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Edward Snowden: ‘They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet’
- JacksonGariety 13y ago20 points, no comments. Hacker News has nothing to dispute here? That means something is very, very wrong.
- ojbyrne 13y agoPerhaps the something wrong is that there is another related link higher up the page.
- product50 13y agoI think this is one area where most of us agree on. Mind you - that doesn't mean we will do anything proactively to curb the NSA but we agree in principle what Snowden is saying and respect him for his actions.
- Zigurd 13y agoMany people here wish this would all just go away. Many people here work at companies that are on the PRISM list, or work for core infrastructure gear makers, or telecom network operators. Some people here work in the "security" industry, which relies on an appearance of security that can be cracked "to catch the bad guys." These people know their tools and services are also used to put dissidents in prison. The only way forward is to make everyone secure to the highest standards, routinely, for all communications and data storage.
- rhizome 13y agoMany people here work at companies that are on the PRISM list And many, many more work at companies that would very much like to be acquired by a company on the PRISM list.
- billspreston 13y agoSilence is consent.
- maqr 13y agoI was in this session and the biggest take away I had was that the ACLU and Snowden believe a technical solution is possible to end mass surveillance, but they aren't concerned with individual targeted surveillance. I think this was a good way of framing the discussion with actionable steps like PFS, end to end encryption (Snowden name checked Whisper Systems), FDE, SSL everywhere, not storing data forever, etc. The ACLU seemed to think that pressure can be brought on big companies to at the bare minimum require SSL immediately makes mass surveillance more difficult.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cheald 13y agoSSL only makes mass surveillance difficult for the people who can't lean on a CA. I somehow suspect that if the NSA decided it wanted to, it could get itself an intermediate cert that it could use to MITM SSL sessions.
- eyeareque 13y agoI don't think they need to get one; Take a look at the CAs are in your browser. Do you implicitly trust all of those organizations and governments? It doesn't matter if you do as your browser already does.
- lern_too_spel 13y agoThis hasn't been the case since Chrome implemented certificate pinning in 2011.
- throwawayaway 13y agoChrome pinning doesn't break corporate MITM proxies. https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html
- brokenparser 13y agoWhile the video and audio feed – routed from Russia *through seven proxy servers* – was choppy, Snowden’s message was clear. Seems legit. (Anyone else got that reference?)
- pyrocat 13y agoI'm imagining the scene from Goldeneye when they're tracing his signal.
- bitJericho 13y agoI'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic; see if I can track an IP address.
- samstave 13y agoI told Google all about it!
- tptacek 13y ago“If we allow the NSA to continue unrestrained, every other government will accept that has green light to do the same.” Drink ejecting through nose.
- pyrocat 13y agoDo you disagree?
- tptacek 13y agoYES.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoCare to share more? This happened when we started fingerprinting all new visitors to the US at airports. Now it's done all over the world.
- psykovsky 13y agoHe must have some interest on the NSA continuing their mass surveillance efforts, or something. Juicy federal contracts aren't something you turn your back on when you're a 20 year old kid with a public voice.
- Phlarp 13y agoI disagree with Tptacek in this particular instance; but to allege a conflict of interest like this is petty. AFAIK his security firm specifically does not do defense contracting.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mahyarm 13y agoHe is not a 20 year old kid, by a long shot. http://www.matasano.com/#overview http://www.matasano.com/#overview
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bestrapperalive 13y agoWhile the video and audio feed – routed from Russia through seven proxy servers – was choppy, Snowden’s message was clear. Edward Snowden is the gift that keeps on giving. I feel like "seven proxies" is the proof of concept for a practice that should be more common. From now on, every statement about technology, especially the intersection of technology with important issues like civil rights, should be watermarked with at least one meme or obviously absurd statement. If a reporter regurgitates the meme as fact, readers are warned about the reporter's lack of general knowledge about the subject and will be primed to read the rest of the article with a more critical eye.
- SDGT 13y agoI thought the 7 proxies thing was just an homage to the well known meme[1] [1] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/good-luck-im-behind-7-proxies http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/good-luck-im-behind-7-proxies
- bestrapperalive 13y agoNo doubt. I'm sure it was. I just think it was also a genuinely useful indicator of exactly which reporters aren't/ don't have access to people with general knowledge of the subject and that more people should make jokes like it for that reason.
- UVB-76 13y agoIn fairness, the line was delivered deadpan, and I couldn't make out any laughter from the audience in the recording. I chuckled to myself.
- stcredzero 13y ago"Truth and heroic goodness through meme knowledge," seems as morally and intellectually bankrupt to me as Ivy leaguers on Mad Men using preppy/main-line subculture as a proxy for ability. Knowing about memes only says something about where you hang out online. It's the same sort of proxy for actual ability or trustworthiness as being a member of the right country club. Such proxies can work, but they depend highly on particular circumstances. The company town residents in Matewan using Bible verse knowledge as an impromptu code uses the same principle. This is not evaluating character from first principles! It's trusting a label! It's knowing that one group has a bit of information that another does not. However, we of the Internet era should know how rapidly and irrevocably this can change. (Actually, a good test for whether someone has A-lister perception is to see if they can see past their own prejudices.)
- johngalt 13y agoIt's been obvious since the 90s that if the internet fulfills half of it's promises that nations would seek to control it. Anyone who thought that the internet wasn't going to have state actors and control, also must think that the internet would never be important.
- twelvechairs 13y agoor that first world democracies would have actually stood up for the combined good of people everywhere rather than just asserting their own narrow organisational goals.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago> first world democracies The people don't rule in the first world. The businesses do. So, "Democracy" is the wrong word. "Plutocracy" and "Oligarchy" are more accurate.
- jonny_eh 13y agoWho rules in the other worlds?
- loup-vaillant 13y agoI'd say the First World businesses, although more indirectly. See the "structural adjustment packages" we impose to enslave those countries (devaluing money, favouring exportation…).
- mpyne 13y agoIf anything Snowden himself has and will accelerate the erosion he fears. Even if the UK, France, Germany, etc. can somehow assume that NSA will stop (which is laughable, but let's assume it), they still will have to deal with a resurgent Russia, Iran, and China. Whatever methods can protect them from China can protect them from NSA, and vice versa. If anything they've been trying for a long time to put up "cyber borders" but policymakers have blown it off as unnecessary when it's just a matter of cyber crime. Now that Snowden has opened up peoples eyes to the possibilities (quite forcefully, I might add), there is now political cover to build those cyber walls, only under the guise of "blocking the NSA" instead of blocking Chinese hackers. You're right that this has been obvious too. There are no commons that are not regulated by the nations, and militarized when and if they become a threat. Antarctica is only left alone because it's unimportant. The Arctic is a growing strategic concern, and space itself is only a step away from being militarized. If the U.S. cannot gain strategic value from cyberspace they will certainly not leave it open as a strategic weakness dragging along a "PLEASE HACK ME" sign, and a similar calculus applies to all of the democracies. Whether it's borders, or a national Internet kill switch, or both or more I don't know, but it won't be the same as it was before.
- Eleutheria 13y agoGuys like Snowden, Assange, Stallman, etc are the best fire fighters humanity will ever have. Bitcoin, Bitmessage, Meshnet, Tor, etc are the tools of the rebels. We can go to sleep safe. With an eye always open.