Snowden’s revelations lack real information – analyst
Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Rickard, former American intelligence linguist from Florida, about former security contractor Edward Snowden saying the US government has violated the constitution by its worldwide espionage program.
- First of all, Edward Snowden says what the US is doing with regards to its eavesdropping program is completely unconstitutional but the US government does not see it that way?
- Well certainly it is unconstitutional. It does violate our Bill of Rights and it certainly does violate our right to privacy.
The other thing I’d like to mention though is that Snowden’s revelations are not really that revealing. And supposedly he is taking quite a bit of information and very little of it has been released now and even during his speech today he mentioned sort of the Greenwald effect, you know sort of referring to Glenn Greenwald as to not being that experienced in the cyber or the technical environments.
So having a guy like Glenn Greenwald is sort of the gatekeeper for this extremely revealing information, I say that sarcastically, is quite odd and especially being connected to the Omidyar Network which is the same network that is working with at the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and other NGOs across Ukraine helping to overthrow that government.
So I find it a little suspicious. I am certainly skeptical of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald because of the slow nature and the really lack of real information that is coming out of them at this point. There is much more ...
- Snowden has also said that his revelations have resulted in protections that have benefited not just the American public but the whole world. Do you agree with that?
- Not necessarily. I mean they are not really protections. I mean certainly it is more widely known that the government is basically recording all of our conversations and it is also recording all of our internet activity.
That was not a secret to anyone that really knew what was going on. The fact that it is in the news and mainstream news is probably the only result of Snowden’s activity and Glenn Greenwald’s activity.
There is nothing in the news that talks about the specific government, the actual applications that are being invested in by the CIA, and the specific applications that are being exploited on our consumer platforms, by foreign intelligence like the MOSSAD.
The MOSSAD has software all over the world on consumer electronics. You know these are real revelations and these are talking about the actual applications that they are using and none of that type of information is coming out.