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I can't speak for the US but this man has shifted so much of the political debate in my country and I think also in the EU in general. If you talked about the m

I can't speak for the US but this man has shifted so much of the political debate in my country and I think also in the EU in general. If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. After Snowden no one could ignore you anymore and privacy is an aspect in any public debate.

kevando 7y ago
For me in the US I went from talking like a lunatic to talking about yesterday’s news. Frustrating to say the least.
jonahbenton 7y ago
Is that the case for both govt and private corporate surveillance? How widespread is the use of Alexa in your area?
- ptero 7y ago
  The key difference is that you can decide not to buy corporate products you do not want, but have to comply with the laws. I am a lot less concerned about stupid things done by a majority for convenience (and I can choose whether to do participate or not) than about the law that forces the same stupidity down my throat. My 2c.
  - kareemm 7y ago
    The problem is that you can't always opt out of someone else's decisions. Example: Doorbell Cams taking video of you walking by, uploading it to a corporate database, identifying you using photo recognition algorithms and your location using the home's address, and using that information to sell you things.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      > using that information to sell you things. The horror. The threat isn't corporations. The threat is when the government goes rogue as governments tend to do unpredictably from time to time. The threat materialises in the government using private corporation data to target arbitrary minorities (although usually the educated, wealthy, foreign and free-spirited). People seem to think that because it "could never happen here" they can just ignore the possibility. Then it turns out that that sometimes it can. Privacy isn't just about the world as it stands today. Privacy is an acknowledgement that the present and the future are linked and that the future may be profoundly different from today. People aggressively selling you things is more harassment.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        > The threat isn't corporations In a thread about surveillance, why are you drawing a dichotomy between different surveillers and basically giving one a pass? They're both prongs of the same threat! On the collection side, every bit vacuumed up commercially is available for use by the government. And on the use side, there is little difference between a government proper and corporations that have achieved enough power to exert de facto governmental control - especially when colluding through a common third party.
        roenxi 7y ago
        Corporate surveillance is only a problem because it will sooner or later feed in to government surveillance. If I could wave a wand and stop that happening I'd be fine with corporate surveillance; I'm annoyed but not threatened by the idea that someone will study my every movement trying to sell me things I want. I'm threatened if the extremely arbitrary government decides that I'm an undesirable for some reason. > corporations that have achieved enough power to exert de facto governmental control Might be a failure of the imagination, but I really can't see myself ever getting involuntarily dragged out of my apartment by McDonalds employees. The worst I've ever seen a corporation do is set the police on someone. As long as the government is functioning sensibly a rogue corp can only do so much.
        deleted 7y ago
    - ptero 7y ago
      Fair. But even this (at least in the US) is the flip side of the laws that in public areas I can take any photos that I want. And I generally like this setup -- I can snap pictures of friends and kids without worrying about proving my right to take those photos). This should not be taken for granted -- in the UK I was twice (very politely) asked to leave because I was taking a picture and apparently a gov't building was in the background (and you need a permission to photograph those!!) and the second time because a school volleyball competition was played in the background. This is stupid because if I did it with a phone instead of a DSLR no one would notice. Maybe some limits on commercial photography in public spaces makes sense, but I would not go as far as putting strong limits on it altogether. My 2c.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        Photography in public places is a separate issue from long term stocking by companies. One can enable the other, but this does not mean they are equivalent. It's a very American fallacy to overextrapolate an individual right into a justification for commercial totalitarianism. But if an individual person were to suddenly start following you around and photographing you every few minutes, you would rightfully complain to the police. That this is being done at scale and for a profit motive should make it more worrying, not normalize it.
      - jonfw 7y ago
        I don't think that limiting the photography or the means of the data collection is the solution. The law is going to have to apply post-mining. In my opinion, we need to start treating data about users as intellectual property. Generally speaking, you don't have to worry about intellectual property when you're doing something personal. I can say "Just do it" all I want. In the same vein, I can make casual observations about random people on the street without having to worry about violating their privacy (that guy has cool shoes!). But if I start to use "just do it" in my business marketing materials, I'll be in trouble. Similarly, if I start keeping a database of somebody's shoes every time I see them so I can try to sell them something, that should be illegal.
      - chenning 7y ago
