Skip to main content

Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

Click "More / Share / Borrow" for each clip's source context and citation link. HTML5 compatible browser required

Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Pete Williams
NBC News Justice Correspondent
KNTV 06/25/2014
Brian Williams: If the fourth amendment is supposed to give us the right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects, if the police need a warrant to search through your phone, what about the NSA? Pete Williams: Well, that's a good question, of course. What the government would say is that when FBI comes to you, they do get a search warrant and that the NSA only finds the information and gives it to the FBI. The government is, also argued that this isn't a search because your phone records, the metadata is already in the company's possession, it's like your toll records and it's not a search. So that's the next case that’s gonna come here. And if this is any kind of a sign, the Supreme Court is going to be very jealous of protecting privacy.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Brian Williams
Anchor and Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News
KNTV 06/25/2014
Brian Williams: This case wasn't about spying, it was about the cops and whether or not they can search your phone when you're under arrest. The justices seem to know your whole life is detailed on the phone. So no search of the phone without a warrant. It's a rare victory for privacy. We begin with our justice correspondent, Pete Williams. Good evening. Pete Williams: It is surprising and it is unanimous and so bold, and shows this that court which still gives out quill pens to the lawyers who argue here is thoroughly up to date on smartphone technology. So many people now carry cell phones that a supreme court says a visitor from mars might assume they are part of the human anatomy. 12% use them in the shower. But it's what they can hold that made the difference in the ruling.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Marcia Coyle
Chief Washington Correspondent, The National Law Journal
KQED 06/25/2014
Coyle: …they (The Supreme Court) sometimes have very unusual coalitions when they divide on fourth amendment questions. But on this case, it seems like it wasn't hard for them, generally because of, as the Chief Justice explained, the amount of information that cell phones contain today. He went into great lengths describing what we keep on our cell phones today. In fact, he said, a search of a cell phone is a more significant invasion than a search of your home in terms of what you can find. He made a funny comment at the beginning of his opinion saying that cell phones have become is such a pervasive and insistent part of our daily lives that a martian who came to the united states might think that it was an important part of the anatomy.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Marcia Coyle
Chief Washington Correspondent, The National Law Journal
KQED 06/25/2014
Coyle: yes, he (Judge Roberts) said privacy has a cost and he noted this will have an impact on law enforcement's ability to fight crime, but did think the government's counterarguments here just didn't outweigh those privacy interests. He says law enforcement has technological tools that it can use, for example, if somebody locks the cell phone, they can put cell phones in these special bags now in order to keep the evidence in the cell phone and cell phone itself from remotely being wiped. So, you know, he just came down basically saying that the privacy interests here were so much stronger, and he even we want back to the founding of the United States -- the American revolution. He said the seeds of that revolution were in the colonist's hatred, antipathy for the general warrants the soldiers used to rummage through their homes.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
David Faber
Co-Anchor of Squawk on the Street
CNBC 06/27/2014
Faber: The German government is essentially saying bye-bye to Verizon as one of its key suppliers of telecommunications and wireless services because of the fallout from the Edward Snowden revelations and the NSA. And this is not insignificant, certainly something we should be watching, not necessarily going to result in an incredible loss of business for Verizon you can see. Investors are taking it in stride. But it came up a lot when we were in -- when I was reporting on whether AT&T would really try and make a move on Vodafone, and I believe one of the reasons it withdrew from the European market as a place to conceivably consolidate, and come back here and do the DirecTV deal, was because again of the Snowden revelations, the NSA, and the push back that we’re seeing today evidenced by Germany saying, no thank you, Verizon.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
David Faber
Co-Anchor Squawk on the Street
CNBC 06/27/2014
Quintanilla: People have not been able to pin point how much the contract was worth and whether or not it's the only one. Eisen: Who wins, also? That's interesting. Deutsche Telecom? Is that going to be the beneficiary? Faber: It would seem to be, yeah. They’re going to go more right. All the European carriers of course, going to be trumpeting their ability to adhere to standards that the EU wants. Privacy becoming a much larger issue across the board whether it's Facebook or Google, I think we have to continue to think about this, what it will mean to some of these business models. Hobbs: It’s more than just privacy, isn't it? Talking about setting their own internet structures, I think what Mark Andresen described as the balkanization of the internet as a result. Because the Germans are like, we simply don't want the Americans to have this sort of access to what we do (on a daily basis). Not least Angela Merkel’s phone.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Charles Lewis
Investigative Journalist, Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C. and Author of
WHYY 06/28/2014
Lewis: And so you have a situation here. They know who his source was. Moyers: They do? Lewis: They do. And they have multiple ways in which they've identified who it is. And that's why they brought a case and they have enough evidence that they hope and they think to convict this person. they've already – Moyers: They want to convict the source? Lewis: They want to convict the source and they want Jim Risen to convict the source. And they want to have Jim Risen be the one who helps them do it. But they don't want to necessarily betray their intelligence ways that they found out that may or may -- they may be legal, because they're government employees, but they're going to appear to be unseemly because they involved monitoring of employees and pulling all kinds of things. So we have a little -- another strange thing going on here where the government doesn't really want to go anywhere near this subject. And so they would like -- so we're all looking at Jim Risen and whether he goes to prison. And the real issue is actually the government.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Charles Lewis
Investigative Journalist, Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C. and Author of
WHYY 06/28/2014
Lewis: What are they mad about? Well, he did a story and a chapter in his book, "state of war," that actually showed that the CIA sent nuclear information to Iran. Oops. And they are livid. Moyers: Something we might want to know about. Lewis: >> yep. yeah, yeah. exactly. Moyers: right? might want to know that the government responsible to the people was actually making these serious mistakes? Lewis: yeah. it's unbelievable that they were doing that. and it's unbelievable. and so risen breaks that story in the book. and they are mad that he did this. and they, frankly, embarrassed them. And so they're trying -- this is retribution. I think it has very little to do with anything but retribution. But I also think what is really disturbing now is the difficulty of doing this type of reporting was never easy. Now it is probably more difficult than it's ever been in U.S. history. And President Obama has used the Espionage Act against journalists more than any president in U.S. history.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Charles Lewis
Investigative Journalist, Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C. and Author of
WHYY 06/28/2014
Moyers: I think even Nixon only used it once against – Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the pentagon papers. And obama's used it how many? Lewis: Eight times. it's unbelievable, and – Moyers: The espionage act. Lewis: Right, the espionage act. and who would've ever imagined that? This is something Obama never talked about in campaigns. He never publicly said he was going to go do this. And like a lot of things in his administration, he's trying to have it both ways. He's supporting a shield law, to some extent, in congress for journalists. but on the other hand, he's criminalizing investigative reporting by going after sources. And so he's throwing a bone, or being accommodating to the national security establishment in Washington, which, you know, in just a couple-year period, did 76 million classified documents. Far more than any time in U.S. history.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Charles Lewis
Investigative Journalist, Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C. and Author of
WHYY 06/28/2014
Moyers: So what's at stake if we do silence and punish whistle-blow whistle-blowers? Lewis: Well, what's at stake is whistle-blowers won't come forward. They know they're going to be prosecuted. They know they're being monitored. A lot of sources have dried up. There have been some panels in the last year, too, in the journalistic realm. And folks have talked about how it's harder to find people to talk now because they fear retribution. They know that the surveillance has gotten incredibly intense and the stakes are incredibly high. And they get that. And so a lot of folks who might be inclined to leak and leakers are wonderful. Because they tell reporters what they don't already have and they can't find in any document. They're very essential.
More / Share / Borrow
Add to Popcorn
Showing 1241 through 1250 of 1708