steps designed to prevent other people from entering what they consider their private realm and knowing what it is that they don't want other people to know. The very same Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, ordered his employees at Google to cease speaking with the online Internet magazine CNET after CNET published an article full of personal, private information about Eric Schmidt, which it obtained exclusively through Google searches and using other Google products. (Laughter) This same division can be seen with the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who in an infamous interview in 2010 pronounced that privacy is no longer a "social norm." Last year, Mark Zuckerberg and his new wife purchased not only their own house but also all four adjacent houses in Palo Alto for a total of 30 million dollars in order to ensure that they enjoyed a zone of privacy that prevented other people from monitoring what they do in their personal lives.
O takšni mentaliteti lahko rečemo veliko stvari. Za začetek — ljudje, ki menijo, da zasebnost ni zares pomembna, dejansko ne verjamejo v to. To kažejo tako, da kljub svojim besedam z dejanji na vrsto načinov varujejo svojo zasebnost. Na e-mail računih in socialnih omrežjih imajo gesla, na vratih spalnice in kopalnice imajo ključavnice. Namen vseh teh korakov je, da drugim ljudem preprečijo vstop v njihovo zasebno področje in razkritje stvari, za katere nočejo, da vedo drugi. Isti Eric Schmidt, direktor Googla, je ukazal uslužbencem, naj nehajo komunicirati z internetno revijo CNET, po tem, ko so objavili članek, poln zasebnih informacij o Ericu Schmidtu, pridobljenih izključno z iskanjem po Googlu in uporabo ostalih Googlovih produktov. Isto delitev vidimo pri ustanovitelju Facebooka Marku Zuckerbergu, ki je v razvpitem intervjuju iz leta 2010 razglasil, da zasebnost ni več "družbena norma". Prejšnje leto je Zuckerberg z ženo kupil ne le svojo lastno hišo, ampak tudi vse štiri sosednje v Palu Altu za 30 milijonov dolarjev, da bi jima zagotovil zasebno cono, kjer nihče ne more opazovati, kaj delata v privatnem življenju.
Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, "I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide." I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, "Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide."
V zadnjih 16 mesecih, ko sem o tem problemu govoril po svetu, mi je vsakič nekdo rekel, "Ne skrbi me vdor v zasebnost, ker ničesar ne skrivam." Moj odgovor je zmeraj enak. Vzamem kuli, napišem svoj e-mail in rečem, "Tu je moj e-mail naslov. Ko prideš domov, mi pošlji vsa svoja gesla za vse svoje e-mail račune, ne le za ugledne službene, ampak vse, ker bi rad preletel, kaj delaš na spletu, in prebral in objavil, kar se mi zdi zanimivo. Navsezadnje, če nisi slab človek in ne počneš ničesar narobe, ne bi smel imeti ničesar za skrivati."
Not a single person has taken me up on that offer. I check and — (Applause) I check that email account religiously all the time. It's a very desolate place. And there's a reason for that, which is that we as human beings, even those of us who in words disclaim the importance of our own privacy, instinctively understand the profound importance of it. It is true that as human beings, we're social animals, which means we have a need for other people to know what we're doing and saying and thinking, which is why we voluntarily publish information about ourselves online. But equally essential to what it means to be a free and fulfilled human being is to have a place that we can go and be free of the judgmental eyes of other people. There's a reason why we seek that out, and our reason is that all of us — not just terrorists and criminals, all of us — have things to hide. There are all sorts of things that we do and think that we're willing to tell our physician or our lawyer or our psychologist or our spouse or our best friend that we would be mortified for the rest of the world to learn. We make judgments every single day about the kinds of things that we say and think and do that we're willing to have other people know, and the kinds of things that we say and think and do that we don't want anyone else to know about. People can very easily in words claim that they don't value their privacy, but their actions negate the authenticity of that belief.
