An activist, a community organizer. In a sense, what are you doing . Youre living off the great capitalist explosion of wealth that you didnt even create. Up, many strong men set its hard to know where to begin. Nobody said americas the most charitable place. But there are a couple of assertions that you have to take on faith that are astonishing. One is the idea that americas great invention was wealth creation, not based on theft at all. What about the theft of the entire continent . That was a theft. That doesnt mean [cheers and applause] 90 of the residents who lived here were murdered. And that was a part of it too. Bill ayer and anesh desouza debate whats to so great about america. Friday night at 8 00 on cspan. Last month, the Columbia UniversityJournalist School began a yearlong project titled journalism after snowden. This 90minute forum talks about how they broke the Edward Snowden story. Also on the panel is executive editor of New York Times and members of the president s n. S. A. Reform panel. Good evening. If youre interested and care about the u. S. Constitution and freedom of speech and press, protected by the First Amendment, or if you care about the role of journal. I and the press journalism and the press in informing the public about important public issues, or if you care about the rules and rights of leakers of government classified information, or the level of information the public needs to exercise our responsibilities of selfgovernment in a democracy, or the role of the state in keeping its citizens safe and functions effectively, or in the perplexing problems of working out a global system of free expression, in a new world defined by a truly Global Communications system, and nations with vastly different views about the freedom of speech and press, if any or all of this interests you, then tonight is your night. We can look forward to hearing from distinguished leaders of some of the most Important Press institutions in the world. Which have had direct recent firsthand experience in these issues. And one of the key figure notice current surveillance debate who also possesses one of the finest legal minds of my generation and who has been a friend and colleague for many years. The questions to be discussed tonight are profound. Among them is this one in particular. In the United States, we have worked out, over the past half century, through Major Supreme Court decisions, led by the pentagon papers case in 1974, through legislation and through custom and behavior by the government and the press, a workable, if unique and somewhat unruly, system. It goes Something Like this. There is no official secrets regime in this country. As there is, for example in britain. The government has full constitutional freedom to classify information as it wishes. For its part, the press may receive classified information from Government Employees who are disposed to hand over classified documents. Moreover, subject to a variety of legal subtleties and nuances, the press may publish those classified documents with constitutional protection. The leaker on the other hand may be prosecuted with little or no First Amendment protection. The only question being just how vigorously the government will track down and prosecute the leaker. In practice over the years, not many leakers have suffered that fate. Also, by custom, the press will typically discuss what has been in its possession with the government and make a careful judgment about what to publish and what would be too harmful to publish. And the government in turn does not try to push the legal interpretations that might support a breach of the First Amendment protections of the press. Every nation must reach some sort of balance and accommodation of these competing interests. And arguably up to now, this has worked well in the United States. But what happens now, should the balance be struck in the same way . A world in which hundreds of thousands of classified documents can be leaked in a second, by leakers who may wish to do harm, not good, to society, then disclosed by organizations that are not necessarily publicspirited in the sense of the New York Times, the guardian or the Washington Post. And when any publication is now instantly global in scope and may violate the laws of other nations states. What now indeed . These are the kinds of questions, like others, involving state acquisition of massive data about activities of citizens that institute the endall and in which a society ultimately defines itself, especially in the respective roles of the state and its citizens. So tonights discussion is a special moment in that larger sense. It is now my great pleasure to introduce our wonderful new dean of the graduate school of journalism. [applause] thank you and welcome. Tonights event marks the public launch of a project of the columbia Journalism Schooled called journalism after snowden. Its a project made possible by the tao foundation. Id like to recognize len tao who is sitting here tonight for his support. And it constitutes a yearlong series of events, research and writing from the tao center for digital journalism which my colleague at the clubia Journalism School faculty directs. And its being carried out in collaboration with the columbia journalism review whose new editor and publisher is here with us tonight. As we have so eloquently described, and i wont attempt to repeat, the snowden affair has sparked an unprecedented debate about digital privacy, the pursuit of National Security after september 11, and the power of the state. Its also sparked an important and continuing debate about Constitutional Rights in the United States and globally governing the press and free expression. But its also changed journalism and is in the process of changing journalism and has raised profound questions about the practice of