Edward Snowden Issues 'Call To Arms' For Tech Companies In Secret SXSW Meeting
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a highlight of last year's SXSW, where he gave one of his first public speeches. This year, Snowden was back at SXSW — but only a few people even knew it was happening. Snowden held a streamed question-and-answer session with roughly two dozen people from across the technology and policy world, which participant Sunday Yokubaitis, president of online privacy company Golden Frog, described as a "call to arms" for tech companies to foil spying with better privacy tools.
According to Yokubaitis, Snowden said that as policy reform lagged, companies should adopt more secure technology that could block surveillance altogether or make it too difficult to pursue en masse. A big focus was end-to-end encryption, which would mean no one (including companies) could see the contents of communications except the sender and recipient. "The low-hanging fruit is always [the] transit layer," he reportedly said. "It raises the cost. Every time we raise the cost, we force budgetary constraints." This is especially relevant as tools that are originally built for targeted use overseas slowly grow into broader programs. "We hope that they start with North Korea and by the time they end up in Ohio, they run out of budget."
Snowden described common security systems like SSL, meanwhile, as "critical infrastructure" that didn't receive enough investment and became vulnerable as a result. And if encryption isn't common enough, simply using it can mark a message as suspicious, which is part of the reason companies should be working on better encryption options. "Him saying that validates that companies should try and fill the holes, and not wait for policy," said Yokubaitis after the meeting.
""Spying programs are worth more than the interests of justice.""
On the policy side, Snowden criticized proposals to expand rules that make phone companies open their networks for government wiretapping. FBI director James Comey has warned that internet services and tech products need similar backdoors to stop cases from "going dark" as criminals moved to the internet. "We can't have CALEA — Part 2," he said, according to Yokubaitis. He also said that penalties were too light for NSA employees who spied on spouses or lovers — informally referred to as LOVEINT. "This proves that spying programs are worth more than the interests of justice." And he thought that the public should pay more attention to NSA programs that tried to discredit enemies by spying on their online sexual activities. "How does using porn habits to discredit people make us much different than [the] Turkish government? We need to maintain moral leadership."
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http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/15/8218659/edward-snowden-secret-sxsw-2015-meeting
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Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Oh, that's just TOO rich...
It has become utterly futile for me to highlight Snowden's hypocrisy, since on a daily basis he's constantly resetting the standard...
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Or did you just extend your vendetta (on someone else's behalf) to include those who are guilty by association?
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Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and he has intentionally shortchanged that grand "discussion" he wanted to bring about by squelching all discussion about corporate metadata collection...
I don't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but the awards, the books, movies, speeches, appearances, softball interviews and all the other bullshit is a smokescreen for something...
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)I'd have millions of dollars and two movies made about me by now...
No skin off my nose; I've been called much, much worse on DU since this charade started...
But since the golden boy having secret off-the-record meetings isn't something you find worthy of discussion, I guess we're done here...
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)As in, did Hillary Clinton's personal email discuss the $81 million from private donors that was laundered through HSBC to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and was it a factor in the State Department putting pressure on the Haitian government to keep slave wages to benefit Hanes and Levi Strauss?
But since you've offered nothing but ad hominem attacks against Greenwald and Snowden, then yeah, we're done here.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)If you want to start a separate discussion on that, I'm game...I'm discussing Snowden's daily episode of hypocrisy...
And I fail to see the wisdom of your displeasure at my supposed ad hominem attacks against Snow-Wald when you just leveled one at *me* two posts earlier...
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)It can, however, be held up as a refutable statement.
Did the State Department, under Hillary Clinton, put pressure on the Haitian government to keep slave wages for the benefit of apparel manufacturers? Yes. (Thank you, Chelsea Manning.)
Have those same apparel manufacturers, working with the Clinton Foundation, ripped off the wages of the workers? Yes.
Did the Clinton Foundation accept $81 million from private donors through HSBC, a bank that laundered nearly $900 million in Mexican drug cartel money? Yes.
I can combine these statements with peer-reviewed information to develop a theory.
