that's followed by columnist and author glenn greenwald speaking about privacy in government surveillance at an event in ottawa, canada. ..

that really we shouldn't expect today in successful, modern, tech-driven economy, and closing this gap was a big part of the motivation, both for my term of duty in public service as well as i wanted to write the book. >> host: the subtitle is how new technologies can transform government. how does the u.s. government use technology and does it do it successfully. >> guest: we're moving in the right direction, i think about american history in the book. go back to our founding fathers. we have had a long tradition of having government keep pace and often lead the private sector in the use of technology to solve problems. i noted, for example, one of the founding technology oz ibm had its origins in a census bureau employee who face seemingly irsurmountmentables to calculate the number of people in the country. so governments have long history

of being innovative and the capability to deliver better services, and the last several decades we have sign a divergence in the capacity in the private sector and public, and we're read to close the gap. >> host: why did the diversity happen. >> guest: in the 1990s, late '80s, there was a bipartisan movement -- it is bipartisan -- to modernize the government, and at that time, while there was political consensus to modernize, there wasn't as minute technological capacity. at the time that president clinton and vice president al gore launched their reinventing government initiative, there were only 200 plus web sites on the world wide web. so while that bipartisan commitment delivered great results results they were largely management reforms. the the technologies of the today hadn't reached big data, mobile technology, cloud computing. these are more recent capables

and have not been part of our prognosissal nan the public seconder, and that's closing. >> host: what was your goal when you became the chief technology officer. >> guest: serve my president to make sure every policy he advanced was thoughtfully infused witch the power and potential of technology, dat, and innovation, as an enable are, helping us recover but to build upon a new foundation for our economy, and strengthening our public safety system to name just a few. >> host: what some of the issues you ran into in that position? >> guest: well, first and foremost, i think you struggle from three perspectives. if you take a big picture of this. first and foremost, you're walking into an environment where there are long--standing ways of operating. if you ask the average employee in the government, how likely are you to be able to open up your information to the public. the perception was, i can't. i have limits.

i have a cultural or technical or maybe even a policy barrier that says i can't open up. so we kind of walked into an environment where entrenched circumstances made it more difficult to achieve some objectives. the second thing we came across was just a bit of a -- wouldn't call it's gap in technology and talent but i might say that's a shorthand for it. literally walked in on my first day, had a computer that was connected to the internet but wouldn't allow me to access my linked in profile or other social media sites for fear it would create risks on the privacy and security front for white house personnel. so i was literally constrained my literal access to technology and last but not least, we have not -- not much of talent gap but the idea of new product development and innovation and r & d had been central to the success of large swaths of our american economy.

dedidn't have the same r & d focus on transforming government services delivery, so that was not a muscle we had worked on in the proverbial gym. so with these limits limits and constraints, the one advantage we had that trumped all of this was a president who was focused and commit on day one. that trumped a lot of limits we saw in the early days. >> host: do you think you made headway in the culture gap? >> guest: , i think we planted a lot of seeds and i'm proud my successor is built on those seeds and with president obama's full support, we're now seeing a much broader impact on the principles i outline in "innovative state." the opportunity to open up more data, collaborate with the private sector to lower barriers, thinking about tapping new problem solvers through challenges and prizes, and on occasion, like in recovering healthcare.gov, after the challenging launch, putting together a lean startup and how to organize and manage such things so that specific projects get delivered at internet speed

and with success as opposed to the more traditional challenges we face. >> host: mr. chopra you talk about the procurement process and how that -- let me just quote: our government has gotten bigger, more bloated, and not necessarily better. it's modern acquisition culture accepting of exorbitant costs and lengthy delays, rarely considering novel alternatives, et cetera, et cetera. >> guest: that's a legacy born of relatively good intentions and that is a couple things. one in the interest of fair play we want to make sure everybody had a shoot to compete for government business, and thus you have to be very specific about what you're looking for, so that you can have an objective way of evaluating whether you choose partner a or partner b to provide that service. well, that is great if you're buying furniture or pencils because you know what those things are, but if you're trying to define a new way of serving

health insurance to the american people through digital means, it may not be as easy to define at the outset all the thousands of requirements one would otherwise do to make a fair and open comparison. the notion of agile development that will build, learn, engage the public, solicit feedback, ad provisions, roll out new capabilities, that iterative process has a lot more to do with procuring talent than it does particular approaches to software development, and there's been a myth busting that needed to be done to say we can't do some of these things, and we learned in the procurement cycle that fixing procurement is in part a congressal issue. we indiana to get laws on the books to create more openness. it's also sort of cleaning up operational administrative capables, and you see with the president's launch of the new u.s. digital service, clear mandate is to myth bust on what can or can't be done on

procurement. so you'll see good thinks coming because some things can be done administratively. >> host: there was a chief technology officer, federal chief information officer, and now there's a u.s. digital services administrator. >> guest: yes. >> host: are we starting a little bit of overlap here? >> guest: oh, no. let me be a little clearer about responsibility and why this is so critical. at the outset, when the president appointed the chief technology officer, he named them an assistant to the president, which means a policy adviser. and so as we looked at the world that i played and how my successor, todd park, plays, it's a direct report to the president. we're meeting every morning in the senior staff meet examination engaging on policy issues to say as we crack new policy or reform old policies and manage really important initiatives on behalf of the white house, are we probably utilizing technology, data, and

innovation. it's a collaborative role because health care is led by the tell focused on healthcare reform but there are passages in there and we have to make sure we have a modern healthcare system. that's an important role. the government also manages $80 billion of i.t. spending. you want to be effective and efficient in how you organize your purchasing power and operationallize the capability that is the servers that operate the medicare system, or how we operate web sites, and immigration, and so we have chief information officer who sets basically agency-wide, or kind of administration-wide policy on how we better utilize the $80 billion. get more with less. and now, as an extension of these two voices, policy, founding¢ed on the sterling, solving problems, and policies to fix the internal operations, you're now starting to see more support structures in place, the diggal services arm clearly is support structure to the chief information officer to make

government work better, and that is a very narl extension of the work we start early in the first term. >> host: when it comes to that $80 billion spent on i.t., should -- is it centralized? is it coordinated? should it be? >> guest: i find this a tough question because one can make the argument centralization leads to economies of scale but you lose the focus on end-state applications. the right to is it's going to be a dynamic continuum based on the need and circumstances in question. at a minimum, you want to make sure that every decision at the agency level is made with the best information at hand as to how to go about solving a problem. as an example, the ultimate in centralized is the use of cloud compute are technologies, whether provided by the government or private sector or hybrid means. so, it might be the best example that an agency says i'm going to use the public cloud to service my infrastructure needs to

provide a function critical to my department, but in another circumstance i might want to have a lot of that infrastructure on premise so that i can actually meet the need. it's not a one size fits all in how to manage the moneys. it's to make sure each decision is infused with the best decisions, what are my options for infrastructure, how do i staff up and get the talent i need to produce the operations, how die engage my public customer in a better way to know what they're looking for, and how might i open up as many of these interfaces as possible so others can build even better services to meet the needs of the american people. >> host: another thing you address is whether or not those services should be contracted out or managed by a dedicated federal work force. >> guest: you know, will say this. if there's one message in the book, it's the notion that an innovative state is characterized by handshakes and handoffs. this speaks to your question as to who should do. what the handshakes are what

washington has been doing lately. maybe behind the curtain and not as well reported in the media, which is shaking hands on some of the key prims of an innovative state, opening up data, ebb couraging collaborative work around standard, issuing challenges and so forth. that means that the opportunity to have a more open government starts with a bipartisan laying of the foundation. what is critical is you're handing off to the american people entrepreneurs and innovators and the public, private, academic, federal, state, local levels of government to take that raw dat and build more interesting products and services let's take weather. you and i have the right to go visit weather.gov. wonderful service. exciting we have all the capability to predict the weather, and great to have a web site that the government supports that makes sure you can see what you want to see. but if that was the only option we faced, if that was the only way we could learn about what we should be wearing today or tomorrow, we reside be constrained and limited and

