Establishment so we learned about that. But the thing that we need to remember is all of these challenges, the medical challenges, the nuclear, biological challenges, the solution to all of these is many different times. You dont do the same thing in the chemical threat as the biological threat. One case you gather up the other case you spread out. So these are the kinds of techniques that we have to think about. When you look at the enormty of it, it is kind of interesting to throw up your hands but we faced a big threat in the 1907s it was extraordinarily complex in terms of weather in terms of physics in terms of ocean et cetera. It was called the Russian Submarine threat. And it was called the u. S. Americanantiis submarine threat as well. It was enormous. So much that we almost didnt want to tackle it. But we did. And we used an approach where we bit off a little bit of the apple at a time, a little bit more at the time, a little bit more at the time. And after a while in about 1015 years we had it pretty well whipped. Thats what i think we have to do here. We have to develop a longrange conceptual plan, i call it a campaign plan. We start out by saying tht the end state that we really want. We would like to really be able to say that with the 75 or 80 chance we will lick these kinds of challenges, whether theyre chemical, biological, medical, et cetera. And challenges here. The Army Developed the marine corps for 15 years now has had an Incident Response for in maryland which is a national asset, its a national asset. Their whole job is to be able to handle this chemical and biological challenge and decontamination. All of that kind of thing. So we have spread out now throughout the United StatesIncident Response units in each state. They can be used by the state and local. Theres an in road here. Many of these units are in the National Guard and the National Guard is a statecontrolled organization until the president for whatever reason federalizes. So we have embryonic capabilities in all of these areas. We have to marshall the National Science foundation. We have to have a tremendous amount of focused research in these different areas. And we have to have the ability then to pull all this stuff together in what the common word today in government is integration bioall we need to be able to integrate these disparate pieces of information, knowledge, capability into a whole. So its an enormous challenge. It would be much easier and simpler to just forget about it and worry about luck and all that kind of thing. I dont think thats the american way. I think we can tackle this challenge. Ts going to take a long time. We want to get started yesterday. Thats sort of what my suggestion would be. Thank you very much. It was a very great panel and helped by your comments and questions and thoughts. Thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] hello, everybody. My name is bill. Im the organizer with a little help, or a lot of help from rabble. Ca. Nd theyve been supportive and helpful. A lit bit of history. Part of the reason im bringing glenn, glenns a friend of mine and i do believe in his message. So i asked him to come. He wasnt planning to come to ot with a. As a favor to me he has come. So tonight maybe you might be interested in how i met glenn. I was commenting years ago when glenn first started. With a lot of fun there were great commenters and we would debate. He would always jump in and insult us, too. People lived in dread of glenn coming down and saying, no, this is why im destroying you logically. Over the years glenn and i would exchange comments. I fed him a couple stories. He mentioned me in his column and i was really happy. Then eventually we started exchanging emails. In 2012 i brought him here for the first time. Contrary to the image, glenn is not an ogre. He is the nicest sweetest guy youd ever want to meet. Im holding my hand here a ruberics cube. This is central to this story. Because when glenn went to hong kong he had no idea what snowden looked like. Snowden did not tell him he looked like. He couldnt because that would be bad operational security. So he told him i will be carrying a rubics cube and thats how youll recognize me. So when glenn went into the hotel hes looking around. Hes expecting like a senior nsa guy and he looks over there and he sees this tiny skinny guy and he looks about 19. He has this cube. Who is this guy . Ive got this kid here. So to make a long story short they talked and this is where we are. Were almost ready here. Our host for the evening is jesse brown, a real journalist, unlike me. And hes had a lot of experience. Cbc and he at cbs is going to do an interview. Then jesse and glenn will come out and have a interview. Jesses promised me with a very probing interview. Thing. s basically the so i guess ill leaf it at that. Jesses going to come in a few minutes. Before i go i thank everybody for coming and sponsors again and my wife for helping me. Also, turn off your cell phones and put them in the refrigerator out back. I dont know how people got that joke but its a joke. Right now weve got jess brown coming out. Give him a big hand. Thank you very much for coming. [applause] its been a hell of a week. I was following along on twitter as things were unfolding here and amid Everything Else i was feeling all the confusion and the shock of it and later the sadness. I felt something else. I had a selfish thought. I thought, this is bad luck. What bad timing that this had to happen so soon before the greenwald event. And everything that i heard as events unfolded and since the days since sort of affirmed that sense that the timing is off. We hear these things. Canada lost her innocence on wednesday. And we hear that we have to say goodbye to the old normal because now its welcome to the new normal. We are told that things just dont feel the same any more. All of this just gave me this growing pervasive sense that this was not the time for this conversation. And then i thought about some other things. I thought about bill c13 first introduced years ago as a lawful access legislation, then called the protecting children from online predators act and people were not so happy as that. Then it was rebranded as the anticyber bullying law. Whatever you call it this is a piece of legislation that makes it easy for Law Enforcement to call up your cell phone provider, to call up your telephone provider and get information about you without a wasnt. Which they do now but this o would make it legal. 