        Think of everything you would have to do to avoid being surveilled today. Heck, think about everything you would have had to do even 40-50 years ago. I think the issue is not wether or not you can avoid being surveilled. I think that debate is largely settled. So the next logical question is, what are the rules governing access to that data? At what point do you need consent and from whom do you need consent? I think the fear, sadly, is that even if we come up with rules there is the challenge of how to apply them retroactively or in a backwards-compatible way. It's quite possible that we now we significant portions of the economy relying on companies having unfettered access to their data. I see parallels between this and the shift to renewable energy. Revenue from oil companies is tightly woven into the fabric of the US economy in many ways.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      That's the thing. All of our legal precedent about privacy, law enforcement surveillance, commercial data gathering, etc, really dates to the 1800's and early 1900's when things were fundamentally different. There is a qualitative difference when information can be automatically processed in aggregate. I don't really care about individual corporate -- or LE -- surveillance actors if the data is partitioned over many and requires real subpoena power or active, limited sharing. If there's thousands of cameras owned by homes and businesses in my town, and everyone uses the pictures on their own for their own purposes, and law enforcement occasionally asks for and/or subpoenas the data when it'd be particularly useful and there's at least some suspicion-- that's great. On the other hand, when we automatically read license plates and form a big database about where everyone goes every day, that's not so great. When individuals are all subject to mass-scale surveillance that we use with data processing and machine learning to manipulate those people-- that's not so great either.
  - godelski 7y ago
    The two big differences between private and government surveillance is 1) law 2) quantity. Look at China how the private sector freely hands data over. But ask yourself, is it that hard for your government to obtain that data? Are they trying to access it? The answers are probably no and yes. If you don't feel comfortable with the government having that data, I wouldn't suggest giving it to private corporations. Even if they are standing up to gov, it means things can change. I think Snowden uses the phrase "turn key tyranny".
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    > " I am a lot less concerned..." On one hand, I hear ya and agree. But the reality is, the deck has been reshuffled such that while we're focused on that front door about rights are being sucked out the back by the likes of Big Tech, social norms, etc. Yeah, the means differ. But in the end, the ends are the same.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    you can decide not to buy corporate products That's a fallacy by both choice and externality. There are cases in which there is no choice but to use specific corporate products, or in which choices are made without an individual's consent or involvement. Karen Sandler, co-host (with former FSF directory Bradley Kuhn) of the "Free as in Freedom" podcast has an implanted, closed-source proprietary medical device. She can literally chose between non-free software (which includes surveillance), or death. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/mar/26/sandler-fsf-free-software-award/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/mar/26/sandler-fsf-free-... Emergency medical services, government contracts, third-party contracts by various firms and organisations, third-party use of Gmail either directly or as a hosted email service (see Benjamin Mako Hill's "Google has most of my email because it has all of yours": https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...), and the issues of spillover externalities (Amazon Ring doorbell surveillance, third-party tracking of mobile phone SIMs, MACs, and Bluetooth signatures, facial surveillance) mean that, no, actually, you cannot decide not to participate in corporate surveillance. And, as a final point, both government and corporate surveillance and oppression very often speak to the same underlying dynamic: that of power to defend both itself and its wealth and/or golden geese. Examples are numerous, though the Johnson County War would be a good case history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War Let's please put this canard in its well-deserved grave and bury it.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      You cannot escape it completely but you can certainly reduce your exposure. I don't think the parent was talking in binary terms.
      - wwweston 7y ago
        This is essentially true of government surveillance as well. Not really a surprise, since most modern state surveillance issues are essentially about ways in which private and public/state power cooperate. The overarching point is that it's naive to consider issues of privacy particularly distinct in the public or private sphere. Neither market nor political power are trivial to escape (and they have other things in common). Individual opt-outs will only get you so far from either a Google scale or state scale operation.
  - mjparrott 7y ago
    Not true. Choice is only as good as your options and also depends on the choices of other people around you. My phone records people standing next to me. They might not have chosen to install the apps on my phone, but they’re subject to the surveillance of my device for example.
  - rmc 7y ago
    How do I decide to stop other people uploading photos of me to Facebook?
philjohn 7y ago
And yet in the UK we have a notorious data miner in the heart of No 10 giving an edict for all data from government websites to be fed into a central location for targetting.
- petargyurov 7y ago
  Sorry, what/who are you referring to?
  - inscionent 7y ago
    My guess is Downing Street, Boris Johnson and London's massive network of CCTV, but I'm not sure.
    - Raudius 7y ago
      I think he means Dominic Cummings and his links to Cambridge Analytica during the Brexit campaign
      - atoav 7y ago
        They are at it again apparently.
      - inscionent 7y ago
        Interesting. So hard to keep up. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-grab-dominic-cummings-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-g...
  - arethuza 7y ago