frustrated. but the weather bureau, in this case noaa, the agency responsible for the weather service, has opened up the underlying data that fuels weather.gov and invites weather.com, ya ooh weather apps, print and tv friends to do whatever they will on top of the data. now we have billionprivate industry born in large part because we opened up all the sensor, satellite data, that would riz be confident prohibitive for any one -- imagine if each company had to build their union satellite network. we bear that burden as a public utility. and if we do that across health, energy, education, safety, all these domains of government, we can start to see a much more vibrant innovative stiff that isn't characterized by, is the government's web site working? but, rather, can i get the information i need, whether i accession it directly from the government or these incredibly more innovative personalized services that have brought it to

my attention. even healthcare.gov has handoff. the u.s. news and world report, one of its first assignments is launching the health insurance finder power bid the data we released in the first version of health health healthcare.gov in 2010. focusing on options available. that site is still alive today. you can have a wonderful user experience but the information that powers it is provided by the federal government. >> host: take it to a 2.0. how else would this system of open government work in health care. >> guest: well, it's an amazing opportunity because if you ask the question, what do we ultimately want, whether you're republican or democrat, you want a system that is high quality, lower cost, and delivers satisfaction to the people who consume it. the former administrator of medicare, medicare, don bullock, refer tops this as the triple aim and it's bipartisan. one way you get there is you

realize a third of the money we spend in health care is wasted and wasted could be defined as you could have gotten care in a cheaper setting that might have been better for you, or you shouldn't have south that particular care at that time if you'd nope you were getting worse if you had south earlier treatment you might have prevented some of the need to have that surgical procedure down the road. where is the biggest source of data on the performsance of our healthcare system? one location, the medicare claims file, and for the first time we are opening up that data, protecting patient privacy to be sure but make sure folks can start to get a handle on, if i'm at risk of blindness, shy see dr. x or dr. y and if see dr. and, will they prescribe a cheaper drug to avoid blindness versus a $2,000 drug. that practice pattern is now transparent and public so people can start making informed decisions about the care they seek and support services are

increasingly being born to help aid you in making those decisions. >> host: what are some of the security and privacy concerns especially when it comes to health care, electronic. >> guest: most important thing we must do as a country is strengthen -- if we're going to use the internet as a way to transform the relationship between the american people and its government and service delivery, we have to strengthen the internet so it can provide more secure privacy protecting capabilities. i often refer to this as an internet within the internet, and in health care it's the birth of the health anywhere inter net. so we might e-mail each other to schedule an appointment but today you and your doctor are not e-mailing your sensitive medical record on your gmail account because that doesn't meet the security and privacy standard. thankfully we worked collaboratively with the private sector say, can't we use e-mail but add encryption and security that weren't present in the traditional forms that are available? so within 90 days the coalition

of private and public stakeholder came together and let's achieve consensus, and every american can they've want to get a secure health e-mail account that is called the direct project, where you can gate direct standardized e-mail system, and in many cases it's free. i get all of my halve records to me safe and secure, transmilted to my personal account, but you can choose another option, and that is going to just continue to flourish. so you want to take advantage of the internet as a communications medium but you want to have an internet on top of the internet that is more secure and more reliable and more focused on your privacy and that's coming and working in a collaborative spirit to be brought you. >> host: how did you become secretary of technology in virginia? >> guest: i was in virginia's -- i was a constituent of virginia and working the private sector at a firm called the advisory company, writing research studies, among things how to

make the internet in health care, and then governor mark warner asked if i would serve on a couple of his boards or commission. he asked me to serve on the medicaid board, and he asked me to serve on the task force he called called the electronic health care record task force. he said we have to use modern technologies to modernize healthcare. so when the governor cain was elected, we had a specific conversation about electronic health records, and his vision of a cabinet position called secretary of technology was not someone who would go off and their own work but would collaborate with he health secretary and say, how might we brings' technology to support your mission or education secretary? or a public safety. and so that's essentially the pitch i made to him, the conversation that we had. had a wonderful time. virginia has been best managed state, best state for business, best state to raise family and has a long bipartisan tradition on ensuring we infuse our

government with the best technologies and most appropriate mottles to solve problems. >> host: people listening to this conversation are going to say, wow, that's all great and wonderful, but this revolution that you're talking about really hasn't occurred because so much is still dealt in paper and phone calls. >> guest: it's funny. it's changing. in just the last several years, the percentage of doctors, for example, that are on electronache health record system went from in the teens, in the beginning of the obama administration, to well over majority of doctors today are on electronic health systems, putting your information into digital form, and according to your own privacy rights, every american has the right to an electronic copy of his or her data if your doctor or hospital stores it electronically. so, you might want to did your do you know about that right? and if you're watching this show today, did you know you could access this if you're on medicare? you have the ability to download three years of your medicare

claims history. why? because you might want know what your method indication list is so you have an accurate depiction when you talk to your next door, or store stow and share it with your doctor so they avoid mistakes because they didn't have exactly what you're on today and there was an adverse reaction. this is all live. part of our reason i wrote the book is some of these things are available but in not be as widely in other words by the american people yet. we'll get there. >> host: what's the x prize. >> guest: it's a wonderful story about how entrepreneurs in the private sector tapped into the site geist to say, just becauser who the best health care i. t. programmer doesn't mean you're the only one that can solve this challenge. what about this chemist or physicist or that actor? there's talent all over our country. or the world. and the x prize was born of a spirit that if we issued challenges or prizes, unexpected

solvers might show up and blow our minds away with what is possible. in the wake of the bp oil spill, we remember the imagery, terrible imagery of all that oil gushing into the gulf. the last real period of innovation in how you remove oil from the surface of the water was in the wake of the exxon valdez. so, the x prize foundation said i wonder if we could double the rate of oil cleanup, not in a decade, but in a year, and the traditional industry players said, you can't make it that fast. that's doesn't make sense. the department of interior said we'll create the test bed facility to a private-public partnership but the x prize agency ran the competition. a tattoo artist was among a half dozen teams that had doubled the goal it. the winning team, tripled the

goal. if you provide a stretch goal and a prize that motivates folks to show up, like charles behindberg responded to a prize which convinced him to fly across the atlantic see, what our country can do. we have talented leaders in every corner of our country, and i we give them a chance to connect to prizes and challenges like the x prize in the private sector 0, challenge.gov, in the public sector, imagine how much progress we could make in meeting the needs of our great country. but. >> host: you ualso say that charles lindbergh probably wouldn't have pursued the goal if the government had been or soming that. >> guest: it's an interesting story. how does one balance the entrepreneurial spirit with our country with the notion that government can't be entrepreneurial? the way you square that circle is collaboration, and also might

say there are certain challenges the american people are motivated to fix, and you use challenge.gov. let's take the challenge we're overcoming at the va, helping with the appointment scheduling process to make sure our veterans, who deserve world class support services and treatment options, have the ability to self-schedule to the va system. i wrote in the book even though we spent nine years on $100 million plus project that didn't produce a single line of working code, scrapping that approach, we moved to challenge or prize model in less than one year we had three teams demonstrate successfully that there their off the shelf tools could plug into the system and run the self-scheduling feature all within that year. and so people respond to these challenges, even if not everybody would. so you'll see a mix, the purely private, the private with public support, and then the purely public, but the point is this is now a bipartisan act of congress. every federal agency can issue

challenges and prizes in lieu of traditional procurement up to $50 million of prize money and that was the compete act, the handshake that led to they handoff. >> host: you mentioned bipartisanship quite a bit. this book, when you read it, sounds like it could have been written bay republican. >> guest: sure. in fact i honored one of the policy advisers to father bush, president bush, james pinkerton, combining with elaine kaymark, wonderful pod si adviser to then al gore, came together and say, why don't we work on these issues regardless of whose boss wins the election. if father bush is re-elected or if bill clinton would be elected, let's put an agenda together that says, let's move beyond this left/right divide. let's modernize there should be plenty of day about to the role of government in society but once you nick the decision government is doing x, let's do

x in most efficient manner, tapping tapping into the expertise of the american people and that's the spirit and why i'm so confident this is the rick candidate of problem solve can even if washington looks like it can't get its act together. >> host: how far along are we in the so-called revolution and are you seeing a sea change attitudes in the federal work force? >> guest: well, absolutely seeing a sea change. probably in the second, maybe third inning of this particular play or this game. and the sea change is this. i've had experience in the private sector, state government experience and federal government experience. the talent across all settings of my life, world class. i've met some of the best and brightest people working in the federal government, working in the state government and working in the private sector. there isn't a difference in talent and passion. what is excite being the public sector employees its they have an added mission orientation, which is what compels them to potentially take a lower pay in order to solve a particular

problem. they've been operating in systems that have constrained. one of the most exciting things about why my successor is a phenomenal chief technology officer, todd passion, he ways the technology officer at hhs and secretary sebelius launched a program called hhs innovate, honoring the employees who have been innovative, and it's not like they've never been innovative. maybe they have been doing it under the radar, commonwealthly, fearful it might get enemy trouble, and you seek the culture change. you're telephoning me i can do this? my wife and i just had a baby boy. we have three beautiful children. installing the infant car seat a chore and making sure it fits properly, difficult. apparently 50% of us install these car seats improperly. who knew that the department of transportation has the database of every place in the country where you can get that car seat checked. well, at a department of transportation event, government employee said, what if we made this more available to you?

