the future of the Internet.

So I would like to welcome to the TED stage

the man behind those revelations,

Ed Snowden.

(Applause)

Ed is in a remote location somewhere in Russia

controlling this bot from his laptop,

so he can see what the bot can see.

Ed, welcome to the TED stage.

What can you see, as a matter of fact?

Edward Snowden: Ha, I can see everyone.

This is amazing.

(Laughter)

CA: Ed, some questions for you.

You've been called many things

in the last few months.

You've been called a whistleblower, a traitor,

a hero.

What words would you describe yourself with?

ES: You know, everybody who is involved

with this debate

has been struggling over me and my personality

and how to describe me.

But when I think about it,

this isn't the question that we should be struggling with.

Who I am really doesn't matter at all.

If I'm the worst person in the world,

you can hate me and move on.

What really matters here are the issues.

What really matters here is the kind of government we want,

the kind of Internet we want,

the kind of relationship between people

and societies.

And that's what I'm hoping the debate will move towards,

and we've seen that increasing over time.

If I had to describe myself,

I wouldn't use words like "hero."

I wouldn't use "patriot," and I wouldn't use "traitor."

I'd say I'm an American and I'm a citizen,

just like everyone else.

CA: So just to give some context

for those who don't know the whole story --

(Applause) —

this time a year ago, you were stationed in Hawaii

working as a consultant to the NSA.

As a sysadmin, you had access

to their systems,

and you began revealing certain classified documents

to some handpicked journalists

leading the way to June's revelations.

Now, what propelled you to do this?

ES: You know,

when I was sitting in Hawaii,

and the years before, when I was working in the intelligence community,

I saw a lot of things that had disturbed me.

We do a lot of good things in the intelligence community,

things that need to be done,

and things that help everyone.

But there are also things that go too far.

There are things that shouldn't be done,

and decisions that were being made in secret

without the public's awareness,

without the public's consent,

and without even our representatives in government

having knowledge of these programs.

When I really came to struggle with these issues,

I thought to myself,

how can I do this in the most responsible way,

that maximizes the public benefit

while minimizing the risks?

And out of all the solutions that I could come up with,

out of going to Congress,

when there were no laws,

there were no legal protections

for a private employee,

a contractor in intelligence like myself,

there was a risk that I would be buried along with the information

and the public would never find out.

But the First Amendment of the United States Constitution

guarantees us a free press for a reason,

and that's to enable an adversarial press,

to challenge the government,

but also to work together with the government,

to have a dialogue and debate about how we can

inform the public about matters of vital importance

without putting our national security at risk.

And by working with journalists,

by giving all of my information

back to the American people,

rather than trusting myself to make

the decisions about publication,

we've had a robust debate

with a deep investment by the government

that I think has resulted in a benefit for everyone.

And the risks that have been threatened,

the risks that have been played up

by the government

have never materialized.

We've never seen any evidence

of even a single instance of specific harm,

and because of that,

I'm comfortable with the decisions that I made.

CA: So let me show the audience

a couple of examples of what you revealed.

If we could have a slide up, and Ed,

I don't know whether you can see,

the slides are here.

This is a slide of the PRISM program,

and maybe you could tell the audience

what that was that was revealed.

ES: The best way to understand PRISM,

because there's been a little bit of controversy,

is to first talk about what PRISM isn't.

Much of the debate in the U.S. has been about metadata.

They've said it's just metadata, it's just metadata,

and they're talking about a specific legal authority

called Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping,

mass surveillance of the entire country's

phone records, things like that --

who you're talking to,

when you're talking to them,

where you traveled.

These are all metadata events.

PRISM is about content.

It's a program through which the government could

compel corporate America,

it could deputize corporate America

to do its dirty work for the NSA.

And even though some of these companies did resist,

even though some of them --

I believe Yahoo was one of them —

challenged them in court, they all lost,

because it was never tried by an open court.

They were only tried by a secret court.

And something that we've seen,

something about the PRISM program that's very concerning to me is,

there's been a talking point in the U.S. government

where they've said 15 federal judges

have reviewed these programs and found them to be lawful,

but what they don't tell you

is those are secret judges

in a secret court

based on secret interpretations of law

that's considered 34,000 warrant requests

over 33 years,

and in 33 years only rejected

11 government requests.

These aren't the people that we want deciding

what the role of corporate America

in a free and open Internet should be.

CA: Now, this slide that we're showing here

shows the dates in which

different technology companies, Internet companies,

are alleged to have joined the program,

and where data collection began from them.

Now, they have denied collaborating with the NSA.

How was that data collected by the NSA?

ES: Right. So the NSA's own slides

refer to it as direct access.

What that means to an actual NSA analyst,

someone like me who was working as an intelligence analyst

targeting, Chinese cyber-hackers,

things like that, in Hawaii,

is the provenance of that data

is directly from their servers.

It doesn't mean

that there's a group of company representatives

sitting in a smoky room with the NSA

palling around and making back-room deals

about how they're going to give this stuff away.

Now each company handles it different ways.

Some are responsible.

Some are somewhat less responsible.

But the bottom line is, when we talk about

how this information is given,

it's coming from the companies themselves.

It's not stolen from the lines.

But there's an important thing to remember here:

even though companies pushed back,

even though companies demanded,

hey, let's do this through a warrant process,

let's do this

where we actually have some sort of legal review,

some sort of basis for handing over

these users' data,

we saw stories in the Washington Post last year

that weren't as well reported as the PRISM story

that said the NSA broke in

to the data center communications

between Google to itself

and Yahoo to itself.

So even these companies that are cooperating

in at least a compelled but hopefully lawful manner

with the NSA,

the NSA isn't satisfied with that,

and because of that, we need our companies

to work very hard

to guarantee that they're going to represent

the interests of the user, and also advocate

for the rights of the users.

And I think over the last year,

we've seen the companies that are named

on the PRISM slides

take great strides to do that,

and I encourage them to continue.

CA: What more should they do?

ES: The biggest thing that an Internet company

in America can do today, right now,

without consulting with lawyers,

to protect the rights of users worldwide,

is to enable SSL web encryption

on every page you visit.

The reason this matters is today,

if you go to look at a copy of "1984" on Amazon.com,

the NSA can see a record of that,

the Russian intelligence service can see a record of that,

the Chinese service can see a record of that,

the French service, the German service,

the services of Andorra.

They can all see it because it's unencrypted.

The world's library is Amazon.com,

but not only do they not support encryption by default,

you cannot choose to use encryption

when browsing through books.

This is something that we need to change,

not just for Amazon, I don't mean to single them out,

but they're a great example.

All companies need to move

to an encrypted browsing habit by default

for all users who haven't taken any action

or picked any special methods on their own.

That'll increase the privacy and the rights

that people enjoy worldwide.

CA: Ed, come with me to this part of the stage.

I want to show you the next slide here. (Applause)

This is a program called Boundless Informant.

What is that?

ES: So, I've got to give credit to the NSA

for using appropriate names on this.

This is one of my favorite NSA cryptonyms.

Boundless Informant

is a program that the NSA hid from Congress.

The NSA was previously asked by Congress,

was there any ability that they had

to even give a rough ballpark estimate

of the amount of American communications

that were being intercepted.

They said no. They said, we don't track those stats,

and we can't track those stats.

We can't tell you how many communications

we're intercepting around the world,

because to tell you that would be

to invade your privacy.

Now, I really appreciate that sentiment from them,

but the reality, when you look at this slide is,

not only do they have the capability,

the capability already exists.

It's already in place.

The NSA has its own internal data format

that tracks both ends of a communication,