"(theme music playing)" "This week on "VICE," the inside story of America's surveillance program." "I'm gonna be detaching the camera." "The devices that you paid for watch you on our behalf." "It seems like technology allows almost anyone to spy on almost anyone." "Snowden:" "Evenifyoutrust thegovernmenttoday, whathappens whenitchanges?" "When eventually we get an individual who says," ""You know what?" "Let's flip that switch"?" "(theme music playing)" "(screaming)" "(crowd chanting) Hands up!" "Don't shoot!" "Hands up!" "¶ ¶" "Smith:" "Firstofall, I'dliketo say thankyou formeetingus today hereatthestoried HotelMetropolin Moscow." "I say "storied" because for the longest time, itwasthedesignatedhotel whereforeignerswere allowedtostay, anditwasrumored that every room was bugged." "(laughs)" "I would definitely presume that in any world capital, or in major business hotel, Mm." "if the h-- hotel rooms aren't pre-wired for surveillance, theycanbe wired almostimmediately." "¶ ¶" "For the last three years, a controversy has raged about the US government's surveillance of its own people." "A terrorist attack last December in San Bernardino, California, brought this debate to a tipping point." "Reporter:" "14 people are dead and 21 people have been injured after a married couple opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino." "Reporter 2:" "Ajudgeis orderingApple tohelptheFBI  breakintoacellphone usedbyoneof theSanBernardinoshooters." "Apple is saying, "Look, this is something that no court can order us to do."" "Tim Cook:" "What is at stake here is can the government compel Apple to write software that we believe would make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world?" "If it is possible to make an impenetrable device, howdowe solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?" "Smith:" "But according to the most famous whistleblower in the world, thegovernmentalreadyhad  thiscapability... andasit turnedout ," "Snowdenwasprovedright 'causetheFBIwas able tocracktheiPhone withoutApple'shelp." "Now,EdwardSnowdenremains apolarizingfigure inAmericanpolitics becauseononeside, he'sconsideredahero on the level of Woodward and Bernstein, who broke the Watergate scandal, but on the other, he's considered" "atraitorwhojeopardized Americanintelligence andsecurity aroundtheworld." "A traitor!" "A traitor to the United States!" "These records were spread about publicly by Edward Snowden internationally, recklessly, and, I might say, illegally." "Smith:" "So,wewenttoMoscow tospeakto  thiscontroversialfigure aboutthestate ofsurveillance inAmericatoday." "So NSA, CIA, FBI, can they get into my phone?" "Yes." "Can they get into my laptop?" "Absolutely." "iPad, any-- Anything." "As long as they can dedicate people, money, and time to the target, they can get in." "And what kind of information can they get from my phone, for example?" "Uh, everything in your contacts list, every, uh, SMS message that you use, every place that's ever been where the phone is physically located, even if you've got" "GPS disabled because they can see which wireless access points are near you." "Every part of a private life today is found on someone's phone." "We used to say a man's home is his castle." "Today, a man's phone is his castle." "My question to you is, why don't more people care?" "Because we've gone from Cold War, pre-9/11, to effectively a police state that's watching your every move, and everyone went, "Eh."" "Why?" "Part of it is the fact that it happened invisibly." "Mm-hmm." "Uh... if a politician had said," ""We want to watch everybody in the country,"" "uh, people would've been up in arms about it." "¶ ¶" "Snowden:" "Inthewake ofSeptember11th, theVicePresident oftheUnitedStates, DickCheney, andhispersonallawyer, DavidAddington, conspiredwithanumber oftoplevelofficials intheNSA andotheragenciestochange" "notonlywhat theyconsideredto be  thelegalrestraints, butactuallytheculture ofsurveillance in the Intelligence Community." "They moved from the exceptional surveillance to the surveillance of everyone." "Technologyhaschanged." "Insteadofsendingpeople tofollowyou, we use the devices that you paid for." "Mm." "Theservices andthesystems thatsurroundyou invisiblyeveryday towatchyou onourbehalf." "Meta data is the fact that a communication occurred." "So, I called you-- You called me, whenyoucalledme,  whereyoucalledmefrom , this information is the same thing that's produced whena privateinvestigator followsyouaroundall day ." "Theycan'tsit closeenoughto you ineverycafétohear  everywordyou'resaying, but they can be close enough to know when you left your house, what the license plate of the car you were driving with," "where you went, who you sat with, how long