18 ms·

Edward Snowden at IETF 93

442 points by grey-area 11y ago

chatmasta 11y ago
Currently this story has 108 points and zero comments. Are people literally scared to comment on Snowden stories?
- vog 11y ago
  Give people some time to read. Also, what's the point in asking for HN comments? Just go read it and provide a good comment on your own!
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Request for comments and the internet.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  From what I've seen, it can take up to 45 minutes for a submission to get commented on after it arrives on the front-page. Which makes sense, since (most) people want to consume the material, do some thinking and write their (hopefully well-thought out) comments.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    Seems like every comment in this thread is downvoted. Might be bots.
- thrillgore 11y ago
  People read the content first. This isn't reddit.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  It could equally be the reverse - that people up-vote such stories based on the headline but don't bother reading or commenting.
vog 11y ago
I like Snowden's final conclusion: > if the internet and technology does become a danger to us in the future, it's our own fault because we decided not to participate and we let other groups and other influences to decide for us rather than being part of it [...] Before that, he argues that more people should involve themselves more in the IETF and similar groups: > [...] However, when you look at the IETF, they literally don't make a decision unless it's based on consensus. There are no requirements. There are no academic standards or qualifications that anybody has to meet before they can be involved in a working group. Literally, anyone can join, anyone can participate in the process, anyone can make themselves heard, anyone can influence the standards that we develop, put forth, and decide. [...] It's a more inclusive community than it ever has been before [...]
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  >>> if the internet and technology does become a danger. Not sure what his context for this is, but one could easily argue we're already here.
  - vog 11y ago
    The context is the last question, asked by journalist Monika Ermert: > So hi-tech is likely always going to be a domain where a few experts will have the knowledge to understand and control the system. Could it be that the use of hi-tech fundamentally undermines democratic society or kind of – how can we do something to educate users or...
hellbanner 11y ago
Props to Mnot (or whoever did it) for providing links out of the transcript.
- mnot 11y ago
  Thanks, it seemed like the right thing to do :) I had the transcript done by a professional, and then went over it and corrected. That said, there are still some places where it may have errors, so if you find an odd statement, take it with a grain of salt and check the recording. Corrections taken in comments, of course (don't think gist does pulls :(
merrywhether 11y ago
I'm always struck by the strange cognitive dissonance US law has for corporate whistleblowers vs governmental whistleblowers. How can you recognize the value of one while dismissing the value of the other? It's not like a whistleblower defense is a get-out-of-jail-free card either, as you must prove that what you did was actually in the public interest. It's a shame that there's no movement for reform in this area, because ultimately it would be very interesting to see Snowden return to the US for a "fair trial" and see the public response (both within the US and globally) to the outcome.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Law at both federal and state levels (in most states) has fairly strong protection for government whistleblowers in general; the Espionage Act specifically lacks whistleblower provisions, which certainly presents an issue when whistleblowing relates to the kind of defense-related information to which the Espionage Act applies, but that's not indicative of a general approach in law to government whistleblowers.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > I'm always struck by the strange cognitive dissonance US law has for corporate whistleblowers vs governmental whistleblowers. It doesn't: there are multiple different programs for reporting perceived illegal activity. Snowden never availed himself of any of these, but instead committed espionage.
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    > It doesn't: there are multiple different programs for reporting perceived illegal activity. Snowden never availed himself of any of these, but instead committed espionage. These programs had been used by multiple people before, with no results. They are for show, so that people like you can point to them to show that there's "oversight". Whistleblowing of the type done by Snowden is a last resort when there is no other option. The options you speak of are not credible avenues for change.
  - theandrewbailey 11y ago
pythondz 11y ago
When Snowden exposed facts about MAC addresses, it's very scary knowing that IoT is coming in our life. I'd like to have a firmware for wireless electronic devices that can use a random MAC address every thirty minutes without using actual spoofing tools that are easy to use only on desktop/laptop/smartphone. I want the same tools for my bluetooth headset, my car wireless devices and so on...
tptacek 11y ago
