9 ms·

How Snowden's Disclosures Made All Our Data Safer

282 points by zerognowl 10y ago

api 10y ago
In my experience they caused people to get slightly more serious about security, but the effect was minimal beyond crypto heads and maybe enterprise users. UX continues to dominate all other market factors in computing by a huge margin.
- mpeg 10y ago
  Yet the article you just commented on lists some concrete ways it affected everyone; like increased TLS usage, FDE and e2e encryption being standard with consumer products and general increase in public awareness around online privacy.
- baconner 10y ago
  I think the impact here has been less with individual users getting better about security and more that companies and developers have been spurred to try and do something about it. For example let's encrypt might not exist and that's led to a huge amount of traffic moving to https. Or the rise of more easy to use encrypted messaging apps like ete encryption in WhatsApp.
- afarrell 10y ago
  > UX continues to dominate all other market factors There is an inherent tension between security and UX from the perspective of designing an individual tool. But from the perspective of building good security habits and policies, good UX is essential. The only way to achieve both is to invest the resources into thoughtful system design. What drives people to invest such resources?
- zerognowl 10y ago
  > but the effect was minimal beyond crypto heads and maybe enterprise users. Security/privacy on the Internet is known for being hard, and it used to be, if you wanted privacy you had to withdraw slightly from society, and learn Linux, read about TOR, learn how to harden your web browser, or otherwise attempt to 'go dark' from the prying eyes of governments or sophisticated criminals. Now it can be said with certainty that many of the things we take for granted, have come along leaps and bounds due to Snowden, and are a lot less complicated to Install and setup. Now a privacy-conscious teenager can install TOR browser bundle, Signal, uBlock, or any number of things you can find on sites like PrivacyTools[1] with relatively little trouble compared to the Internet pre-Snowden. > UX continues to dominate all other market factors in computing by a huge margin It might come at some cost, like reduced UX, as you mention, but that's called a security tradeoff or a privacy tradeoff and it's a well-known hard fact of protecting your communications and traffic. [1] https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/
- apeace 10y ago
  Would Whatsapp and Facebook Chat been end-to-end encrypted had it not been for the Snowden leaks? It's hard to say. But personally I believe it wouldn't have happened if the public perception of security had not been altered by his leaks. Another example that affects billions: after the Snowden leaks, Google scrambled to encrypt their intra-datacenter traffic. Before they did so, those billions of end-users would get the green padlock when visiting Gmail, only to have their data snooped as it travelled over Google-owned dark fiber. You are right that UX still dominates all other factors. But I think post-Snowden, there have been many significant improvements to security that affect billions of people.
  - wruza 10y ago
    If you dig into security world details, you'll see that Whatsapp's is not even considered as a competitor. They could just claim they're now encrypted without actually doing anything to get the same total effect. Today's encryption and security are not features, these are marketing tags like these "without chlorine" on salt packs. Thanks to guess who?
- icecold12741 10y ago
  The real question is how much of it was because of him. They assume it was him that made these changes but that's ignoring the data leak of over 100,000,000 government employees personal information, plus the University of Maryland hacks, and probably 2 dozen other high profile hacks since then. To credit the changes to him, you would have to shove that those events (individually or collectively) had no effect on privacy concerns. I would venture to guess it was the multitude of hacks that led to increased privacy concerns, since 90% of what he revealed wouldn't be defeated by using current encryption methods or changing your password... I mean what is the count on the FBI "breaking" TOR? 3x in the past year that went public? Yes, Google added encryption but only because they were afraid of losing a competitive edge. They will still gladly sell all the information they collect (by monitoring emails, texts, phone calls, etc - which their right to monitor was defended in a district court) provided you have enough money. They are first and foremost an advertising agency. All their other services and products just serve to give them more sources of information.
oconnore 10y ago
[quickly] Reading through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... If you say that disclosing surveillance on US citizens was ok, how do you explain these leaks: * """The Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS), which cooperates with the NSA, has gained access to Russian targets in the Kola Peninsula and other civilian targets. In general, the NIS provides information to the NSA about "Politicians", "Energy" and "Armament".""" * """In France, the NSA targeted people belonging to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration.""" * """the NSA had been monitoring telephone conversations of 35 world leaders""" * """In an effort codenamed GENIE, computer specialists can control foreign computer networks using "covert implants," a form of remotely transmitted malware on tens of thousands of devices annually.""" * """According to Edward Snowden, the NSA has established secret intelligence partnerships with many Western governments.""" * """revealed NSA spying on multiple diplomatic missions of the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Headquarters in New York.""" How are these matters relevant to the citizens of the United States? Aren't these things exactly what spy agencies are supposed to do? Why should Snowden get a pardon for disrupting normal intelligence work?