Niti ena oseba še ni pristala na pobudo. Ta e-mail račun -- (aplavz) preverjam ves čas kot zmešan, ampak je zelo osamljen prostor. Za to obstaja razlog, in sicer, da tudi ko ljudje z besedami zanikamo pomen naše zasebnosti, instinktivno razumemo, kakšen globok pomen ima. Res je, da smo ljudje družbena bitja in imamo potrebo, da drugim ljudem pokažemo, kaj delamo, govorimo in mislimo, zato tudi prostovoljno objavljamo svoje informacije na spletu. Za svobodno in zadovoljno osebo pa je enako pomembno tudi, da ima prostor, kamor se lahko umakne pred očitajočimi očmi drugih. Obstaja razlog, zakaj stremimo k temu, in sicer, da imamo vsi — ne le teroristi in kriminalci, ampak vsi — stvari, ki jih hočemo skriti. Vrsto stvari, ki jih delamo in o katerih razmišljamo, smo pripravljeni povedati zdravniku, odvetniku, psihologu, partnerju, najboljšemu prijatelju, vendar bi nas bilo grozno sram, če bi zanje vedeli tudi drugi. Vsak dan opravljamo sodbe o stvareh ki smo jih pripravljeni deliti z drugimi ljudmi, in o stvareh, za katere nočemo, da ve kdorkoli. Ljudje lahko brez težav trdijo, da ne cenijo svoje zasebnosti, vendar njihova dejanja zanikajo to prepričanje.
Now, there's a reason why privacy is so craved universally and instinctively. It isn't just a reflexive movement like breathing air or drinking water. The reason is that when we're in a state where we can be monitored, where we can be watched, our behavior changes dramatically. The range of behavioral options that we consider when we think we're being watched severely reduce. This is just a fact of human nature that has been recognized in social science and in literature and in religion and in virtually every field of discipline. There are dozens of psychological studies that prove that when somebody knows that they might be watched, the behavior they engage in is vastly more conformist and compliant. Human shame is a very powerful motivator, as is the desire to avoid it, and that's the reason why people, when they're in a state of being watched, make decisions not that are the byproduct of their own agency but that are about the expectations that others have of them or the mandates of societal orthodoxy.
Obstaja razlog, zakaj po zasebnosti hrepenimo vsesplošno in instinktivno. Ne gre le za refleks, kot je dihanje ali pitje vode. Razlog je v tem, da se v stanju, kjer smo lahko opazovani in nadzorovani, naše obnašanje drastično spremeni. Ko se nam zdi, da smo opazovani, je naše vedenje veliko bolj omejeno kot sicer. To je preprosto dejstvo človeške narave, priznano v družboslovju, literaturi, religiji in praktično na vseh področjih. Na ducate psiholoških študij lahko potrdi, da je obnašanje nekoga, ki se zaveda, da je lahko opazovan, veliko bolj konformistično kot sicer. Občutek sramu je močan motivator, tako kot želja, da se mu izognemo, kar je razlog, da ljudje medtem ko so opazovani, sprejemajo odločitve, ki niso stranski produkt lastnih dejanj, ampak so povezane s pričakovanji drugih ali s tem, kar jim narekajo družbene norme.
This realization was exploited most powerfully for pragmatic ends by the 18th- century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who set out to resolve an important problem ushered in by the industrial age, where, for the first time, institutions had become so large and centralized that they were no longer able to monitor and therefore control each one of their individual members, and the solution that he devised was an architectural design originally intended to be implemented in prisons that he called the panopticon, the primary attribute of which was the construction of an enormous tower in the center of the institution where whoever controlled the institution could at any moment watch any of the inmates, although they couldn't watch all of them at all times. And crucial to this design was that the inmates could not actually see into the panopticon, into the tower, and so they never knew if they were being watched or even when. And what made him so excited about this discovery was that that would mean that the prisoners would have to assume that they were being watched at any given moment, which would be the ultimate enforcer for obedience and compliance. The 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault realized that that model could be used not just for prisons but for every institution that seeks to control human behavior: schools, hospitals, factories, workplaces. And what he said was that this mindset, this framework discovered by Bentham, was the key means of societal control for modern, Western societies, which no longer need the overt weapons of tyranny — punishing or imprisoning or killing dissidents, or legally compelling loyalty to a particular party — because mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind that is a much more subtle though much more effective means of fostering compliance with social norms or with social orthodoxy, much more effective than brute force could ever be.