When asked about DNSSEC, which is a forklift upgrade of a core Internet protocol that has the deliberate effect of giving NSA and GCHQ control of TLS keys for hosts in .COM, .UK, .NET, .ORG, and .IO, this was Snowden's answer: Edward Snowden: So, I agree with you and I mean this is what's important about the IETF. Just because I say it, doesn't mean it's gospel. I can be wrong about an incredible amount of things. Nobody should trust me. Nobody should grant any sort of outsized weight to what I say. When I talk about the NSA, I mentioned it in correlation with DANE and the DPRIVE initiative as well because the whole idea is that, yes, providing some mechanism for authentication of the responses between DNS queries is valuable. It's not an end to itself. We still have to be able to say, "Well, all right, the certificate that you're getting from it, for a server is also reliable," and then we have to actually do more armour the requests themselves to make sure that they don’t become a new vector, they don't become manipulated. Who knows like if eventually the DNS responses themselves that are provided through this become some sort of vulnerability because of the way they're parsed or whatever, but the whole idea is that we gotta start somewhere and then we've got to iterate from that point. We've gotta begin building and when I think about things like DNSSEC, I don't think it's the golden age, we can solve all of the problems, but I do think that it's a start. It's better than the status quo. It's better than what we have today And by getting the community thinking, by coming together and trying to develop some kind of solution, some kind of standard, we can start developing things that will allow us to build a bridge to the next generation of what we need to protect us against the next generation of coming attacks, and there's a lot of things that get in there. I mean cryptographic agility is one of the big hot things that we have to deal with as well. I can barely follow this at all, but the part where he says DNSSEC is "better than the status quo" is pretty clear. The questioner responds, "so let's implement it". Please be careful with what Snowden says. Whatever you think of his disclosures --- and most of my friends think they were brave and incredibly useful --- there is very little evidence that Snowden is qualified to advise anyone on cryptographic security, and some pretty significant evidence to the contrary.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  The current situation is that anyone can read DNS. If DNSSEC and DANE were implemented, that group would be restricted. In that sense it's better than the status quo, though admittedly only a little bit. I'm all for implementing the perfect protocol if it exists or there is a known credible path to get there. But to my knowledge noone has proposed such a thing (namecoin maybe?), certainly not in a form that my grandmother would be likely to use. Do you have a suggestion for how you would like to see DNS evolve to fix these issues?
rodionos 11y ago
This is the first time I've read his point of view first hand and actually listened to his presentation. He seems to be incredibly smart and well-versed in his subject domain.
- BillPond 11y ago
  You should take the time and watch the documentary. Its a good perspective of his intentions. You can walk away from it with your own opinions if he did the "right" thing.
- mnot 11y ago
  That was the reaction of many people in the room too; he came across as not only smart and well-considered, but also deeply technical.
lsllc 11y ago
Wow, he's got me. Reddit, HN and grandma's cookie site!
travjones 11y ago
I think it's a shame how mainstream media suggests that Snowden is a "coward" for not "coming home to face his charges." It's clear that he released confidential docs to reporters and this would be incredibly easy to prove in court, thereby landing him in prison for the rest of his life. I don't know any sane person that would surrender to this type of treatment, considering that he wouldn't be able to defend his actions legally. Stay on the run, Ed. Thank you for releasing this information so that the American public has some idea of the degree to which we are electronically surveilled on a daily basis.
- 3327 11y ago
  Releasing sensitive information concerning international information collection under the premises of releasing "domestic spying". He said he would only release domestic related information? What happened. Not true. Wake up people he was the best Russian sleeper agent to date. You can Run ED but you can't hide.
- kajecounterhack 11y ago
  Agreed, did you see https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow... > If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions. Ridiculous. They literally don't know what "whistleblower" means. "Go to prison because you deserve it in our clearly unjust system" ...the gall.
  - travjones 11y ago
    Exactly! I did see the response to the petition and thought the exact same thing. The government is pretty much saying, "We know what you did was just. But you broke the law, so come back to suffer in federal prison." "In the land of the free and the home of the brave..." Haha. Ed Snowden is brave and we are freer as Americans knowing what the government is capable of when it comes to electronic surveillance.
wdewind 11y ago
The internet doesn't belong to vendors. The internet doesn't belong to governments. The internet belongs to the user, right? The thing is, this is literally false. The infrastructure of the internet is paid for by governments and vendors. A user wouldn't be called a user if it belonged to them... The internet is a great decentralization when compared to traditional media like television, but it's not nearly as big a difference as people make it seem. With how most people use it it's not far from just having more channels on your existing cable box.
- iscrewyou 11y ago
  And who pays the government to run it's operations? Same for the vendors. Who pays them? I as a consumer keeps them running.
  - wdewind 11y ago
    As a single consumer you don't do anything. And that's reflected in the fact that you don't write or contribute to the policy or infrastructure of the internet. The point is that the internet is not something that is fundamentally different or outside of our culture's existing political, legal and social framework. It exists inside it and replicates most of it. We shouldn't expect it to be different. It hasn't been constructed in a way that implies it will be different either, outside of extremely superficial ways (protocols etc.).
