theintercept | In October 2014, on a stage in San Francisco in front of a
live audience, Katie Couric asked Mike Bloomberg whether he had ever
“sexted on Snapchat.” The former New York City mayor, speaking alongside
Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit,
joked that he “couldn’t answer the question.” But the question prompted
Bloomberg to describe his views on data collection, and a personal
“Richard Nixon lesson” about record-keeping.
What followed was a lighthearted discussion of digital privacy, in
which Bloomberg, now a candidate in the Democratic presidential
race, praised the National Security Agency and said he doesn’t have a
problem with apps selling users’ personal data, as long as consumers
understand what is happening.
“Look, if you don’t want it to be in the public domain, don’t take
that picture, don’t write it down. In this day and age, you’ve got to be
pretty naive to believe that the NSA isn’t listening to everything and
reading every email,” Bloomberg said. “And incidentally, given how
dangerous the world is, we should hope they are, because this is really
serious, what’s going on in the world.”
Bloomberg’s comments in 2014 came more than a year after the first
disclosures of documents by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but before a federal appeals court ruled
that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records was illegal.
Bloomberg did not describe any specific NSA program or form of data
collection in detail, but the lighthearted conversation contains
insights into his views on digital privacy.
Bloomberg mentioned Snowden by name, saying that because hackers or
whistleblowers can obtain and leak records, he joked that he has a rule
against keeping records. “And when you write something, you take a
picture and somebody leaks it,” Bloomberg said. “How many times does
that have to happen before you realize it’s gonna happen again and it
could happen to you? And so whether it’s Snowden or some hacker or
something, it’s what I call the Richard Nixon lesson: Don’t record it.”
