{"id":33953,"date":"2016-03-20T21:40:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T01:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=33953"},"modified":"2016-03-20T21:40:04","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T01:40:04","slug":"ed-snowden-we-must-seize-the-means-of-communication-to-protect-basic-freedoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=33953","title":{"rendered":"Ed Snowden: \u2018We Must Seize The Means of Communication\u2019 to Protect Basic Freedoms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Other luminaries of alternative media such as Julian Assange, also addressed the Logan Symposium held in Berlin<\/em><\/h3>\n

\"1-ENyeFnu7IGa6UCQ05x9Tlg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Renowned NSA whistleblower calls for \u2018radical\u2019 popular action to take control of information technologies<\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

by Nafeez Ahmed<\/p>\n

This exclusive is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE<\/a>, a crowd-funded investigative journalism project for the global commons.<\/em><\/p>\n

A gathering of journalists, hackers and whistleblowers in Berlin this weekend heard former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden, issue a call for citizens to find ways to take direct control over the information technologies we use everyday.<\/p>\n

The Logan Symposium, organized by the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) based in Goldsmiths University, London, also heard from Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, and NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and William Binney.<\/p>\n

The two-day conference was supported by a wide range of press freedom organisations, independent journalism outfits, and mainstream media\u200a\u2014\u200aincluding the German newsmagazine Der Speigel.<\/p>\n

I participated in the symposium as a speaker, where I and my other panelists including investigative journalist Jacob Appelbaum\u200a\u2014\u200awho has worked with both Assange and Snowden, and independently broke the story of NSA spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u200a\u2014\u200adescribed our experiences of frontline reporting.<\/p>\n

Also on my panel was Eveline Lubbers, who has pioneered investigations exposing UK police operations to infiltrate activist groups; Martin Welz, editor of Noseweek, South Africa\u2019s only investigative journalism magazine; Natalia Viana, co-director of Brazil\u2019s leading nonprofit investigative journalism outlet, Agencia Publica; and Anas Aremeyaw, Africa\u2019s foremost undercover journalist.<\/p>\n

During his exclusive video address on Saturday evening, Snowden cautioned against viewing new developments in encryption as the only way of addressing mass surveillance, instead emphasising the urgency of dramatic global political and legal reform.<\/p>\n

The whistleblower also criticised President Barack Obama\u2019s stance on the dispute between Apple and the FBI over access to the IPhone used in the San Bernardino shootings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot about how we can address challenges through technical means,\u201d Edward Snowden told the audience in Berlin via live video link.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to think about how we got here. We talk about legal reform, but these weren\u2019t authorised in the first place\u2026 Reforming things within the system is the ideal, within the system. It\u2019s the way it should work, the way our societies are designed to function.<\/p>\n

What happens when the systems fail to function?<\/p>\n

We have this natural inclination to think that these are departures from the natural order of things, and everything will be better again, and we can rely once more on the system.<\/p>\n

But, it turns out, that abuse is the byproduct of power\u2026 Whenever we have increasingly small groups with power, we have abuses of power. The mechanism today is technology\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an intersection of technology and access to information in society. The internet is the shorthand for it\u2026 It increasingly effects all of us, but we have less and less control over it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, the founding publisher of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, expressed similar concerns in his live video address from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where a UN panel recently concluded he is effectively being arbitrarily detained. That conclusion was reached, Assange said, \u201cdespite improper pressure from the US and UK governments on the UN.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assange warned of the increasing intersection between Google, now the world\u2019s largest media company, and the US military industrial complex, in particular highlighting Google\u2019s escalating investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, largely for \u2018national security\u2019 applications by the US military and intelligence community.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle is integrating AI systems with the national security system,\u201d said Assange. \u201cThis is a threat to mankind. We must stop feeding Google.\u201d<\/p>\n

He urged the public to explore alternative online services to mitigate Google\u2019s ability to sweep up vast quantities of personal data into AI systems co-opted by the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

Both Assange and Snowden argued that the rapid centralisation of control of information communication technologies within a private corporate sector increasingly enmeshed with the security-state, represents a fundamental threat to functioning democracies, particularly a free press.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to accept that the only way to protect the rights of one, is to protect the rights of all,\u201d said Snowden. \u201cIncreasingly this is seen as a threat to government because it represents a domain in which they will no longer be able to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing President Obama\u2019s stance on the Apple-FBI dispute as a \u201cfalse dichotomy between privacy and security,\u201d he stated that \u201cyou need both\u201d, and can\u2019t have one without the other.<\/p>\n