- kajecounterhack 11y ago
  The internet != the infrastructure of the internet. The internet is not its wires, it's the content and the people who are part of a large global community that comprises it. Vendors and governments use the internet, but they don't and shouldn't own it. > ...it's not nearly as big a difference as people make it seem. With how most people use it it's not far from just having more channels on your existing cable box. You can't write emails on your TV, or do banking, or...well this is just a silly sentiment.
  - wdewind 11y ago
rafaelferreira 11y ago
The interview would've probably been a lot more fruitful if questions centered around what he knows about the surveillance capabilities of the agencies he was involved with, in technical detail, than asking for his opinions on technology policy, an area where he is admittedly not an expert.
- mnot 11y ago
  Other people came away with similar thoughts. Perhaps we'll hear more about that from him in other channels.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    I thought that Snowden stated that he's not going to leak anything further? He handed it off to the journalists and he's done. I remember this being part of his conditions for asylum in Russia, but I could be mistaken. I wouldn't expect him to leak anything or discuss government capabilities beyond what has already been leaked. That was never his stated intention. Involving journalists was deliberate on his part to remove himself from being final decision-maker about what to publish.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  Occams razor would conclude that he doesn't know. He ripped a ton of documents off multiple servers because he was an IT admin and had access, and rolled out.
mercurialshark 11y ago
I pretty much agree with Marc Andreessen, on each point. Instead of attempting to paraphrase his points, just watch: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/05/snowden-a-traitor-andreessen.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/05/snowden-a-traitor-andreessen....
mike_hearn 11y ago
Ed's views on Bitcoin are a little surprising. I'm not sure what he means by "nobody likes to talk about Bitcoin any more". It's not that old! One of the problems Bitcoin solves is that you cannot have personas or unlinked identities in the traditional financial system. Governments, and therefore the banks they control, all view financial privacy or pseudonymity as only useful for criminals. That's a rather narrow viewpoint. Especially as the notion of "criminal" becomes more divergent between ordinary citizens and their rulers. There's some truth to it (anonymity does sometimes enable bad stuff), but it's excessively black and white. Regardless, given that Snowden views payment methods and such as being very important, he even brought that up himself, I don't know how else he thinks it can be done, other than with Bitcoin. If you try and create a payment method that has privacy the banks won't give you the time of day. Being completely decentralised and independent is the only way to do money that exists outside of the status quo.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Bitcoin does not solve this problem; you can follow the money from the exchange to the consumer's wallet to the merchant. It's only anonymous if you're using a tumbling service, and transferring your money to a tumbling service is an unambiguous broadcast to the entire world that you are committing the federal crime of money laundering. If they ever increase in popularity, you can bet that regulators will routinely trace transfers to tumbling services and prosecute their users for money laundering, because that is what they're doing.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    You're engaged in a nirvana fallacy: comparing something real to some theoretical but non-existent ideal. Bitcoin "solves the problem" to a much greater extent than any other actual system. It provides a base on which privacy can be improved over time. Tumbling is not required to upgrade privacy in Bitcoin, there are many other techniques that can help too.
  - sonoffett 11y ago
    A good paper on this point "A Fistful of Bitcoins": https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf
rbcoffee 11y ago
Without blindly claiming that Snowden was a staged act by the NSA and done on purpose to shake things up and ruffle feathers, it certainly is an interesting thought experiment to run if you love conspiracy theories. Imagine that was the case! Possible explanations for a false flag: 1.) Public needed to know where there money was going 2.) Not enough to know we're being watched. We need tangible evidence of surveillance apparatus 3.) Leaks designed to bolster the web and privacy; look how many people suddenly care about security 4.) NSA got tired of working in a black box and wanted to flaunt its power 5.) Other reasons?
jokoon 11y ago
If a republican is elected, ed might stay away from the US for a long time.
- thephyber 11y ago
  To be honest, it doesn't seem to have to do with political party affiliation. President Obama's administration has been arguably more hawkish against national security disclosures (when they don't benefit the administration) than Bush's was[1], and his administration has set up quite a few cases that involved tapping the communications of journalists. I liked Candidate Obama quite a bit and am fairly disappointed in President Obama's policies. " The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers."[2] [1] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house...
- steamer25 11y ago
  If the election were held tomorrow between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican, I'd write in Edward Snowden. Right now, I can't imagine either of the parties yielding a better candidate. If enough others did the same, I think the discussion might actually be elevated enough to make a difference--I won't be holding my breath, though.