To odkritje je v praksi najbolje uporabil filozof iz 18. stoletja Jeremy Bentham, ki se je odločil rešiti pomemben problem, ki je spremljal industrijsko dobo. Takrat so institucije prvič postale tako velike in centralizirane, da niso bile več zmožne nadzorovati in s tem kontrolirati vsakega posameznika. Rešitev, ki jo je zasnoval, je bila konstrukcija po imenu panoptikum, sprva mišljena za zapore. Njena glavna značilnost je bil ogromen stolp v sredini ustanove, iz katerega je lahko nadzornik v vsakem trenutku opazoval katerega koli zapornika, čeprav ni mogel gledati vseh naenkrat. Ključno pri tej konstrukciji je bilo, da zaporniki niso mogli videti, kaj se dogaja v stolpu in tako niso nikoli vedeli, če jih kdo opazuje in kdaj. Pri odkritju ga je najbolj navdušilo, da bi za zapornike to pomenilo, da morajo domnevati, da so opazovani v katerem koli trenutku, kar bi bil najboljši mehanizem poslušnosti in ubogljivosti. Michel Foucault, francoski filozof iz 20. stoletja, je ugotovil, da se tak model lahko uporablja ne le v zaporih, ampak v vseh institucijah, kjer želijo nadzirati človeško vedenje: šolah, bolnicah, tovarnah, delovnih mestih. Povedal je, da je takšen miselni okvir, kot ga je odkril Bentham, ključen za družbeni nadzor v modernih družbah zahoda, ki tako ne bi več potrebovale očitnih orožij tiranije — kaznovanja, zapiranja ali ubijanja disidentov ali zakonite prisile v zvestobo določeni stranki — ker množični nadzor ustvarja miselni zapor, ki je veliko bolj subtilna, pa vendar učinkovitejša metoda za spodbujanje spoštovanja družbenih norm in veliko učinkovitejše orožje ortodoksije kot surova moč.
The most iconic work of literature about surveillance and privacy is the George Orwell novel "1984," which we all learn in school, and therefore it's almost become a cliche. In fact, whenever you bring it up in a debate about surveillance, people instantaneously dismiss it as inapplicable, and what they say is, "Oh, well in '1984,' there were monitors in people's homes, they were being watched at every given moment, and that has nothing to do with the surveillance state that we face." That is an actual fundamental misapprehension of the warnings that Orwell issued in "1984." The warning that he was issuing was about a surveillance state not that monitored everybody at all times, but where people were aware that they could be monitored at any given moment. Here is how Orwell's narrator, Winston Smith, described the surveillance system that they faced: "There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment." He went on to say, "At any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct, in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and except in darkness every movement scrutinized."
Največja klasika s področja nadzora in zasebnosti je Orwellov roman "1984", o katerem smo se vsi učili v šoli in je že skoraj kliše. Ljudje ga celo označijo za slabo primerjavo v pogovoru o nadzoru in rečejo, da so tam ljudje imeli monitorje v stanovanjih in so bili opazovani ves čas, kar nima veze z današnjim nadzorom. To je dejansko glavno napačno razumevanje svaril, ki jih je Orwell objavil v svojem romanu. Njegovo svarilo se je nanašalo na nadzorovalno državo, ki ni opazovala vsakogar ves čas, ampak kjer so se ljudje zavedali, da so lahko opazovani kadarkoli. Orwellov pripovedovalec Winston Smith je njihov sistem nadzora opisal takole: "Seveda ni bilo mogoče vedeti, ali te v danem trenutku opazujejo." Nadaljeval je: "... priključili so se lahko na tvoj oddajnik, kadarkoli so hoteli. Živeti si moral — in si živel, iz navade, ki se je spremenila v nagon — v domnevi, da prisluškujejo vsakemu šumu, ki ga narediš, in opazujejo - razen v temi - vsak tvoj gib."
