Ever have that fear that your phone is spying on you?
Well, it has before and very well could be in the future. And we know that because of the heroic efforts of Edward Snowden, guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast – episode #1536.
Snowden is an American whistleblower, famous for exposing a secretive government surveillance program that collected massive amounts of information about American citizens. This was done without American citizens consent, approval, knowledge it was happening, or that the program even existed.
Snowden made a “bold” and “heroic” move to expose this secretive program, risking his own life and possible prison sentence, which led to Joe Rogan having him on the JRE podcast and labeling him a “hero”.
Snowden’s whereabouts are unclear, as you can see by the dark gray background in this podcast episode. He was laying low in Russia, and might still be, because he would presumably be arrested by the American government.
It’s unfortunate that “whistleblower” has a negative connotation to it, similar to calling someone a “tattletale”. However, make no mistake, Snowden took extremely honorable actions for the protection of our human rights and information.
JRE episode #1536 was Snowden’s second appearance on the podcast, and this article will extract the Top 10 Ideas from that episode.
*I try my absolute best not to take anything out of context from the podcast. This is my interpretation of the points made from this episode.
Point #1: Snowden has a chance to be pardoned
Rogan said on this podcast that Snowden is a national hero and has a good chance to presidentially pardoned, eventually. The court of public opinion has swayed massively in favor of Snowden, after many people had falsely accused him of being a traitor to his country.
“In my mind, you are a hero and what you exposed is hugely important for American citizens,” said Joe Rogan.
Apparently, many other people are in support of Snowden too, like apple co-founder Steve Wozniack. See what he said here. Fun fact: Wozniak shares the same birthday as Joe Rogan – August 11th.
Snowden recently scored a big win when the 9th district court of appeals ruled that what he exposed was illegal: warrantless wiretapping and government surveillance. Snowden called this a “huge victory for privacy rights.”
Point #2: The Patriot Act is a terrible, misleading name
The Patriot Act was an act put into place by president George W. Bush to provide tools to intercept and obstruct terrorism attacks.
Rogan and Snowden liken The Patriot Act name to something fictitious like the “Save Puppies Act”. Nobody would want to go against an act to save puppies, yet the name is just a lie and it would kill puppies. (This is just an example they used on the podcast)
The Patriot Act name is just pure propaganda and is a terrible name for an act. It’s disguised as something to prevent terrorism, but essentially granted access to all our personal information. Rogan says, “There is a real problem with that name.”
Snowden said The Patriot Act was written prior to 9/11 as a way to get your data and was just sitting on the shelf, waiting for an event so they had a real reason to use it. When 9/11 happened, it was like a blank check, the government (CIA, FBI, NSA, White House) could have anything they wanted and nobody was going to stop them.
The act was originally intended to gather any information via phone calls that was deemed relative to terrorism. But, the problem is in the use of the term “relative”, because every single call could be argued as relative. Snowden says, “What is the definition of relevance? What is not relevant? Where does this end?”
The U.S. government created a system where they can break the law, and did it for 12 years (2001-2013) where nobody even knew it was happening or existing, until Snowden stumbled upon it and exposed it when he was working as subcontractor for the CIA.
Point #3: Mass Surveillance Vs. Individual Surveillance
The real cause for concern is the big data from massive government surveillance. All this data becomes extremely valuable in noticing trends in society, and can be sold, marketed, and even used against people years later.
There is less to worry about you as individual being spied on for what you have googled, but more about massive data collection of law-abiding citizens, which is unethical and unlawful. And the big thing is, the government just took it without our consent, our knowledge, or approval.
Of course, you do have to worry about you as an individual too, because anything you have said on social media in the past is being recorded and could be used against you. We see it all the time in celebrities, athletes, and politicians, when an old tweet resurfaces from years past, and they then have to face consequences.
Point #4: We need End-To-End Encryption for Social Media
On the podcast, Snowden made a great point about why technology companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube need end-to-end data encryption.
What is it? It is a method of data protection that prevents an unwanted third party from accessing your information and online activity.
It’s like sending mail from one person to another, but both people have to have a special key to open the mail. A third person would not be able to read it.
Right now, Google and Facebook do a great of keeping other people from seeing your messages. But if government wants your info, it’s just a button click away from giving all your data to the government.
Snowden suggests end-to-end encryption would solve this. Google could turn all your data over to the government, but without a key, the government (3rd party) wouldn’t be able to read it.
Other countries like Russia and China have shut companies like Google and Facebook down because they won’t agree to hand over the data to those governments.
Snowden and Rogan think there is hope that we are finally going to have data protection for the first time at some point in the future, thanks to whistleblowers like Snowden.
Point #5: Something is wrong with The Espionage Act
The Espionage Act is an act aimed at preventing injury to the United States by means of information leaks, recording pictures, spying, or anything else related to national security.
There are 2 inherent flaws about the Espionage Act that Snowden and Rogan discuss on the podcast.
- It makes no distinction between someone who steals American secrets and sells them to foreign governments, which Snowden hasn’t done, and someone that gives them freely to journalists for the public’s best interest.
- You can’t tell the jury “why” you did what you did, a publics best interest defense case. It only matters that you broke the law, even if it was the right thing to do and the honest thing to do.
When a spy steals government information and sells it for money, it is done for the private interest of that person. However, what Snowden did was massively different. He didn’t sell the information, he exposed the secret government surveillance program for the common good of the public.
