Snowden tells CES crowd fighting encryption is the wrong fight

8 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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“I’ve read the emails of terrorists, I know what they’re doing, I know how they work”, Edward Snowden told a rapt audience in a CES booth yesterday. “Terrorists are already using encryption. Everybody in the world is using encryption”.

He was being interviewed by serial entrepreneur Peter Diamondus – X-Prize, Singularity and, yesterday, Human Longevity, Inc. – via a BeamPro telepresence robot made by Palo Alto-based Suitabletech. It was a promotionally convenient necessity since Snowden is a fugitive, living in exile in Russia after blowing the whistle on the National Security Agency’s massive data trawling operation.… More

Latest Snowden revelations will push Internet infrastructure and traffic away from U.S.


Expect more lines in the future to bypass the U.S.

If there was ever any doubt that there’s no privacy on the Internet, the latest nuggets from Edward Snowden’s trove of documents detailing U.S. electronic spying efforts should remove it. Stories on the ProPublica.org website and in the New York Times show how telecommunications companies have cooperated with the National Security Agency to trawl emails that pass through their systems, regardless of where the messages originate or where they are destined.… More

Rich countries bid up the price of Internet freedom


Assume perfect information.

The richer the country, the greater the impact and accessibility of the web, but the more intrusive governments become. The annual Web Index, compiled by the World Wide Web foundation, shows a strong correlation between high GDP and high scores on the attributes it measures. Even amid warnings from Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web and the man behind the foundation, that “a growing tide of
surveillance and censorship now threatens the future of democracy”, it’s people in rich countries that are better able to improve their lives and affect the course of government via the Internet.… More