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Because their versions of the NSA spy on Americans doing the same things we do for them, and then trade the information. Their NSA spies on us, our NSA spies on them, they trade to subvert their local laws. That is maybe the most important disclosure that Snowden helped make happen.
  - oconnore 10y ago
    > their versions of the NSA spy on Americans doing the same things we do for them, and then trade the information. Disclosing the things I listed is not required to tell us that.
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      Actually, it is. We've had whistleblowers before who tried to censor what they told us and it didn't have half the impact. As long as the leadership of the NSA keeps treasonously lying, all leaks are necessary and thus justified.
vaadu 10y ago
Snowden's revelations about domestic spying made the US safer. Snowden's revelations about non-domestic spying made the US weaker. If all he'd done was the first he should be pardoned. Because he did the second he should get life without parole.
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  There is no evidence that it caused any harm though. Can you explain why you feel that way or show some evidence?
  - piptastic 10y ago
    That's not really a valid reason to not prosecute people though. If I run a red light and no one happened to be going through the intersection besides me, should I still not be ticketed?
    - serg_chernata 10y ago
      Agreed, though as a counter point to OP I would propose that if Snowden only revealed information about our international operations then he should have been prosecuted. However, his act was twofold. Arguably 50% heroic and 50% of betrayal. There is no good to your running of a red light. This is not a proper comparison.
      - EdHominem 10y ago
        That's not your, or Snowden's worry. The law doesn't say you have to reveal criminal activity - only IF you feel it's a benefit overall. If the organization had real internal controls, or was under the control of government at all, Snowden could have used those channels and could have been expected to. But as soon as he fears they won't work he must do whatever he can. The obligation to blow the whistle doesn't end when it's hard, or when your friends get hurt.
    - Zigurd 10y ago
      It is a good reason to deemphasize such prosecutions. Federal prosecutions are expensive and take resources away from cases where material damage is involved. It's not like writing a traffic ticket.
Zigurd 10y ago
The most important impact will be difficult to gauge: The US and Five Eyes have built a world-spanning interlocking hierarchy of lords and vassals of surveillance. This means none of the important governments in the world has true autonomy in decision-making, without their decisions being anticipated and influenced by the US and its closest allies. Security efforts will get serious if state actors decide to try to escape this web.
HugoDaniel 10y ago
It would be nice to see how companies like google/twitter/facebook/apple/microsoft/etc got negatively affected by these disclosures. Probably by checking usage drop or some other relevant metrics. I know a few people (non it related) that dropped gmail.
- erentz 10y ago
  On a technical front it has influenced their hardware decisions, forcing adoption for example of MACSec, adding some minor capital cost. Mostly though the cost has been in the resulting data sovereignty laws forcing them to set up sovereign clouds in places like Germany, UK, Canada, etc. I can tell you this makes a real mess of things - you can't share your management infrastructure or anything across the infrastructures. In Germany you are using remote hands to do everything because they have to be Germans. Etc.
  - late2part 10y ago
    My understanding based on actual reports from people is that the companies you speak of did not go to MACSEC, but did start doing host-to-host IPSEC, as well as L1 AES256 encryption (not macsec). Agreed with the balkanization of the clouds/infrastructure.
- alecco 10y ago
  They obviously don't care. Outside of the tech crowd people don't have a clue. And worse, they don't want to care.
djyaz1200 10y ago
Does anyone else think this Snowden as a hero stuff is a bit much? The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed decades before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON). I'll grant he sure raised awareness but does that make him a hero? ...and the recent increased attention to security seems to be heavily influenced by commercial hacking concerns rather than a response to government surveillance? Also... does anyone seriously think the government can't decrypt your data? Do we want every soldier, employee and contractor working in our government to use giant data dumps as a legit way to lodge their objections? Convince me why this guy shouldn't be in prison?
- my_ghola 10y ago
  > Convince me why this guy shouldn't be in prison? You said it yourself, "The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed decades before." All he did was raise awareness.
  - djyaz1200 10y ago
    Yes but he didn't tweet out the wikipedia link he data dumped classified materials.
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      As your responses say, you can't have it both ways. If you tell us the material was all well known then it doesn't deserve to be called classified, and it isn't a crime to leak. If the information is classified and contains evidence of ongoing crimes, then it must be leaked if the crimes can't be stopped in another way. > he didn't tweet out the wikipedia link Obviously you don't know how classified data works. The Wikipedia pages in question were written based partly on earlier leaks, meaning that they count as classified for this purpose. Had Snowden sent you the WP page on the NSA and said "Read paragraph 3" it would have been an illegal disclosure, but it wouldn't have had any impact. > The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed Without proof that knowledge was essentially a conspiracy theory. I knew of ECHELON but there's no way I could prove it to anyone else. Snowden gave us data we could use to prove it. > Does anyone else think this Snowden as a hero stuff is a bit much? No, heroism is essentially concern for others / concern for self. He put himself in much risk, for no personal gain, so he's pretty clearly a hero.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jamisteven 10y ago
