Tech Musing 3: Thoughts On Edward Snowden and Privacy

Edward Snowden was a government contractor leaked 10,000 classified U.S. documents to the world. A mass surveillance program from the National Security Administration gathers information on citizens via phone tracking and tapping undersea Internet cables. I think when people act against the NSA surveillance in another way is hurting the country. It has been three years since then, Snowden is still an important part at fields of personal privacy, public security, and online right.

According to a recent interview with Snowden, he said there have been a lot of changes that have happened over these three years, and not just on the Internet. It has changed our culture, laws, the way our courts decide issues and the way people consider what the Internet, their communication security means to them. I believe even if people do not use the internet, do not have smart phones, laptop or phone lines, most of their personal information is still going to be handled by tax authorities, health providers or hospitals; So it is not just people’s smart phones that was being monitored carries too much of personal privacy, actually all of this information is always routed over the Internet. As I also understand people are not happy that police and the government then have the authority to search through your entire life through your phone and internet. So one of the most measurable changes in the past three years is to guarantee personal privacy rights through encryption and it is pretty effective. The FBI failed to crack an Apple device recently was a good example of that.

I think because of the context of terrorism threat that was heavily promoted by two successive administrations after all the bad things happened in the 9/11 era, there was an idea made the government have to go to the dark side to be able to confront the threat posed by bad guys. I think this method is what we have to adopt under most cases.

http://www.popsci.com/edward-snowden-internet-is-broken