73 of canadians oppose this bill and privacy advocates and commissioners are against it. The Supreme Court has ruled its probably constitution. This past week it passed in the house of commons and off for rubber stamp. After the shooting our Prime Minister promised tough new legislation that will make sort of speech illegal and make it easier for authorities to detain suspects of terrorism. This is not a new normal. This is the old normal. Weve seen this before. We have seen moments of trauma and fear that have come with them subtle messages that its not appropriate to have certain conversations during those times. Weve seen before that while were getting that subtle and not so subtle messages that those are not appropriate our rights get curtailed. This has happened before. So seeing this auditorium filled with canadians tells me that this is the exact right time to have this discussion. This is the exact right time to talk about things like surveillance and our rights. I feel incredibly lucky to be introducing Glenn Greenwald in a moment. I feel very lucky that there is a Glenn Greenwald. I think about that. [applause] think about that. Consider for a second if Edward Snowden didnt have a Glenn Greenwald to contact, if there wasnt a journalist to encrypt the information. Imagine if the nsa had heard what snowden was trying to convey, if the journal was not as committed to responsibly reporting the revelations that snowden was brave enough to come forward with. Imagine, we would all be the worst off for it. I dont know where Edward Snowden would be. Glenn greenwald has paid a price for revealing these truths. He has had his pate are thism questioned, he has called a criminal or accessory to a criminal. E has had these been called these things by a journalist. He has had his boyfriend detained. But he is here with us. Glenn greenwald. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you so much. Good evening to everybody. Thanks for coming out tonight. And thank you as well to open media and rabble pa for sponsoring the event and thanks as well to my very enthusiastic long time reader bill owen for organizing such an event and helping me to be able to come this week to canada where i have had a very eventful 96 hours. It is actually in an interesting way i feel ive had, despite how tumtuss its been, a rather productive week because i feel like ive accomplished something on my list of life objectives which some would say would brex possible to achieve, which is i have gotten to spend an entire week with my email box full of enraged canadians. And there are a lot of people who would have said thats just impossible to achieve. So its something i got to check off of my list. The reaction to the article i wrote this week, which i wrote fter the question beck attacks, very short by before the news of the ottowa shooting broke, actually did provoke among the most intense and polarizing reaction of anything that ive ever written. And in a lot of ways i look at that as a sign that it was actually a piece very worth writing. Because i do think ultimately the role of journalism especially at the most difficult times is to question and challenge the assumptions hat people cling to most fervently. I heard from at least as many canadians who were supportive of the arguments i had made and who were appreciative of the fact that the debate ended up with the arguments and perspectives as i did hearing from enraged canadians and i think this underscores an important point, which is that the events of this week, as tragic and horrific as they have been to watch and to watch unfold, really do provide the perfect framework in a lot of ways to think about all the issues that i had long planned here to come and discuss. Those issues are one that is i have been working on for many years but were really brought into vivid highlight by the work ive been able to do over the last 16 months reporting on the extraordinary archive of documents provided to me by my heroic source Edward Snowden. And these issues pertain to the messages and narratives that western democracy, the governments of western democracies have been disseminating to their citizenry in their post 9 11 era about terrorism, about threats, about the nature of our societies. And they pertain to all the pollingssy that is have been you should in ushered in as a result of those claims. In a lot of ways the events of this week which ive got to see firsthand by being here is almost like a Perfect Laboratory for understanding how countries in the west have responded to these kinds of attacks and the policies and perspective that is theyve been able to entrench as a result. The very first event that happened upon the first attack that i immediately noticed and recognized as extremely familiar and significant was the instantaneous injection and by instantaneous, i do mean instantaneous injection of the most inflammatory but also the most meaningless word in our political lex con, which is terrorism. Almost instantly before anybody knew anything about the perpetrators of either events, the media and Political Class in this country and then in the United States and throughout the west all agreed by consensus that both of these attacks were adequately and even necessarily described as being terrorism. There is no discussion as usual of what that word means or what an act has to do in order to qualify. It was simply a label that instantly got applied almost reflexively without any re flecks or deliberation or any kind in that word is meaningless