The reality is even if they pardon him, the guy will never be safe in his home country. Thousands of so called "patriots" believe this man is a traitor. Very sad especially considering what little has changed since the leak.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  Thousands believe that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes, but as far as I know, no one has tried to kill him yet. I wouldn't completely rule out the idea that someone might take a shot at Snowden were he to return, but at the same time I doubt that the vast majority of people who label him a "traitor" feel strongly enough about it to personally try to kill him.
  - 0xFFC 10y ago
    You are wrong. Those two are completely different. People who believes Cheney is war criminal are mostly liberal, non violent side of country. But the other side is nothing like that.
    - theGimp 10y ago
      Liberals can and have been violent in the past. No group large enough is free of extremists.
    - optimuspaul 10y ago
      it's not fair to either side to generalize like that. Also, we're all Liberals in the US, just different flavors of it.
      - ionised 10y ago
        The problem with that statement is a lot of Americans would be foaming at the mouth if you labelled them a liberal due to a severe misundertanding of the meanings of words like 'liberal', 'progressive', 'communist', 'socialist'.
sickbeard 10y ago
This is nothing but a propaganda piece with some nice graphics. How exactly has it made all our data safer?
- milkytron 10y ago
  I don't think that Snowden releasing documents directly made anyone's data safer, but indirectly it did. Now that people are aware that we are being spied on at a massive scale, many are more cautious about which services they choose to use, what information to put on the internet, and are more considerate of encryption. There's a few anecdotal comments in this thread saying so, and I certainly have made different choices now because of the revelations of Snowden. So maybe Snowden didn't make our data safer, but we are because of what he showed us.
  - zerognowl 10y ago
    > Now that people are aware that we are being spied on at a massive scale Here's an EFF.org press conference video detailing NSA wiretapping, from 10 years ago, as of writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEfMMUbfQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEfMMUbfQw Whilst the efforts of the NSA were known for some time, the Snowden leaks were very aggressive and a lot more information could be gleaned from them. It's not enough to casually mention Echelon and then dismiss these revelations as trivial. There is an enormous trove of details in the Snowden Archive that describes the apparatus and machinery used to spy, not just some vague reference to "Tapped Undersea Cables" which is an oft-used scene people use to describe the NSA. I just wish the leaks had more detail, like code samples, or even pictures of the facilities used to spy. (You'd be surprised how much can be gleaned from just one picture or a line of code).
readhn 10y ago
It has not made our data safer - rather it confirmed that our data "is not safe" anymore!! Snowden confirmed that we have 0 (zero) privacy and that government has unrestricted access to all of your personal data, and if needed that data could be "pulled" and used against you.
- readhn 10y ago
  Anyone does not agree? If you are a person of interest, Do you think government would not use an opportunity to fabricate evidence against a citizen using collected data?
  - return0 10y ago
    Our upvotes are being tracked as well
readhn 10y ago
On a personal level the disclosure was that "little additional push" (a wake up call) that made me abandon use of main Google services (email and voice). I advocated my close friends and associates to do the same and some of them are following the lead.
- theGimp 10y ago
  [edit: the downvotes aren't warranted...] Aren't email and phone calls monitored anyhow since they're not encrypted (by default)? Why wouldn't the three-letter agency capture all email traffic if it can?
  - DavideNL 10y ago
    If the three-letter agency would be the only one invading our privacy that would be a lot better already; Of course this is not the case, many companies are invading our privacy for commercial reasons, they sell our personal data for their own financial profit (Google, Linkedin, Facebook, etc.)
    - theGimp 10y ago
      Of course I won't contest that, but Snowden's revelations did nothing to change that knowledge. We have always known private companies keep all the data they can get their hands on and use it to sell ads.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      The companies that publish policies and give you control over the "invasion" of privacy, up to and including not interacting with them. The saintly three-letter agencies simply consider all the information their right to take. I have a hard time seeing your point of view in light of that reality.
      - DavideNL 10y ago
        what i meant was that i agree with what @readhn said; i think many people (around me) have become more privacy aware because of Snowdens disclosures, which i think is a good development, even though no matter how hard they try they are still not protected, and probably never will be, from three-letter agencies collecting their data...
smkellat 10y ago
Why do we always assume that the NSA (including its allies) is the only bad guy to worry about?