would nip here like to do something with it? that weekend, someone built an iphone app that would allowing anyone to figure out where i am, where is the nearest place to get my infant car seat checked and it was no muss, no fuss no procurement. it was an spired government employee who said we have this resource, and then the handoff to an entrepreneur and innovate for who said, let me try to do this, and then all of a sudden small little tool was made available that made my life a little bit better. >> host: how far along are we to open government? how much of the government is open now to folks? >> guest: well, it's getting better. it's hard to measure the percentage of data that is open. i'll give you an example. if you count data sets we're in the tens of thousands of data sets you can access now on data.gov you can download them, connect them with web services, run a new application fueled in part by that data.

if you ask yourself where we collect information, can i get what i want? not yet but president obama made it clear, this is commitment he made not just in the hiss memo order -- but scent order, congress with the data act, at said fant transactions data shill be open, and piecemeal parts, the medicare database is opening up. the affordable care act had provisions to make that easier to access, and other data sets are coming online. but here's the point. we'll no longer have a debate whether we should or shouldn't open. it's the pace at which we find new assets and bring them to bear and it opens up a new conversation. what new data should we be collecting we haven't been in let's take labor market information. how will performing is work force system? there is a skills gap? why is so it hard for veterans to find jobs who are heros and so many employers are saying, way don't hire a veteran, yet the unemployment rate for veterans is much higher among

the younger? partly it's informed by new data that we'll make available to the american people. what is the skills profile of the unfloyd and how might we bert plan and allocate resources to match the skills in demand with the skills that are in the supply of talent. we're going to get there but this is the movement that won't stop. >> host: we have been talking with anish chopra, former chief technology officer of the united states. innovative state is the name of the book, how new technologies can transform government.

throughout campaign 2014 chance has brought you more than 130 candidate debates from across the country, in races that will determine control of the next congress. and this tuesday night, watch c-span's live election night coverage to see who wins, who loses, and which party will control the house and senate. our coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern with results and analysis. you results also see candidate victory and concession speeches, in some of the most closely watched senate races across the country, throughout the night

and into the morning, we want to hear from you with your calls, facebook comments and tweets. campaign 2014 election night coverage, on c-span. >> coming up here on c-span2, columnist and author, glenn greenwald speaking about government surveillance, followed by attorney general eric holder and epas a mr.or announcing the federal government's settlement with car companies hundred day and -- hyundai and kia for violation under the clean air act. later, a discussion on immigration policy. >> author and column nist glenn greenwald spoke in ottawa, canada birth privacy and security and government surveillance, focus on canada's surveillance industry and his work with canadian journalists to disclose information about invasive surveillance practices. this event happened shortly after the fatal shooting of a

canadian soldier near parliament. it's two hours. [inaudible conversations] >> hello, everybody. hello, everybody. my name is bill owen. i'm the organizer with a little help -- shy say a lot of help from open media and ralph.ca who have been instrumental. they're great sponsors, supportive and helpful. a little history here them reason i'm bringing glenn or part of the reason is glenn is actually a friend of mine and i do believe in his message. it's an important message, particularly at this time in canada, so i asked him to come to ottawa. he wasn't planning on coming here, and as favor to me he has come to ottawa. so thank you, glenn.

so, tonight maybe -- you might be interested how i met glenn. way commenting years agoing when glen n started and great commenters and we would debate and glenn would always jump into the comments and talk to us, and sometimes insult us, too. people lived in dread of glenn coming down and saying, no, no, this is just destroying logically. so over the years glenn and i would exchange comments. i fed him a couple stories, he mentioned me in his column and i was happy. then eventually we started exchanging e-mails and things like that, and back in 2012 i brought glenn here for the first time, and contrary to the image you see on tv, a lot of people think glenn is the ogre, see him on tv and his snarling at people. he is the nicest, sweltseest guy you would ever want to meet. i'm holding in my hand here a

rube rubik's cube. when glenn went to hong kong he had no idea what snowden looked like. snowden did not tell hell wham he looked like. he couldn't because that would be bad operational security. so, he told him i will be carrying a rube rubic's club, so when glen went interest the lobby of the hotel, he is looking around and is expecting a seniortana guy and he size is this tiny guy, looks about 19 and has the rubik's club, and he said, i'm looking for season nsa guy and i have this kid here. so long story short, they talked and this where is we are. so, we're almost ready here. our host for the evening, the actual host, is jesse brown, real journalist, i'm just a guy with a big mouth. and he has had a lot of experience, worked at cbc and he

has his own web site called canada lan, and jesse is a great journalitt and will do an interview with glenn after glenn talks. so they're going to come out and have an enter very, and jesse promised a probing interview. won't let glen f get with the answer waves heard before. so, that is basically the thing. so, i'll just leave it at that. jesse introduce glenn and i'd like to thank everybody for coming and thank my sponsors and my wife for helping me. she has been absolutely instrumental. and turn off your cell phones and puts them in the refrigerator out back. it's a joke. right now we have jesse brown, coming out, and give him a big hand. thank you very much for coming. [applause]

>> thank you. it's been a legal of a week. i was following along on twitter as things were unfolding here, and amid everything else i was feeling all the confusion and shock of it and later the sadness. i felt something else. i had a selfish thought. i thought, this is bad luck. what bad timing this had to happen so soon before the greenwald event. and everything that i heard as the events unfolded and the days since, sort of affirmed that sense of the timing is off. we larry these had gones, hear that canada lost her innocence on wednesday. and we hear that we have to say goodbye to the old normal because now it's welcome to the new normal. and we're told that things just don't feel the same anymore. and all of this just gave me this growing sense that this was not the time for this

conversation. and then i thought about some other things. i thought about bill c13, first introduced as a lawful access legislation, then called the protecting children from online predators act, and people were not so happy with that. and then it was rebrand as the anticyberbuhleying law. this is a piece of legislation that makes its very easy for law enforcement to call up your cell phone provider, call up your telephone provider and get information about you, all kinds of information, without a warrant, which they die anyhow but this would make it legal. this is a bill we have been beating down, 673% of canadians oppose this bill. and privacy advocates and commissioners are against it and the supreme court has ruled it's probably unconstitutional. and we have been beating it back for years, and this week, it passed its third reading in the house of commons and is off to the senate for a rubber stamp. after the shootings, something else happened.

our prime minister promised us he would expedite anti-terror legislation that would make certain kinds of speech illegal and make it easier for authorities to detain suspects of terrorism. this is not a new normal. this is the old normal. we have seen this before. we have seen moments of trauma and fear that have come with them subtle messages that it's not appropriate to have certain conversations during those times, and we have seen before that while we're getting that subtle and not so subtle message that those conversations are not appropriate, our right get curtailed at that exact moment. this happened before. so, seeing this auditorium filmed with canadians tells me that this is the exact right time to have this discussion. this is the exact right time to talk about things like surveillance and our rights, and i feel incredibly lucky to be

introducing glenn greenwald in a moment i feel lucky there is a glenn greenwald. [applause] >> ooh. >> consider if edward snowden didn't have a glenn greenwald to call. major the nsa heard what edward snowden was trying to convey to journal nist imagine i the george just that edwards snowden contacted was not as committed to rigorously and aggressively but responsibly reporting the revelations that snowden was brave enough to come forward with. we would all be the worse off for it, all be ignorant and i don't know where edward snowden would be. glenn greenwald paid a price. he has had his patriotism question, has been called a criminal, or accessory to a criminal. he has been called these things by journalists.

he has had his boyfriend detained. had his freedom curtailed. but he is here with news ottawa tonight and i would like a warm round of applause for pulitzer prize winning journalist, glenn greenwald. [applause] >> thank you very much. good evening to everybody, and thanks for coming out tonight, and thank you as well to open media for sponsoring the event and thanks as well to my very enthusiastic, long-time reader, bill owen, for organizing such a great event and helping me be able to come this week to canada, where i have had a very event.

