So he was a privacy activist while he worked at the NSA? Isn't this a bit like being a healthcare activist and working for McDonalds?
>For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency's secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media.
>"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
>...Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: "Correct on Booz."[1]
Coworkers started to become suspicious of his intentions years earlier when he was with the CIA.
>Just as Edward J. Snowden was preparing to leave Geneva and a job as a C.I.A. technician in 2009, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file, noting a distinct change in the young man’s behavior and work habits, as well as a troubling suspicion.
>The C.I.A. suspected that Mr. Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access, and decided to send him home, according to two senior American officials. [2]
[1] - http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-s...
[2] - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/cia-warning-on-snowden-...
His motives and how he ultimately ended up leaking information is well documented in the 2014 documentary Citizenfour [1] and the 2016 movie Snowden [2].
> But he was with the bad guys.
Are there shades of grey or nuances or is the NSA the root of all evil? Its impossible to care about security as NSA employee? Teaching US civilians how to use GPG means you're trying to protect civilians against the NSA? The world isn't black and white.
>"Its impossible to care about security as NSA employee?"
I don't think the question is security but privacy and no, it's hard to imagine sincerely caring about other's privacy and working for an organization that regularly disrespects it as a matter of course.
Documentaries like autobiographies are often a vehicle for revisionist history. In regards to [2], Hollyood is not really considered a good source of historical accuracy.
Your question is answered in depth in the documentary, in the movie, and in various interviews (written, as well as videos). Imagine someone who's patriotic at heart, who picks up signs where he's starting to doubt the things he's doing are patriotic (e.g. on the longer term, or in their specific targets). That's Snowden in a nutshell.
You're also seemingly unaware Snowden attempted to disclose the information before.
Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread HN user sig links to an article where he admits he did join "Booz Allen to gather evidence of surveillance".
> I don't think the question is security but privacy
Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG. The latter depends on the former, and GPG is very much related to security just as well.
> Documentaries like autobiographies are often a vehicle for revisionist history.
And often they're not. They're used to tell one side of the story. The other one's the US government's take on the matter.
> In regards to [2], Hollyood is not really considered a good source of historical accuracy.
Not a statement of much, if any, value.
It wasn't the sole source I stated. If you'd have a look on Wikipedia article, you could learn how the movie was made (research-wise there's quite some details). If you'd have seen both docu and move you'd know how close the movie is to the docu (although also dramatised as mentioned in the movie itself, btw).
It wasn't an actual question it was rhetorical. I've seen the documentary, I don't buy it all. I find his sincerity questionable. Similarly his Twitter profile shows he is the President at @FreedomofPress, yet he takes refuge in a country that that is one of the most deplorable in terms of media freedom.
>"Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG."
No it's not semantics and if you want distort it like that, both security and privacy are under assault by that same NSA.
>"Not a statement of much, if any, value."
But sighting a Hollywood movie as evidence of accuracy is? Sure, right that makes a lot of sense.
That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom. We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding its own, various somewhat less powerful countries that are effectively allied with one or the other, and various significantly less powerful countries that don't have the ability to anger either.
What country do you think he should have taken refuge in?
No, there's no shortage of countries that have good media freedom:
>"We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding its own,"
Please name one crime that the US media hid from the American people? Everything and everyone in the US is fair game.
>"What country do you think he should have taken refuge in?"
That's not the point, the point is he emigrates to Putin's Russia and then becomes President at @FreedomofPress. And for a refresher on the state of media freedom in Russia:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23...
Cute list, Sweden at #2, I suppose Assange should go to Sweden as well?
What you say is completely and utterly irrelevant in the context where the United States of America would use extradition agreements to get Snowden back on US soil, for example by basing themselves on this ridiculous law [1]. Notwithstanding that Snowden did a service to the countries in your list.
Germany did not pardon Snowden, so he didn't go there.
Bottomline is, such a list is secondary to Snowden's personal freedom, his primary interest (don't confuse that with your lack of care about his personal freedom). His personal freedom is [somewhat] protected in Russia, but not in Sweden, Germany, or The Netherlands because the claw of the US government reaches that far. TL;DR he'd have been an utter idiot if he went to the EU.
Every time you are confronted with facts and you shift the focus to something else. Now you are discussing Julian Assange? But since you brought him up, he is another one who has taken up refuge in a country where censorship is rampant and press freedom is abysmal:
https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-17891-attacks-freedo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Ecuador
>"Bottomline is, such a list is secondary to Snowden's personal freedom,"
How very selective for both Snowden and Assange that being a pawn of corrupt regimes that have no respect for press freedoms is acceptable as long as you have another bogeyman to point at.