282 points by zerognowl 10y ago

api 10y ago

In my experience they caused people to get slightly more serious about security, but the effect was minimal beyond crypto heads and maybe enterprise users. UX continues to dominate all other market factors in computing by a huge margin.

mpeg 10y ago
Yet the article you just commented on lists some concrete ways it affected everyone; like increased TLS usage, FDE and e2e encryption being standard with consumer products and general increase in public awareness around online privacy.
baconner 10y ago
I think the impact here has been less with individual users getting better about security and more that companies and developers have been spurred to try and do something about it. For example let's encrypt might not exist and that's led to a huge amount of traffic moving to https. Or the rise of more easy to use encrypted messaging apps like ete encryption in WhatsApp.
afarrell 10y ago
> UX continues to dominate all other market factors There is an inherent tension between security and UX from the perspective of designing an individual tool. But from the perspective of building good security habits and policies, good UX is essential. The only way to achieve both is to invest the resources into thoughtful system design. What drives people to invest such resources?
zerognowl 10y ago
> but the effect was minimal beyond crypto heads and maybe enterprise users. Security/privacy on the Internet is known for being hard, and it used to be, if you wanted privacy you had to withdraw slightly from society, and learn Linux, read about TOR, learn how to harden your web browser, or otherwise attempt to 'go dark' from the prying eyes of governments or sophisticated criminals. Now it can be said with certainty that many of the things we take for granted, have come along leaps and bounds due to Snowden, and are a lot less complicated to Install and setup. Now a privacy-conscious teenager can install TOR browser bundle, Signal, uBlock, or any number of things you can find on sites like PrivacyTools[1] with relatively little trouble compared to the Internet pre-Snowden. > UX continues to dominate all other market factors in computing by a huge margin It might come at some cost, like reduced UX, as you mention, but that's called a security tradeoff or a privacy tradeoff and it's a well-known hard fact of protecting your communications and traffic. [1] https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/
apeace 10y ago
Would Whatsapp and Facebook Chat been end-to-end encrypted had it not been for the Snowden leaks? It's hard to say. But personally I believe it wouldn't have happened if the public perception of security had not been altered by his leaks. Another example that affects billions: after the Snowden leaks, Google scrambled to encrypt their intra-datacenter traffic. Before they did so, those billions of end-users would get the green padlock when visiting Gmail, only to have their data snooped as it travelled over Google-owned dark fiber. You are right that UX still dominates all other factors. But I think post-Snowden, there have been many significant improvements to security that affect billions of people.
- wruza 10y ago
  If you dig into security world details, you'll see that Whatsapp's is not even considered as a competitor. They could just claim they're now encrypted without actually doing anything to get the same total effect. Today's encryption and security are not features, these are marketing tags like these "without chlorine" on salt packs. Thanks to guess who?
icecold12741 10y ago
The real question is how much of it was because of him. They assume it was him that made these changes but that's ignoring the data leak of over 100,000,000 government employees personal information, plus the University of Maryland hacks, and probably 2 dozen other high profile hacks since then. To credit the changes to him, you would have to shove that those events (individually or collectively) had no effect on privacy concerns. I would venture to guess it was the multitude of hacks that led to increased privacy concerns, since 90% of what he revealed wouldn't be defeated by using current encryption methods or changing your password... I mean what is the count on the FBI "breaking" TOR? 3x in the past year that went public? Yes, Google added encryption but only because they were afraid of losing a competitive edge. They will still gladly sell all the information they collect (by monitoring emails, texts, phone calls, etc - which their right to monitor was defended in a district court) provided you have enough money. They are first and foremost an advertising agency. All their other services and products just serve to give them more sources of information.