96 hours -- eventful 96 hours. it is -- an interesting way i feel like i've had, despite how tumultuous it's been, rather productive week because i feel like i've clicked something on my list of life objectives that a lot of people believe your stereotypes about your country would be imfor to achieve which is i have got ton spend the entire week with my e-mail in box, full of enraged canadians, and there are a lot of people who would have said that's impossible to achieve so it's something i got to check off of my list. the reaction to the article i wrote this week, which i wrote after the quebec attack, shortly before before news of the ottawa shooting broke, actually did provoke among the most intense and polarizing reaction of anything i've ever written. and in a lot of ways i look at that as a sign that it was actually a piece very worth

writing. because i do think ultimately the role of journalism, especially at the most difficult times, is to question and challenge the assumptions that people cling to most fervently. and i heard from at least as many canadians, at least as many canadian, whoa were supportive of the arguments i had made and were appreciative of the fact that the debate ended up including those arguments and perspectives as i did, hearing from enraged canadians, and i think this really underscores an important point. which is that the events of this week, as tragic and horrific as they have been to watch and to watch unfold, really do provide the perfect framework in a lot of ways to think about all of the issues that i have long planned here to come and discuss. those issues are ones i have been working on for many years but were really broth into vivid

highlight by the work i've been able to do over the last 126 16 months, recording on the extraordinary archive of damps provided to me by my heroic source, edward snowden, and these issues pertain to the messages and narrative that western democracy, the governments of western democracies, have been disseminating to citizenry in the post 9/11 ear remark about terrorism, about threats their nature of our societies and they pertain to all of the policies ushered in as a result of those claims, and in a lot of ways the events of this week, which i have got ton see unfold first hand by being here, are almost like a perfect laboratory for understanding how countries in the west have responded to these kind of attacks and the policies and perspectives they've been able to entrench as a result. the very first event that happened upon the first attack

that i immediately noticed and recognized as extremely familiar and significant, was the intakennous injection do -- by instantous, instant stainous injection of most inflammatory but also the most meaningless world in our political lexicon, which is terrorism. almost instantly, before anybody knew anything about the perpetrators of either events, the media and political class in this country, and in the united states and throughout the west, all agreed by consensus that both of these attacks were adequately and even necessarily described as being terrorism. there is no discussion as usual of what that word means or whatever at act has to do order to qualify. it was simple play label that instantly got applied almost reflexively, without any reflection or deliberation or discussion of any kind, and that word, asia said, is meaningless

in the sense it has no definition but it's inflammatory in the sense it's incredibly consequential and happens over and over again with these attacks and it's worth think about what that word means and the effect we have allowed it to have on all of our thought processes as citizens. that was followed by the remarkable agility of how the harper government tactically responsibled to these attacks. i am not a particularly enthused fan of the harper government. [applause] >> but -- [applause] >> but, i think it's important to give credit where it's due. the speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the shamelessness with which the prime minister moved to manipulate and exploit the emotions around these events to demand more power for himself was in a really way almost

impressive. i think you have to give him credit. if you look at how other western governments have responded to these eye tack is they usually have the decency to wait an interval two of or three weeks before admitting they're exploiting these fears and order to justify new legislation and new powers. prime minister harp iris remarkly unburdened by those kind of qualms. it was really -- less than 48 hours, less than 48 hours, after the ottawa shootings, he stood up in the house of commons -- this is yesterday and this what he said. he said, quote, our laws and police powers need be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention, and arrest. they need to be much strengthened. i assure members that work which is already underway will be expedited. the only thing unusual is the speed and nakedness with which

happened but this has been the process in the 9/11 era when attacks are instantly seized upon as way to further dismantle poor protections of civil liberties and core principles of western justice. another really visible and really familiar dynamic that i was able to see this week is what referred to as the too-soon tactic. i had a lot of people who wrote to mow who said i agree with what you had said in the article and what you have been saying in interview. i think it's important for you to seive it but i just feel like it's too soon. apparently there's some kind are kind of time limit you're supposed to wait before you start talking below these attacks and while i understand the sentiment behind that claim, the problem with it is that there is no such thing as too soon, when it comes to how the government and their allies in the media start politicizing

these events. itself was, as i said, instainous it was label a terrorist attack and all kinds of claims, very debatable claims made based on the emotions that came out of these eye tacks, and if you're a journalist or citizen, it's actually irresponsible to seize these critical hours when citizenry is most engaged in an emotional and rifted way to cede that to the government and let the government message goes unchallenged. they don't wait before the start politicizing, not just the event but even these well intentioned emotional rituals that spring up around them. and i think it's worth talking about that as well. but the most significant part of this dynamic that i want to spend the bulk of my time talking about is the way in which we have been persuaded to think about the world in a drastically different way than reality ought to suggest, and by

that i mean we have been persuaded to think about our own societies and governments and our own behavior in the world, that there's very little resemblance to the reality of what we allowed or society and governments to do in the world to illustrate that i want to share an alaska anecdote that involves canada. the very first story from the snowden archive i was able to report that specifically involved canada -- all the stories involved canada in the sense they're all about the internet and we all share the same internet but the very first story i was able terror about self-really that pertained to canada was in october of last year, and i reported this story with the large brazilian television network, and what this story revealed, it used documents from you're version of the nsa, csac and it revealed that csay had been spying on the

communications of the brazilian merchandiseyear or of mines ministry, whichs just happens to be the agency in brazil of greatest interest of the canadian timber and logging industry. and when i reported the story, before i reported i, knew it would be a huge story in brazil in part because they're very concerned about the way in which surveillance is being used to essentially cheat in the mecklenberg market place. also because it has -- it smacks of the kind of colonialism and imperialism with which that country has been plagued for so long about its neighbors to the north. and ailes knew while it would be a huge story in brazil, i didn't actually expect it to be a very gig story in canada. the reason i didn't think it would be a bug story in canada is because from experience i know when i've done reporting, along the lines of country a. is spying on country b, country b, the country being spied on,

cares a huge amount but typically country a., the country can do the spying, doesn't really care at all. people care bet stories that show they're being pied on. don't carry very much about toes showing their government is spying on other people around the world. yet my expectations were the warted once we did the reporting. it was a huge story in canada. led the nightly news four or five nights. i was deluged with interviews to interview skis was very surprised at how much that story resonated here in canada, and i spoke to a couple of canadian journalists who i know pretty well. in fact i spoke with three or four them them and asked them why has the story become so big in canada, this idea that canada is spying on this ministry in brazil. they said basically there or two reasons why the story ended up being big. they said, number one, there were a ton of canadians,

probably most, who didn't even know there was such an agency called csac. that canadians didn't know they had an agency engaged in this very far-reachingreaching and ie electronic surveillance. they were watching the snowden reporting, knew the nsa did it, the british had the gch2 but canadians doesn't know there was an agency edge gauging in this activity. southboundly they said -- and i found this even more meaningful -- they said the self-perception that canadians have nationalistically is completeliedled a at odds with t this story reveals. they were saying, the idea that canadians think we're canadian, we don't do that kind of thing, we don't spy on democratically elected friendly governments, for unfair economic advantage. and i found both those of points to be profoundly significant. i mean, you think about the first point, the idea that

there's this agency called csac that throughout the world engages in incredibly consequential behavior which the very existence of which has been kept from canadians, let alone the broad strokes of what they do. think about what that means for the claim that we're living in a meaningful democracy. whenever people ask me dish get asked this all the time -- what is most meaningful revelation you discovered, i say the threat to privacy posed by this surveillance, the vast amount of communications they collect every day, is very significant, but even more significant than that is the threat polessed to the democracy. it is stunning that these five governments of the five -- u.s., u.k., australia, new zealand, and canada, have instituted a system as self-evidently consequential with such profound reaching, far reaching implications, as a system of

