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.
To je James Risen. Morda ga poznate kot s Pulitzerjem nagrajenega poročevalca za New York Times. Preden je kdorkoli poznal Edward Snowdena, je Risen napisal knjigo, v kateri je izpostavil, da NSA nelegalno prisluškuje telefonskim klicem Američanov. A v tej knjigi je neko drugo poglavje, ki ima morda bolj trajen vpliv. V njej opiše katastrofalno operacijo obveščevalne službe ZDA, v kateri je CIA dobesedno predala načrte za atomsko bombo Iranu. Če vam zveni noro, si pojdite prebrat. Neverjetna zgodba je.
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.
A veste, komu to poglavje ni bilo všeč? Vladi ZDA. Skoraj desetletje po tem je bil Risen predmet vladne preiskave ZDA, v kateri so tožilci zahtevali, da priča proti enemu izmed svojih domnevnih virov. In sčasoma je postal primer tega, kako vlada ZDA danes kazensko preganja žvižgače in vohuni za novinarji.
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.
Veste, pod Prvim amandmajem imajo mediji pravico do objave skrivnih informacij, ki so v interesu javnosti. A nemogoče je to pravico uporabljati, če mediji ne morejo zbirati teh novic in zaščititi identitet teh pogumnih moških in žensk, ki jim jih prinesejo. Ko je vlada prišla na njegova vrata, je Risen naredil, kar so naredili mnogi pogumni novinarji pred njim: zavrnil jih je in rekel, da gre raje v zapor. Od leta 2007 do 2015 je Risen živel pod grožnjo, da gre v zvezni zapor.
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.
Dokler se ni nekaj dni pred sojenjem zgodila zanimiva stvar. Nenadoma, po letih trditev, da je nujno za ta primer, je vlada prenehala s svojimi zahtevami. Kot se izkaže, je v dobi elektronskega nadzora zelo malo krajev, kjer se novinarji in viri lahko skrijejo. In namesto, da bi poskušali prisiliti Risena, da priča, in pri tem spodleteli, je lahko namesto njega pričala njegova digitalna sled. Tako so popolnoma na skrivaj in brez njegovega soglasja tožilci dobili zapiske telefonskih pogovorov. Dobili so njegovo elektronsko pošto, finančne in bančne izpiske, podatke o kreditih, celo podatke o potovanjih s seznamom njegovih letov. In med temi informacijami, ki so jih uporabili za obsodbo Jeffrey Sterlinga, je bil Risenov domnevni vir in CIA žvižgač.
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.
Na žalost je to samo en primer izmed mnogih. Predsednik Obama je prelomil obljubo, da bo zaščitil žvižgače, in namesto tega jih je njegovo Ministrstvo za pravosodje obsodilo več kot vse ostale administracije skupaj. Lahko vidite, zakaj je to problem, še posebej, ker ima vlada toliko svojega delovanja za skrivno. Od 11. septembra je praktično vsaka pomembna zgodba o nacionalni varnosti bila rezultat tega, da je žvižgač prišel do novinarja. Zato tvegamo, da novinarji ne bodo mogli opravljati svojega dela, ki naj bi ga branil prvi amandma, zaradi povečane zmožnosti vlade, da vohuni za vsemi.
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.
A kot je tehnologija omogočila vladi, da zaobide pravice novinarjev, lahko novinarji uporabijo tehnologijo, da še bolj kot prej zaščitijo svoje vire. Lahko začnejo že v trenutku, ko se pogovor začne, ne pa šele kasneje na prostoru za priče. Sedaj obstajajo programi za komunikacijo, ki niso bili na voljo, ko je Risen pisal svojo knjigo, in je veliko bolj odporna proti nadzorovanju kot e-pošta ali klici. Naprimer, eno izmed teh orodij je SecureDrop, odprtokodni sistem za žvižgače, ki ga je prvotno ustvaril pokojni internetni velikan Aaron Swartz, in ga sedaj razvijamo v neprofitni organizaciji, kjer delam, Fundaciji za svobodo tiska. Namesto, da bi poslal e-pošto, greš na spletno stran časopisa, kot je ta stran Washington Posta. Od tu lahko naložiš dokument ali pošlješ informacije, kot bi jih v kateremkoli kontaktnem obrazcu. Potem bo šifrirano in spravljeno na strežnik, do katerega ima dostop samo ta časopis. Tako vlada več ne more skrivoma zahtevati informacij in veliko informacij, ki bi jih zahtevali, sploh ne bi bilo na voljo.
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.
SecureDrop pa je samo majhen delček mozaika za varovanje svobode tiska v 21. stoletju. Na žalost vlade po vsem svetu neprestano razvijajo nove metode vohunjenja, ki spravljajo vse v nevarnost. In na nas je, da zagotovimo, da niso samo tehnološko spretni žvižgači, kot je Edward Snowden, tisti, ki imajo možnost razkriti zločine. Prav tako pomembno je, da zaščitimo žvižgača o oskrbi veteranov, ki opozarja na prepolne bolnišnice, ali naslednjega okoljskega delavca, ki opozori na umazano vodo v Flintu, ali insajderja z Wall Streeta, ki nas opozarja na naslednjo finančno krizo. Ker ta orodja niso bila zgrajena samo zato, da pomagajo pogumnim ljudem, ki odkrivajo zločine, ampak so tu, da zaščitijo pravice vseh nas pod Ustavo.
Thank you.
Hvala
(Applause)
(Aplavz)