The Abrahamic religions similarly posit that there's an invisible, all-knowing authority who, because of its omniscience, always watches whatever you're doing, which means you never have a private moment, the ultimate enforcer for obedience to its dictates.
Abrahamske religije imajo podobno predpostavko o nevidni in vsevedni avtoriteti, ki zmeraj gleda, kaj počneš, kar pomeni, da nikoli nimaš trenutka zasebnosti in si tako prisiljen v poslušnost ukazov.
What all of these seemingly disparate works recognize, the conclusion that they all reach, is that a society in which people can be monitored at all times is a society that breeds conformity and obedience and submission, which is why every tyrant, the most overt to the most subtle, craves that system. Conversely, even more importantly, it is a realm of privacy, the ability to go somewhere where we can think and reason and interact and speak without the judgmental eyes of others being cast upon us, in which creativity and exploration and dissent exclusively reside, and that is the reason why, when we allow a society to exist in which we're subject to constant monitoring, we allow the essence of human freedom to be severely crippled.
Vsa ta na videz različna dela imajo skupno točko in zaključek, da je družba, v kateri so ljudje lahko nadzorovani ves čas, družba konformizma, ubogljivosti in podrejanja, zaradi česar o takšnem sistemu sanja vsak tiran, od očitnega do prikritega. Po drugi strani je še bolj pomembno področje zasebnosti, možnost, da gremo nekam, kjer lahko razmišljamo razpravljamo in komuniciramo in govorimo, umaknjeni pred očitajočimi očmi drugih. Samo v tem področju bivajo ustvarjalnost, raziskovanje in nestrinjanje. Zaradi tega z obstojem družbe, v kateri smo podleženi neprestanemu nadzoru, dopuščamo močno ohromitev bistva človeške svobode.
The last point I want to observe about this mindset, the idea that only people who are doing something wrong have things to hide and therefore reasons to care about privacy, is that it entrenches two very destructive messages, two destructive lessons, the first of which is that the only people who care about privacy, the only people who will seek out privacy, are by definition bad people. This is a conclusion that we should have all kinds of reasons for avoiding, the most important of which is that when you say, "somebody who is doing bad things," you probably mean things like plotting a terrorist attack or engaging in violent criminality, a much narrower conception of what people who wield power mean when they say, "doing bad things." For them, "doing bad things" typically means doing something that poses meaningful challenges to the exercise of our own power.
Rad bi še pripomnil, da ideja, da imajo razloge za skrivanje in zasebnost le tisti, ki počnejo nekaj narobe, utrjuje dve zelo škodljivi sporočili, dve škodljivi lekciji. Prva je ta, da so edini ljudje, ki jih skrbi za zasebnost in ki jo bodo poiskali, po definiciji slabi ljudje. Temu zaključku bi se morali izogibati iz številnih razlogov. Še posebej takrat, ko vi rečete "nekdo, ki počne slabe reči," verjetno mislite načrtovanje terorističnih napadov, nasilne kriminalce in podobno, kar je veliko ožje pojmovanje, kot ga imajo ljudje na vrhu. Za njih "slabe stvari" večinoma pomenijo stvari, ki izvajanju njihove oblasti prinašajo pomenljive izzive.
The other really destructive and, I think, even more insidious lesson that comes from accepting this mindset is there's an implicit bargain that people who accept this mindset have accepted, and that bargain is this: If you're willing to render yourself sufficiently harmless, sufficiently unthreatening to those who wield political power, then and only then can you be free of the dangers of surveillance. It's only those who are dissidents, who challenge power, who have something to worry about. There are all kinds of reasons why we should want to avoid that lesson as well. You may be a person who, right now, doesn't want to engage in that behavior, but at some point in the future you might. Even if you're somebody who decides that you never want to, the fact that there are other people who are willing to and able to resist and be adversarial to those in power — dissidents and journalists and activists and a whole range of others — is something that brings us all collective good that we should want to preserve. Equally critical is that the measure of how free a society is is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens, but how it treats its dissidents and those who resist orthodoxy. But the most important reason is that a system of mass surveillance suppresses our own freedom in all sorts of ways. It renders off-limits all kinds of behavioral choices without our even knowing that it's happened. The renowned socialist activist Rosa Luxemburg once said, "He who does not move does not notice his chains." We can try and render the chains of mass surveillance invisible or undetectable, but the constraints that it imposes on us do not become any less potent.
