from RT:
David Miranda says the public has the right to see documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which he plans to release soon. However, Miranda told RT that he has been pressured from US and UK security agencies not to disclose the documents.
On August 18, 2013, Miranda’s life was turned upside down when he was detained at London’s Heathrow Airport for 12 hours under anti-terrorism laws. This came after his partner Glenn Greenwald had published numerous documents released by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Now the Brazilian-born Miranda says the public has the right to “see what is inside” the documents, which he plans to leak within the next few weeks, despite coming under pressure from governments not to publish the files.
RT: As we understand we are on the brick of new disclosures? Are we going to have any new surprises?
David Miranda: I imagine everybody is going to have a lot of surprises with what you can find inside those files. There are a lot of files that we didn’t use for a reason. And for a lot of reasons we have now a lot of pressure, a lot of people want to see that. And we had long conversations over the years [about] whether should we do that or not. And now we want to do this, because we owe [it] to the public to be able to see what is inside of those documents.
RT: And how many of the documents or materials that you have are you planning to disclose in the next few weeks or so?
DM: I cannot say certainly, but most of the documents are going to be online and people and journalists are going to be able to access that and see the information that we got from Snowden in 2013.
RT: You spoke about pressure from the public to see these documents, see what you have. But have you received any pressure not to publish it?
DM: Always. Every time that we wanted to publish something, the agencies – NSA, GCHQ – they always said that if we published that, it was going to be a threat to national security and all this bullsh*t they always say to us. So they always kind of threatened us that we are going to be harming the countries by doing that. We haven’t had one single case of that happening in the past and it’s not going to happen now. We know how these governments say something to frighten you.
RT: What process do you guys go through in order to estimate what material you can publish and what could be a possible threat to national security? Is there a process?
DM: There is. In the beginning we would use a lot of the knowledge of the experts that we would consult first. The time passed and we have our own crew inside The Intercept that would look through that and would give their expertise: Would that … harm somebody or not? And of course as journalists we have sensibility for material, so we would look at material and say: ‘Will this be a problem for the US and relations with this country?’ But also it’s the major goal for us to show the public what really is developing inside of those countries: whether they are spying or doing something wrong. So, we put on the table what is in the public interests and how we can show that without doing any harm. And I guess so far we have done that pretty [well].
RT: Yes, because nothing you guys have published has harmed any sort of national security. But do you act responsibly?
DM: Yes, we do, we have always been very careful with everything that we are going to be publishing … All the newspapers that we publish with around the world are respected ones like New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Hindu. All around the world we publish with very secure journalists who have been working for many years. So we are very careful in the process of publishing.
RT: Now this is the process that you guys have completely controlled, and you have a systemic way of approaching it. And you have certain things you know you have to do. But take me back to those first days back in 2013. The first hour when you guys were in Singapore and afterwards in Berlin when you really didn’t know what you had with you. Was it frightening. Was it exciting?
DM: That was very exciting. As journalists we are looking through that, we are trying to find gold and everything was very interesting for journalistic materials. But also we were very careful with everything that we wanted to publish because we always had that threat that we are going to harm national security. But in the end of the day it was like three hours of sleeping, working with like ten journalists from five different countries at my house where we spent days. With every story that got published, we had to do a follow-up. It was very exciting and we barely knew how much time has passed.
Now we have control over the situation, but back then we did have control but there was more work, constant work in all the countries and so many interesting journalists that we had to meet in the process. With different views. And sometimes we had to struggle with some of them. They didn’t understand what we wanted to publish. Sometimes we had to agree with something different. It was fun, but I lost like ten kilos over the first six months. I forgot to eat, I forgot to drink, [it] was just constantly coffee and working.
from SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom http://ift.tt/1UbSfzG