in the sense that it has no definition but its inflammatory in the sense that its incredibly consequential. And it happens over and over again. I think its worth thinking about what that word means and the effect that weve allowed it to have on all of our thought processes as citizens. That was followed by the remarkable agility of how the harper government tactically responded to these attacked. I am not a particularly enthused fan of the harper government. But [applause] but, you know, i think its important to give credit where its due. The speed and the aggression and the brazenness and the shamelessness with which the Prime Minister moved to manipulate and exploit the emotions, to demand for power for himself were in a really workway almost impressive. I think youve got to give him credit. If you look at how other western governments have responded to these attacks they usually have the desensey to waited an intval of two to three weeks before admitting that theyre exploiting these fears to justify the new powers. But Prime Minister harper is remarkably unbrdnd by those kinds of quams. Its amazing. Ss than 48 hours after the ottowa shootings he stood up in the house of commons, this is yesterday, and this is what he said. Our laws and Police Powers need to be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention, and arrest. They need to be much strengthened. I assure members that work which is already under way will be expedited. And again the only thing unusual about that is the speed and nakedness with which it has happened but this has been the process in the 9 11 era in which these are seized upon in a way to further dismantle core protections of Civil Liberties and Core Principles of western justice. Another really visible and really familiar dynamic that i was able to see this week is what i often refer to as the too soon tactic. I had a lot of people who wrote to me the canadians who wrote to me who said, look, i agree with a lot of what youve said in that article and what youve been saying. I think its important for you to say it but i feel like its too soon. Apparently theres some kind of time limit that youre supposed to wait before you Start Talking about these attacks in a substantive way. And while i understand the sentiment behind that claim, the problem with it is that there is no such thing as too soon when it comes to how the government and their allies in the media start politicizing these events. It was, as i said instantaneous that it got labeled a terrorist attack and that there were all kinds of claims very debatable claims made based on the emotion that came out of these attacks. And i think if youre a journalist or satessn its actually irresponsible to seize these critical hours when citizenry is most engage in an emotional and riveted way to cede that to the government and let the government messages go you think challenged. They dont wait before they start challenging. I think its worth talking about that as well. But the most significant part of the dynamic that i want to spend the bulk of my time talking about is the way in which we have been persuaded to ink about the world in a drastically different way than reality ought to suggest. And by that i mean that we have been persuaded to think about our own societies and our own governments and our own behavior in the world that bears very little resemblance to the reality of what weve allowed our society and governments to do in the world. And to illustrate that as best i can, i want to share with you a little anecdote that involves canada. The very first story from the snowden arkife that i was able to report that specifically involved canada, i mean, all the stories involve canada in the sense that theyre all about the internet and we share the same internet. But the very first story i was able to report about surveillance from the snowden archive was back in october of last year. And i reported this story twt large Brazilian Television network globeo. And what this story revealed it used documents from your version of the nsa, which is the Surveillance Agency in canada and what it revealed is that c sak had been spying on the communications of the br zillion ministry of mines energy which oh so coincidentally just happens to be the agency in brazil of greatest interest to the timber and logging industry. Before i reported this story i knew it was going to be a huge story in bra zilt because part because theyre very concerned about the way in which surveillance is brg used to essentially cheat in the marketplace to zpwainub fair advantage. Also because it smacks of the kind of colonialism and imperialism with which that country has been plagued for so long by its neighbors to the north. But also, i knew that while it would be a huge story in brazil i didnt actually expect it to be a big story in canada. The reason is because from experience i know that when ive done reporting along the lines of country a is spying on country b, country b, the country being spied on, cares a huge amount but typically country a, the country doing the spying, doesnt really care at all. People care about the stories that show that theyre being spied ofpblet they dont care very much about stories showing their government is spying on other people around the world. Yet my expecttations were completely thwarted. It was a huge story in canada. It led the nightly news four or five consecutive nights. I was delugede to do interviews and do further reporting. A lot did. I was very surprised at how much that story resonated here in canada. I spoke to a couple of canadian journalist whose i know pretty well, three or four of them, and asked why has this story become so big in canada that canada is spy ong this ministry in brazil . Basically they said there are two reasons. They said number one there were a ton of canadians, probably most, who didnt even know there was such an agency called csac, that canadians didnt know that they had an agency engaged in this very farreaching and invasive surve