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Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

chisleu 9y ago
He was a coder and a lot of other things too.
- safisher 9y ago
  That changes everything.
  - chisleu 9y ago
    It changes that "he was a sharepoint admin". He was a lot more. He wrote the backup software that was used to distribute drone video/data feeds around the globe. He was a trained offensive security engineer. He wasn't just a sharepoint admin.
- krapp 9y ago
  That describes me, probably you, and most other people here.
  - chisleu 9y ago
    Right, except he was also a trained offensive security engineer and wrote code still used extensively in the NSA/CIA operations. (EpicShelter) He wasn't just a sharepoint admin.
wlesieutre 9y ago
Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one-time-i-threw-a-cryptoparty-with-edward-snowden/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist ..." So he was a privacy activist while he worked at the NSA? Isn't this a bit like being a healthcare activist and working for McDonalds?
  - j2bax 9y ago
    Well, we all know how well that worked out!
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Yes, he led some GPG training meetups where he taught best practices for securing yourself while he was stationed in Hawai'i, at the very least.
  - geofft 9y ago
    I thought it was reasonably widely believed that he took the job at the NSA specifically so he could figure out what they were doing wrong and leak it.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      I had not heard this, what is the basis for that belief? Also he worked for the CIA prior to the NSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
    - dna_polymerase 9y ago
      Yeah sure, people believe what they want to believe. Or we could just accept that until 2013 he was just another wheel in the giant machinery that is the NSA and that his morals changed - for whatever reason. But he was with the bad guys.
      - Fnoord 9y ago
mrb 9y ago
He knows a thing or two about, you know, privacy. And Zcash's main feature is, you know, privacy :) For the crowd, Zcash obfuscates the sending address, the receiving address, and even the amount transacted, using zero-knowledge proofs.
- the_stc 9y ago
  Only when you opt-in to using shielded transactions. Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do. Combine that with two of the founders saying they're OK with backdoors (Green) and making it too traceable for criminals (Zooko) plus a 20% cut of all the currency for years and it starts looking sort of bad. (Yes it's 10% overall, but instead of showing long-term trust in their project, they decided to grab 20% really quick.) Monero is far from perfect. Their ringsize is pitiful. But it works well, doesn't require heavy hardware, and privacy is mandatory. Plus it feels like a real community effort, not commandeered by a group that's open to making things traceable or demanding a huge cut.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    they're OK with backdoors See matthewdgreen response elsewhere in this thread. This is FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15370744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15370744
  - AgentME 9y ago
    >Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do. It's nothing beyond what most laptops can do in a few seconds; the main issue is that it's enough that they decided not to make it the default mode, and many services like exchanges don't make anonymous transactions when sending to users. (A user can always then immediately move that zcash to an anonymous address afterwards, but that does mean it's somewhat public that $service made a transaction of X amount at a certain time.) Hopefully they'll change the default sometime since they've announced that they've found ways to massively improve the efficiency.
  - mrb 9y ago
    «too traceable for criminals (Zooko)» No. Zooko denied it: https://twitter.com/zooko/status/864341289374023680 https://twitter.com/zooko/status/864341289374023680
bshur 9y ago
Russia is also grateful for his sacrifice.
krapp 9y ago
To be fair, Snowden wasn't endorsing Zcash based on his own cryptographic or security expertise, he was responding in agreement to a tweet regarding the cryptographic background of the Zcash developers with a general statement that privacy is important with regard to cryptocurrencies[0]. The primary reason anyone cares what Snowden thinks is his celebrity - it should be a non-story, although the Twitter thread is an interesting read. [0]https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/913544739542241282 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/913544739542241282
- acover 9y ago
  Integrity, principles and more domain expertise than the general public
starrychloe 9y ago
He's an expert in privacy and security and has gobs of time to research and think about these things. Plus he's famous, so there's that.
Aqueous 9y ago
