Top 12 Most Fascinating Takeaways from Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald’s Reddit AMA

Q: To Greenwald & Poitras: What was the most alarming revelation(s) you discovered throughout this process, and is there more to come?

To Snowden: What validation do we have that Putin is being honest about NOT spying in Russia?

Greenwald: For me personally, the most shocking revelation was the overall one that the explicit goal of the NSA and its allies is captured by the slogan “collect it all”—meaning they want to convert the internet into a place of limitless, mass surveillance, which is another way of saying they literally want to eliminate privacy in the digital age:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all

There is definitely more significant reporting to come. Our colleagues at the Intercept—Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley—just last week reported one of the most significant stories yet on the NSA and GCHQ’s ‘s hacking practices:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/

Snowden: To tag on to the Putin question: There’s not, and that’s part of the problem world-wide. We can’t just reform the laws in one country, wipe our hands, and call it a day. We have to ensure that our rights aren’t just being protected by letters on a sheet of paper somewhere, or those protections will evaporate the minute our communications get routed across a border. The only way to ensure the human rights of citizens around the world are being respected in the digital realm is to enforce them through systems and standards rather than policies and procedures.