"There are a lot of people in this room that are
on watch lists, with huge dossiers," Edward Snowden's colleague Jacob
Appelbaum warned a packed audience of international journalists and
diplomats, business executives, software experts and others here in
Bangkok at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.
"Not just me. Probably people you wouldn't imagine," Appelbaum said.
"I think that that's a problem. To have a secret police state society,
is really scary."
Appelbaum helped create -- and appears in -- "CITIZENFOUR" which won
Best Documentary at the Oscars on February 22 for portraying former
U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor Snowden and the
information he smuggled out, revealing America's electronic spying on
the public worldwide.
The film was directed by Laura Poitras who Appelbaum assisted during
their joint initial interviews with Snowden online, encrypting their
conversations and confirming his NSA qualifications.
Appelbaum, a Californian, is based in Berlin.
"Laura [Poitras] and myself live essentially in exile thanks to the
protection of the German government, strangely enough."
He feels "safe" in Germany because "I was the person who brought the
[German Chancellor] Angela Merkel story to Der Spiegel" magazine, he
said, which reported in 2013 that Americans were spying on her
communications.
"They were crappy spies. They got caught," Appelbaum said.
"If any of you have any documents you want to leak, I'm always happy
to take them and to do something useful with them, to make the maximum
impact, which is the WikiLeaks promise," Appelbaum said after
screening "CITIZENFOUR" here at the correspondents' club on February
25 making it the Asian premier.
In 2010, Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
at a hacker conference in New York.
Appelbaum said he now works as a journalist mostly with Der Spiegel --
assisted by his personal access to Snowden's documents -- and also
develops encryption for the Free Software Foundation and the Tor
privacy network.
Appelbaum named his current targets.
President Barack Obama, General Keith Alexander, the Senate's
Intelligence Select Committee and others should be held legally
responsible for spying on, and intercepting the communications of,
every American and the public worldwide, he said.
"Probably the most important thing that I would say is that people
like General Alexander must not be allowed to have impunity."
Gen. Alexander served as director of the NSA, commander of U.S. Cyber
Command, and Central Security Service chief in Fort Meade, Maryland.
"He was responsible for a Department of Defense agency with national
foreign intelligence, combat support, and U.S. national security
information system protection responsibilities," the NSA said in a
statement.
Appelbaum said National Intelligence director James Clapper, former
head of both the CIA and NSA Michael Hayden, former CIA director
George Tenet, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, and others should
also face charges for massive secret electronic spying on Americans
and people throughout the world.
"Clapper is a good example. Alexander is a good example. But Obama is
also a good example. And so is Hayden, Tenet, Nancy Pelosi, and the
rest of the people that were in on it.
"There is a set of people in the Intelligence Select Committee who
knew about mass bulk [communications] interception of the entire
American population," Appelbaum said.
"Those people should be held accountable for violating fundamental
civil liberties of Americans, and people all around the world. And
that's just a legal fact. And right now, they have impunity," he said.
"They know about drone politics and the assassination memos that are
still not public," he said referring to "the United States which
assassinates its own citizens with drones" in foreign countries.
"I myself have not been home [to America] in two years because of FBI
harassment...because of my work with WikiLeaks, and my work with Der
Spiegel and other news organizations, talking about information in
which the U.S. government has committed serious international and
national crimes."
Appelbaum consults "a lawyer every single time I want to travel" to
other countries, including "an extradition specialist" when visiting
here in Thailand.
Appelbaum appears several times in "CITIZENFOUR" explaining U.S.
electronic spying, including metadata "linkability".
For example, when you buy a public transportation pass with your
credit card, your identity is then known and all your transport dates
and locations are recorded, which are then linked to all your credit
card purchases and your cell phone's information.
This can be matched with other people's data, to see when they
intersect, indicating you may have met them.
This can be collected endlessly, "in aggregate over a person's life,"
he says in "CITIZENFOUR."
Though he works with Snowden's documents, Abbelbaum said he never met
his "hero".
"He [Snowden] does not need to stay in Russia. He should be able to
come home a hero to America, which is what he is. He is a hero,"
Appelbaum said here in Bangkok.
"But he cannot come home to America until we create the situation
where people respect him for the things that he has done, which is to
inform the American people, and all people around the world, about
basic fundamental human rights."
In a question and answer session on the social website Reddit on
February 23, Snowden said laws that are perceived to be wrong should
be violated.
"America was of course born out of a violent revolution that was an
outrageous treason against the [colonial British] crown and
established order of the day," Snowden wrote.
"History shows that the righting of historical wrongs is often born
from acts of unrepentant criminality. Slavery. The protection of
persecuted Jews," Snowden wrote, apparently from his base in Russia.
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