442 points by grey-area 11y ago

chatmasta 11y ago

Currently this story has 108 points and zero comments. Are people literally scared to comment on Snowden stories?

vog 11y ago
Give people some time to read. Also, what's the point in asking for HN comments? Just go read it and provide a good comment on your own!
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Request for comments and the internet.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
enraged_camel 11y ago
From what I've seen, it can take up to 45 minutes for a submission to get commented on after it arrives on the front-page. Which makes sense, since (most) people want to consume the material, do some thinking and write their (hopefully well-thought out) comments.
- jMyles 11y ago
  Seems like every comment in this thread is downvoted. Might be bots.
thrillgore 11y ago
People read the content first. This isn't reddit.
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
It could equally be the reverse - that people up-vote such stories based on the headline but don't bother reading or commenting.

vog 11y ago

I like Snowden's final conclusion: > if the internet and technology does become a danger to us in the future, it's our own fault because we decided not to participate and we let other groups and other influences to decide for us rather than being part of it [...] Before that, he argues that more people should involve themselves more in the IETF and similar groups: > [...] However, when you look at the IETF, they literally don't make a decision unless it's based on consensus. There are no requirements. There are no academic standards or qualifications that anybody has to meet before they can be involved in a working group. Literally, anyone can join, anyone can participate in the process, anyone can make themselves heard, anyone can influence the standards that we develop, put forth, and decide. [...] It's a more inclusive community than it ever has been before [...]

at-fates-hands 11y ago
>>> if the internet and technology does become a danger. Not sure what his context for this is, but one could easily argue we're already here.
- vog 11y ago
  The context is the last question, asked by journalist Monika Ermert: > So hi-tech is likely always going to be a domain where a few experts will have the knowledge to understand and control the system. Could it be that the use of hi-tech fundamentally undermines democratic society or kind of – how can we do something to educate users or...

hellbanner 11y ago

Props to Mnot (or whoever did it) for providing links out of the transcript.

