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Interview with Edward Snowden, who made the biggest leak of secret documents in US history
"The government and companies have taken advantage of our ignorance, but that's coming to an end"
The Guardian / Daily
| Five years after the historical data filtering NSA, Edward Snowden takes stock of what has been achieved in the fight against mass surveillance by the government and intelligence services. "People say that nothing has changed, there are still massive surveillance. But the changes are not measured well. Look prior to 2013 and look what happened situation. Everything has changed." |
Edward Snowden in an interview with Japan's Kyodo in Moscow in May 2017, KYODO.
Five years after the biggest leak of secret documents in history, Edward Snowden has no regrets about anything. United States has in the list of most wanted persons. He lives in exile in Russia. However, he feels satisfied with the way his revelations about mass surveillance have shaken governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies. In a telephone interview on the occasion of the anniversary of the day when The Guardian published the news firstSnowden remembers the day his world - and that of many others on the planet changed forever. He went to sleep at a hotel in Hong Kong and when he awoke, the news that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been absorbing the data of millions of Americans took hours moving headlines.
Snowden knew at that moment that he knew his life was over. " It scared me, but also was liberating , " he says. "I had the feeling it was something definite. There was no turning back."
What happened in the last five years? Snowden is one of the most famous fugitives in the world, it has been filmed with its history a winning documentary Oscar a Hollywood movie and they have written at least a dozen books. The governments of the US and UK, because of his revelations, have been brought to court to change laws surveillance. Both countries have had to adopt new laws. Internet companies, thanks to the popular reaction around privacy, encryption have made is something widespread.
Snowden, evaluating the changes, says some privacy activists have expressed disappointment with how the events occurred, but he does not agree with that. "People say that nothing has changed, there are still massive surveillance. But that's not how the changes are measured. Look at the situation prior to 2013 and look what happened. Everything has changed."
According to him, the most important change has been the public consciousness: "The government and the business sector have taken advantage of our ignorance But now we know people are aware people still do not have power to stop it , but we're trying... . the revelations have made the fight more balanced , "he explains.
Snowden says he does not regret anything. "If I wanted to be safe, I would not have gone to Hawaii" (where he had been destined when heworked for the NSA, before moving to Hong Kong).
His own life is marked by uncertainty, perhaps now more than ever, he says. His asylum in Russia depends on a change in the government of Putin opinion, and US intelligence agencies and British have not forgiven him. For them, the issue is hotter than ever. They say that his betrayal has hurt them at a level that the public fails to understand.
This was reflected in an unusual statement Jeremy Fleming, director of British surveillance agency GCHQ which, together with the US NSA, was the main purpose of filtration. Responding to a question from The Guardian for the anniversary filtration, Fleming argues that the mission of GCHQ was to keep safe UK: "What did Edward Snowden five years ago was illegal and jeopardized our ability to protect UK, causing a real and necessary to the security of the country and our allies harm. you should pay for what he did. "
The danger of what not publishedThe fury of the intelligence community in the US and UK is not only what has been published , which represents just over 1% of documents- but also what has not been published. They explain that they have had to work on the assumption that all the information that Snowden had access has been compromised and had to be discarded.
Agencies had another job. Having had to throw away so much information, they had to develop and install new and better systems faster than planned. Another change came in the area of transparency. Before Snowden, questions from the press at GCHQ were with answers "no comment", while now have more willingness to cooperate.The fact that Fleming has responded with a statement shows that change.
In his statement, Fleming expresses its commitment to transparency, but makes clear that this is not the merit of Snowden, because change is prior to 2013. " It is important that we remain as open as we can and I am committed to the changes we have begun more than a decade to achieve greater transparency. "
Other people in the intelligence services, especially in the US, grudgingly admit that it was by Snowden so they began to discuss where they should draw the line between privacy monitoring.The former director of the NSA deputy, Richard Ledgett, when he retired last year, said the government should have made public the information that had a lot of phone data.
Demonstration against spying by the NSA and for Snowden against the US Congress in Washington in October 2013. Applewhite SCOTT / AP.
The former director of GCHQ, David Omand, agrees with the statement Fleming on the damage caused, but admits that Snowden has helped new legislation is introduced. "We now have a better and more transparent for gathering intelligence legal framework. Of course this would have happened anyway, but certainly their actions accelerated the process , " Omand said. The US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, which limits the mass collection of telephone data. A year later, the British Parliament passed the controversial Investigatory Powers Act (Investigatory Powers Act).
Ross Anderson, A leading specialist in computer security and privacy academic, believes Snowden's revelations were a momentous time."Snowden's revelations were one of those luminous moments that change the way people see things," Anderson, professor of security engineering at the computer lab at the University of Cambridge explains. "Maybe they did not change much in the UK for our culture idolizing James Bond and everything he does. But in the rest of the world did people really understand that monitoring is a serious matter".
Lawmakers and much of the British media are not committed to the same level as their colleagues in other European countries, the United States, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Among the exceptions is the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who pushed for this issue until he lost his seat in the election of 2015. "Snowden's revelations were a tremendous blow, but theyhave made us to achieve greater transparency in some of the agencies on their work , "he says.
"The counter has just begun"One of the revelations that had the greatest impact was on the level of cooperation between intelligence agencies and Internet companies. In 2013, US companies outstripped the EU in the negotiations on data protection. Snowden leaks fell like a bomb in the middle of negotiations and data protection law that was applied last month is a result.
One of the most visible effects of the revelations of Snowden was the small yellow sign that began appearing in the messaging service WhatsApp in April 2016: "The messages and calls in this chat are now protected with encryption end to end".
Snowden before, this encryption few people used it. "If I could go back to 2013 , " says Jillian York, Director of the international department for freedom of expression of the group for the digital rights of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "I perhaps on my phone would TextSecure, the previous version of the encrypted communication of Signal application. It would have another tool mail encryption mail, PGP, but would not use anyone. " The only major exception was the iMessage Apple, which has been encrypted from end to end since its launch in 2011.
The developers at large technology companies, scandalized by revelations Snowden began to take action. Some, such as WhatsApp application that was bought by Facebook a year after it came to light leaks, implemented their own encryption.Others, like Alex Stamos, of Yahoo, They resigned rather than support more intelligence (Stamos is now Facebook 's chief security officer, but has announced that the company will soon).
"No Snowden , " says York. "I do not think that Signal had secured funding. I do not think Facebook would have gotten Alex Stamos, because it would have been in Yahoo. These small actions caused further action. Not that these companies suddenly say 'we care about privacy. "I think they had no other choice. "
Other changes in the technology sector show that the influence of Snowden has been limited in many respects. The rise of "smart speaker"Exemplified in the Amazon Echo, he has perplexed many privacy activists defenders. Why, just a few years after a global surveillance scandal at the hands of the government, people accept microphones installed in their homes that remain always on?
"The recent dilemma privacy representing installing a device that can literally hear everything you say is a chilling innovation in the era of things connected to the Internet , " he wrote last year Adam Clark Estes, Gizmodo .
Toward the end of the interview, Snowden recalls one of his first alias, Cincinnatus, in honor of the Roman who returned to his farm after serving society. Snowden said he also feels that once fulfilled its role, has retired to a quiet life, spending time developing tools to help journalists to protect their sources. "I think I had never felt so accomplished , " he says.
However, he said that not celebrate the anniversary as a triumph. There's still much to do. "The counter has just begun , " said Snowden."Governments and businesses have long been in this game and we just started."
Translated by Lucia Balducci
Source: http: //www.eldiario.
