Snowden Advocates Disclosure of Lava Jato Messages by The Intercept

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Every published private conversation brings some discomfort, but I think ministers, politicians, prosecutors, and judges should be subject to such discomforts. They are the ones deciding who goes to jail, who is released, who lives or dies, what our future will be like.

“It doesn’t matter where the information came from. If it is in the public interest and true, let it be disclosed,” said Snowden, when asked about the controversy in Brazil.

The current justice minister and former judge, Sérgio Moro, as well as members of Operation Lava Jato’s workgroup are on the sights of investigations that began on June 9th when The Intercept Brasil and other ‘media’ partners began to publish reports that called into question the impartiality of what is the longest-running operation against corruption in Brazil.

Based on information obtained from an unidentified source and delivered to the American journalist and founder of The Intercept Brasil, Glenn Greenwald, these reports suggest that Moro had guided the Lava Jato prosecutors, recommended lines of investigation and advanced decisions while he was the judge in charge of analyzing the case files in the first instance.

If confirmed, the denunciations point to illegal behavior by the former magistrate and Brazilian prosecutors because, under Brazilian law, judges must remain impartial and, therefore, are forbidden from assisting the parties involved in the proceedings.

In turn, Sérgio Moro and Lava Jato prosecutors have denied having committed improprieties and criticized The Intercept’s and partner platforms’ reports, stating that they are sensationalistic and use conversations that may have been tampered with, adding that these have been obtained through cyber-crime.

In 2013, with the help of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, today at The Intercept Brasil, Edward Snowden released top-secret documents that made US surveillance clear to ordinary citizens, both through communications and the Internet, a scandal that has led to law changes in several countries.

The United States charged him with espionage and appropriation of state secrets. With the scandal, Snowden had his passport canceled by the US, where he is the target of a criminal act. He currently lives in Russia.

When asked by Veja about progress in restrictions on surveillance systems since he uncovered the US program, Edward Snowden stressed that little has changed: “The European Union has approved the General Regulation on Data Protection, some surveillance programs have been deactivated in the United States, but many more have been created”.

“In the meantime, Germany has authorized forms of mass surveillance and China is starting to use facial recognition indiscriminately, even to check when someone leaves certain provinces,” he said.

“The good news is that technology is progressing. Not so long ago, less than half of the world’s communications were encrypted. In 2016, it had reached something like 70 percent,” added the computer systems analyst.

Source: Veja

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