mnot 11y ago
Thanks, it seemed like the right thing to do :) I had the transcript done by a professional, and then went over it and corrected. That said, there are still some places where it may have errors, so if you find an odd statement, take it with a grain of salt and check the recording. Corrections taken in comments, of course (don't think gist does pulls :(

merrywhether 11y ago

I'm always struck by the strange cognitive dissonance US law has for corporate whistleblowers vs governmental whistleblowers. How can you recognize the value of one while dismissing the value of the other? It's not like a whistleblower defense is a get-out-of-jail-free card either, as you must prove that what you did was actually in the public interest. It's a shame that there's no movement for reform in this area, because ultimately it would be very interesting to see Snowden return to the US for a "fair trial" and see the public response (both within the US and globally) to the outcome.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Law at both federal and state levels (in most states) has fairly strong protection for government whistleblowers in general; the Espionage Act specifically lacks whistleblower provisions, which certainly presents an issue when whistleblowing relates to the kind of defense-related information to which the Espionage Act applies, but that's not indicative of a general approach in law to government whistleblowers.
wtbob 11y ago
> I'm always struck by the strange cognitive dissonance US law has for corporate whistleblowers vs governmental whistleblowers. It doesn't: there are multiple different programs for reporting perceived illegal activity. Snowden never availed himself of any of these, but instead committed espionage.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  > It doesn't: there are multiple different programs for reporting perceived illegal activity. Snowden never availed himself of any of these, but instead committed espionage. These programs had been used by multiple people before, with no results. They are for show, so that people like you can point to them to show that there's "oversight". Whistleblowing of the type done by Snowden is a last resort when there is no other option. The options you speak of are not credible avenues for change.
- theandrewbailey 11y ago

pythondz 11y ago

When Snowden exposed facts about MAC addresses, it's very scary knowing that IoT is coming in our life. I'd like to have a firmware for wireless electronic devices that can use a random MAC address every thirty minutes without using actual spoofing tools that are easy to use only on desktop/laptop/smartphone. I want the same tools for my bluetooth headset, my car wireless devices and so on...

tptacek 11y ago

When asked about DNSSEC, which is a forklift upgrade of a core Internet protocol that has the deliberate effect of giving NSA and GCHQ control of TLS keys for hosts in .COM, .UK, .NET, .ORG, and .IO, this was Snowden's answer: Edward Snowden: So, I agree with you and I mean this is what's important about the IETF. Just because I say it, doesn't mean it's gospel. I can be wrong about an incredible amount of things. Nobody should trust me. Nobody should grant any sort of outsized weight to what I say. When I talk about the NSA, I mentioned it in correlation with DANE and the DPRIVE initiative as well because the whole idea is that, yes, providing some mechanism for authentication of the responses between DNS queries is valuable. It's not an end to itself. We still have to be able to say, "Well, all right, the certificate that you're getting from it, for a server is also reliable," and then we have to actually do more armour the requests themselves to make sure that they don’t become a new vector, they don't become manipulated. Who knows like if eventually the DNS responses themselves that are provided through this become some sort of vulnerability because of the way they're parsed or whatever, but the whole idea is that we gotta start somewhere and then we've got to iterate from that point. We've gotta begin building and when I think about things like DNSSEC, I don't think it's the golden age, we can solve all of the problems, but I do think that it's a start. It's better than the status quo. It's better than what we have today And by getting the community thinking, by coming together and trying to develop some kind of solution, some kind of standard, we can start developing things that will allow us to build a bridge to the next generation of what we need to protect us against the next generation of coming attacks, and there's a lot of things that get in there. I mean cryptographic agility is one of the big hot things that we have to deal with as well. I can barely follow this at all, but the part where he says DNSSEC is "better than the status quo" is pretty clear. The questioner responds, "so let's implement it". Please be careful with what Snowden says. Whatever you think of his disclosures --- and most of my friends think they were brave and incredibly useful --- there is very little evidence that Snowden is qualified to advise anyone on cryptographic security, and some pretty significant evidence to the contrary.