    "Data privacy campaign groups and Labour have expressed alarm after it emerged Downing Street has ordered departments to centralise the collection and analysis of user information from the government’s main public information website ahead of Brexit." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-user-data-government-website-sparks-alarm https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-... Edit: I wonder if this includes the petition site?? Can't say that I'd be too keen on the Dark Lord Cummings getting the details of my personal petition history! Edit2: Yes, I know that's not his official job title, at least not yet.
mnm1 7y ago
That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or anything like that they mostly can't even understand.
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  It's one for the history books. We can't say we weren't warned. To many of the public bemoan the state of things while ignoring the events that lead up to the current state.
- nyolfen 7y ago
  encryption by default and privacy as an intrinsic good have been pervasive if subtle shifts in the culture
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    Yup. Even the dark fiber back haul networks used by data centers that were once thought to be private are now being encrypted (Google, Microsoft, etc have mentioned this). This is exactly what PRISM was, not taking data from servers, but tapping into the data networks between them and siphoning off whatever the NSA wanted. And it just so happens that to mirror a fiber optic line you use a crystal prism.
- khuey 7y ago
  Section 215 of the Patriot Act was not reauthorized, for one.
- kodablah 7y ago
  > I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change I've seen intranet encryption between internal services become much more commonplace
- vl 7y ago
duxup 7y ago
> If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. I wonder how much that was any given person, or just that the availability of such surveillance has increased dramatically.
- tracker1 7y ago
  My thinking before Snowden was the sheer resources it would take to actually record, catalog and index all that information, let alone into something useful. I thought some people were just a bit too paranoid. Then I learned they did have/spend/use the resources needed for this. It just feels crazy, but true. Since then, combined with the ability to use AI patterns against video streams and even deep fake capability. My trust in most things is pretty much broken at this point.
  - ryanisnan 7y ago
    My trust in most things is pretty much broken at this point. Are you me?
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > I wonder how much that was any given person, or just that the availability of such surveillance has increased dramatically. The UK introduced (public) mass surveillance long before Snowden was on the scene.
GordonS 7y ago
Can I ask what country this is in? Here in the UK, nothing had changed, and any debate that wasn't centred around condemning Snowden and justifying the actions of the security services, was very short lived.
- tomatocracy 7y ago
  I'd disagree that nothing has changed. Consciousness of the fact that mass surveillance is happening is much more widespread, and gets brought up in passing from time to time. People have changed their behaviour somewhat - eg many now try to use encrypted communications quite consciously and even Signal has become quite popular for example. It's influence thinking over e.g. use of facial recognition cameras in public places which is unpopular. And whilst what eg GCHQ actually do hasn't really changed much as far as I can tell, it's been brought onto an "open" legal footing which is progress. The next step will be for the legal safeguards which are currently rather toothless to evolve to have real teeth. I think that will happen eventually but it'll be a slow journey to get there.
  - yuduhhrhr 7y ago
    It's amazing how people still believe government laws will protect them from spy agencies. The CIA spied on the Senate and nothing happened. Naive in the extreme. So naive its hard to believe the opinion is genuine and not Astro turf.
    - bori5 7y ago
      If voting made a difference, they would have outlawed it years ago.
- rmc 7y ago
  In the EU, the revelations from Snowdon were successfully used in the data protection cases which overturned the Safe Harbour exemption.
- rmc 7y ago
  Much much more websites are HTTPS now. LetsEncrypt was set up, and browsers are better at HTTPS. That benefits people in the UK. "Encrypt everything" was a result of knowing the NSA were hooving everything up.
snowden_report 7y ago
Much discussion on this topic relies on popular sentiment and media reporting. The redacted and declassified Congressional report should be considered a primary source and contradicts many common beliefs about Mr. Snowden: https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pd... The Executive Summary provides a good overview. In contrast to the Amazon book page that claims he helped "build" the system, it appears he was primarily a system administrator responsible for tasks such as patching and file transfers.
- mgamache 7y ago
  I think system administrators would take exception to your claim they don't help build anything. Also, Congressional report prepared by whom? Can't take a report by the fox guarding the hen house seriously.
  - snowden_report 7y ago
    I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were. It's a minor point, but speaks to Mr. Snowden's reportedly inflated self-importance. It's up to all of us to take this report, and news reports and autobiographies, as seriously as you think they deserve. This provides background information not commonly known and is a valuable counter balance to Mr. Snowden's account. How seriously should we take an autobiography written by the person who perpetrated such (in)famous actions? There is "selective reporting" on all sides, it's up to us to take it all in and form our own opinions. For example: read the report, note Mr. Snowden's length of service at each job, his age and experience, and consider how likely it was that he was a "senior advisor" or a more junior system administrator. I understand this may be a lost cause, but I'm simply advocating for balance on this issue.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      >I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were Both groups would have been necessary to build the a long term system. Beyond that, I don't see how his status while working for the intelligence sector is very important, and I've never gotten the impression Snowden was trying to boast about how achievements there.