journalism that feel very unsettled and thats going to be one subject of the panel tonight. These include shield laws and subpoena defense, the sort of front line experience of reporters under pressure in their relations with confidential sources. The very viability of a regime of source protection in the digital age, how to define and spread sound practices of Digital Security. And the growing professionalamateur divide in journalism caused by the deinstitutionization of many reporting reporting fuppingses. All of these are subjects of the larger project of journalism after snowden it. Will constitute over the year ahead a series of articles about the implications of state surveillance and, for the practice of journalism, research about changing journalistic conduct in a time of data insecurity and state surveillance. And we intend to carry out an in depth survey of the practices of investigative reporters, their use of Digital Security tools, their understanding of them, and the potential to improve the security practices of working journalists. And, finally, we intend to bring forward online resources that will be available to all journalists, to assist them in protecting their data and their sources and to make recommendations for the protection both of journalists and the people that they collaborate with in and out of government. That all lies ahead. Tonight what brings us together is this extraordinary panel that my colleague emily will now direct and introduce. So i thank you for being here and for your attention. Emily, over to you. [applause] thank you. Thank you all, all of you, including the late students, for turning out tonight. For what we believe is going to be a very important year of work for us. My colleagues are looking very enthusiastic. Were incredibly lucky to have this great panel with us here tonight. And i think this will be a great moment to address many of the issues that weve already had framed. But before i introduce, i have two important pieces of housekeeping, one of which is say in true clanian jump columbian journalism disclosure, i worked on the guardian for a long time. If you if youre worried this is too close and cozy a panel, im here to tell that you youre correct. Its your job to be the effective opposition. And the second is that we couldnt have a better panel tonight but we know there are many, many voices who are not included on the panel. There are the reporters who were involved in really finding the story,. Were very lucky to have one of the reporters who broke many of the stories through the Washington Post here tonight. Ill be going to him just to get a Quick Response to what hes heard. And then well be having some q a from the audience as well. Please be thinking of questions because im sure there are plenty i will not get to. So, to introduce the panel. On my immediate left is Janine Gibson who is the editor in chief of guardian u. S. Which broke the initial stories. The xt to her we have is editor of the New York Times on the west side. Needs no introduction. But nevertheless were delighted to have her here. Shes a member of the board of visitors of the Journalism School. And also i think its fair to say that the New York Times is still the voice, the editorial voice which is probably most listened to by the establishment in the u. S. I hope thats not too controversial. Next we have david schultz. David is the leading First Amendment lawyer. Hes very kind to make time in his schedule to teach up here at the law school. Hes a partner at a law firm. He is the guardians lawyer on the n. S. A. And before that he was external counsel to the New York Times on wikileaks, i believe. So he has been inside two of the biggest stories of this time. And were very, very pleased to have kas here. One of the things we have sought is to get members of the administration or the n. S. A. To come and talk to us. Theyre not quite ready for that yet. We hope they will. At some point. Hes one of the countrys leading scholars and constitutional law. He served in the Obama Administration as the administration of the White House Office of information. Hes served many of my students,. Im hes married to the u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. But tonight hes here as a member of president obamas review economy on intelligence and Commune Committee on intelligence and Communications Technologies which is one of the panels convened in response to the revelations by snowden. So we are going to address the whats the journalism after snowden, but first i want to go to janine first. I think some of the of us are familiar with this, some less familiar. Can you tell us about actually breaking the story . Tell us a little bit about how it came to you and then what it was like so you can set the scene of how what is it like to deliver a story of that size to the world . Well, it starts very small, of course. Like everything. T starts with a phone call from glen greenwaled and i should say, you know, the guardian is a 200yearold News Organizations with a storied history of breaking large stories, we are wikileaks, were even accustomed to the megaleak. But in america were 2 1 2 years old and we live in a small loft in soho and while we are all we all have guardian running through us and our combined work history might be eight years or so, in america we dont look like a 200yearold News Organizationment we call ourselves g by the guardian. Im sitting in a soholoft and i got a call from demren and he said, i think i have the biggest intelligence leak in a generation. If not ever. I like it when reporters undersell stories. [laughter] well, obviously your first thought is, we might be the judge of that. Oddly, because of wikileaks, and the various measures wed had to take while working on it, i knew that skype was not a particularly safe form of technology. And i