mast surveillance, without a whiff of disclosure or debate among the citizenries that are supposed to hold them democratic include accountable. i did a story i think about four months ago, and as i came from the nsa archive that was one of the most significant ones we did, even though it didn't get a lot of attention fired the other stories, and the story was essentially about this magazine that the nsa publishes internally. they publish -- they have a magazine that is top secret, only for themselves and it looks like every other magazine that you would buy at news stand, except it's really creepy and they boast of all the wonderful ways they invaded other people's communications and have prefiles of the technological nerd to have figured out how to break into somebody's e-mail account and they highlight them and it's like snoop of the week, that kind of thing. and one of the issues that we had in the snowden archives contained an interview, they do

interviews like every other magazine them and view was with the top official at the nsa in charge of foreign partnership. he manages the relationship with the gchq and casc in canada and european countries countries anr agencies and the interviewer said, there's this incredibly strange phenomenon that a lot of us can't figure out, which is an -- all of these other countries with which we partner you have wild swings in the outcome of political elections. sometimes conservatives win, other times liberals win. you have the far right that can governor, you have the far left and it almost makes no difference, the interviewer stayed, nothing ever changes. our partnership with these other countries continues as strong, no matter who wins or loses the election. why is that? and one of the really fascinating things, and unusual things about reading these documents from the snowden archive you encounter these

things you never otherwise see, which is government officials who win they're asked the question, actually tell the truth, because they didn't ever think anybody would know what their answer was because it was all supposed to be secret. and what this official said in response to that question to me was incredibly significant. he said, the reason these partnerships never change based on the outcome of elections is because there is almost nobody outside of the military structure of these countries that even know that these partnerships exist. in other words, the people that we go to at the polls and elect as political leaders have no idea and never learn about the existence of these surveillance activities and, therefore, can't change them because they don't know about them. and over and over, and all of the countries in which i did reporting i constantly had top officials or members of parliament or congress say to me, i was responsible for overseeing this agency and yet i

learned so much more from reading your articles that were published than i ever learned from the oversight committees on which i sat or from the government meeting i attend. we have allow thread to be almost like a state within a state. and the state that is within the state is one that has been completely removed from democratic accountability or from transparency of any kind, and that experience in writing about csac really underscored that for me. think of hough little we have learned prior to that reporting about the most or one of the most profoundly consequential programs that our government has implemented and think about how genuine of a democracy we really have, how meaningful it is with go to polls and pick the leader we want if we have no idea what it is that they're doing, and of course it's not just surveillance but all sorts of other policies. implemented in the name of terrorism that have exist evidence beyond this wall of secrecy and the implications for

democracy are incredibly profound, as is our ability as citizens to understand what our government is doing. now, that leads to the other reason that they gave and i found even more fascinating, which was, although they were saying it happen -- this idea that canada ya reactedded to the story because it's inconsistent with their self-perception, we're canadians, we deposits do this thing. that perception was wrong. canada cans do that thing. the documents we publish demonstrates they did exactly that. and when you think about what that means, that the reality of what our government is doing on the one hand is inconsistent with the perceptions that we have about our government on the other, that is another way of saying that the citizenry has been propagandized. that's the definition of the term. they've been led to believe pleasant things about their government that actually is different to the arrest of what

the government does in the world, and this to me is the crux of the entire post 9/11 era and of the event wet saw this week. so i want to spend a little time talking about that a little bit more in depth. i remember really vividly the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack. i'm talking about the days and weeks after 9/11 attack. i was in manhattan on 9/11. i had lived and worked there ten years and i recalled that experience and still recall it very, very clearly. and the prevailing emotion that was triggered by the 9/11 attacks in the immediate aftermath, not months down the road, once the government began massaging the messaging but the immediate aftermath was not one of anger or vengeance or sadness. it wasn't those things. the immediate prevailing emotion was bafflement, shock, and surprise. and the question that was on almost everybody's mind is, why

would somebody possibly want to do this? toe the united states? why would somebody have such hatred for americans that they would be willing to blow themselves up in order to kill as many people indiscriminately whom they don't know? what kind of causes could have led them to that mindset? this was being asked not rhetorically. it want a protest addition of innocence or anything else. it was a general question most americans general lynn we did not understand the answer. and the u.s. government knew that it had to provide an answer because everybody knew there were some reason. everyone knew it wasn't random. the group that was responsible for it didn't put the names of all the countries into a hat and happened to pick out the united states. there had to be some reason, and the government enough it had to provide an explanation. and the explanation it provided was one that we now 12 years

later can scoff at readily but at the time it's what huge numbers of americans believed, because their government told them that, and the media told them that. the answer was, the reason they hate us isn't because of anything we've done, perish the thought. nothing to do with anything we have done. the reason they hate us is because we're so free that they hate us for our freedom. that was the genuine answer with the a straight face that the u.s. government and then the u.s. media delivered to the american population. and what was so extraordinary about that, if you look back on it, is that it was not difficult at all to find out the reason. there was a long list of grievances that not only the group that perpetrated the attack but a huge part of the muslim world had been openly discussing for many, many years.

you could have gone good and read news him newspapers, visited muslim countries, talk to somebody who was muslim could have south -- sought out any of that dialogue and the grievances were clear and all imbedded into the culture for a long time. wasn't just things like the u.s. putting troops on what is perceived as holy soil in saudi arabia it was more substantial. things like imposing a sanctions regime on iraq that killed several hundred thousand iraqi children or overthrowing their democratically elect leaders and propping up some of the most heinous despots despots and tyrh as the ones that ruled egypt and still rule saudi arabia 0, supporting militarily economically and diplomatically the country of israel as it engages in violence against its neighbors and palestine, lebanon, and elsewhere. this list of grievances was fully aired in that part of the world, and yet remarkably, americans depend didn't just

reject the validity of those grievances. didn't reach the connects didn't justify the attack. they literally were completely unaware of the existence of that dialogue from that part of the world. they had no idea their government was doing these things and that is stunning. the fact that for so long, critical parts of what the u.s. government were doing in the world were simply suppressed and n most u.s. discourse. to the point where americans lid literally did not though the existence of it. i if you look at polling dat and other surveys of the muslim world versus the western world -- by the muslim world i mean shirt hand for predominantly muslim countries you. find radical differences in how people in that part of the world think about things versus how people in our part of the world think about things, and we often like to tell ourselves the reason for this disparate view is because they don't have a

free press and they're primitive and get misled and they're propagandized. and there's all kinds of polling dot a a that shows if you ask people in that part of the world, which countries are the greatest threat to world peace, people in they part of the world don't si iran and china and russia or north korea. they say the greatest threat to world peace are two countries two close allies of canada, the united states and israel, and so it may be true in some cases that sometimes what explains this disparate perspective in the world is that the part of the worldes propagandized, but sometimes what explains it is that we are. and i think it's critical to accept that fact and to confront it. nobody likes to think of themselves as living in a society that is propagandized. i think some of the most vivid examples demonstrate can how this works that is a seemingly narrow one but to me very powerful, is one that happened

in 2009 in 2009, this woman who is an iranian american journalist name roxanna was detained while in iran, doing journalism work, and the iranian government say they had detained her and arrested her because they suspect she was a spy, and she was imprisoned in an iranian prison for three months, until an iranian court ordinary orderer her released on the ground there was inned to justify her detension. during the three months when she was in prison in iran, her cause, he case, was one of the most celebrated cases in american media circles. almost every prominent journalist would go on twitter and say, free roxanna. there was all this outrage of the idea that, look at iran, they're a country that is so tyrannical they actually imprisoned journalists and there is would indignation and horror over what they had done. the same thing happened in north korea when they imprisoned two

american korean journalists and then ends up releasing them when al gore went in and visited. huge amounts of attention paid, huge opt amounts of anger and indignation a country could imprison journalists. at the same exact time all of that was happening then same exact time, the united states government had been imprisoning over two dozen journalists, as part of whatted called the war on terror, including the case of somebody named sammy hawk. sammy hawk -- was an al-jazeera photo journalist and cameraman who was arrested and detained by the u.s. government when he was crossing into the board of afghanistan to cover the war for al-jazeera in late 2001. he was taken first to bagram, the prison in bagram, and then shortly after he was taken to guantanamo, where he remained for the next six years, without being charged with any kind of a