oconnore 10y ago

[quickly] Reading through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... If you say that disclosing surveillance on US citizens was ok, how do you explain these leaks: * """The Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS), which cooperates with the NSA, has gained access to Russian targets in the Kola Peninsula and other civilian targets. In general, the NIS provides information to the NSA about "Politicians", "Energy" and "Armament".""" * """In France, the NSA targeted people belonging to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration.""" * """the NSA had been monitoring telephone conversations of 35 world leaders""" * """In an effort codenamed GENIE, computer specialists can control foreign computer networks using "covert implants," a form of remotely transmitted malware on tens of thousands of devices annually.""" * """According to Edward Snowden, the NSA has established secret intelligence partnerships with many Western governments.""" * """revealed NSA spying on multiple diplomatic missions of the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Headquarters in New York.""" How are these matters relevant to the citizens of the United States? Aren't these things exactly what spy agencies are supposed to do? Why should Snowden get a pardon for disrupting normal intelligence work?

DiabloD3 10y ago
Because their versions of the NSA spy on Americans doing the same things we do for them, and then trade the information. Their NSA spies on us, our NSA spies on them, they trade to subvert their local laws. That is maybe the most important disclosure that Snowden helped make happen.
- oconnore 10y ago
  > their versions of the NSA spy on Americans doing the same things we do for them, and then trade the information. Disclosing the things I listed is not required to tell us that.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    Actually, it is. We've had whistleblowers before who tried to censor what they told us and it didn't have half the impact. As long as the leadership of the NSA keeps treasonously lying, all leaks are necessary and thus justified.

vaadu 10y ago

Snowden's revelations about domestic spying made the US safer. Snowden's revelations about non-domestic spying made the US weaker. If all he'd done was the first he should be pardoned. Because he did the second he should get life without parole.