Druga resnično škodljiva in po mojem še bolj prikrita lekcija, ki izvira iz sprejemanja takšnega mišljenja, je implicitna kupčija, ki so jo ti ljudje sprejeli. Kupčija je takšna: Šele takrat, ko si pripravljen postati dovolj neškodljiv in dovolj negrozeč ljudem na oblasti, si lahko popolnoma svoboden pred nevarnostmi nadzora. Edini, ki imajo vzrok za skrb, so disidenti, ki oporekajo oblasti. Tudi temu bi se morali izogibati iz več razlogov. Tudi če trenutno nisi oseba, ki se želi uvarjati s takšnim početjem, se boš mogoče hotel nekoč v prihodnosti. Tudi če se odločiš, da tega nikoli nočeš početi, že dejstvo, da obstajajo drugi, ki se hočejo in zmorejo zoperstaviti ljudem na oblasti — disidenti, novinarji, aktivisti in številni drugi — je nekaj, kar prinaša skupno dobro, in nekaj, kar moramo ohranjati. Prav tako odločilen pokazatelj, kako svobodna je neka družba, ni njeno ravnanje z dobrimi, poslušnimi državljani, temveč ravnanje z disidenti in tistimi, ki se upirajo pravovernosti. Najpomembnejši razlog pa je ta, da sistem množičnega nadzora zatira našo svobodo na vse možne načine. Prepoveduje številne vedenjske možnosti, ne da bi se tega sploh zavedali. Priznana socialistična aktivistka Rosa Luxemburg je nekoč dejala, "Kdor se ne premika, ne opazi svojih okov." Okove množičnega nadzora lahko poskušamo narediti nevidne ali neopazne, vendar omejitve, ki jih nadzor vsiljuje,
Thank you very much.
s tem ne postanejo nič šibkejše.
(Applause)
Najlepša hvala.
Thank you.
(Aplavz)
(Applause)
Hvala.
Thank you.
(Aplavz)
(Applause)
Hvala.
(Aplavz)
Bruno Giussani: Glenn, thank you. The case is rather convincing, I have to say, but I want to bring you back to the last 16 months and to Edward Snowden for a few questions, if you don't mind. The first one is personal to you. We have all read about the arrest of your partner, David Miranda in London, and other difficulties, but I assume that in terms of personal engagement and risk, that the pressure on you is not that easy to take on the biggest sovereign organizations in the world. Tell us a little bit about that.
Hvala, Glenn. Prepričljivi argumenti, ni kaj. Če nimate nič proti, bi vprašal par vprašanj o zadnjih 16 mesecih in Edwardu Snowdenu. Prvo vprašanje je osebno. Vsi smo brali o aretaciji vašega partnerja Davida Mirande v Londonu in ostalih težavah, vendar sklepam, da ste bili da ste bili z vidika osebne vpletenosti in tveganja deležni veliko pritiska v spopadu z najmočnejšimi organizacijami na svetu. Povejte nam več o tem.
Glenn Greenwald: You know, I think one of the things that happens is that people's courage in this regard gets contagious, and so although I and the other journalists with whom I was working were certainly aware of the risk — the United States continues to be the most powerful country in the world and doesn't appreciate it when you disclose thousands of their secrets on the Internet at will — seeing somebody who is a 29-year-old ordinary person who grew up in a very ordinary environment exercise the degree of principled courage that Edward Snowden risked, knowing that he was going to go to prison for the rest of his life or that his life would unravel, inspired me and inspired other journalists and inspired, I think, people around the world, including future whistleblowers, to realize that they can engage in that kind of behavior as well.