crime, given no due process, of any kind, where he was interrogated overwhelmingly about his work for al-jazeera and almost none about anything to do with terrorism or al qaeda. the reason that is so amazing is because the word, sammy al hawk, were almost never messengered in american mitt cal discourse. americans have no idea that their government imprisoned two dozen journalists as part of the war on terror or kept an al-jazeera photojournalist imprisoned in goon for six years without any kind of trial. in fact i went to a nexus search and looked up the word "roxanna sabary" and found the number of mentions during that three-month person when she was detain ned an iranian prison and it was 8,000 mentions in american media of her name. if you search the name, sammy al haq for the several send year he

was kept in goon, it is less than 100. the number is something like, 71. americans have no idea who he is. in the muslim world, however, sammy al-haq is a human celebrity. when he was released it was major headline news all over that palled of the world. people in that part of the world know it isn't just iran and north korea which imprison journalists but also the united states that does so. it's we in this part of the world, from whom that has been largely kept, and this disparity between what our government is doing in the world and what we actually ourselves are aware of, i think is central to so much of what has gone wrong the most 9/11 era. and all of this was the backdrop for a what i watched this week in canada. and what prompted me was the main impetus for me to write the article i wrote, and i remember the moment i decided i had to write about this.

i was reading a newspaper account of the attack in quebec and was simultaneously watching a canadian television program about it and the theme of both the article and the television show was the same. the theme was this. was people are stunned that this kind of violence could take place in such a peaceful community like the one where it took place. and i remember thinking that on some level that's really appealing to believe that's true. it is, of course, true the community where that otaco cured is relatively peaceful, and if you walk around canada, as i have done many, many times in many cities, it seems like a really peaceful country. it is when you walk on canadian soil. all of that is really true. but what isn't true is that the foreign policy of canada is peaceful. the foreign policy of canada is

not peaceful. and i say that not judgmentally or in denunsation. ry gallon tote that -- i'll get to that in a minute. for a moment i say that only as a literal observation of facts. i think a lot of times i have seen americans who come and speak to the canadians, like too display up stereo types and flatter canadians by saying our governmenting really militaristic and warlike special lie under the bush administration and we wish we could be more like you, this nice, tranquil, tie verse, peaceful country and that's right an extent to which that is not entirely mythical. just from the obama administration alone, this to me is one of the most extraordinary statistics that i've heard. in the last six years, just under president obama, who by the way won the 2009 nobel peace prize -- the united states has dropped bombs on seven, seven, different predominant natalie muslim countries.

syria is the seventh in addition to a muslim minority in the philippines which is eight countries bombed just since the inauguration of the 2009 nobel peace prize winner. now, canada has not been a party to all of that. canada often refrains from some american aggression, largely from par it pacing in the war in iraq but canada is a steads fast partner in the united states in all kinded of militarism and violence. years of invasion and occupation in afghanistan, a bombing campaign of libya that left that country in utter and complete sham bells and now was the canadian press itself is calling a new war in iraq which is already spilled over into syria. now, you may have a lot of different views about all of those policies if you may believe those policies are charitable acts of nation-building generosity. and maybe they are. that's a debate that people can have and have had.

but there is a huge part of the world, hundreds of millions of people, that regard those words much, much differently. they sigh theme as acts of aggression and militarism. they see the innocent children and the women and the innocent men who are killed continuously by those policies, on top of which the participation of canada in things like surveillance, or rendition, literally picking up people from around the world, including in one case your own citizen, and send them to the world's word regimes to be tortured. you cannot be a country. you cannot be a country that lets your government engage in militarism and violence and that kind of radicalism and aggression in multiple countries around the world, year after year after year, and simultaneously have the expectation that there will never be any violence brought back to the country perpetrating them. and this is not some radical

left wing doctrine i invented. this concept of what is called blowback has beencry doctrine for men deng candidates. the idea if a government engages in military action in a different country in a different sovereign country, maybe it's not justifiable but it is inevitable that violence will be brought back to that country. there is this remarkable, remarkable 2004 report that was commissioned by the george bush pentagon, run by donald rumsfeld, which it was given to the defense task force, and the question that donald rumsfeld commissioned that task force to ask was, what is ultimately the cause of terrorism? why are there so many people in the world that want to do violence to the united states? and you can go online and read it. it seemed as though what i wrote this week for what said in interviews was controversial. it isn't. it is self-evident. the report in 2004 concluded

this. it said, the key cause of terrorism aimed at americans is, quote, american direct intervention in the muslim world. american direct intervention in the muslim world. it then identified three different policies that comprise this intervention. one is support for the regions' worst tyrant, giving economic aid and drowning in weapons the regimes in egypt and saudi arabia. secondly was stead fast report support for israel, which i viewed as enabling all sorts of aaggression. and third was actual wars and occupations, principally the invasion of afghanistan. canada plays a role in all of those policies and what the report concluded -- this is not me saying this, this is an actual quote. repudiated the government's statements about why the philadelphia attack, why terrorism happened. this what it connect, quote, muslims do not, quote, hate our

freedoms, end quote. but, rather, they hate our policies. it is so tempting, soso tempting to see ourselves as victims, as pure and innocent victims, it is -- we all want to see ourselves that way. we get to emancipate ourselves from any kind of responsibility or culpablity or guilt. it's tempting to say when our societies are attacked rather than our societies doing the attacking can the reason it happenedder is there's this extremist religion in the world or extremist version of a religion that is just unbear play bly hateful and irrationally savage and want to do violence for its own sake. they hate us for our freedom. this just simply isn't the case, and it is our responsibility as citizens and certainly as journalists to make certain that the dialogue isn't comfortable or flattering. that shouldn't be the goal of the goal should be to make it as raskal and fact based ann as

possible so we're not actually susceptible to manipulation. so i just want to talk about one other point about the events this week and how critical i think it is in this dynamic. this is actual late bit uncomfortable to talk about but i think it's probably a sign that it's really worth talking about. i have spent i think three or four days now, like everybody necessary this country, watching unbelievably difficult to watch footage of the family members of the two soldiers who were killed, one in each of the eye attacks sky learned their names and what their life aspiration aspirations were, seen their parents grieve organize siblings. it is incredibly horrific and emotional and tragic to watch and i have gone through that exact same thing with all other canadians. but the thing i find very significant about that, and we should be focused on the victims that way but what i find really

significant about that is that over the past 12 years, my government especially but also yours, has done all kinds of things that have resulted in the horrific deaths of innocent people throughout the world. thousands of children, women, and innocent men. and i would be willing to bet almost anything that over 99.9% of americans and 799.9% of canadaans are complete live incapable of identifying the name of a single one of those victims. we know nothing about the life aspirations of the people that our government, whose lives they end. we don't hear from their grieving mothers or their grieving siblings. they are literally disappeared from our public discourse. and in some sense this is just natural human behavior women care more and pay more attention when our neighbor down the sent to whom we know well gets killed in a car accident than we do of

someone who lives thousands of miles away whoa is kill. that's natural human interaction with the world. when it comes to public policy it's a really dangerous thing, to have that kind of a one-sided perspective on the world. that is what then leads us to believe that there is this ideology out there that is evil and savage and kills innocent people in the most roar hick and tragic ways and we're nothing more than the innocent victims who their buy standers of it because -- bystapedeses ofs because we a allow ourselves to suppress the implications of our action and things that cause it. i think the reason that for me it's so important to talk about these things is twofold. one is that i think we become much more susceptible to the kind of fear mongering that the canadian government is already engaged in, that western governments unformally engage in, to manipulate our emotion,

to get us to acquiesce the toe things like what prime minister harper calls greater police powers of surveillance, detention, and arrests. even talk that the conservatives in parliament want to introduce a bill to criminalize anything that is perceived as endorse organize legitimatizing terrorist attacks, particularly alarming for me because although i didn't say, a lot of people falsely claimed i was justifying and legitimatizing the attack by talking debt the things i'm talking about tonight. that's extreme and radical. we become more susceptible that manipulation when we don't face the reality of what our own government does. the more important reason to confront these facts, i believe, is because it's really easy to look back at past generations and to make judgments and condemnations about what they did. and the reasons why they made all kinds of evil choices to and

to have clarity about the path they embarked on and it's extremely difficult to do that to ourselves. but i think it's worst trying to mam what the next generation or future generations will think about what it is we're doing, and i think it is undoubtedly true, uncontrovertible the case, that future generations will look back certainly at the united states but its key allies and say in the wake of 9/11, the u.s. and its allies embarked upon a path of endless war. they put themselves in a mind s and a policy approach that guaranteed not a long war but a war that had no end. and the reason i say that is the pattern is so clear over 13 years and so clear this week, which is we do something in that part of the world that generates all sorts of rage and fury, rightly or wrongly. that rage and cure guy causes a tiny percentage of the people in that world to want to bring violence back to us.