knew that glen had a skype phone. So my first question was, are you calling me from your delightful rio residence on your skype phone me . Said, yes. I said hm. So we didnt talk very much. In that conversation. It became very clear that the first thing he was going to have to do was get on a plane. He explained that he was going to see a sample of the material, that hed had encrypted conversations with the source. Its funny to remember now. We did not know his name. We didnt know his name. He wasnt the source he was the source. For a quite long time after we did know his name, we kept referring to him as the source because hed been the source for so long. He was going to get this small sample of material and look at it and he would call me back and if he thought it was good, he would get on a plane to new york. So within five days he was in our loft. And there were five of us in the room then. And laura and a reporter. In the entire universe of the guardian staff, if you could pick someone you wanted to have outside your office when he walks in with the biggest intelligence leak in possibly ever, it is ian. Hes not here so i can say grizzled. Hes done everything. Hes been to every wartorn hot spot, he was the d. C. Bureau chief. And hes the person you send to the fire, whatever the fire is. When it became clear that, you know, were sitting there on the cheapest sofa in the world, on an air gap compute that are weve had to sent somebody out to best buy to buy, looking at what later turns out is the prison presentation and youve seen the slides. They dont look like the most top secret thing in the world. But quickly, very quickly realize, its either an incredibly huge, sensitive, difficult story, or its the hitler diaries. Its a great big hoax and the next job is verification. He was straight away into how do you verify it. How long was the verification process . It was really intense. We put people on a plane to hong kong and they went to a hotel and i think Everybody Knows a detail that was maddeningly reported first in the New York Times. They identified Edward Snowden by use of a rubix cube in a hotel lobby. And couldnt believe he was 29. We assumed when we were looking at the material and the description of the rest of the material that this was going to be somebody very senior, this was going to be somebody really high in the ranks of n. S. A. We were expecting and they we couldnt work out the psychology of it. In new york waiting to hear from the people on the ground in hong kong, you spend a lot of time speculating. What would cause somebody who is career n. S. A. To walk out with the crown jewels . They saw this kid walking through a lobby and they thought, thats not him. Then of course youre right into the hitler diaries. E had him briefed on the standards of verification that wed want and he spent three days locked in a room interviewing him, show me this i. D. , show me this car parking pass. They were very convinced by him. And his motives. And of course the material that he had. And then you move straight into , what of the story . What can we do . And the first one was clearly, the fisa court order. It should be made clear there are 56,000 documents, is that right . No, there are many more than that. Many more than that. There are 56,000 in one cache alone. Which was the cache that edward nowden gave to ewan. Does anyone actually know can anyone quantify what the size of the leak is . I dont think anybody knows. The n. S. A. Said for a while that they did know and then they said they didnt. So, just on the launch of the story. Its june 5. Yes. Were working in huge amounts of secrecy at this point. We have realized that communications at hong kong are necessarily going to be sparse and very highly encoded. The first thing we did was fly james bowl to new york. Hes a veteran of wikileaks. Sitting in the second row. And freakishly young. Really annoyingly young. But brilliant at all things involving cryptology and technology. He can also fix a printer. Very important. [laughter] i didnt know that. We must call him. Without putting it on the network. But he came and introduced us to disposable chat rooms and properly secure technology. Then we had to teach glen and ewan how to use it from london. Fortunately again they were being taught how to do it. If youre going to learn how to do encrypted technology, be taught by the person who works at the n. S. A. Doing encrypted technology. They came back really knowing how to move documents around securely. But were trying to edit the report and stand up and verify a story about a document that nobodys ever seen, nobody you cant google secret file fisa court order fs it looks like one thats in the public nothing. Thats not funny. Thats a genuine problem when youre trying to work out what it is. But we realize they have been referred to in reporting and that one of the crucial factors around this document is that, if you are the subject of a fisa court order, theres a gagging order. And you cant refer to it. So we knew the first call we had to make was to verizon and if the spokesman said there was no such thing, then we were not allowed to do that. , well lly, they said call you back. Then they called back very quickly and said, sorry, can i just check, whats the name of the agency on the gag order . On the fisa court order . And what is the date . Which we were listening to this and thinking, its a bit like is it the pink one or the yellow one . So we started to think but up until that point youve got a huge amount of work in it. Enormous amount of money already. Barely even started paying davids bills and youre still thinking, this could all be not this could be nothing. This could be a massive, massive hoax. But when the verizon called so the verizon call was tremendously important. We were working to script at that point but we knew t