Point #6: Snowden backs other Whistleblowers
Although Snowden said on the podcast that he will not ask President Trump for a pardon, he has been a public advocate for the pardoning of other famous whistleblowers.
Another important factor for Snowden, and one that Rogan agrees with, is that the context of private interest vs. public interest matters. Snowden backs these former whistleblowers, because their intent was not to leak classified information for private gain, but for public interest:
- Daniel Hale
- Terry Albury
- Reality Winner
“These people should be recognized as patriots who stood up and took a risk for the rest of us.” – Snowden
Julian Assange, chief editor and publisher of WikiLeaks, was also charged under the Espionage Act. Rogan pointed that he was once loved by Democrats, but that changed when he released information about the Hillary Clinton emails just prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Although Assange is disliked by both Democrats and Republicans, Snowden thinks that the most noble thing he ever did was expose the “weapons of mass destruction” lie of the George W. Bush administration, as well as the lies of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, and Guantanamo Bay torture practices.
Point #7: A Culture of Unaccountability
Public officials and private citizens are not held to the same standards. When a government official does something wrong, they often get a slap on the wrist whereas private citizens are held to a much higher standard of consequences for breaking the law.
Unfortunately, this has created a culture of unaccountability for our elected officials in the U.S. government.
Rogan and Snowden discussed that the problem is that when the government breaks the law, like they did for decades, there is no punishment or criminal liability.
What government are we talking about? Tons of agencies, administrations, and offices:
- Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- National Security Agency (NSA)
- Depart of Justice (DOJ)
- Senate, Congress, and House of Representatives
- Lobbyists
- White House Administration
The CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ violated Americans rights for decades. But, they rarely go to jail, lose their houses, put handcuffs on, or even smell the inside of a courtroom.
The hypocrisy is baffling and we don’t know where they are, or what they are doing. There is no visibility or transparency into it, and yet if wrongdoing is found it takes the judicial system 10 years to create a verdict.
Point #8: Extremism is being enhanced by technology
Rogan made a great point about extremism, saying that it thrives in places where it can not be challenged or exposed for what it really is.
Like someone who only watches Fox News, or only watches MSNBC, they will only get half of the full picture. There is a compounding effect over time, where your ideas just keep getting reinforced, and brainwashed, if you don’t unplug and balance out the other half.
On the podcast, Rogan and Snowden talk about how YouTube keeps feeding you more videos based off what you tend to watch. The algorithm provides you videos in the “Recommended for you” section.
While this may seem helpful for someone who likes certain sports and teams, it can be damaging for people who watch extremist viewpoints on conspiracies, and political viewpoints. These people never get exposed to counter speech.
On social media, Rogan says that he doesn’t communicate with anybody on social media in a negative way, and in fact, he has stopped reading comments on his social media.
Point #9: You have a Permanent Record online
Snowden wrote a book, Permanent Record, which implies that what you say and do online becomes a permanent record.
In pre-internet, Google, and social media days, it wasn’t this way. You could move to a new city or town, where nobody knows you, and start fresh with your reputation.
Nowadays, everything you’ve ever searched on Google is stored in your permanent record. Everything you’ve ever said on social media is stored in your permanent record.
Snowden says that we are now “married to our prior ignorance.”
The problem is that public opinion is changing constantly at a rapid pace. What once was ok to say, tomorrow may not be ok.
One example, for me – Eric, is calling something “gay”. When I was growing up in the early 90’s, we used that word all the time. But if you used that word on social media now, it could cost you your job, and subject you to “cancel” culture.
Hypothetically – What if I called something “gay” on Twitter 10 years ago? Could that come back to haunt me in the future? I was a young college student and my ideas of the world, right or wrong, were very much adolescent.
We are no longer allowed to forget our worst mistakes. We pin everyone to their worst moment by doing away people’s ability to adapt, change, grow, or be persuaded otherwise.
The permanent record is there and can be weaponized against you, and society is aware of this tool as a real political advantage to go after your credibility and character.
What’s the first thing a political candidate does when he’s scouting his political opponent? Nowadays, they’ll go straight online to see if they can dig up dirt from their old archives of social media.
PRO TIP: The less said, the sooner forgotten. Do as Rogan does, and don’t communicate anything negative online.
Point #10: There Is Hope
Yes, political institutions are fighting on who gets to aim the permanent record weapon and pull the trigger, instead of deciding whether the weapon should even exist.
Yes, we have broken the chain of wrongdoing between knowledge of consequence and consequence of wrongdoing.
There is still hope. Rogan has called humans just “hairless chimps”. And that’s what we are. If you give a monkey a stick, the first thing he’s going to do is look for something to hit with it.
Everybody has a violation of something, somewhere in our past online history.
And Snowden has hope for the individual:
“The reason I’m ok with seeing how much we fail, is I have a lower expectation of the individual, at the moment, but a higher appreciation for their potential. And the reason is we are ALL inherently flawed. You are not as good as you want yourself to be. You become a better person over time, and always have that potential.”
It’s important to just get out, live and enjoy your life. Knowledge is power. Don’t say anything negative online, keep it positive, and focus on becoming a better person.
Don’t freak out too much from reading this article. Although all of this is concerning, Snowden thinks we are making progress, albeit slowly, into finally having data protection, better online communication and real whistleblower protection.
Thanks for reading this article!
Other helpful links:
- Snowden’s first appearance on the JRE podcast – episode #1368.
- The 25 Smartest Guests on the JRE podcast – link. (Snowden makes list)
- Book Permanent Record for sale on Amazon