Ena od stvari, ki mislim, da se zgodijo v taki situaciji, je pogum, ki postane nalezljiv. Čeprav smo se vsi novinarji zavedali nevarnosti — ZDA ostaja najmočnejša država na svetu in nerada vidi, da razkriješ na tisoče njenih skrivnosti na inetrnetu, kadar hočeš — videti običajnega 29-letnika, ki je odraščal v zelo običajnem okolju, s tolikšno stopnjo načelnega poguma, kot jo premogel Snowden, vedoč, da bo zaprt do konca življenja ali da se mu bo življenje sesulo, je navdihnilo mene in ostale novinarje, mislim pa, da tudi ljudi po svetu, vključno z bodočimi žvižgači, da spoznajo, da lahko tudi sami počnejo take stvari.
BG: I'm curious about your relationship with Ed Snowden, because you have spoken with him a lot, and you certainly continue doing so, but in your book, you never call him Edward, nor Ed, you say "Snowden." How come?
Zanima me vaš odnos s Snowdenom. Z njim ste veliko govorili in veliko govorite še naprej, vendar mu v svoji knjigi nikoli ne rečete Edward ali Ed, ampak "Snowden". Kako to?
GG: You know, I'm sure that's something for a team of psychologists to examine. (Laughter) I don't really know. The reason I think that, one of the important objectives that he actually had, one of his, I think, most important tactics, was that he knew that one of the ways to distract attention from the substance of the revelations would be to try and personalize the focus on him, and for that reason, he stayed out of the media. He tried not to ever have his personal life subject to examination, and so I think calling him Snowden is a way of just identifying him as this important historical actor rather than trying to personalize him in a way that might distract attention from the substance.
Veste, prepričan sem, da bi to lahko preučevala ekipa psihologov. Ne vem. Mislim, da zato, ker je bil eden njegovih glavnih ciljev oziroma taktik, da je vedel, kako bi lahko osredotočanje medijev nanj kot na osebo preusmerilo pozornost stran od bistva razkritij. Zato se tudi ni hotel pojavljati v medijih. Svoje življenje je vedno poskušal umakniti pred analiziranjem. Zato mislim, da s ga tem, ko mu rečem Snowden, le označim kot pomembno zgodovinsko osebo, namesto da ga poskušam personalizirati na načine, ki bi lahko odvračali pozornost od bistva.
Moderator: So his revelations, your analysis, the work of other journalists, have really developed the debate, and many governments, for example, have reacted, including in Brazil, with projects and programs to reshape a little bit the design of the Internet, etc. There are a lot of things going on in that sense. But I'm wondering, for you personally, what is the endgame? At what point will you think, well, actually, we've succeeded in moving the dial?
Ta razkritja, vaša analiza, in delo ostalih novinarjev so resnično razvili debato, veliko vlad se je na primer odzvalo, med drugim brazilska s projekti in programi, ki bi vsaj malo preoblikovali internet. V tem pogledu se trenutno dogaja veliko. Zanima pa me, kaj je končnica za vas osebno. Na kateri točki si boste rekli, zdaj smo pa uspeli premakniti kolesje?
GG: Well, I mean, the endgame for me as a journalist is very simple, which is to make sure that every single document that's newsworthy and that ought to be disclosed ends up being disclosed, and that secrets that should never have been kept in the first place end up uncovered. To me, that's the essence of journalism and that's what I'm committed to doing. As somebody who finds mass surveillance odious for all the reasons I just talked about and a lot more, I mean, I look at this as work that will never end until governments around the world are no longer able to subject entire populations to monitoring and surveillance unless they convince some court or some entity that the person they've targeted has actually done something wrong. To me, that's the way that privacy can be rejuvenated.
