Det her er James Risen. I kender ham måske som Pulitzer-vindende journalist fra New York Times. Lang tid før Edward Snowden var et kendt navn. Skrev Risen en bog Hvor han afdækkede den ulovlige telefonaflytning som NSA foretager af amerikanere. Det er dog et andet kapitel i den bog som måske har en endnu større betydning. I det, beskriver han en katastrofal amerikansk efterretningsoperation hvor CIA helt bogstaveligt gav Iran tegningerne til atombomber. Hvis det lyder sindssygt, så læs det. Det er en utrolig historie.
So this is James Risen. You may know him as the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. Long before anybody knew Edward Snowden's name, Risen wrote a book in which he famously exposed that the NSA was illegally wiretapping the phone calls of Americans. But it's another chapter in that book that may have an even more lasting impact. In it, he describes a catastrophic US intelligence operation in which the CIA quite literally handed over blueprints of a nuclear bomb to Iran. If that sounds crazy, go read it. It's an incredible story.
Ved i hvem der ikke kunne lide kapitlet? Den amerikanske regering. I næsten ti år bagefter blev Risen undersøgt af regeringen og blev af anklagere afkrævet, at vidne imod en af hans påståede kilder. I den proces blev han eksemplet på et mønster fra den amerikanske regering af at retsforfølge whistleblowers og spionere på journalister.
But you know who didn't like that chapter? The US government. For nearly a decade afterwards, Risen was the subject of a US government investigation in which prosecutors demanded that he testify against one of his alleged sources. And along the way, he became the face for the US government's recent pattern of prosecuting whistleblowers and spying on journalists.
Det første tillæg til forfatningen giver pressen ret til at udgive hemmelig information af almen interesse. men det er umuligt at bruge den ret hvis medierne ikke kan samle oplysninger og beskytte identiteterne på de modige mænd og kvinder som deler oplysningerne. Så da regeringen bankede på, gjorde Risen hvad mange journalister har gjort før: Han nægtede og sagde han hellere ville fængsles så fra 2007 til 2015 levede Risen under truslen af at blive sat i fængsel.
You see, under the First Amendment, the press has the right to publish secret information in the public interest. But it's impossible to exercise that right if the media can't also gather that news and protect the identities of the brave men and women who get it to them. So when the government came knocking, Risen did what many brave reporters have done before him: he refused and said he'd rather go to jail. So from 2007 to 2015, Risen lived under the specter of going to federal prison.
Indtil, bare dage før retssagen, hvor noget mærkeligt skete. pludseligt, efter i årevis at påstå at det var vitalt for deres sag, droppede regeringen alle krav til Risen Det viser sig, i den elektroniske overvågningsalder, er der meget få gemmesteder for journalister og deres kilder og i stedet for at prøve og fejle i at få Risen til at vidne, kunne de få hans digitale spor til at vidne imod ham istedet. Så fuldstændigt i hemmelighed og uden hans accept, fik anklagerne Risens telefonoplysninger. De fik hans email, hans finans- og bankoplysninger, hans kredit oplysninger, selv rejseoplysninger med en liste over ture han havde taget. Det var disse oplysninger de brugte til at dømme Jeffrey Sterling Risens påståede kilde og CIA whistleblower.
That is, until just days before the trial, when a curious thing happened. Suddenly, after years of claiming it was vital to their case, the government dropped their demands to Risen altogether. It turns out, in the age of electronic surveillance, there are very few places reporters and sources can hide. And instead of trying and failing to have Risen testify, they could have his digital trail testify against him instead. So completely in secret and without his consent, prosecutors got Risen's phone records. They got his email records, his financial and banking information, his credit reports, even travel records with a list of flights he had taken. And it was among this information that they used to convict Jeffrey Sterling, Risen's alleged source and CIA whistleblower.
Desværre er det kun en sag af mange, præsident Obama blev valgt på at beskytte whistleblowers og istedet, har hans justitsministerium retsforfulgt flere end alle andre administrationer tilsammen. Man kan se hvordan det er et problem, specielt fordi regeringen betragter meget af hvad den gør som hemmeligt Siden 11. September er næsten alle sikkerhedshistorier kommet fra at en whistleblower kontakter en journalist Så vi risikerer en presse ude af stand til at udføre sit job som det første forfatningstillæg er beregnet til at beskytte fordi regeringens udvidede evne til at spionere på enhver.