kevando 7y ago

For me in the US I went from talking like a lunatic to talking about yesterday’s news. Frustrating to say the least.

jonahbenton 7y ago

Is that the case for both govt and private corporate surveillance? How widespread is the use of Alexa in your area?

ptero 7y ago
The key difference is that you can decide not to buy corporate products you do not want, but have to comply with the laws. I am a lot less concerned about stupid things done by a majority for convenience (and I can choose whether to do participate or not) than about the law that forces the same stupidity down my throat. My 2c.
- kareemm 7y ago
  The problem is that you can't always opt out of someone else's decisions. Example: Doorbell Cams taking video of you walking by, uploading it to a corporate database, identifying you using photo recognition algorithms and your location using the home's address, and using that information to sell you things.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    > using that information to sell you things. The horror. The threat isn't corporations. The threat is when the government goes rogue as governments tend to do unpredictably from time to time. The threat materialises in the government using private corporation data to target arbitrary minorities (although usually the educated, wealthy, foreign and free-spirited). People seem to think that because it "could never happen here" they can just ignore the possibility. Then it turns out that that sometimes it can. Privacy isn't just about the world as it stands today. Privacy is an acknowledgement that the present and the future are linked and that the future may be profoundly different from today. People aggressively selling you things is more harassment.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      > The threat isn't corporations In a thread about surveillance, why are you drawing a dichotomy between different surveillers and basically giving one a pass? They're both prongs of the same threat! On the collection side, every bit vacuumed up commercially is available for use by the government. And on the use side, there is little difference between a government proper and corporations that have achieved enough power to exert de facto governmental control - especially when colluding through a common third party.
      - roenxi 7y ago
        Corporate surveillance is only a problem because it will sooner or later feed in to government surveillance. If I could wave a wand and stop that happening I'd be fine with corporate surveillance; I'm annoyed but not threatened by the idea that someone will study my every movement trying to sell me things I want. I'm threatened if the extremely arbitrary government decides that I'm an undesirable for some reason. > corporations that have achieved enough power to exert de facto governmental control Might be a failure of the imagination, but I really can't see myself ever getting involuntarily dragged out of my apartment by McDonalds employees. The worst I've ever seen a corporation do is set the police on someone. As long as the government is functioning sensibly a rogue corp can only do so much.
        deleted 7y ago
  - ptero 7y ago
    Fair. But even this (at least in the US) is the flip side of the laws that in public areas I can take any photos that I want. And I generally like this setup -- I can snap pictures of friends and kids without worrying about proving my right to take those photos). This should not be taken for granted -- in the UK I was twice (very politely) asked to leave because I was taking a picture and apparently a gov't building was in the background (and you need a permission to photograph those!!) and the second time because a school volleyball competition was played in the background. This is stupid because if I did it with a phone instead of a DSLR no one would notice. Maybe some limits on commercial photography in public spaces makes sense, but I would not go as far as putting strong limits on it altogether. My 2c.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Photography in public places is a separate issue from long term stocking by companies. One can enable the other, but this does not mean they are equivalent. It's a very American fallacy to overextrapolate an individual right into a justification for commercial totalitarianism. But if an individual person were to suddenly start following you around and photographing you every few minutes, you would rightfully complain to the police. That this is being done at scale and for a profit motive should make it more worrying, not normalize it.
    - jonfw 7y ago
      I don't think that limiting the photography or the means of the data collection is the solution. The law is going to have to apply post-mining. In my opinion, we need to start treating data about users as intellectual property. Generally speaking, you don't have to worry about intellectual property when you're doing something personal. I can say "Just do it" all I want. In the same vein, I can make casual observations about random people on the street without having to worry about violating their privacy (that guy has cool shoes!). But if I start to use "just do it" in my business marketing materials, I'll be in trouble. Similarly, if I start keeping a database of somebody's shoes every time I see them so I can try to sell them something, that should be illegal.
    - chenning 7y ago