Snowden added that the use of metadata to target people as threats to national security sets a dangerous precedent, with wide scope for miscarriages of justice against everyday citizens. A person who simply communicated with a journalist breaking a story based on information from a government whistleblower, for instance, could end up being convicted as the source\u200a\u2014\u200aeven if they were not the source\u200a\u2014\u200abased on the use of metadata linking them circumstantially to the journalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether or not you were the source, if you simply communicated with the journalist, you could be convicted,\u201d said Snowden.<\/p>\n

In Britain, the Tory government is attempting to push through a particularly draconian piece of legislation, the Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill), which would grant the state extraordinary powers to interfere with journalism. The bill, which if passed could set a precedent for other Western countries, is due to receive a second reading in parliament on Tuesday, 15th March.<\/p>\n

According to the National Union of Journalists, the bill will grant the government powers to access journalists\u2019 communications and hack their electronic equipment, including intercepting the content and metadata of their communications, without informing them.<\/p>\n

Despite significant opposition from various parliamentary committees, including the Joint Committee on the Investigatory Powers Bill, subsequent government re-drafts have only worsened its provisions.<\/p>\n

According to Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, the IP Bill:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 is a threat to the ability of journalists to do their jobs, to guarantee their material and to protect their sources. Without that protection, we simply won\u2019t have a functioning free press\u2026 A lack of safeguards for all journalists will have profound consequences for the public\u2019s right to know in the UK.\u201d
\nMetadata, of course, is already used in a wide range of contexts by the intelligence community to identify not just terrorism suspects, but also activists, human rights groups, and others critical of government policy.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, signature drone strikes against unidentified groups of suspected terrorist targets in theatres like Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan are based solely on metadata gleaned through surveillance of mobile phones, social media profiles, and other electronic information repositories. This has led to countless civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

Metadata from numerous electronic sources, including social media, is increasingly being seen by the Pentagon, as well as UK and EU security agencies, as a vast repository of easily attainable \u2018open source\u2019 intelligence to attempt to predict, and control, the behaviour of human populations.<\/p>\n

As I reported in February, unclassified official documents from the US Office of Naval Research among other Pentagon research programmes throw light on the alarming \u2018minority report\u2019-style ambitions of US government officials in terms of wanting to precisely anticipate and predict future activism, protests, crime, terrorism, conflicts and state-failures. Yet independent experts note that such technologies are more likely to generate false positives and red-herrings, rather than forecasts of real predictive value.<\/p>\n

Edward Snowden advocated the careful use and advancement of encryption technologies by journalists to help protect sources, but noted that technology alone is not the answer.<\/p>\n

One new powerful technology, a complete operating system known as SubGraph OS which can be installed onto a PC or Mac to provide a full range of encrypted communication tools, was launched at the conference. SubGraph is the latest in several different but similar tools, such as Tails\u200a\u2014\u200aan operating system that can be booted up on any computer through a USB drive\u200a\u2014\u200aand Qubes, another system requiring installation on specifically tailored security hardened computers.<\/p>\n

Designers of these projects at the conference warned, however, that while these tools are powerful, they do not offer guarantees against government surveillance, especially due to the possibility of as yet unknown built-in \u2018backdoors\u2019 in both mainstream software and hardware.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are truly great projects,\u201d said Snowden, highlighting SubGraph OS in particular: \u201cI plan to use this myself. But we have to recognise that these are inaccessible for the majority of users, for journalists, who aren\u2019t specialists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge for technologists is to develop friendlier and more accessible user-interfaces which can be learned by laypeople as you go. Snowden suggested exploring the \u2018gamification\u2019 of the learning curve for such tools to make the experience of getting to grips with them easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can provide people basic skills, understandings, by teaching them as they go\u200a\u2014\u200aa gamification of the interface, that teaches people as they use it, in a way that\u2019s fun, not burdensome, and enjoyable. This is something we need to work on a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snowden also encouraged technologists to \u201ccompete directly with these billion dollar corporate interests\u201d like Google, Facebook and Apple. There\u2019s a chance, he said, that citizen-led entrepreneurship could be \u201cmore successful, creating products that are just as attractive, more easy to use, but aren\u2019t as dangerous to the individual\u2019s rights to be free and associate in a free and safe way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edward Snowden also warned against assuming that attempting to counter state surveillance through encryption alone would be a panacea, advocating the need to fundamentally challenge the centralisation of power over information technologies in state-corporate hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re reliant on for-profit groups corporations like Apple to defend our rights. We have to rely on the protocols and systems that are underlying our communications.<\/p>\n