serg_chernata 10y ago
There is no evidence that it caused any harm though. Can you explain why you feel that way or show some evidence?
- piptastic 10y ago
  That's not really a valid reason to not prosecute people though. If I run a red light and no one happened to be going through the intersection besides me, should I still not be ticketed?
  - serg_chernata 10y ago
    Agreed, though as a counter point to OP I would propose that if Snowden only revealed information about our international operations then he should have been prosecuted. However, his act was twofold. Arguably 50% heroic and 50% of betrayal. There is no good to your running of a red light. This is not a proper comparison.
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      That's not your, or Snowden's worry. The law doesn't say you have to reveal criminal activity - only IF you feel it's a benefit overall. If the organization had real internal controls, or was under the control of government at all, Snowden could have used those channels and could have been expected to. But as soon as he fears they won't work he must do whatever he can. The obligation to blow the whistle doesn't end when it's hard, or when your friends get hurt.
  - Zigurd 10y ago
    It is a good reason to deemphasize such prosecutions. Federal prosecutions are expensive and take resources away from cases where material damage is involved. It's not like writing a traffic ticket.

Zigurd 10y ago

The most important impact will be difficult to gauge: The US and Five Eyes have built a world-spanning interlocking hierarchy of lords and vassals of surveillance. This means none of the important governments in the world has true autonomy in decision-making, without their decisions being anticipated and influenced by the US and its closest allies. Security efforts will get serious if state actors decide to try to escape this web.

HugoDaniel 10y ago

It would be nice to see how companies like google/twitter/facebook/apple/microsoft/etc got negatively affected by these disclosures. Probably by checking usage drop or some other relevant metrics. I know a few people (non it related) that dropped gmail.

erentz 10y ago
On a technical front it has influenced their hardware decisions, forcing adoption for example of MACSec, adding some minor capital cost. Mostly though the cost has been in the resulting data sovereignty laws forcing them to set up sovereign clouds in places like Germany, UK, Canada, etc. I can tell you this makes a real mess of things - you can't share your management infrastructure or anything across the infrastructures. In Germany you are using remote hands to do everything because they have to be Germans. Etc.
- late2part 10y ago
  My understanding based on actual reports from people is that the companies you speak of did not go to MACSEC, but did start doing host-to-host IPSEC, as well as L1 AES256 encryption (not macsec). Agreed with the balkanization of the clouds/infrastructure.
alecco 10y ago
They obviously don't care. Outside of the tech crowd people don't have a clue. And worse, they don't want to care.

djyaz1200 10y ago

Does anyone else think this Snowden as a hero stuff is a bit much? The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed decades before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON). I'll grant he sure raised awareness but does that make him a hero? ...and the recent increased attention to security seems to be heavily influenced by commercial hacking concerns rather than a response to government surveillance? Also... does anyone seriously think the government can't decrypt your data? Do we want every soldier, employee and contractor working in our government to use giant data dumps as a legit way to lodge their objections? Convince me why this guy shouldn't be in prison?

my_ghola 10y ago
> Convince me why this guy shouldn't be in prison? You said it yourself, "The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed decades before." All he did was raise awareness.
- djyaz1200 10y ago
  Yes but he didn't tweet out the wikipedia link he data dumped classified materials.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    As your responses say, you can't have it both ways. If you tell us the material was all well known then it doesn't deserve to be called classified, and it isn't a crime to leak. If the information is classified and contains evidence of ongoing crimes, then it must be leaked if the crimes can't be stopped in another way. > he didn't tweet out the wikipedia link Obviously you don't know how classified data works. The Wikipedia pages in question were written based partly on earlier leaks, meaning that they count as classified for this purpose. Had Snowden sent you the WP page on the NSA and said "Read paragraph 3" it would have been an illegal disclosure, but it wouldn't have had any impact. > The guy revealed government programs that ANYONE who cared to look knew existed Without proof that knowledge was essentially a conspiracy theory. I knew of ECHELON but there's no way I could prove it to anyone else. Snowden gave us data we could use to prove it. > Does anyone else think this Snowden as a hero stuff is a bit much? No, heroism is essentially concern for others / concern for self. He put himself in much risk, for no personal gain, so he's pretty clearly a hero.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jamisteven 10y ago