As of November, 2016, Snowden's opinions have altogether stopped being relevant, and I no longer have any confidence that he acts in good faith. The guy almost certainly lives in an FSB safe-house in Moscow, the very same FSB that just helped to launch a brazen attack on our electoral process. This is not a coincidence. Snowden and like-minded people (Assange, Greenwald, Manning) were very deliberately used as Russian pawns to help divide the left and libertarians against themselves, making them unable to form a functional democratic coalition. They've also helped the FSB demonize - and attempted to neuter - the US Intelligence Community charged with defending us against this aggression while cozying up to one of the most autocratic and corrupt regimes in the world. Why anyone here takes Snowden seriously is beyond me. You can be privacy-conscious without cozying up to someone who continues to betray his country to the benefit of a corrupt dictator.
- linkregister 9y ago
  I thought that Crowdstrike's report equated APT28 signatures with GRU, not FSB. To defend Snowden, I haven't seen overt regime support for Putin besides a softball question being asked during the Russian President's Q&A session two years ago. Assange's support for the regime's talking points is comically earnest to the point that he has completely given up his credibility.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  The left and the libertarians have always been divided, they've never been a coalition, why would they start now? I mean I agree Russia fucked with the election, but I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning. Assange in particular is out to bring down the U.S. empire, his motives are always in question even if the information he chooses to release is real. Snowden is the only one in that list that deserves any respect.
  - vorg 9y ago
    > I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning A line in the same vein as such others we've heard before: "Schwartz doesn't count because he gave up." "For Assange it's mostly about himself, and a little bit about anonymity." "Kim Dotcom doesn't rank with the likes of ... because he's a profiteering off of it." These lines attack the Free Information movement by peeling off those at its edges one by one.
kafkaesq 9y ago
He was a SharePoint administrator. This is just silly. His skills are clearly way broader and deeper than that.
- steeleduncan 9y ago
  How is that clear? It is clear to me that he is brave, principled and committed to privacy. It is not clear to me that his skills extend beyond that of the average sysadmin.
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    An "average sysadmin" would not be (anywhere near) capable of setting up a VPN so that non-technical journalists can access a considerably sized document stash - but which not even the most powerful and well-funded spy agency on the planet can break into. For example.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      According to Greenwald's original article, Snowden gave him a physical copy of the media in Hong Kong. When was the VPN introduced as a medium?
      - kafkaesq 9y ago
        I was referring to his initial assistance to Poitras, actually (which apparently involved setting her up with enhanced email encryption, not setting up a VPN per se). So people can get jollies downvoting me for misremembering something I last read about 4 years ago, if they want. The bigger point is that the depiction of Snowden as simply a "SharePoint administrator" is clearly off base, according to multiple journalistic accounts (which are very easily findable).
        linkregister 9y ago
        You're being down voted? Jollies? What? I don't think he had more technical capability than a typical SharePoint administrator at the time of his leaks. Setting up a VPN is pretty much sysadmin work. Digital Ocean had excellent guides on setting up OpenVPN and IPSec tunnels on CentOS in 2012. SharePoint administration is credible tech work, it's just unrelated to programming and crypto. He has had time to learn about any subject he wants to since. He may very well be a privacy or crypto expert now. If he wants to become an authority on any of that knowledge, he'll need to write about it with justification. Otherwise, why would anyone take him at face value?
justinzollars 9y ago
Because SharePoint is a web-based, COLLABORATIVE platform that integrates with Microsoft Office
kraig 9y ago
We got russian bots on hackernews now?
- fish_fan 9y ago
  Yea, I’m not sure why this was posted either. Russian bots aren’t the craziest proposition; they certainly don’t dislike Snowden’s PR.
gt_ 9y ago
His undeniable integrity
okigan 9y ago
Do you have any comments on the actual content of the article? It's fun to question the author, but it's unclear if you actually read it.
__s 9y ago
He has experience with how well metadata is being utilized to control popular opinion. He's since become President of https://freedom.press/about https://freedom.press/about I was a highschool student; that isn't a relevant argument to dismiss my opinion on any topic Granted a relevant argument will be separate from my identity, but while we're in ad hominem we might as well defend this article's plea to authority fallacy
krick 9y ago
For the same reason people care what Jay-Z thinks about laptops or whatever. Because he is a celebrity. Hell, I remember some unremarkable actor (Kutcher, I guess?) being hired at Intel for some quazi-technical job a couple of years ago. Because marketing. And you are wondering why Snowden (some hackerish dude that worked at some super-secret government agency and revealed how USA spies on everyone — or something like that) has something to say about everything privacy/security-related.