when violence is brought back to us we immediately demand our government further erode civil liberties and engage in even more militarism, which informs that part of the world more and us kansas more violence to be brought back to us in a never, ending spiral. how do people think we're ever going to be able to get off that path if each time one of these attacks happens, our reaction is the same? i think there's just two critical points worth thinking about in terms of that process. one is that the mere existence of a successful attack is not evidence that government policy was flawed. themer existence of a terrorist attack doesn't show the government should take its policy. you have at the most personal policy the perfect calibration of privacy and security or freedom and security, and still have terrorist attacks. you cannot have a society in

which absolute safety is the goal. it isn't achievable. and trying to achieve it will create so many worse harms than the failure to have it in the first place. we allow that all the time. when we see a fatal car accident we don't start immediately demanding that our government lower the speed limit or change its policies. we accept that in exchange for the benefit of having automobiles, we're going to have the risk of death, and sometimes people are going to die. it's intrinsic to the process, unavoidable. we don't demand the speed limit be reduced to three miles per hour in order to avoid fatilities. we should be thinking the same way about terrorism. this is the crucial fact. even after this week, even after this week, and even if there are weeks and weeks more of weeks like this one in the year ahead or two years ahead, if you are a canadian citizen, you have the

greater chance of dying by slip neglect bag tub and hitting your head on the cement or getting struck by lightning, than you do dying in a terrorist attack. that is just factually the case. and yet we have allowed this word, terrorism to take on such profound meaning that right before our eyes, governments dismantle the poor protections, the defining at tribind western justice in order to keep us safe. it's critically important not reflexively act that way every time there's an attack. but the last one i just want to leave you've with is this word terrorism itself. because in all the things i've written about over the last ten years, every single issue, from torture to indefinite detention to killing people whose namous don't know, with drones to massive government secrecy to

privacies mass surveillance, the governments and its defenders use one word over and over to justify everything they've do and that this word terrorism. they just it the word and expect it will end the debate in their favor. it is the most consequential word in our political vocabulary. and what is really amazing about that fact is that it is simultaneously a word that does not have any fixed meaning. you cannot provide any definition of terrorism that will then lead to a consistent application. you cannot find scholars who can give you what that definition of that word means. there's a famous supreme court case in the united states where the supreme court justices grappled over the word on sent because pornography in the united states is legal but on sent and the supreme courtitys had to define obscenity. and the supreme court justice fame is mostly said, well, ail can say is i don't -- i can't

define it but i know it when i see it. which is a really kind of alarming way for our first amendment freedoms to be defined, based on this tingling sensation in your stomach about what this phenomenon is. that's the say became that terrorism is talk about. it was remarkable that incident in quebec, according to the government's version, the perpetrator of the crime waited for two hours in his car in order to find a soldier in uniform and attack that soldier. now, whatever terrorism means -- and it's impossible to define but the one common usage it typically has is it requires the deliberate targeting of civilians with violence for critical end, and yet here is something who seeped to have deliberately avoided targeting civilians and targeted a soldier instead. clearly illegal and unjustified. this is not a soldier deployed

in war. how and what sense is that terrorism? or if you have somebody like the ottawa shooter, who very likely -- although we don't kno -- i'm0s at the driven by a mental instability as much as religion and cdsol, in what sense that turns out to be the case is that terrorism? this shows the word, terrorism, as significant at it's become, really has no meaning other than violence engage ned by muslims against the west. it's really just a term to legitimatize the kind of violence that we dooferses dooferses-door -- do ourselves and delegitimateize the violence used against us, and if you think of itself in that way it should have far different consequences than it has now when is comes to to being applied without anybody really thinking about what it is. >> the last point i want to leave you with fully ask then i'll talk to jesse -- is not quite about the events of this

week directly. it's actually about the last year and a half of work i've been able to do with edwards snowden. and i just want to share with you one particular lesson that i learned from the last year and a half that i try and impart to everybody wherever i go and whatever i'm speaking about, but a to me it was realow found lesson, something that will influence me the rest of my life. when i first talked to edward snowden, the very first conversation i ever had with him was online, and i knew nothing about him. i at any time know his name, didn't know how old he was, didn't even know in which agency he worked. but what i did know was that he had claimed to have an enormous amount of extremely sensitive material from the most secretive agency of the world's most powerful government and he wanted to give that to me. usually when you have somebody who comes forward, even with a tiny fraction of what he had, to give you information that the law says they're not allowed to

give you, they want to hide. they want too be protected and remain anonymous because they fear the consequences of being discovered. edward snowden said exactly the opposite thing. the he said i don't want to hide. i don't intend to hide. i intend once i give you this material, to come forward into the world and publicly identify myself as the source, and to explain to the world why it is that i did what i did and to explain my reasoning and motive of why i think it's the right thing to do. he said die think it's the right thing to do and therefore i don't field a need to hide. and when i got to hong kong, i remember before i got i had this mental image of what he is like. i'm sure you have all had that experience,os develop a mental image and it's never anything like what that like. i get to hong kong, and there's this kid, he is 29, looks six years younger, can looks like

any kind of computer geek that wandered the mall or is in a college laboratory, and i spent a lot of time with million trying to understand his motives for why he would want to unravel his life and come forward, knowing it would probably mean he would good to prison for the rest of his life. and what i finally understood about those motives was that he had discovered something that he believed was a profound injustice. and knew that he had the ability to do something about it. ...

>> at. >> then he would toil away with a massive national security corporation. and yet through nothing more than an act of conscience conscience, and a fearless commitment to the political principles that he said he believed

>> >> with that i thank you

very much. [applause] thank you. >> would you like some water? we will have a conversation and for a while. there are microphones here and with another one in the back. to the end of the conversation.

>> it is true that canadians were shocked to learn reword spying on brazil for industrial purposes. but we were not shocked by the revelations or shocked enough to learn that we welcome to nsa or to be spying at the un named airport through wife by connections. that is embarrassing in a way that our own abrupt -- government what they're doing here is not i have heard other theories i have heard we're not like americans. we are more deferential to power that is why the reaction here has been muted where in the united states

which edwards noted have prompted the president to actually modify if that is meaningful not is another question. so we get into this discussion so i say we don't always much says we do they know about verizon but we don't know with conclusive terms whether or not our spy agency or the government is spying on us. you do know something about that. and maybe more than anybody in the audience there are questions been no question before this one. is csec spying on canadians? >> we have already done stories in particular that demonstrates the answer to that question is yes. that you reference that csec that land international

airports in canada track them through they leave through the wifi connections. it is important to understand there is no such thing as canadians buying. and with how indivisible it is so whenever reporting we have done about the nsa necessarily includes canada as well. it is important to realize that edwards noted was working inside an american and surveillance agency. so that whole that it took were documents about the nsa there is already information about csec doing that type of spying and to have more

reporting on those questions to come. it is complicated but they have paid responsibility to do a write but we reports that as quickly as we can with some very significant revelations about canada. the difference with an essay that message to americans was the company's you communicate through are indiscriminately spying on massive amounts of people. here we have a situation people could say i do know what airport that was then another with metadata then one was just an exercise said the commissioner says nothing was -- no laws were broken so makes it, and denial because they're forbidden by law to do so so

is there anything you can tell us? >> i would tell you that you did the canadian edwards noted and to take the documents to look at your journalist or another way. so if you grab their canadian edwards noted now the journalists could cover us. [laughter] thirty mail.com. [laughter] but i actually do think one of the most consequential aspects is they will spy on other people and a partner countries as well. i learned a lesson i will not preview the reporting we're doing because i believe you reporting live

have documents that show xyz by the time i get back to my hotel room and tell the day i die i would get emails that say where are these documents? plus you want to make sure what you are reported hot -- reporting is true that as you know, there will be reported in good times even if you are such duchies you have been saying they're coming four months and months. >> i will not play 20 questions it doesn't do any good but with all due respect to report this responsibly and i can understand what you do so so, there are other factors that hinder your ability we are not talking about canadian edwards noted but edwards noted.