The reality is even if they pardon him, the guy will never be safe in his home country. Thousands of so called "patriots" believe this man is a traitor. Very sad especially considering what little has changed since the leak.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Thousands believe that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes, but as far as I know, no one has tried to kill him yet. I wouldn't completely rule out the idea that someone might take a shot at Snowden were he to return, but at the same time I doubt that the vast majority of people who label him a "traitor" feel strongly enough about it to personally try to kill him.
- 0xFFC 10y ago
  You are wrong. Those two are completely different. People who believes Cheney is war criminal are mostly liberal, non violent side of country. But the other side is nothing like that.
  - theGimp 10y ago
    Liberals can and have been violent in the past. No group large enough is free of extremists.
  - optimuspaul 10y ago
    it's not fair to either side to generalize like that. Also, we're all Liberals in the US, just different flavors of it.
    - ionised 10y ago
      The problem with that statement is a lot of Americans would be foaming at the mouth if you labelled them a liberal due to a severe misundertanding of the meanings of words like 'liberal', 'progressive', 'communist', 'socialist'.

sickbeard 10y ago

This is nothing but a propaganda piece with some nice graphics. How exactly has it made all our data safer?

milkytron 10y ago
I don't think that Snowden releasing documents directly made anyone's data safer, but indirectly it did. Now that people are aware that we are being spied on at a massive scale, many are more cautious about which services they choose to use, what information to put on the internet, and are more considerate of encryption. There's a few anecdotal comments in this thread saying so, and I certainly have made different choices now because of the revelations of Snowden. So maybe Snowden didn't make our data safer, but we are because of what he showed us.
- zerognowl 10y ago
  > Now that people are aware that we are being spied on at a massive scale Here's an EFF.org press conference video detailing NSA wiretapping, from 10 years ago, as of writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEfMMUbfQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEfMMUbfQw Whilst the efforts of the NSA were known for some time, the Snowden leaks were very aggressive and a lot more information could be gleaned from them. It's not enough to casually mention Echelon and then dismiss these revelations as trivial. There is an enormous trove of details in the Snowden Archive that describes the apparatus and machinery used to spy, not just some vague reference to "Tapped Undersea Cables" which is an oft-used scene people use to describe the NSA. I just wish the leaks had more detail, like code samples, or even pictures of the facilities used to spy. (You'd be surprised how much can be gleaned from just one picture or a line of code).

readhn 10y ago

It has not made our data safer - rather it confirmed that our data "is not safe" anymore!! Snowden confirmed that we have 0 (zero) privacy and that government has unrestricted access to all of your personal data, and if needed that data could be "pulled" and used against you.

readhn 10y ago
Anyone does not agree? If you are a person of interest, Do you think government would not use an opportunity to fabricate evidence against a citizen using collected data?
- return0 10y ago
  Our upvotes are being tracked as well

readhn 10y ago

On a personal level the disclosure was that "little additional push" (a wake up call) that made me abandon use of main Google services (email and voice). I advocated my close friends and associates to do the same and some of them are following the lead.

theGimp 10y ago
[edit: the downvotes aren't warranted...] Aren't email and phone calls monitored anyhow since they're not encrypted (by default)? Why wouldn't the three-letter agency capture all email traffic if it can?
- DavideNL 10y ago
  If the three-letter agency would be the only one invading our privacy that would be a lot better already; Of course this is not the case, many companies are invading our privacy for commercial reasons, they sell our personal data for their own financial profit (Google, Linkedin, Facebook, etc.)
  - theGimp 10y ago
    Of course I won't contest that, but Snowden's revelations did nothing to change that knowledge. We have always known private companies keep all the data they can get their hands on and use it to sell ads.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    The companies that publish policies and give you control over the "invasion" of privacy, up to and including not interacting with them. The saintly three-letter agencies simply consider all the information their right to take. I have a hard time seeing your point of view in light of that reality.
    - DavideNL 10y ago
      what i meant was that i agree with what @readhn said; i think many people (around me) have become more privacy aware because of Snowdens disclosures, which i think is a good development, even though no matter how hard they try they are still not protected, and probably never will be, from three-letter agencies collecting their data...

smkellat 10y ago

Why do we always assume that the NSA (including its allies) is the only bad guy to worry about?