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I think he's right. His statement is carefully phrased. Yes, of course, all sorts of intelligent people have argued that the tools of mass surveillance could be
by sievebrain 10y ago
I think he's right. His statement is carefully phrased. Yes, of course, all sorts of intelligent people have argued that the tools of mass surveillance could be developed and could be abused.
But only a very small number of people picked up on AT&T Room 101 and Echelon and so on, and saw their significance. Unfortunately those things were more like news stories than events that redefined people's thinking. Mass surveillance simply wasn't a part of the conversation for the vast majority of technologists who mattered, i.e. the ones building the products we all use.
The NSA leaks changed all that. Now you have the guys running WhatsApp and Apple talking about this stuff. And even though for politeness reasons they sometimes talk in hypotheticals, "if we don't encrypt it could be abused by bad governments", it's as clear as day that what they really mean is "because we don't encrypt it is being abused by our governments".
- stevetrewick 10y agoNot could. Had been and were, for which there was growing evidence culminating with the Snowden files. I don't disagree that they had a considerably larger impact than what went before. You're absolutely right in the sense that once the stories of GCHQ's black boxes, the EUP's documented disclosure of Echelon [0], room 101 and so on and so forth got outside the circle of people who were familiar with them they became FOAF stories and conspiracy theories and weren't part of any mainstream discourse, but there was a bit more to [it] than abstract hypotheticals and general 'power corrupts' cynicism. [0] An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/jadis/2013_12/8.PE4_AP_PV!LIBE.1994_LIBE-199801260050EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/jadis/2013_12/8.PE4_AP_PV!... [edit]