      Think of everything you would have to do to avoid being surveilled today. Heck, think about everything you would have had to do even 40-50 years ago. I think the issue is not wether or not you can avoid being surveilled. I think that debate is largely settled. So the next logical question is, what are the rules governing access to that data? At what point do you need consent and from whom do you need consent? I think the fear, sadly, is that even if we come up with rules there is the challenge of how to apply them retroactively or in a backwards-compatible way. It's quite possible that we now we significant portions of the economy relying on companies having unfettered access to their data. I see parallels between this and the shift to renewable energy. Revenue from oil companies is tightly woven into the fabric of the US economy in many ways.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    That's the thing. All of our legal precedent about privacy, law enforcement surveillance, commercial data gathering, etc, really dates to the 1800's and early 1900's when things were fundamentally different. There is a qualitative difference when information can be automatically processed in aggregate. I don't really care about individual corporate -- or LE -- surveillance actors if the data is partitioned over many and requires real subpoena power or active, limited sharing. If there's thousands of cameras owned by homes and businesses in my town, and everyone uses the pictures on their own for their own purposes, and law enforcement occasionally asks for and/or subpoenas the data when it'd be particularly useful and there's at least some suspicion-- that's great. On the other hand, when we automatically read license plates and form a big database about where everyone goes every day, that's not so great. When individuals are all subject to mass-scale surveillance that we use with data processing and machine learning to manipulate those people-- that's not so great either.
- godelski 7y ago
  The two big differences between private and government surveillance is 1) law 2) quantity. Look at China how the private sector freely hands data over. But ask yourself, is it that hard for your government to obtain that data? Are they trying to access it? The answers are probably no and yes. If you don't feel comfortable with the government having that data, I wouldn't suggest giving it to private corporations. Even if they are standing up to gov, it means things can change. I think Snowden uses the phrase "turn key tyranny".
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  > " I am a lot less concerned..." On one hand, I hear ya and agree. But the reality is, the deck has been reshuffled such that while we're focused on that front door about rights are being sucked out the back by the likes of Big Tech, social norms, etc. Yeah, the means differ. But in the end, the ends are the same.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  you can decide not to buy corporate products That's a fallacy by both choice and externality. There are cases in which there is no choice but to use specific corporate products, or in which choices are made without an individual's consent or involvement. Karen Sandler, co-host (with former FSF directory Bradley Kuhn) of the "Free as in Freedom" podcast has an implanted, closed-source proprietary medical device. She can literally chose between non-free software (which includes surveillance), or death. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/mar/26/sandler-fsf-free-software-award/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/mar/26/sandler-fsf-free-... Emergency medical services, government contracts, third-party contracts by various firms and organisations, third-party use of Gmail either directly or as a hosted email service (see Benjamin Mako Hill's "Google has most of my email because it has all of yours": https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...), and the issues of spillover externalities (Amazon Ring doorbell surveillance, third-party tracking of mobile phone SIMs, MACs, and Bluetooth signatures, facial surveillance) mean that, no, actually, you cannot decide not to participate in corporate surveillance. And, as a final point, both government and corporate surveillance and oppression very often speak to the same underlying dynamic: that of power to defend both itself and its wealth and/or golden geese. Examples are numerous, though the Johnson County War would be a good case history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War Let's please put this canard in its well-deserved grave and bury it.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    You cannot escape it completely but you can certainly reduce your exposure. I don't think the parent was talking in binary terms.
    - wwweston 7y ago
      This is essentially true of government surveillance as well. Not really a surprise, since most modern state surveillance issues are essentially about ways in which private and public/state power cooperate. The overarching point is that it's naive to consider issues of privacy particularly distinct in the public or private sphere. Neither market nor political power are trivial to escape (and they have other things in common). Individual opt-outs will only get you so far from either a Google scale or state scale operation.
- mjparrott 7y ago
  Not true. Choice is only as good as your options and also depends on the choices of other people around you. My phone records people standing next to me. They might not have chosen to install the apps on my phone, but they’re subject to the surveillance of my device for example.
- rmc 7y ago
  How do I decide to stop other people uploading photos of me to Facebook?

