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For more than a year now, the world has closely followed revelations disclosed by former American intelligence worker Edward Snowden. The documents from the whistleblower's archive have fueled an at times fierce debate over the sense and legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA) sheer greed for data.
In its current issue, SPIEGEL conducted two interviews it hopes will contribute to the debate. The first is with two major critics of the NSA's work -- human rights activist and lawyer Jesselyn Radack, who represents Snowden, and former spy Thomas Drake. The second interview is with John Podesta, a special advisor to United States President Barack Obama.
SPIEGEL: You yourself worked as a spy for the NSA. What made you become a whistleblower?
Drake: It was only months after 9/11. Back then it became clear to me that in order to avoid another failure to protect people we just set aside the rules of law. The NSA violated our constitution by spying on its own people. Today, we have the greatest surveillance platform the world has ever seen. This is why I shudder. National security has become a state religion. They say they want to keep us safe, but from whom?
SPIEGEL: Terrorists, for example?
Radack: Oh, I've heard that a lot of times: This is all being done for security. The former NSA director Keith Alexander lied to Congress when he said they had thwarted 54 terrorist plots. Four months later, he was dragged back to the Senate Judiciary Committee and had to admit it had thwarted one plot. Maybe.
SPIEGEL: Information from US intelligence services allegedly helped lead to the arrest of members of the Sauerland terrorist group that was planning attacks in Germany.
Radack: I'm not denying this is possible, but the vast majority of this, 99.9 percent, is not about security. It's about controlling people and information.
Interview with Obama Advisor John Podesta on NSA and Cyber Security - SPIEGEL ONLINESPIEGEL: Yet the offer for a no-spy agreement came from the US in the first place. That, at least, is what Merkel's chief of staff said last summer.
Podesta: I think the German government would acknowledge that perhaps there was a little bit of a lack of clarity as to what the US was offering. As I said, we don't have no-spy agreements with any country, including the UK. I wasn't in government at that moment, but I think what we have done subsequent to those earlier conversations is to try and enhance the dialogue at every level: at the technical level and at the political level. In that context, I met with the foreign minister when he was in Washington last spring and he asked me to come over here to participate in the Cyber Dialogue.
SPIEGEL: The dialogue focused on economic innovation and cyber-cooperation. Wouldn't a firm statement of regret be a good starting point? Is the US worried that a no-spy agreement would set a precedent?
Podesta: We want to have an open and collaborative dialogue with our friends and our partners, and Germany is on top of that list. But with respect to our policies on the use of intelligence assets for national security purposes: As the president made clear in his January speech, we've laid out what we don't do. We are not spying on ordinary citizens. We don't collect for purposes of trying to suppress political speech. We don't collect to give commercial advantage to our companies. Other countries have been known to do that; we don't do that. And so the intelligence program is aimed at protecting our national security and the national security of our friends and allies.
SPIEGEL: Yet those allies are also targeted, as we now know. As former US Ambassador John Kornblum recently said: Nations have no friends, only interests.
Podesta: I know the ambassador, but I don't know if I agree with that. We do have friends and we do have alliances. We need to balance that against our security needs and that's why the president has restrained collection against heads of state of our friends and allies. I'm not going to go into the details of this, as you may expect. But with respect to what German citizens think, the United States has a pretty good track record of standing up for values of global democracy, of free expression, of protecting the rights of individuals, of trying to ensure that people are not discriminated against, of not suppressing free speech. Every country has a history of going over the line, and ours is no exception. But our democracy is self-correcting.
SPIEGEL: It sounds to German ears as though you are trying to trivialize the issue. Even Judge Richard Leon, with whom you teach at Georgetown University, ruled that NSA data-mining was likely unconstitutional.
Podesta: Far from trivializing, we take this very seriously.
The NSA violated our constitution
couldn't have said it better myself. You have a way with words.They trying to make a move on me in my house because I am a heavy smoker dope, crack exceeded. These are the United States, I like to keep up on my, whoever has this diplomacy they father , they mother can dictate elsewhere this is United States where god almighty was born the city of Chicago, at his childhood he wasn't called god but called special to a mother of his I am him, they call me jehovah a state religion suppose to go for my life and eyes and nose face hands feet and life.
10,000 Feet
When we think about justice-fantasy movie characters in American popular culture such as Neo (a Messianic anti-industrialization guardian) and Snake Eyes (a democracy-advocate super-soldier), we think of society's general interest in republicanism vanguarding.
However, when we think of America's potential brand of social network 'militarization,' we become wary of the NSA, and even Hollywood (USA) movies such as "Enemy of the State" (1998) echo this criticism.
Hey, liberal dialogue is the nature of American politics.
It seems that modern media connectivity (Internet, etc.) associated security and terrorism anxieties are today's brand of yesteryear's radicalism street culture fears about student-culture eco-terrorism.
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It's so bad that a read somewhere that the Germans are thinking of going back to manual type writers for certain State and Economic Business.