Kot novinar je zame končnica zelo preprosta, in sicer ko bom prepričan, da je vsak dokument, vreden objave in razkritja tudi objavljen, in da so skrivnosti, ki to ne bi smele biti, na koncu razkrite. To je zame bistvo novinarstva in temu se bom posvetil. Kot nekdo, ki se mu množični nadzor gnusi zaradi prej naštetega in veliko drugih razlogov, to vidim kot delo, ki nima konca, vsaj dokler oblast po svetu ne bo več zmožna nadzirati celotnih narodov, razen v primeru, ko prepričajo sodišče ali drugo pravno osebo, da je njihova tarča dejansko storila nekaj narobe. Mislim, da je to način za ponovno obuditev zasebnosti.
BG: So Snowden is very, as we've seen at TED, is very articulate in presenting and portraying himself as a defender of democratic values and democratic principles. But then, many people really find it difficult to believe that those are his only motivations. They find it difficult to believe that there was no money involved, that he didn't sell some of those secrets, even to China and to Russia, which are clearly not the best friends of the United States right now. And I'm sure many people in the room are wondering the same question. Do you consider it possible there is that part of Snowden we've not seen yet?
Kot smo videli na TED-u, je Snowden zelo dober govorec, ko se predstavlja kot zagovornik demokratičnih vrednot in načel. Vendar veliko ljudi težko verjame, da je to njegov edini povod. Težko verjamejo, da v igri ni bilo denarja, da nekaterih skrivnosti ni celo prodal Kitajski ali Rusiji, ki seveda trenutno nista najboljši prijateljici ZDA. Prepričan sem tudi, da mnoge v tej sobi zanima isto vprašanje. Se vam zdi možno, da obstaja obraz Snowdena, ki ga še nismo videli?
GG: No, I consider that absurd and idiotic. (Laughter) If you wanted to, and I know you're just playing devil's advocate, but if you wanted to sell secrets to another country, which he could have done and become extremely rich doing so, the last thing you would do is take those secrets and give them to journalists and ask journalists to publish them, because it makes those secrets worthless. People who want to enrich themselves do it secretly by selling secrets to the government, but I think there's one important point worth making, which is, that accusation comes from people in the U.S. government, from people in the media who are loyalists to these various governments, and I think a lot of times when people make accusations like that about other people — "Oh, he can't really be doing this for principled reasons, he must have some corrupt, nefarious reason" — they're saying a lot more about themselves than they are the target of their accusations, because — (Applause) — those people, the ones who make that accusation, they themselves never act for any reason other than corrupt reasons, so they assume that everybody else is plagued by the same disease of soullessness as they are, and so that's the assumption. (Applause)
Ne, to se mi zdi absurdno in idiotsko. Če bi res hoteli — vem, da igrate hudičevega advokata — ampak če bi hoteli prodati skrivnosti drugi državi, kar bi Snowden lahko storil in zraven še ekstremno obogatel, bi bila zadnja stvar, da bi dokumente izročili novinarjem in jih prosili za objavo, saj bi s tem izgubile vso vrednost. Ljudje, ki želijo obogateti, vladam prodajajo skrivnosti naskrivaj. Je pa še ena pomembna točka, in sicer obtožbe, ki prihajajo s strani ameriške vlade, in s strani ljudi v medijih, ki so zvesti tem vladam. Ljudje, ki obtožujejo druge na tak način — "Tega pa že ne počne iz načelnih razlogov, zagotovo ima kakšen pokvarjen in podel razlog" — po mojem mnenju povejo več o sebi, kot o človeku, na katerega letijo obtožbe, ker — (Aplavz) ljudje, ki tako obtožujejo druge, sami nikoli ne naredijo ničesar iz razloga, ki ni pokvarjen, zato sklepajo, da so tudi ostali okuženi z isto boleznijo brezdušnosti, in pridejo do takšnega zaključka. (Aplavz)
BG: Glenn, thank you very much. GG: Thank you very much.
Glenn, najlepša hvala. - Najlepša hvala.
BG: Glenn Greenwald. (Applause)
Glenn Greenwald. (Aplavz)