you were there, when you left, where you went after that." "That's meta data." "Smith:" "Now,allof thismetadata , itturnsout, wasactuallyremarkably easttogetat." "Infact , youdon'tevenhaveto hackthephoneatall." "Allyouneedistechnology thatisreadilyavailable, calledanIMSIcatcher, thatcanintercept yourphone's metadataremotely." "Every phone has what's called am IMSI, Mm-hmm." "uh, which is actually for the SIM card." "That's your subscriber information." "Mm-hmm." "What your name is, what your phone number is." "Allofourdevices astheytravel throughouttheday areconstantlybroadcasting insortof this radio orchestra." "IMSI catchers masquerade as the legitimate cell phone tower." "Mm-hmm." "So, when you're saying, "Hey, cell phone tower, canyouhearme? "" "Instead,a man inthemiddle, somebodywithan IMSIcatcher inthetrunkoftheircar, ina briefcase, intheiroffice has it send a louder signal back to you Uh-huh." "than the cell phone tower and say, "I'm the cell phone tower."" "Now, this sounds pretty complex." "How hard is it to-- to make or buy an IMSI catcher?" "It's incredibly easy." "You buy these things off the shelf." "Every police department in the United States seems to be buying these things nowadays." "Really?" "Smith:" "Now,theuse ofIMSIcatchers bypolicerecentlycaused internationalheadlines whena newspaperin Norway attempted to track the amount of IMSI catchers in Oslo, andactuallyfoundsomany  thattheyquestioned iftheirtrackerwas  workingproperly." "Afterhiring acybersecurityfirm, they discovered that not only were they indeed correct, butthesedeviceswere actuallybeingused tospyon theirown  governmentfacilities." "In five places in Oslo, uh, the measurements were so serious that I could say with a high probability that there was IMSI catchers." "Foss:" "Themostclearsigns was in the areas of the Prime Minister's office andoftheMinistry ofDefence." "Wealsogotalerts upintheEmbassy'sarea  andinthe-- infrontof theParliament." "Smith:" "Andwhilethepolice initiallydeniedusing" "IMSIcatchersextensively, intheface ofoverwhelmingevidence, they were eventually forced to admit it." "Foss:" "Thepolicestated thatweareusing" "IMSI catcher, at minimum, once a week, and that was the first time ever that the police had gone out and stated how often they were using these kinds of equipment." "Inalltheareas thatwedetectedsignals, thousandsofpeopleare  strollingbyeveryday ." "So, that's" " I think that's, uh, some of the problem with these kinds of technology because you're looking for one number, but you're in the same place." "You're collecting hundreds of numbers." "Smith:" "Now,thistechnology isbeingused bypoliceforces allovertheworld." "Infact, inNewYorkCityalone," "IMSIcatchershavebeenused  morethanathousandtimes bypolicesince2008, andthat'sjustthe tip  oftheiceberg, asthey'renowbeingused  allaroundus  allthetime." "There's a joint CIA/NSA program called, appropriately enough, Shenanigans." "Shenanigans was a project to mount on airplanes an IMSI catcher andflyit aroundthe city." "Theycantell whenyou'vetraveled, they can tell when you move, and this all happens without warrants." "Right." "Shenanigans was happening in Yemen." "Right." "Uh, that's where it was being tested." "And you go, "Well, look, this is being used" ""toaimmissiles atterrorists." "I'mokaywiththat."" "but these programs have a disturbing frequency, a tendency, to move from war front to home front." "Right." "And within six months of Shenanigans being reported," ""The Wall Street Journal" reported that the same technology was now being used domesticallyinside theUnitedStates." "TheFBIhasaspecific aviationunit Uh-huh." "that'sflying aroundcities,uh , and frequently, they're-- they're monitoring protesters rather than violent criminals." "WiththeBlackLivesMatter protestsinBaltimore, the FBI was flying surveillance over the protesters." "Smith:" "Now,thishasbeen causeforalarm becausemodern surveillancetechnologies arealreadybeingused byoppressiveregimes tosuppress governmentopposition." "(shouting)" "(shouting)" "(shouting) (shouting)" "(shouting)" "Ala'a Shehabi:" "Since2011, Bahrainhaswitnessed some of the largest protests in its history." "Therearethousands ofprotesters takingtothestreets whoaredemanding moredemocraticreforms anda changein regime." "Smith:" "Ala'a Shehabi is aBahrainiactivist whofoundherselfthe target ofgovernmentsurveillance." "In 2012, I was briefly arrested." "Immediately after I was released," "Ireceivedastring offouror fiveemails thatwereverysuspicious tome." "Isuspectedthat thiswasacyberattack, andsoIimmediatelysent  thesuspiciousemails tomycolleague, Morgan,atCitizenLab ." "Itactuallyturnedout  thatthisspywarewas  produced and operated by a British-German company calledFinFisher." "This