philjohn 7y ago

And yet in the UK we have a notorious data miner in the heart of No 10 giving an edict for all data from government websites to be fed into a central location for targetting.

petargyurov 7y ago
Sorry, what/who are you referring to?
- inscionent 7y ago
  My guess is Downing Street, Boris Johnson and London's massive network of CCTV, but I'm not sure.
  - Raudius 7y ago
    I think he means Dominic Cummings and his links to Cambridge Analytica during the Brexit campaign
    - atoav 7y ago
      They are at it again apparently.
    - inscionent 7y ago
      Interesting. So hard to keep up. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-grab-dominic-cummings-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-g...
- arethuza 7y ago
  "Data privacy campaign groups and Labour have expressed alarm after it emerged Downing Street has ordered departments to centralise the collection and analysis of user information from the government’s main public information website ahead of Brexit." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-user-data-government-website-sparks-alarm https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-... Edit: I wonder if this includes the petition site?? Can't say that I'd be too keen on the Dark Lord Cummings getting the details of my personal petition history! Edit2: Yes, I know that's not his official job title, at least not yet.

mnm1 7y ago

That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or anything like that they mostly can't even understand.

newsgremlin 7y ago
It's one for the history books. We can't say we weren't warned. To many of the public bemoan the state of things while ignoring the events that lead up to the current state.
nyolfen 7y ago
encryption by default and privacy as an intrinsic good have been pervasive if subtle shifts in the culture
- tomschlick 7y ago
  Yup. Even the dark fiber back haul networks used by data centers that were once thought to be private are now being encrypted (Google, Microsoft, etc have mentioned this). This is exactly what PRISM was, not taking data from servers, but tapping into the data networks between them and siphoning off whatever the NSA wanted. And it just so happens that to mirror a fiber optic line you use a crystal prism.
khuey 7y ago
Section 215 of the Patriot Act was not reauthorized, for one.
kodablah 7y ago
> I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change I've seen intranet encryption between internal services become much more commonplace
vl 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

