Snowden: NSA Targeted Journalists Critical of Government after 9/11
Photo Credit: Daily Mail By Jonathan Easley
Leaker Edward Snowden accused the National Security Agency of targeting reporters who wrote critically about the government after the 9/11 attacks and warned it was “unforgivably reckless” for journalists to use unencrypted email messages when discussing sensitive matters.
Snowden said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine published Tuesday that he came to trust Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who, along with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, helped report his disclosure of secret surveillance programs, because she herself had been targeted by the NSA.
“Laura and [Guardian reporter] Glenn [Greenwald] are among the few who reported fearlessly on controversial topics throughout this period, even in the face of withering personal criticism, and resulted in Laura specifically becoming targeted by the very programs involved in the recent disclosures,” Snowden said for the article, a profile of Poitras.
Snowden didn’t detail how Poitras was targeted by the NSA surveillance programs he disclosed, but suggested the agency tracked her emails and cautioned other journalists that they could be under surveillance.
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‘It cost the public dearly’: Snowden says media have failed as government watchdogs in his first interview since NSA leaks
By Joshua Gardner
In his first interview since he outed himself as the source of leaked NSA documents, Edward Snowden said the media has given the government a free pass to grow unchecked power ever since the attacks of September 11.
‘[It] ended up costing the public dearly,’ the 30-year-old newly minted Russia resident told the New York Times in a QandA published Tuesday.
Snowden’s interview focused on journalists and the media, which he said need to wake up to the realities of surveillance. ‘Any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world,’ he said.
Snowden’s QandA was, of course, done through encrypted emails. Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who helped Snowden spill his secrets, served as intermediary, having won the former NSA contractor’s trust months ago.
‘Laura was more suspicious of me than I was of her, and I’m famously paranoid,’ Snowden told Times reporter Peter Maass.
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