Re:Julian Assange Is Free
by newzisforsukas on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @12:20AM
(#40784442)
> You can look at the mass adoption of encrypted messaging and HTTPS adoption statistics (which grew exponentially directly after the leaks to become near standard), and plenty of other metrics to see that.
I don't think increased TLS adoption was caused by Snowden or Wikileaks. It was because of the HTTP/2 protocol and Lets Encrypt taking off.
You can read about that history here: https://opensource.com/business/16/8/lets-encrypt
According to Aas, they decided to start LetsEncrypt in 2012. Before Snowden leaked anything.
Similarly, one could argue that encrypted messaging became popular because of the work done on projects like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp (which added "encryption" in August 2012).
And objectively the internet is a safer place thanks to the Snowden NSA leaks which were directly inspired, not just ideologically but technically in how it was done, by Assange. You can look at the mass adoption of encrypted messaging and HTTPS adoption statistics (which grew exponentially directly after the leaks to become near standard), and plenty of other metrics to see that.
Wikileaks was the spawn of many good things, even despite it’s flaws.