By Charlton Stanley, Weekend Contributor
Last Sunday, former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden was interviewed for the German television network ARD. The interview was big news in Germany and much of the world in both print and broadcast media. However, the interview appears to have been blocked intentionally by US government authorities. In fact, the media in the US appears to have gone to ‘radio silence’ about it. It has been posted on YouTube several times, but is taken down almost immediately. The video site Vimeo has it embedded, but as I write this, Vimeo is under a DDoS attack. LiveLeak also has it, and that video is embedded in this report by Jay Syrmopoulos for Ben Swann’s news page.
Mr. Snowden spoke candidly in a thirty-minute English language interview with the reporter from ARD.
He says his “breaking point” was “seeing Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.” That was when Clapper denied the existence of a domestic spying programs when he testified before Congress in March of last year. Snowden added, “The public had a right to know about these programs. The public had a right to know that which the government is doing in its name, and that which the government is doing against the public.”
In case Ben Swann’s page is taken down, along with the LiveLeak video, here is the interview on Vimeo. Offered without commentary, since Edward Snowden can speak for himself.
Reblogged this on My name is Asher Hirsch.
A bizarre video has been posted of editorial staff of The Guardian destroying computer hard drives used to store documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/31/footage-released-guardian-editors-snowden-hard-drives-gchq
anonymously posted
Here is a transcript, with the video:
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Thanks much.
They can’t block that.
Yastreblyansky
It’s also true that ARD blocks users outside Germany from watching the video (in English or dubbed in German)
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I watched it on the German ARD.
Someone else is blocking you.
Download vid here:
http://speedy.sh/k8U33/987654321.mp4
So what r ya gonna do about it? Is the question.
very significant educational interview explaining the danger of nsa to our society, clear and simple fix of known proper encryption to eliminate need and function of nsa, and obama’s engulfment by spy community by selection of statues to prosecute and persecute snowden.
The difference between the college age generation in 1971 and now is that then they were in Washington DC demanding that the government shut down the Vietnam War or we will shut down the government. and today’s generation who are demanding “What is up with Justin Bieber?”
Once they shut the internet down, which is coming, there won’t be anyplace left for the truth in America.
bettykath: Thanks. I had found the NY Times article on Pete Seeger, as well as one in the LA Times, and The Guardian. There is a good Wikipedia summarizing his life. He was “blacklisted” by the McCarthy Stasi Congress members. The blacklist still exists. The networks ignored him the week after his death as did Yahoo News and Google News. On the right side of Google News I found the three newspaper articles. The blacklisting of Pete Seeger comes the same week as the blacklisting of the Snowden interview. I saw Pete Seeger play at the May Day Tribe march on Washington in May 1971. The day after he played a concert I saw him get tear gassed and busted. This was in a prior life as a human. Its been a while. He sang We Shall Overcome at the concert. I had more cause for hope then than I do now. The Military Industrial Complex has grown and the cause celebre is now 9/11 and al Qaeda not communism.
Charlton,
Thanks for the video. That said, what we don’t know can’t hurt us…right????
barkin dog, A friend in NYC said that the NYTimes put Seeger’s death on page one with considerable space inside, not the obits. They did a good summary of his life, even included his time in the CP.
I have been to Northern Europe this past year and the outrage over NSA spying is huge. Our media does not pick up on it. The Dutch and Germans are the most upset. The Frogs are se le vie. English are lame about it. Irish and Scots are mad. They hate MI5 and MI6. The word in the streets was that Merkel would take Snowden in but that he fears getting killed there.
Snowden was quite articulate in the interview. It will sell very well in Europe. Too bad Amerika did not get to see it. Sixty years ago in a prior life I used to listen to Voice of America, the BBC and Radio Free Europe on short wave radio. We disdained Radio Moscow. Turnabout is fair play over time.
Stasi? KGB ? Gestapo. That is where we are now as a nation.
It’s also true that ARD blocks users outside Germany from watching the video (in English or dubbed in German) at their own site without much explanation, leaving some room to be paranoid in on all sides: “+++ Aus rechtlichen Gründen kann das Video nur innerhalb von Deutschland abgerufen werden. +++ Due to legal reasons the video is only available in Germany.+++” http://www.ardmediathek.de/das-erste/ard-sondersendung/edward-snowden-exklusiv-das-interview?documentId=19287388
Just in the interests of accuracy, the interview was covered in Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/26/edward-snowden-nsa-industrial-sabotage, Chicago Tribune http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-26/news/sns-rt-us-security-snowden-germany-20140126_1_edward-snowden-nsa-u-s-national-security-agency, New York Times (with video excepts) http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/video-from-snowdens-german-tv-interview/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0, International Business Times (!!) http://www.ibtimes.com/edward-snowden-claims-nsa-engages-industrial-espionage-new-interview-1548078 and more. At the YouTube address for the video is a claim that it was removed at ARD’s request on copyright grounds, which it’s not at all unreasonable to believe.
@Yastreblyansky “Just in the interests of accuracy, the interview was covered…..”
Thank you for the cites.
Still the question remains was there an effort to prevent dissemination of the interview and if so was that effort the result of actions by zealots or the government?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. But it is troubling that some have reported difficulty accessing the video.
What a ridiculous transparently childish effort by the failed American government.It will fail, and the revolution will be televised.
If someone starts a petition at whitehouse.gov, do you suppose the President would respond after it gets over the 100,000 required signatures? I suppose the petition would disappear as well.
Luke Harding has written a book on Snowden that will be released on February 11th.
“How Edward Snowden went from loyal NSA contractor to whistleblower”
“He was politically conservative, a gun owner, a geek – and the man behind the biggest intelligence leak in history. In this exclusive extract from his new book, Luke Harding looks at Edward Snowden’s journey from patriot to America’s most wanted”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/01/edward-snowden-intelligence-leak-nsa-contractor-extract