throwaway7767 11y ago
The current situation is that anyone can read DNS. If DNSSEC and DANE were implemented, that group would be restricted. In that sense it's better than the status quo, though admittedly only a little bit. I'm all for implementing the perfect protocol if it exists or there is a known credible path to get there. But to my knowledge noone has proposed such a thing (namecoin maybe?), certainly not in a form that my grandmother would be likely to use. Do you have a suggestion for how you would like to see DNS evolve to fix these issues?

rodionos 11y ago

This is the first time I've read his point of view first hand and actually listened to his presentation. He seems to be incredibly smart and well-versed in his subject domain.

BillPond 11y ago
You should take the time and watch the documentary. Its a good perspective of his intentions. You can walk away from it with your own opinions if he did the "right" thing.
mnot 11y ago
That was the reaction of many people in the room too; he came across as not only smart and well-considered, but also deeply technical.

lsllc 11y ago

Wow, he's got me. Reddit, HN and grandma's cookie site!

travjones 11y ago

I think it's a shame how mainstream media suggests that Snowden is a "coward" for not "coming home to face his charges." It's clear that he released confidential docs to reporters and this would be incredibly easy to prove in court, thereby landing him in prison for the rest of his life. I don't know any sane person that would surrender to this type of treatment, considering that he wouldn't be able to defend his actions legally. Stay on the run, Ed. Thank you for releasing this information so that the American public has some idea of the degree to which we are electronically surveilled on a daily basis.

3327 11y ago
Releasing sensitive information concerning international information collection under the premises of releasing "domestic spying". He said he would only release domestic related information? What happened. Not true. Wake up people he was the best Russian sleeper agent to date. You can Run ED but you can't hide.
kajecounterhack 11y ago
Agreed, did you see https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow... > If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions. Ridiculous. They literally don't know what "whistleblower" means. "Go to prison because you deserve it in our clearly unjust system" ...the gall.
- travjones 11y ago
  Exactly! I did see the response to the petition and thought the exact same thing. The government is pretty much saying, "We know what you did was just. But you broke the law, so come back to suffer in federal prison." "In the land of the free and the home of the brave..." Haha. Ed Snowden is brave and we are freer as Americans knowing what the government is capable of when it comes to electronic surveillance.

wdewind 11y ago

The internet doesn't belong to vendors. The internet doesn't belong to governments. The internet belongs to the user, right? The thing is, this is literally false. The infrastructure of the internet is paid for by governments and vendors. A user wouldn't be called a user if it belonged to them... The internet is a great decentralization when compared to traditional media like television, but it's not nearly as big a difference as people make it seem. With how most people use it it's not far from just having more channels on your existing cable box.

iscrewyou 11y ago
And who pays the government to run it's operations? Same for the vendors. Who pays them? I as a consumer keeps them running.
- wdewind 11y ago
  As a single consumer you don't do anything. And that's reflected in the fact that you don't write or contribute to the policy or infrastructure of the internet. The point is that the internet is not something that is fundamentally different or outside of our culture's existing political, legal and social framework. It exists inside it and replicates most of it. We shouldn't expect it to be different. It hasn't been constructed in a way that implies it will be different either, outside of extremely superficial ways (protocols etc.).
kajecounterhack 11y ago
The internet != the infrastructure of the internet. The internet is not its wires, it's the content and the people who are part of a large global community that comprises it. Vendors and governments use the internet, but they don't and shouldn't own it. > ...it's not nearly as big a difference as people make it seem. With how most people use it it's not far from just having more channels on your existing cable box. You can't write emails on your TV, or do banking, or...well this is just a silly sentiment.
- wdewind 11y ago

rafaelferreira 11y ago

The interview would've probably been a lot more fruitful if questions centered around what he knows about the surveillance capabilities of the agencies he was involved with, in technical detail, than asking for his opinions on technology policy, an area where he is admittedly not an expert.