chisleu 9y ago

He was a coder and a lot of other things too.

safisher 9y ago
That changes everything.
- chisleu 9y ago
  It changes that "he was a sharepoint admin". He was a lot more. He wrote the backup software that was used to distribute drone video/data feeds around the globe. He was a trained offensive security engineer. He wasn't just a sharepoint admin.
krapp 9y ago
That describes me, probably you, and most other people here.
- chisleu 9y ago
  Right, except he was also a trained offensive security engineer and wrote code still used extensively in the NSA/CIA operations. (EpicShelter) He wasn't just a sharepoint admin.

wlesieutre 9y ago

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one-time-i-threw-a-cryptoparty-with-edward-snowden/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bogomipz 9y ago
>"Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist ..." So he was a privacy activist while he worked at the NSA? Isn't this a bit like being a healthcare activist and working for McDonalds?
- j2bax 9y ago
  Well, we all know how well that worked out!
- kobeya 9y ago
  Yes, he led some GPG training meetups where he taught best practices for securing yourself while he was stationed in Hawai'i, at the very least.
- geofft 9y ago
  I thought it was reasonably widely believed that he took the job at the NSA specifically so he could figure out what they were doing wrong and leak it.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    I had not heard this, what is the basis for that belief? Also he worked for the CIA prior to the NSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
  - dna_polymerase 9y ago
    Yeah sure, people believe what they want to believe. Or we could just accept that until 2013 he was just another wheel in the giant machinery that is the NSA and that his morals changed - for whatever reason. But he was with the bad guys.
    - Fnoord 9y ago

mrb 9y ago

He knows a thing or two about, you know, privacy. And Zcash's main feature is, you know, privacy :) For the crowd, Zcash obfuscates the sending address, the receiving address, and even the amount transacted, using zero-knowledge proofs.

the_stc 9y ago
Only when you opt-in to using shielded transactions. Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do. Combine that with two of the founders saying they're OK with backdoors (Green) and making it too traceable for criminals (Zooko) plus a 20% cut of all the currency for years and it starts looking sort of bad. (Yes it's 10% overall, but instead of showing long-term trust in their project, they decided to grab 20% really quick.) Monero is far from perfect. Their ringsize is pitiful. But it works well, doesn't require heavy hardware, and privacy is mandatory. Plus it feels like a real community effort, not commandeered by a group that's open to making things traceable or demanding a huge cut.
- contingencies 9y ago
  they're OK with backdoors See matthewdgreen response elsewhere in this thread. This is FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15370744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15370744
- AgentME 9y ago
  >Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do. It's nothing beyond what most laptops can do in a few seconds; the main issue is that it's enough that they decided not to make it the default mode, and many services like exchanges don't make anonymous transactions when sending to users. (A user can always then immediately move that zcash to an anonymous address afterwards, but that does mean it's somewhat public that $service made a transaction of X amount at a certain time.) Hopefully they'll change the default sometime since they've announced that they've found ways to massively improve the efficiency.
- mrb 9y ago
  «too traceable for criminals (Zooko)» No. Zooko denied it: https://twitter.com/zooko/status/864341289374023680 https://twitter.com/zooko/status/864341289374023680

bshur 9y ago

Russia is also grateful for his sacrifice.

krapp 9y ago

To be fair, Snowden wasn't endorsing Zcash based on his own cryptographic or security expertise, he was responding in agreement to a tweet regarding the cryptographic background of the Zcash developers with a general statement that privacy is important with regard to cryptocurrencies[0]. The primary reason anyone cares what Snowden thinks is his celebrity - it should be a non-story, although the Twitter thread is an interesting read. [0]https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/913544739542241282 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/913544739542241282

acover 9y ago
Integrity, principles and more domain expertise than the general public

starrychloe 9y ago

He's an expert in privacy and security and has gobs of time to research and think about these things. Plus he's famous, so there's that.