~snip~
Unless, however, there were to be a fundamental change in legislation in regard to charitable gifts,12 the advantages of transferring both capital and annual income away from the personal estate of a taxpayer in the high income brackets or away from a corporation are very considerable.13 But in the age of the managerial revolution and the Welfare State, a motive at least equal to that of providing a suitable mechanism for philanthropy and a tax free reservoir for an otherwise highly taxable income is the power which the foundation gives to the controller of a business or industry to perpetuate his control.14
~snip~
A detailed analysis of the many methods and purposes for which the modern American foundation is used would greatly exceed the scope of this article. It clearly represents a development strikingly different from the state of affairs which Maitland portrayed. As many modern jurists and sociologists have pointed out,15 the modern industrial enterprise has become a corporate empire within the State in which control of management is more important than nominal ownership of shares. Modern government attempts to counter the accumulation of private wealth and power partly by supervisory regulation and partly by heavy taxation. The controllers of enterprises counter by divesting themselves of assets which they would otherwise pay to the State as income tax. At the same time they sanctify their name and give public proof of their sense of social responsibility through the establishment of charitable institutions. Examples are known of large business concerns vesting their entire real property assets in a controlled charitable foundation and renting them back from that foundation.16 As long as charities retain the legal benefits and advantages which they have traditionally enjoyed-and it would be difficult for any legislature to take them away'7-the modern business corporation gains by diminishing its assets and its income. By this device persons and corporations not only reduce their liabilities without losing control but also make their name a household word in philanthropy.
Friedmann, W. G. (1957). Corporate power, government by private groups, and the law. Columbia Law Review, 57(2), 155-186.
You say Snowden is a "tool of Putin," a level of analysis appropriate to a rather dull child. What have you offered to prove that statement? Mind-reading skills? Your delusions can be proven with 100% certainty (in your head.)
According to Wikipedia, "Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact or when used in certain kinds of moral and practical reasoning."
I was not being fallacious with my use of ad hominem against you because the credibility of statements of facts you provided is nil.
As such, I am not being fallacious when I say you are a narcissistic conspiracy theorist with delusions of grandeur.
"I'd have millions of dollars and two movies made about me by now..."
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)hundreds of fucking times on DU -- Quit being lazy and go search for any one of them, since I grow tired of repeating myself...(I also noticed YOUR ass was nowhere to be found in my more recent threads)
There's nothing dull or childish about my assessment -- Quite the contrary, it is a measure of naivete on the Snowdenistas who somehow believe Snowden is "special" when Russia has a 100% success record of knowing what national security defectors know...There are also a number of red flags visible to anybody actually paying attention...
The funny part is for all the insults you and your fucking people dished out at me, and given the fact that my opinion is outnumbered 100-to-1 on this site, not ONE of you have been able to actually disprove my assessment in almost two years...Not one person on twitter has been able to do it (and yes, I've directly questioned a few people in the Snow-Wald cabal and they subsequently blocked me without even bothering to answer)...
I'll happily admit that my case against Snowden and his true motivations is flimsy and circumstantial, and it will continue to be until I get some real inside information about the cabal...But it speaks volumes that even the biggest Snow-Wald cultists on DU (yes, even bigger than you) haven't been able to touch me, and revert to name-calling, deflection and personal insults instead of challenging it...Which means I must be moving in the right direction...
I know DU's unofficial rules dictate you must get in the last word here, so just close it in the the usual manner by calling me an idiot, a pentagon paid shill, a hater, a statist asshole or whatever garden variety epithets you wish to use...(Extra credit if you want to use more JPEGs or GIFs, since those require at least a little creativity and although I didn't mention it, I did appreciate the cologne bottle)...Neither of us is going to change the other person's mind, and only the passage of time will reveal which side is right...
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)You've offered nothing but your beliefs about Snowden's motivations (which don't matter; people can have good intentions and still make things worse), and while those beliefs may be proven with 100% certainty in your head, that doesn't mean shit in the real world.
That you don't understand that reveals the depth of your delusions.
One thing you got right: your case is flimsy and circumstantial.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)you claim you've laid out your case, you refuse to link to any of those times you've laid out your case.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)some are obsessed with hatred. Makes me wonder why. One guess is that people like Snowden shake the foundations that some feel are so secure and so needed for security. An open-minded person might be suspicious when the Powers That Be tell us they are spying for our own good.
I think it's an authoritarian problem. When the boy speaks out saying the NSA has no clothing, those living in their pseudo-secure reality bubble lash out with ad hominem attacks. The messenger must be killed to reestablish the peacefulness of denial.
There are two sides in this class war we are engaged in, the 1% and their NSA/CIA Security State and the 99% that whistle-blowers are fighting for. Why do some here choose the strong, manly, 1% bully over the 99%? You tell us.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)and if you had actually read the article.. which apparently, you rarely do, it states… "There was no directive to keep the meeting secret after the fact, so some participants, like Center for Democracy and Technology director Nuala O'Connor, tweeted Snowden selfless."
Again, human beings have a right to privacy and secrecy. Government agencies do not.