mnot 11y ago
Other people came away with similar thoughts. Perhaps we'll hear more about that from him in other channels.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  I thought that Snowden stated that he's not going to leak anything further? He handed it off to the journalists and he's done. I remember this being part of his conditions for asylum in Russia, but I could be mistaken. I wouldn't expect him to leak anything or discuss government capabilities beyond what has already been leaked. That was never his stated intention. Involving journalists was deliberate on his part to remove himself from being final decision-maker about what to publish.
irishcoffee 11y ago
Occams razor would conclude that he doesn't know. He ripped a ton of documents off multiple servers because he was an IT admin and had access, and rolled out.

mercurialshark 11y ago

I pretty much agree with Marc Andreessen, on each point. Instead of attempting to paraphrase his points, just watch: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/05/snowden-a-traitor-andreessen.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/05/snowden-a-traitor-andreessen....

mike_hearn 11y ago

Ed's views on Bitcoin are a little surprising. I'm not sure what he means by "nobody likes to talk about Bitcoin any more". It's not that old! One of the problems Bitcoin solves is that you cannot have personas or unlinked identities in the traditional financial system. Governments, and therefore the banks they control, all view financial privacy or pseudonymity as only useful for criminals. That's a rather narrow viewpoint. Especially as the notion of "criminal" becomes more divergent between ordinary citizens and their rulers. There's some truth to it (anonymity does sometimes enable bad stuff), but it's excessively black and white. Regardless, given that Snowden views payment methods and such as being very important, he even brought that up himself, I don't know how else he thinks it can be done, other than with Bitcoin. If you try and create a payment method that has privacy the banks won't give you the time of day. Being completely decentralised and independent is the only way to do money that exists outside of the status quo.

superuser2 11y ago
Bitcoin does not solve this problem; you can follow the money from the exchange to the consumer's wallet to the merchant. It's only anonymous if you're using a tumbling service, and transferring your money to a tumbling service is an unambiguous broadcast to the entire world that you are committing the federal crime of money laundering. If they ever increase in popularity, you can bet that regulators will routinely trace transfers to tumbling services and prosecute their users for money laundering, because that is what they're doing.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  You're engaged in a nirvana fallacy: comparing something real to some theoretical but non-existent ideal. Bitcoin "solves the problem" to a much greater extent than any other actual system. It provides a base on which privacy can be improved over time. Tumbling is not required to upgrade privacy in Bitcoin, there are many other techniques that can help too.
- sonoffett 11y ago
  A good paper on this point "A Fistful of Bitcoins": https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf

rbcoffee 11y ago

Without blindly claiming that Snowden was a staged act by the NSA and done on purpose to shake things up and ruffle feathers, it certainly is an interesting thought experiment to run if you love conspiracy theories. Imagine that was the case! Possible explanations for a false flag: 1.) Public needed to know where there money was going 2.) Not enough to know we're being watched. We need tangible evidence of surveillance apparatus 3.) Leaks designed to bolster the web and privacy; look how many people suddenly care about security 4.) NSA got tired of working in a black box and wanted to flaunt its power 5.) Other reasons?

jokoon 11y ago

If a republican is elected, ed might stay away from the US for a long time.

thephyber 11y ago
To be honest, it doesn't seem to have to do with political party affiliation. President Obama's administration has been arguably more hawkish against national security disclosures (when they don't benefit the administration) than Bush's was[1], and his administration has set up quite a few cases that involved tapping the communications of journalists. I liked Candidate Obama quite a bit and am fairly disappointed in President Obama's policies. " The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers."[2] [1] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house...
steamer25 11y ago
If the election were held tomorrow between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican, I'd write in Edward Snowden. Right now, I can't imagine either of the parties yielding a better candidate. If enough others did the same, I think the discussion might actually be elevated enough to make a difference--I won't be holding my breath, though.