Snowden: 'When You Collect Everything, You Understand Nothing'

Mass surveillance can harm the ability to deal with terrorist attacks, and will also hurt personal privacy, said the National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, while he was answering questions by Canadian students on Monday.

Snowden was responding at the Upper Canada College in Toronto via webcam from Russia, along with the journalist, Glenn Greenwald. High school students threw a battery of questions at them.

One question about mass domestic surveillance that Canada is engaged in was answered by Snowden, arguing that it could distract attention as well as resources from focused efforts that will bring them better results, according to rt.com.

The former NSA contractor cited the example of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. After it occurred, the agency found that it had data on the suspects who had been flagged. Yet, it failed to "predict, detect, or stop their plot."

"The problem with mass surveillance is when you collect everything, you understand nothing," Snowden said.

His comments followed a fresh report on Canada's global surveillance program, which has been operating in countries such as the United States, Britain, Brazil, Germany, Spain and Portugal. It is codenamed "Levitation," and permits government agents to identify as well as archive "internet activity", even those which indicate the files that are uploaded as well as downloaded, even as they try to identify terrorists.

He also referred to Canada's newly proposed anti-terror law. It was a bill that was permitting the cops to arrest and detain terror suspects for a week, which made it not only easier for the law enforcement officials to arrest, but also criminalize the promotion of terrorism. Snowden told Canadians that they should not permit the law to get passed without sufficient examination: "Once we let these powers get rolling, it's very difficult to stop," he said.

He told the high school students that they should "always be extraordinarily cautious" and press for answers, whenever governments rely on "fear and panic" to set up powers that can be exercised in secret, according to theglobeandmail.com.

Most governments would tend to use the information collected for "new and novel purposes." It was a surveillance that was "dangerous to democracy" and invited an open, public discussion.

"Democracy is about participation...we take risks. We dare," he said. "Sometimes we do right and sometimes we do wrong, even if we intended to do right." He suggested that expressing disagreement with the government is the right course of action when its behavior is perceived as "morally unjustifiable."

Even while fielding the student questions, Snowden said that revealing classified NSA documents to journalists like Greenwald was not incorrect, as independent investigators were not able to reveal even one incident in which such revelations had harmed American security.

Agreeing that NSA was important and not exclusive in the US, Snowden argued that its importance should not overshoot its requirement. After all, people are killed more due to accidents and diseases than terrorist attacks. The "fear of terror" is being abused to make people permit and support repressive policies, he added.

"Sometimes authority itself is corrupt and unjust, and the only just act is to disobey it," Greenwald said.