and your experience that may talk about with the canadian press has been a little troubled burger you describe your relationship as difficult and a shocking resistance for months and months and you told me this past to do we have to give specific with a remark -- a member of the cdc was opposed to reporting this. i let him do the dirty work it is then mixed bag we did several stories with the cdc in cooperation with a fantastic reporter and a couple of editors there that were very aggressive and

really stood behind the story and did not about to government pressure. they became too, the editor-in-chief of the globe and the mail and then we had a new journalist with him to work and this individual seems to believe that surveillance is a good thing which he is entitled to think, i guess and therefore he does not think it should be reported because he believes canadians want csec to do these things. that was the hold up and us cbc said one journalist and are committed to reporting and i feel we will now. there were problems but let me say when just so you understand the process the documents that we talk about reporting on around the

world are in the eyes of the government's with the most sensitive material they have. it shows how they invade our privacy on the internet didn't want people how they do it. so to report on those documents they have extreme amounts of pressure to bully and intimidate to scare them out of publishing if you publish this documents will help terrorist that would cause the death of innocent people and of blood will be on your hands. now a good journalist and good editors know they say that when they want to hide what they are doing so you ignore it. and some people get scared by those warnings and if

health -- hold up the reporting and that is exactly what they told the office this was a matter of life and death. and read the documents came up public sentiment came on. we're still waiting for that moment. at one to put everything on but remembers cbc is the public broadcaster and for months and months nothing was coming out. and then with that information he has suggested strongly and that is bullshit and we can put that to rest here you can go on twitter and call it bullshit

and that is not convincing. and that the reporting has not come. who are you working with now? i realize i make things very awkward with you for you to be talking to the cbc i'm sorry if i've made things weird. [laughter] but who will report this with you? >> i spend a long time to talk about the role of the journalist which is to hold people in positions of power accountable that includes those that have a significant role. annoying as you have been and as uncomfortable you make things with other journalists you did the right thing and i am glad you did it and the public has a right to know and the media outlets are being

bullied or if there is other corrupt issues but we still work with the mail so i hope and expect there to the important reporting coming through. >> consistent holding people accountable but as of person it is unfortunate to some of the other people is shameful because you are working with journalists. i do have to have questions to hold you accountable but one said he is puzzled but -- by the process of the journalist you choose to work with with lack of transparency. but you did tell me in a previous conversation how the intercept and you that

it is the slow process with a robust press with so many eyes so quickly but then the months can go by. telesco as much as you can and about the steps you're taking to go faster. >> often into voice opinions about what is a natural thing to do there is a lot of interest in the story. the archive that we have is vast and complex that pertains to pretty much every country on earth in ways that take a long time for the most technically adept people. the other times better

invade archives but it takes a lot of reporting to come to work. but what is remarkable is how many documents we could disclose around the world in the time we have been able to do it. but not just the public but also to the source added and merge snowden wanted to me that indiscriminate population he would just of blood from the internet himself. and to make sure every story publishes in the public interest that is the of burden i take very seriously. but to get them reported more quickly like big media outlets they will just hold

onto those documents then one day they will report that maybe they won't. we want to put the story ahead of our own competitive interest or proprietary interest so we created a system in new york that is almost ready where journalists around the world can work directly so we substantial lead -- essentially maximize the journalist reporting that we think expedites the process to have the media outlets have had it. >> and this is like the human size and in the fridge where they could access that suggests. and this is soon it is almost ready. >> almost ready.

>> i cannot imagine how your life must have changed and you are a new kind of journalist but you are one guy who wishes of magnets to report this stuff are you ready for it to be off your shoulders? >> it is the burden when there is a lot of responsibility to be a principal guardian of the material and how it is distributed into the world you do have a responsibility to make certain that the material to endangers people's lives are reported responsibly we also have a corresponding burden to make

sure it is the way to be conducted. there are threats that come from books like this there was a long time i could not travel back to the united states because the government threatened to arrest us me and my partner with the investigation. that you don't -- to go into journalism to do a story like this. to show all that stuff actually is true to see the evidence for it now to kick as usual in the wall of secrecy to be incredibly gratifying.

it is really valuable to meet so a journalist around the world it is just the nature of the journalism if you say to challenge people in power because they could do things to you by the way you challenge them that is an intrinsic to the process. >> but then almost before our eyes with character assassination and slowly the stories bear out with the pulitzer prize then you come to canada and top journalist welcome with open arms. >> it is funny i was elected

here in toronto six months ago very high end. [laughter] said two people i was meeting with alan dershowitz precisely. [laughter] and the director of the ncaa though the bush administration i gave an interview on the day before i left and talking about the serious crisis that when you are invited to these type of defense you are expected to be very simple. there is the cocktail party initiative their room and you are treating adversaries like prospective opponents and i don't have respect for worker chouettes.

[laughter] [applause] he is a war criminal. should be implemented us system of torture. [applause] it does bring up conflicts. it was funny i gave disclosure like that i have a hard time shaking their hands because i consider them to be to the most pernicious people on the planet though there is a huge profile of me and the parties and they put his eye and degrading to the most pernicious people on the planet. [laughter] i did not speak to them or shake hands with them. but you do have that conflict you want to remain that outsider status but then you are invited to these legal holes where it is expected to change their

behavior and that is the process if you are committed to resisting it said american has said that a problem that i will let out looking at the facebook page to those who can line up we would extend a conversation with you. why did dennis noted news facebook? tim mackey was you john social media why was he not on the platform? >> one of the first violators of privacy in history that would be really weird. [applause] no one should use facebook. but i have encouraged them to use twitter as a means to

have a platform where he can speak with the interesting things he could construct his life with united states and russia with the seizures people say oh you did russia laky through them to darkness that we thought he would end up an american prison for the rest of his life and although he did not choose russia it enabled him to do interviews to give speeches and make appearances and he is an important voice. so he is happy and there may be a day he ends up on twitter spin magazine's he should be mixing it up more than he is selected as a little difficult when you

cannot leave the country of the world's most powerful government considers to the number one fugitive. so he tends to live his life on line so that has not changed that much. >> we will get to as much as making and. please keep the questions brief. please make sure their questions. some have drawn the distinction between stories of a government spying on them which was intensely debatable and those of the agency spying on other governments that they kind of suspected was happening and you draw distinctions and how you do that?

>> with four broad categories of stories of nsa spying on its own citizens than the nsa to spy on foreign populations indiscriminately entire populations under a surveillance microscope then spying on friendly governments like that chancellor of germany then then assays spying on adversarial countries like pakistan. there is a sense in the united states the only legitimate stories are about the nsa spying on their own citizens. we have done a lot of reporting and snowden once asked about this and i say all the time the idea the only privacy that matters is the privacy of matters and

fibers and other rugged is not american their privacy is irrelevant and should not be reported on is grotesque. and snowden was adamant from the start -- the start that to use the internet's but the debate with the government is valid. with the stories on spying on democratic leaders were significant because a lot of people don't think any government should do that. that is debatable but i have stayed away from stories of u.s. government spying on adversary governments because that i don't think is all that interesting.

>> so to talk about being insulated from democracy because people are not made aware. short of waiting for someone to come along how do suggest we establish runaway intelligence community? >> reducing public awareness is that the crux of it. with the united states there has always been certain avenues that existed for information to get to the public that the government does not want to get to the public. there has been no more in particular has a statistic under president obama there have been seven prosecutions of whistle-blowers or sources under the 1917

statutes of the espionage act of during world -- will pour one there was a grand total of three prior to obama he has more than double the number just in his six years compared to every other president before him combined this is trying to shut off every valve that exist for any informations and other than what the government chooses if you live in a state the only information that gets to the public is what they choose you live in the states of propaganda so what can be done i don't think anything can be done there may be other ways to do it not everybody leaks a journalist takes 10,000 docus