is a company thatspecializes in producing hacking software, and it claims that it sells them to government regimes, so that immediately fitted with my suspicion that this was the Bahraini regime." "Thespyware'scapable ofswitching yourmicrophoneon , yourcamera, it'scapableof logging everysinglething thatyoutype." "Thereareahandful ofkeycompaniesinEurope thatareopenlymarketing, promoting, and selling these tools in arms exhibitions inEuropeancapitals." "Theyarenotbeingused  inthename oftacklingterrorism." "They are being used to keep these regimes in place and in power." "Smith:" "Now,toseeexactly whattypeof information ahackedphonecan yield, wecontactedthesamehacker whouncovered theBahrainiscandal andaskedhimtohack  oneofourown reporters usingthesame typeofsoftware" "that targeted Ala'a Shehabi's." "Wewereabletocompletely commandeerBen'sphone andheneverknewit." "Smith:" "SoBenwasinPakistan doinga shooton polio." "So you hacked his phone and you figured out who he called." "Right, and so," "I mean, what we've got here is I can see, you know, who he's calling and when he called them and how long the calls were." "Wow." "We can actually record his calls." "Wow." "Let's have a listen to them." "This will also keep a list of Ben's web browsing history." "Wow." "Um, and so for instance, you can see here he's Google searching for BBC, you can see news articles that he's writing." "Right." "Checking his Twitter." "It's sort of like reading someone's mind 'causeyoucansortofsee whatthey'rethinking whilethey'reon theInternet." "So we've been location tracking Ben." "You can even get it to animate, and so it will show where Ben" " Ben is at various sort of times." "You can see him traveling around the city there Sure." "and you can tell exactly where he is Right." "which is obviously, in terms of keeping tabs on someone, a highly desirable thing." "¶ ¶" "Marquis-Boire:" "Think about anything that the phone can do." "Mm." "Right." "Like, once you've actually installed this malicious software on the phone, Mm." "then it's simply a matter of activating the phone's capabilities." "So, I mean, the phone has a camera, right?" "Well, now we can turn on the camera." "What are these ambient recordings?" "And so" "Yeah, so the ambient recording if kind of the invisible microphone." "The-- the real sort of spy stuff." "So he's interviewing a Gitmo detainee-- a former Gitmo de-- detainee." "So I guess when you talk about protecting journalists, protectingyoursource isa bigissue." "Can you be said to be practicing journalism in a traditional sense if you can't guarantee source protection?" "You may be sort of actively endangering the-- their livelihood, welfare, and life." "Now with software like this and the other more commercially available software, it seems like technology allows almost anyone to spy on almost anyone." "We live in a golden age of convenience enabled by technology, and so that means that, you know, y-- you and I can be on other sides of the planet and we can have a conversation in real time" "for-- for no money." "Technology has enabled convenience of communication, but also convenience of surveillance." "Smith:" "Now, this so called goldenageof technology hasessentially madeitpossible foranyoneto spy onanyoneelse." "Itbegsthequestion, canpeople, forexample,journalists, evergodark?" "Isthatevenpossiblenow withthesenewadvancements?" "How do we go black?" "Well, so going black is a-- a pretty big ask." "For me, for example, I really know what I'm doing." "Yeah." "But if the NSA wants to pop my box, Uh-huh." "you know, they're totally gonna do it." "But if you know you're actively under threat, if you know your phone has been hacked, these are ways that you can ensure that your phone works for you Yeah." "rather than working for somebody else." "You might've bought the phone, but whoever hacked it, they're the ones who own it." "Wow." "Smith:" "That'sbecausethirdparties canactuallyturnon yourphone'smicrophones andcameras withoutyouknowingit." "Any device that's on here, you can operate independently." "So, it's true you can get into the phone and turn the camera on?" "Yeah, absolutely." "So, you would turn this guy on (beep) and you'll just heat that guy until the solder is molten." "Notice I'm gonna be detaching the ribbon cables that are connecting the camera." "As a surface mount device, you'll be able to just pull it off like that." "So this is the camera." "What's that?" "This is the other camera." "You got two cameras in your phone." "You got your front-facing camera for sort of the selfies, and you got your rear-facing camera that's" "I think this one has a multi-microphone array, Mm." "which is gonna be this guy, this guy, and this guy." "But if you take out