I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote

Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by coldcode on Monday December 30, 2013 @10:37AM (#6984992)

Reading this (and others) makes me conclude that we the people (or any country, but especially here in the US) are truly and royally fucked. For every brave person who stands up there are a hundred thousand who refuse to the see the sun rises in the east and continues to believe what they are being told, that it rises in the west.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by davidw on Monday December 30, 2013 @10:54AM (#6985054)

We are only if people give up. Progress is a long road, at times. Not to directly compare the two, but look at the history of the civil rights movement in the US, from slavery, to Lincoln, to the 60ies and to the present day. That has been a fight carried out over generations, but things have gotten better.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by dontusually2 on Monday December 30, 2013 @03:37PM (#6986772)

It's interesting that privacy enabled many previous, successful movements like civil rights.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by hnha on Tuesday December 31, 2013 @07:08AM (#6990095)

this is a great point when arguing with the "nothing to hide" people

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by AlexanderDhoore on Monday December 30, 2013 @11:07AM (#6985112)

Technology will be the solution, not politics. Cryptography is the only way out of this hell.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by pstuart on Monday December 30, 2013 @11:16AM (#6985159)

Crypto to what degree? Are your medical records safe? Correspondence with other secure on the other side? Credit card history? If you drive, your license plate being scanned to track location? Do you have a cell phone? Do you send postal mail (envelopes are now scanned).

Et cetera.

Crypto is great, but if the population as a whole doesn't care then it's more an exercise in keeping your journal entries secret (possibly).

We need to foment public anger over this, and have a clear course of action to channel that anger.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by thirsteh on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:23PM (#6985575)

This is primarily a political problem. Talk to people who really understand the capabilities of state-level adversaries--applied cryptographers in particular--and you'll invariably get "well... what can you do?" Entities like the NSA are too powerful for you as an individual to defend against.

Crypto will help, and it will put a dent in dragnet surveillance, but it is dangerous to think we can "just put SSL in everything" and be done with it.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by Luc on Monday December 30, 2013 @04:13PM (#6986998)

Exactly the opposite. The NSA already had firmware exploits for BIOSes, harddrives, mobile phones in 2008. They have won on the technological front - if they want to track your communications, they'll find a way.

Only laws could rein them in. There's simple no computing platform that can be trusted to do your encryption on.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by amagumori on Tuesday December 31, 2013 @01:56AM (#6989449)

what about the loongson laptops? they run on their own proprietary silicon, designed and built in china. yep, this is where we're at in 2014...the technology designed in a communist country is more trustworthy than the stuff designed here.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by baddox on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:06PM (#6985464)

Cryptography is one big part of it, but I think all of counter-economics is the real hope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by hobbes300 on Monday December 30, 2013 @11:37AM (#6985263)

Crypto is a tool, not a solution.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by baddox on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:05PM (#6985453)

"How are we going to push this nail into this board?"

"We can use a hammer."

"A hammer is a tool, not a solution."

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by olefoo on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:50PM (#6985753)

The question is "How can we build a house on a solid foundation that helps us live free, happy, healthy lives."

Hammers may be a part of the toolset, but they won't solve issues like siting it on the edge of a sand dune, or that the septic tank is currently in the master bedroom.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by scott_karana on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:48PM (#6985740)

The foundations of our building are crumbling, causing all the wood beams to fall out of place.

Do you use a hammer to right them all?

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by thirsteh on Monday December 30, 2013 @12:43PM (#6985708)

It'd be great if it were that simple, but it isn't.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by freshhawk on Monday December 30, 2013 @11:23PM (#6988932)

Technology makes things more efficient, in general. That means those in power have a heightened ability to abuse that power. The idea that technology is a democratizing force is based on wishful thinking.

Technology is not, and has never been, a solution to the concentration of power.

I say that as someone who would absolutely love for this not to be true by the way.

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by mercer on Friday January 03, 2014 @07:22AM (#7005074)

Indeed. Perhaps the most hopeful thing to say about technology is that it is a disrupting force, and at least offers some interesting new avenues to explore (both for good, and evil, though).

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Re:I Transcribed Glenn Greenwald's 30C3 Keynote by sneak on Monday December 30, 2013 @01:31PM (#6985994)

Were it that simple we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

They then just subvert those implementing the crypto like Hushmail, Skype, or iMessage.

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