Gadgetory

it was the first leaked top-secret documents from the most secretive agency inside the world's most powerful government ever the first time I started really really reading through the documents I definitely did have a sense of the scope and the breadth of what we had obtained inside I had a pretty good idea that we can make an extremely big impact and would enable a lot of y can be shined on many things that have unjustifiably been hidden from the public for a really long time obviously there hasn't been a lot of change in terms of domestic law the u.s. hasn't enacted a bunch of laws imposing upon itself draconian limits about how it can spy so I think a lot of times people say well what has really changed their thinking of that you know NSA is still open it's still spying the law that was passed is is pretty modest you could even say trivial in terms of what it changes but we never thought that that was where the real action is governments don't go around imposing huge amounts of limits on their own power I think the much more significant changes have taken place in terms of individual consciousness so people now understand the extent to which their privacy is being compromised they as a result can and are taking all kinds of precautions to safeguard the privacy of their own communications by massively increasing their encryption use which is taking place on every continent I mean these companies for years were more than willing to just run roughshod over the privacy rights of their users they didn't care in the slightest about any of that they didn't just wake up one day and like develop on conscience and say oh I think actually actually went wrong and privacy is really important from this ethical or moral or political perspective what change was the market incentive the fact that consumers are now demanding that privacy be safeguarded and refusing to use companies that won't do that the US and the UK have now essentially launched their PR campaign to accuse Facebook and Google and Apple of being eaters and abettors of terrorist groups essentially being the best friend of Isis of having blood on their hands these companies are not being bullied by that kind of rhetoric is damaging as it might be because they fear even more than that public relations campaign a huge exodus of users who are not going to use their services if they're perceived as partners of the NSA and the GCHQ well so I mean as far as encryption is concerned obviously that is the key to defeating the surveillance state and that's going to be the battle that probably is with us for not just years but decades to come it's going to be like our arms raised from the ones you're going to see government agencies developing technologies to break encryption to invade communication and then the other side you're going to see private companies and privacy activists and others trying to use math to build a wall of numbers essentially around people's communication and keep the government and non-state actors out and so the awareness that it's really crucial now not to just tell individuals go use encryption because that's too complicated but to have companies implanted embedded in their product so that it's essentially automatic so if you read me the biggest companies we're talking about Google and Facebook and Apple are now probably the most powerful companies in the world more powerful than oil companies or defense contractors they have more money than those industries they exert more power and their core business is collecting data it's not like it's ancillary to their business you know if people think of Google as a search company that's sort of along the way collects data no Google provide provides search capacities so that you use it so that it can collect data about you whether that's to monetize it or sell it or more importantly to analyze it so that they can understand on the human brain work so that they can develop artificial intelligence products and the like which they see is the future so I don't see a way although it'd be great if it could be done I don't see a plausible way given that these companies are really more powerful than governments now to curb the the willingness and ability of these companies to collect data so the fact that he has ended up not in US custody not in prison and most importantly of all completely free to participate in the debate that he triggered around the world has been immensely positive for him and I think for for every citizen concerned about these issues and not only does he participate in these debates he had become an extremely desired speaker so he gives speeches he participates in events he writes columns and he does interviews he has large platforms and so as he's talked about before he's able to make a living a good living actually I mean I'm not sure that there is a way to avoid using these companies short of removing yourself from the matrix all together interestingly when I met with that were sown in Hong Kong and you know kept pressing him on his motive for why he was going to risk his liberty or even his life to bring this information to the public that's essentially what he said is that you know especially someone his age who came of age already in the world of the Internet it's not this kind of ancillary technology that you can sort of choose to use or not use the way maybe if you're older you you think of it as it's really it's the the window into which you you interact with the world it's unavoidable and and so to see that he said compromised and turned into a tool of oppression and corrosion control as opposed to this this device of you know this innovation of liberation and and and and democratization and was just so disturbing to him that he couldn't in good faith left in good conscience let that happen so I don't I don't I don't think that there are ways to avoid these technologies I think that what individual citizen can do is apply various pressure points to make sure that they can do so safely without having a privacy compromise