Aqueous 9y ago

As of November, 2016, Snowden's opinions have altogether stopped being relevant, and I no longer have any confidence that he acts in good faith. The guy almost certainly lives in an FSB safe-house in Moscow, the very same FSB that just helped to launch a brazen attack on our electoral process. This is not a coincidence. Snowden and like-minded people (Assange, Greenwald, Manning) were very deliberately used as Russian pawns to help divide the left and libertarians against themselves, making them unable to form a functional democratic coalition. They've also helped the FSB demonize - and attempted to neuter - the US Intelligence Community charged with defending us against this aggression while cozying up to one of the most autocratic and corrupt regimes in the world. Why anyone here takes Snowden seriously is beyond me. You can be privacy-conscious without cozying up to someone who continues to betray his country to the benefit of a corrupt dictator.

linkregister 9y ago
I thought that Crowdstrike's report equated APT28 signatures with GRU, not FSB. To defend Snowden, I haven't seen overt regime support for Putin besides a softball question being asked during the Russian President's Q&A session two years ago. Assange's support for the regime's talking points is comically earnest to the point that he has completely given up his credibility.
gnaritas 9y ago
The left and the libertarians have always been divided, they've never been a coalition, why would they start now? I mean I agree Russia fucked with the election, but I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning. Assange in particular is out to bring down the U.S. empire, his motives are always in question even if the information he chooses to release is real. Snowden is the only one in that list that deserves any respect.
- vorg 9y ago
  > I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning A line in the same vein as such others we've heard before: "Schwartz doesn't count because he gave up." "For Assange it's mostly about himself, and a little bit about anonymity." "Kim Dotcom doesn't rank with the likes of ... because he's a profiteering off of it." These lines attack the Free Information movement by peeling off those at its edges one by one.

kafkaesq 9y ago

He was a SharePoint administrator. This is just silly. His skills are clearly way broader and deeper than that.

steeleduncan 9y ago
How is that clear? It is clear to me that he is brave, principled and committed to privacy. It is not clear to me that his skills extend beyond that of the average sysadmin.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  An "average sysadmin" would not be (anywhere near) capable of setting up a VPN so that non-technical journalists can access a considerably sized document stash - but which not even the most powerful and well-funded spy agency on the planet can break into. For example.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    According to Greenwald's original article, Snowden gave him a physical copy of the media in Hong Kong. When was the VPN introduced as a medium?
    - kafkaesq 9y ago
      I was referring to his initial assistance to Poitras, actually (which apparently involved setting her up with enhanced email encryption, not setting up a VPN per se). So people can get jollies downvoting me for misremembering something I last read about 4 years ago, if they want. The bigger point is that the depiction of Snowden as simply a "SharePoint administrator" is clearly off base, according to multiple journalistic accounts (which are very easily findable).
      - linkregister 9y ago
        You're being down voted? Jollies? What? I don't think he had more technical capability than a typical SharePoint administrator at the time of his leaks. Setting up a VPN is pretty much sysadmin work. Digital Ocean had excellent guides on setting up OpenVPN and IPSec tunnels on CentOS in 2012. SharePoint administration is credible tech work, it's just unrelated to programming and crypto. He has had time to learn about any subject he wants to since. He may very well be a privacy or crypto expert now. If he wants to become an authority on any of that knowledge, he'll need to write about it with justification. Otherwise, why would anyone take him at face value?

justinzollars 9y ago

Because SharePoint is a web-based, COLLABORATIVE platform that integrates with Microsoft Office

kraig 9y ago

We got russian bots on hackernews now?

fish_fan 9y ago
Yea, I’m not sure why this was posted either. Russian bots aren’t the craziest proposition; they certainly don’t dislike Snowden’s PR.

gt_ 9y ago

His undeniable integrity

okigan 9y ago

Do you have any comments on the actual content of the article? It's fun to question the author, but it's unclear if you actually read it.

__s 9y ago

He has experience with how well metadata is being utilized to control popular opinion. He's since become President of https://freedom.press/about https://freedom.press/about I was a highschool student; that isn't a relevant argument to dismiss my opinion on any topic Granted a relevant argument will be separate from my identity, but while we're in ad hominem we might as well defend this article's plea to authority fallacy

krick 9y ago

For the same reason people care what Jay-Z thinks about laptops or whatever. Because he is a celebrity. Hell, I remember some unremarkable actor (Kutcher, I guess?) being hired at Intel for some quazi-technical job a couple of years ago. Because marketing. And you are wondering why Snowden (some hackerish dude that worked at some super-secret government agency and revealed how USA spies on everyone — or something like that) has something to say about everything privacy/security-related.