Press TV has conducted an interview with Danny Schechter, editor of mediachannel.org from New York, to further talk about the issue of sharing raw intelligence data by the United States’ National Intelligence Agency with Israel.
The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Schechter, first of all, how do you think the American people will react to this?

Schechter: Well, I think there is a growing concern about privacy and it is quite interesting because you have the internet companies and the telecom companies cooperating with the government and the government actually paying them for their cooperation by reimbursing them for the time that people spend on them, making data available to the government.

I have been in a little bit of a tiff with one company, AT&T. They say they believe in supporting privacy but when I raised this question, they said we cannot comment on national security but you know, is this national security sending people’s names and information or data to Israel? Or in this case, there was a new report out tonight that the NSA cannot say why it shared information with the CIA and the FBI.
So the NSA is looking worse every day with new revelations that put it in conflict with the rules and regulations that it is supposed to be upholding. So we have a situation of a kind of almost a rogue agency that is sharing information with other governments and with other agencies in our own government.
Press TV: And do you think the world and especially the US mainland itself has become a safer place with all this intelligence sharing?

Schechter: Well, I do not think so. I mean the US intelligence which is, you have to put quotes around ‘intelligence’, missed some of the biggest stories of the past 50 years. They missed the Iranian revolution for one thing; they missed the war between Iran and Iraq; they missed certainly 9/11.

These are not good people who have a great track record going down. So the more people they spy on does not necessarily mean the more information that is useful that they get, or that information will make us more secure. I think generally speaking, they cannot even process the information they are getting right now.

Press TV: Although these revelations are coming out by day, are we to expect the worst to come?

Schechter: Well, I think that there is more information coming out because first of all, Ed Snowden did a very gutsy thing in releasing information but I am sure there will be other and there are other whistleblowers who are going to talk about some of these issues as well and other countries.
So you know you have a growing gap between the public, which wants its privacy protected, and the government, which wants to have access to everybody’s information and that conflict is going to continue and it is going to deepen and it already is.
Press TV: At one time, we used to call and we used to label the whistleblowers as the traitors but nowadays I think the tide has turned. I mean, how do you think the people are treating the people like Edward Snowden nowadays?

Schechter: You know, Edward Snowden is living in Russia; he is not exactly free; he actually promised not to release new information.

So the information that is coming out now is the information he had earlier given to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, who has been publishing these disclosures.

No, no, I think the whistleblowers play a very important role in our society but the problem is they are not being protected; they are at risk and this is something that really puts our freedoms at risk as well because people who did the same, people who do have some conscience that reveal things that the American people should know are being persecuted and prosecuted.

So it is a dangerous situation and it is likely to continue as the administration becomes more paranoid, as it becomes more convinced that it cannot control the release of information. It is going to take steps that are even more insane.

Today in China, the bloggers are being targeted because they publish critical information that the public there eats up and loves.

So this is the conflict. The conflict is a fight over free information and it is a fight over whether or not the government has the right to interfere in our privacy. I do not think they should but they certainly do.

By Press TV

 

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