When

Wednesday February 1, 2017 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST
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Where

Hoover Institution 
1399 New York Avenue, NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005
 

 
Driving Directions 

Contact

Erin Nichols 
Hoover Institution 
202-760-3210 
emnich@stanford.edu 
 

How America Lost its Secrets

The Hoover Institution's National Security, Technology and Law Working Group, along with Hoover's Washington, DC office, invite you to a discussion with author of How America Lost its SecretsEdward Epstein. Hoover working group member and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Benjamin Wittes will interview Epstein, who will discuss hacker turned avenging angel Edward Snowden while revealing the vulnerabilities of our national security system.
After details of American government surveillance were published in 2013, Edward Snowden, formerly a subcontracted IT analyst for the NSA, became the center of an international controversy: Was he a hero, traitor, whistle-blower, spy? Was his theft legitimized by the nature of the information he exposed? When is it necessary for governmental transparency to give way to subterfuge? Edward Jay Epstein brings a lifetime of journalistic and investigative acumen to bear on these and other questions, delving into both how our secrets were taken and the man who took them. He makes clear that by outsourcing parts of our security apparatus, the government has made classified information far more vulnerable; how Snowden sought employment precisely where he could most easily gain access to the most sensitive classified material; and how, though he claims to have acted to serve his country, Snowden is treated as a prized intelligence asset in Moscow, his new home.