the microphones, then how do you use it as a phone?" "You would add your own external microphone." "For example, the iPod type earbuds that have the mic integrated on the lanyard." "Right." "Built in." "Is there a way you can tell if your phone's been hacked?" "Perhaps the most terrifying thing is, if your phone had been hacked, you would never know." "Smith:" "Andas"VICE"reporter JasonLeopoldfound, surveillancehasbecome soubiquitous thateven thegovernmentagencies responsibleforpolicingit arenotsecure." "You got a FOIA request recently in the mail that's causing quite a stir." "The way that this all surfaced," "Dianne Feinstein, she made this extraordinary Floor speech." "Smith:" "AstheheadoftheSenate IntelligenceCommittee," "Feinsteindelivered someshockingallegations." "Feinstein:" "Ontwooccasions," "CIA personnel electronically removed" "Committee access to CIA documents." "She said that the CIA had hacked into Senate computers while these staffers who work for her were writing a report about the CIA's torture program." "JohnBrennan, thedirectorof theCIA  saidthatis preposterous." "Our only way to look deeper into it was to file a Freedom of Information Act request." "So,thesedocuments absolutelybackedup  everythingthat DianneFeinsteinsaid." "What'smost interestingthough, whatI wouldcall asmokinggun," "JohnBrennanwrotealetter andhesaidthat theCIAstaffhad  improperlyaccessed yourcomputers." "But John Brennan never sent this letter to Dianne Feinstein." "They said that this letter was was mistakenly turned over to us." "Right." "It was an accident, and it actually should not have been released to us, and, uh, they asked us not to, uh, post it." "Because it's embarrassing." "Completely embarrassing for them." "And we declined that, uh, request because there's no national security concerns in this letter." "This is simply something that" "John Brennan did not want the public to see after making all these, uh, statements about what the CIA did not do." "Smith:" "Wenowknowthat the CIA officers were in fact spying on the committee chargedwithkeeping theminline." "So,wespoketoone ofthosecommitteemembers," "SenatorRonWyden, abouttheletter thatBrennannevermeant tosend." "This will be the first time I've ever said this publicly." "My sense is there were clearly people at the CIA who understood that what Mr. Brennan had done was flat out wrong, and they drafted an apology letter." "Andyet,Mr.Brennan wasjustunwilling topubliclyacknowledge wrongdoing." "This is basically rewriting the law." "We are the agency that is required by law to conduct vigorous oversight over the CIA." "We can't do vigorous oversight over the agency if the agency we're supposed to be overseeing is in fact, uh, secretly searching our files." "Smith:" "Now,SenatorWyden hasbecomealeader inattemptingto reinin our Intelligence Community." "Wyden:" "Director Clapper," "I want to ask you about..." "Snowden:" "SenatorRonWydensaid," ""IstheNSAcollecting anykindof dataatall onmillionsor hundreds ofmillionsof Americans?"" "And James Clapper sort of scratched his head..." "No, sir." "andhesaidno..." "It does not?" "theydonot." "Not wittingly." "Themostsenior Intelligenceofficial intheUnitedStates ofAmerica raised his hand and swore an oath to tell the truth to Congress, and he lied on camera." "Mm-hmm." "He wasn't charged, despite the fact that he-- that's a felony." "He didn't even lose his job." "Mm-hmm." "He'sstilldoing thesamethingtoday." "Within a few months, he admitted that he lied." "He said his answer was "too cute by half"..." "Mm." "andtheleast untruthfulstatement thathefelthecouldhave madeatthetime." "Mm." "My view is that if you're going to protect the American people, you've gotta embed those protections into law." "And we of course have been very concerned about with what I call secret law." "Smith:" "And at the heart ofthatsecretlaw isFISA , theForeignIntelligence SurveillanceAct, whichauthorized secretcourtsto green-light domesticspyingprograms." "Wyden:" "Thegovernmentpersuaded thecourtto say," ""Well,it'sokay tocollectmetadata."" "When you read the fundamental law, you hear anything about meta data and collecting millions of records on law abiding, uh, people." "That was all done in secret." "And in fact, I went to the floor of the Senate and I warned that when the American people found out how that law had been secretly interpreted, they would be very angry, and that in fact was the case." "(indistinct chanting)" "Smith:" "Now, public anger hasn'tbeenenoughtoend manyoftheseprograms, butincreasingly, thequestionisn'twhether ornottheycan be justifiedunderlaw, but whether they're actually effective in the first place." "Smith:" "Recently there were attacks in Paris." "What happens when you have