So it's OK for them to condone the behavior of those governments provided that both of them are recipients of their favors? They are both principled where and when it's convenient for them. I didn't think principles were something that could be selectively applied. I'm sure they both appreciate that your doing their bidding though.
Newsflash Sherlock: Reporters Without Borders credibility isn't related to extradition laws with the USA. Those 2 variables are not affecting each other, yet the latter is very much relevant here for the freedom and perhaps even life of Snowden.
I already told you this once in my previous post, and you carefully dance around that cause it doesn't suit your agenda. What you say regarding RWB is irrelevant, as Snowden wouldn't be long in that country. He'd have been send a one way ticket to the USA instead, and he'd have gotten a secret trial. What matters is looking at the situation and facts as they occurred and being practical. Now you are going to tell us which country Snowden should've fled to instead of Russia. Go ahead, share the magic faerie-tale country which would've been better according to your one criteria of Reporters Without Borders. Then I will tell you 1) the plane from Ecuador didn't stop at that country (and Snowden got stuck in Russia thanks to US action). 2) Furthermore, he wouldn't been long in said country as I already described.
> I'm sure they both appreciate that your doing their bidding though.
And I am sure the US government is pleased you're doing theirs with your baseless character assassinations.
1. I said US (as in the government), not US media.
2. You, uh, realize we're in a thread about Edward Snowden, right? Are you familiar with what he did?
> the point is he emigrates to Putin's Russia and then becomes President at @FreedomofPress.
So? What is this point relevant to?
His destination wasn't Russia. He went from Hong Kong to Ecuador and got stuck in transit at Sheremetyevo International Airport because the US government revoked his password while he was flying from Hong Kong. Efforts to get him to Germany (with pardon) failed.
As for media freedom in our Western so-called free world, look at what happened with news agency The Guardian, how they had to discard material which was in the interest of the general population of the UK and the world.
Also he worked for the CIA prior to the NSA:
https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h...
Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like 5 mining pools and the occasional lucky lottery winner. If they blacklist your address, your "permissionless" currency starts looking a lot more like a frozen bank account.
There are better ways :)
No. You only need to trust 1 of 9 persons. The cryptographic algorithm works so that if 1 honest and 8 malicious persons participate, then the output can be 100% trusted. I do think it would have been interesting to allow hundreds of random participants to take part in the ceremony. But I'm not sure what the technical hurdles would have been (eg. what if one person abandons the process in the middle, does the whole ceremony has to be restarted?)
I find the comparison with Bitcoin perfect. The same people trusting PoW cartels to keep their system operational are complaining that zk-SNARKs require a parameter setup for proof soundness? That doesn't really make sense to me.
On the face of it, that sounds very wrong. Could you elaborate on what you were saying?
That is, if I ask 1 billion questions about a resource, and get true, verifiable answers, can't I find out something about it? For example, some projection onto a linear subspace or something.
Not really, no. There is no known scheme that has similar properties but non-trusted setup. There's not a proof that it's impossible either, so something might get invented. But at the moment, no.
That said I share the criticism. Even with trusted setup it could have been done much better.
Already invented. It's called MimbleWimble.
The Zcash-like approach on the other hand is to provide a transaction mode where your anonymity set is everyone who has ever transacted with the system before. That's N=everybody; the source of funds is entirely obscured.
The two achieve totally different goals, with a different set of tradeoffs. Apples to oranges.
Monero's ring signatures have their drawbacks, but they don't require trust. It is hard to see his rationale for referring to it as an "amateur effort".
Ring signatures with small anonymity sets have very serious privacy drawbacks, but they have more sensible assumptions for protecting the monetary base integrity.
zk-SNARKs are the opposite: they don't compromise on privacy at all, but require stronger assumptions to protect the monetary base.
zk-SNARKS have no privacy issues, but to trust ZCash you require absolute trust in the zcash ceremony. This is an issue for many, including me. This ceremony has happened, there is no way for me to prove to myself that the private keys were not stored somewhere. Although I can prove to myself it is decentralised and private, I can't see how I could ever prove to myself that noone can cheat and generate coins with minimal effort, thus devaluing mine. I just have to trust the founders.
Monero's Ring signatures require no trust, but they have privacy problems in the case of small rings. This is solveable by restricting to large rings (as a hard fork will enforce this September[1]), and at that point, I can see how to convince myself that the system is decentralised, private, and noone can generate coins without appropriate mining effort.
[1] https://getmonero.org/2017/09/13/september-15-2017-protocol-...
The software those people ran is a single point of failure that hasn't been properly audited. As one of those people, all I know is I attempted to faithfully run a DVD image; I have no idea if that DVD image was backdoored.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...