HACKER Q&A
📣 tcmb

How did you change your online behavior after the Snowden leaks?


I'm currently reading Edward Snowden's autobiography "Permanent Record". It is now over six years since his famous release of internal documents from the Intelligence Community.

I have the impression that despite the knowledge that his leak brought us, many have gone back to 'business as usual'. But if I take it seriously, I would have to assume that all the traffic I am generating is being logged and stored for an indefinite time, and that various international intelligence agencies have direct access to the data stored on servers of all major cloud providers, negating the usefulness of 'https everywhere' and similar approaches to encrypted transmissions.

So I'm curious how you changed your online behavior in the past six years. Do you store all private data on your own servers? Do you take additional measures with regards to encryption, in storage or in transmission?

  👤 ivanon Accepted Answer ✓
I was around 18 at the time of the Snowden leaks. I became extremely privacy-conscious and ended up closing myself off to the world as a result. I stopped participating on social media and I think it stunted some of my growth. What I mean by this is social media has really changed my life in a positive way. I've met a lot of great people and it's helped me grow my career and business substantially. I'm glad I got over that privacy phase since it did nothing but turn me into a ghost. Nowadays, I could care less. I write a lot and I'm pretty open about my life. Once you put yourself out there, you have to surrender some of that privacy and that's just how it is.
👤 octosphere
I'm going to 'recycle' an older comment of mine, pertaining to the comments about the book. The original comment can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20583363 I was annoyed that someone called Ed Snowden a 'Traitor'. Hopefully it gets a bit more recognition in this thread

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For me he made the Great Game of Privacy a lot fairer. You should read the excellent entry on Wikipedia about the aftermath of the leaks[0]. If the leaks meant that privacy-loving folk went 'dark' in light of the leaks, then this is a net plus. Snowden's actions possibly hindered NSA in catching undesirables, but it's a small price to pay for a bolstered Internet and privacy-respecting comms. And who's to say that the apparatus even worked that well in foiling the efforts of plotters? Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA's surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him.

Even if it stopped one plot in all the time of its existence, it's still an enormous effort and an enormous amount of money spent just to foil one plot. Old fashioned police work is better at foiling plots because it doesn't have to rely on big data algorithms sifting through the noise of Internet traffic (most of which is innocuous). Old fashioned methods work because they employ simple detective work - it doesn't need the NSA at every choke point and decrypting countless crypto.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_Effect

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intelli...

👤 p1esk
Why would I change my online behavior? I hope one day Google learns enough about me to start showing me relevant ads. Or maybe be even personalized search results? One can dream...
👤 buboard
I 'm assuming by now it's a lot worse that what Snowden revealed. I even assume that E2E encryption can be broken, but it probably takes them longer. I think people who started using the internet in the 90s are more wary of the tech anyway - it's a more recent phenomenon that people started sharing real names and photos etc.
👤 impossiblewhisk
People like simple answers (Snowden good / Snowden bad). A manipulator makes you believe THEY trust YOU. The message: well crafted, packaged, and distributed. Today he profits from national security secrets, whatever that may mean. How do you know you have enough information to make a correct assessment? Capturing a pawn at face value may get you a piece, but how do you know it's not a gambit if you can't see the whole chess board?

Perhaps these assist your question more than this harangue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Reaction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_global_surveillan...

👤 kwillets
It was already pretty obvious with Echelon and so forth; IDK why people didn't get it before.

I was disappointed in the NSA's security though.

👤 algaeontoast
Don’t buy any blatantly voice activated shit