a terrorist attack like that within security agencies, with the NSA, for example?" "I was working, uh, at the NSA during the Boston Marathon bombings investigation, and as it was playing on the news, myself and colleagues were in the cafeteria, and we turned to each other and said, "I'll bet you anything" ""we already knew about these guys in the databases." And in Paris," "I'm certain that the same conversation happened." "And this is really the legacy of mass surveillance, is the fact that when you're watching everyone, you know who these individuals are." "They're in the banks." "You had the information you needed to stop, to prevent even the worst atrocities." "But the problem is when you cast the net too wide, when you're collecting everything, you understand nothing." "We know for a fact that it is not effective for stopping terrorist attacks and it never has been." "¶ ¶" "TheWhiteHouseappointed twoindependentcommissions inthewakeofmydisclosures in2013 to review mass surveillance programs and go," ""All right, do these have value?" "Should they be changed?" "Should they the reformed?"" "They looked at the evidence, the classified evidence, and they found, wow, despite the fact that this had been going on since 2001, it had never stopped a single terrorist attack intheUnitedStates." "Andthat'safter monitoringthephonecalls of everyone in the country." "So, that's a huge point." "So, two independent commissions started by the White House said mass surveillance has not stopped a terrorist attack." "And both of them found that these programs should be ended, and then they came up with 42 different points, uh, for a reform that they recommended should happen to restrict the use of these powers." "Mm." "The last time that I saw a review of this, the President only adopted three of the 42 points." "Why?" "Because they would limit the exercise of executive power." "Thisissomethingthat youhaveto understand isnotaboutthispresident." "It'saboutthepresidency." "It'sclearthat thepublicopposes amajorityof thesepolicies, Mm-hmm." "and yet politicians, because the word" ""terrorism" is involved, Mm." "uh, they can't justify being the one to stand, uh, up and mal the vote because they know there will be another terrorist attack" "'Cause if they say no, we're gonna-- we're gonna stop doing this, and then there's a terrorist attack, they get painted with that brush." "They know they'll be blamed by their political opponents, and they're right." "Mm." "Of course their political opponents will do this." "It's the easting thing in the world to do." "Mm-hmm." "Uh, and unfortunately, it's quite effective because we live in a time where the politics of fear arethemostpersuasive thingonthetable." "Smith:" "Now,whilethedebate oversurveillance continuestorage hereintheUS," "EdwardSnowden remainsa fugitive forhisrevelations abouttheNSA, andhehad acautionarystatement aboutwhat'sat stake." "When the world was first introduced to you, you made a statement about turn-key tyranny." "What did you mean by that?" "It means that even if you trust the government today, what happens when it changes?" "In-- in our democracy, we're never more than eight years away from a total change of government." "Mm-hmm." "Suddenly... everybody's vulnerable to this individual, and the systems are already in place." "What happens tomorrow, in a year, in five years, in ten years when eventually we get an individual who says," ""You know what?" "Let's flip that switch" ""and use the absolute," ""full extent of our technical capabilities to ensure the political stability of this new administration"?" "(indistinct chanting)" "When we think about the future and where we go from here, thequestionis  arewegoingtochange andentersortof aquantifiedworld whereeverywhere you'vebeen, everyoneyoutalkto,  it's indexed, it's analyzed," "it's stored, and it's used... maybe against you..." "Within our technologies here, we have our license plate reader system, which we can capture dozens of license plates in the matter of a second." "...or will we recognize the danger of that and embrace the fact that people should have space to make mistakes without judgment, to have sort of the unconsidered thought or conversation with your friend?" "But if that was recorded in a database where, you know, now you say," ""I think Donald Trump should be kicked off a cliff,"" "uh, and Donald Trump becomes president someday, Sure and everybody who said that ends up getting thrown off a cliff?" "Uh..." "That's a very dangerous world." "And I think this really is the question that our political structures are not yet comfortable even discussing." "But whether they like it or not, it's a world that's coming and we're going to have to confront." "¶¶"