> If you talked about the massive surveillance from governments people tossed you aside as a paranoid lunatic. I wonder how much that was any given person, or just that the availability of such surveillance has increased dramatically.

tracker1 7y ago
My thinking before Snowden was the sheer resources it would take to actually record, catalog and index all that information, let alone into something useful. I thought some people were just a bit too paranoid. Then I learned they did have/spend/use the resources needed for this. It just feels crazy, but true. Since then, combined with the ability to use AI patterns against video streams and even deep fake capability. My trust in most things is pretty much broken at this point.
- ryanisnan 7y ago
  My trust in most things is pretty much broken at this point. Are you me?
BeetleB 7y ago
> I wonder how much that was any given person, or just that the availability of such surveillance has increased dramatically. The UK introduced (public) mass surveillance long before Snowden was on the scene.

GordonS 7y ago

Can I ask what country this is in? Here in the UK, nothing had changed, and any debate that wasn't centred around condemning Snowden and justifying the actions of the security services, was very short lived.

tomatocracy 7y ago
I'd disagree that nothing has changed. Consciousness of the fact that mass surveillance is happening is much more widespread, and gets brought up in passing from time to time. People have changed their behaviour somewhat - eg many now try to use encrypted communications quite consciously and even Signal has become quite popular for example. It's influence thinking over e.g. use of facial recognition cameras in public places which is unpopular. And whilst what eg GCHQ actually do hasn't really changed much as far as I can tell, it's been brought onto an "open" legal footing which is progress. The next step will be for the legal safeguards which are currently rather toothless to evolve to have real teeth. I think that will happen eventually but it'll be a slow journey to get there.
- yuduhhrhr 7y ago
  It's amazing how people still believe government laws will protect them from spy agencies. The CIA spied on the Senate and nothing happened. Naive in the extreme. So naive its hard to believe the opinion is genuine and not Astro turf.
  - bori5 7y ago
    If voting made a difference, they would have outlawed it years ago.
rmc 7y ago
In the EU, the revelations from Snowdon were successfully used in the data protection cases which overturned the Safe Harbour exemption.
rmc 7y ago
Much much more websites are HTTPS now. LetsEncrypt was set up, and browsers are better at HTTPS. That benefits people in the UK. "Encrypt everything" was a result of knowing the NSA were hooving everything up.

snowden_report 7y ago

Much discussion on this topic relies on popular sentiment and media reporting. The redacted and declassified Congressional report should be considered a primary source and contradicts many common beliefs about Mr. Snowden: https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pd... The Executive Summary provides a good overview. In contrast to the Amazon book page that claims he helped "build" the system, it appears he was primarily a system administrator responsible for tasks such as patching and file transfers.

mgamache 7y ago
I think system administrators would take exception to your claim they don't help build anything. Also, Congressional report prepared by whom? Can't take a report by the fox guarding the hen house seriously.
- snowden_report 7y ago
  I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were. It's a minor point, but speaks to Mr. Snowden's reportedly inflated self-importance. It's up to all of us to take this report, and news reports and autobiographies, as seriously as you think they deserve. This provides background information not commonly known and is a valuable counter balance to Mr. Snowden's account. How seriously should we take an autobiography written by the person who perpetrated such (in)famous actions? There is "selective reporting" on all sides, it's up to us to take it all in and form our own opinions. For example: read the report, note Mr. Snowden's length of service at each job, his age and experience, and consider how likely it was that he was a "senior advisor" or a more junior system administrator. I understand this may be a lost cause, but I'm simply advocating for balance on this issue.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    >I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were Both groups would have been necessary to build the a long term system. Beyond that, I don't see how his status while working for the intelligence sector is very important, and I've never gotten the impression Snowden was trying to boast about how achievements there.