Sadly, this is only one case of many. President Obama ran on a promise to protect whistleblowers, and instead, his Justice Department has prosecuted more than all other administrations combined. Now, you can see how this could be a problem, especially because the government considers so much of what it does secret. Since 9/11, virtually every important story about national security has been the result of a whistleblower coming to a journalist. So we risk seeing the press unable to do their job that the First Amendment is supposed to protect because of the government's expanded ability to spy on everyone.
På samme måde som teknologi har tilladt regeringen at omgå journalisters rettigheder, kan pressen også bruge teknologien til at beskytte deres kilder bedre end før og de kan begynde fra det øjeblik hvor de starter med at snakke, i stedet for i vidneskranken bagefter. Der findes nu kommunikations software som ikke var tilgængeligt da Risen skrev sin bog, og som er meget mere overvågningssikker end almindelige emails og telefonopkald. For eksempel er et værktøj SecureDrop, et open-source whistleblower indsendelses system der oprindeligt blev skabt af den afdøde internetstjerne Aaron Swartz, og som nu bliver udviklet hos organisationen hvor jeg arbejder, Freedom of the Press Foundation. I stedet for at sende en email, gå du ind på et nyhedsmedies hjemmeside ligesom den her hos Washington Post derfra, kan du uploade et dokument eller sende oplysninger på samme måde som på andre kontakt skemaer Derefter krypteres det og gemmes på en server som kun nyhedsmediet har adgang til. Så regeringen ikke længere i hemmelighed kan afkræve oplysningerne, og mange af oplysninger som de ville kræve vil ikke være tilfængelige alligevel.
But just as technology has allowed the government to circumvent reporters' rights, the press can also use technology to protect their sources even better than before. And they can start from the moment they begin speaking with them, rather than on the witness stand after the fact. Communications software now exists that wasn't available when Risen was writing his book, and is much more surveillance-resistant than regular emails or phone calls. For example, one such tool is SecureDrop, an open-source whistleblower submission system that was originally created by the late Internet luminary Aaron Swartz, and is now developed at the non-profit where I work, Freedom of the Press Foundation. Instead of sending an email, you go to a news organization's website, like this one here on The Washington Post. From there, you can upload a document or send information much like you would on any other contact form. It'll then be encrypted and stored on a server that only the news organization has access to. So the government can no longer secretly demand the information, and much of the information they would demand wouldn't be available in the first place.
SecureDrop, er dog kun en lille del af at beskytte pressefriheden i det 21. århundrede. Desværre udvikler regeringer overalt nye spionteknikker som sætter det hele i fare. og det er op til os fremadrettet at sikre at det ikke kun er de teknologikyndige whistleblowers som Edward Snowden som kan afdække synder, det er ligeså vigtigt at vi beskytter den næste whistleblower i veteranplejen som advarer om overfyldte hospitaler, eller den næste miljøarbejder der alarmerer om Flints beskidte vand, eller en Wall Street insider der advarer om den næste finanskrise. I sidste ende er de her værktøjer ikke kun beskyttelse for dem der afslører forbrydelser, men også midler til at beskytte vores rettigheder under forfatningen
SecureDrop, though, is really only a small part of the puzzle for protecting press freedom in the 21st century. Unfortunately, governments all over the world are constantly developing new spying techniques that put us all at risk. And it's up to us going forward to make sure that it's not just the tech-savvy whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden, who have an avenue for exposing wrongdoing. It's just as vital that we protect the next veteran's health care whistleblower alerting us to overcrowded hospitals, or the next environmental worker sounding the alarm about Flint's dirty water, or a Wall Street insider warning us of the next financial crisis. After all, these tools weren't just built to help the brave men and women who expose crimes, but are meant to protect all of our rights under the Constitution.
Mange tak
Thank you.
(Bifald)
(Applause)