We need to get more radical as technologists and journalists\u2026<\/p>\n

There have been extraordinary imbalances of power throughout history. I\u2019m not a Communist, but there were people who argued we need to seize the means of production. We\u2019re rapidly approaching the point where we need to seize the means of our communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing entirely too much control of institutions we\u2019re supposed to be able to trust, but we cannot trust,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, we\u2019re seeing corporations get access to our private lives, in ways we didn\u2019t anticipate and we\u2019re not aware of how its being used.\u201d
\nSnowden dismissed the idea that privacy or liberty stood somehow counterposed to genuine security.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoliticians are consumed by the ease of fear in messaging. Saying \u2018this will save lives\u2019 is persuasive to the voter. People are inclined to believe them\u2026Let\u2019s look at the actual facts, at 9\/11. We had a Congressional investigation\u200a\u2014\u200aand they found that it wasn\u2019t the case we weren\u2019t collecting enough. The problem was our focus was so scattered, so many programmes collecting so much, we didn\u2019t share it properly, and because of that, 3,000 people died. Politicians today are saying we need to collect more\u200a\u2014\u200abut they\u2019re making us all less safe, and putting lives at risk.\u201d
\nThe Boston marathon bombings, he said, provided a clear example of the bankruptcy of the surveillance-for-security mantra\u200a\u2014\u200athe perpetrators, despite operating in the context of \u201cthe largest dragnet programme in the history of my country\u201d had remained undetected.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, we have to make a decision. Do we want to be a controlled society? Or do we want to live in a free one? Because we can\u2019t have both.\u201d
\nIn a panel on Friday, Thomas Drake\u200a\u2014\u200athe former senior NSA executive who inspired Snowden to blow the whistle by exposing the flaws of the agency\u2019s billion dollar Trailblazer mass surveillance project\u200a\u2014\u200arecalled how his NSA bosses cynically saw the 9\/11 intelligence failure as an opportunity to increase the agency\u2019s budget dramatically.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it when my supervisor described 9\/11 as \u2018a gift to the NSA.\u2019\u201d
\nThe idea that mass surveillance has any prospect of genuinely keeping us safe is thus deeply questionable. The fundamental problem with the insistence on eliminating privacy in the name of security is its totalitarian impact across our entire societies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to think about what rights are for? Where do they come from? What are their values? What is privacy for, really?\u201d Snowden told the audience at the CIJ gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivacy is the right from which all others are derived. Without privacy there is only society, only the collective, which makes them all be and think alike. You can\u2019t have anything yourself, you can\u2019t have your own opinions, unless you have a space that belongs only to you.
\nArguing that you don\u2019t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don\u2019t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say\u2026\u201d
\nIf mass surveillance was simply about thwarting terrorism, its targets would not consistently be political dissidents, Snowden argued, pointing to the famous \u2018I have a dream\u2019 speech by Martin Luther King Jr\u200a\u2014\u200adescribed by Snowden as the \u201cgreatest civil rights leader my country has ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two days after that speech, Snowden said, the FBI assessed King to be \u201cthe greatest threat to national security\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n

Little has changed since then.<\/p>\n

The former intelligence contractor pointed out that Britain\u2019s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has unlawfully spied on human rights groups like Amnesty International, journalists, media figures and other NGOs, \u201cusing powers passed publicly to thwart terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the top secret documents he had leaked, he noted that internal justification for keeping such programmes classified made no reference to national security issues. Instead, the documents said that \u201cpublicising them would lead to a \u2018damaging public debate\u2019 because we [the public] would protest these activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The implication is that the national security state sees the very fundamentals of vibrant democracies\u200a\u2014\u200aa truly free press, vigorous public debate, oversight over highly classified intelligence policies\u200a\u2014\u200aas the enemy.<\/p>\n

The dismissal of the importance of rights of privacy, Snowden said, is a function of unequal power. The whistleblower urged his listeners to consider how the demand to eliminate privacy comes from powerful people \u201cin a position of privilege\u2026 If you\u2019re an old white guy at the top of the pyramid, society is ordered to protect your interests. You designed the system to protect your interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

This inequality in power, Snowden said, means that \u201cit\u2019s the minorities who are most at risk\u201d from the impact of mass surveillance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to think about these things, it\u2019s not enough to believe in something,\u201d concluded Snowden to resounding applause. \u201cYou have to actually stand for something, you have to actually say something, you have to actually risk something, if you want things to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
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Other luminaries of alternative media such as Julian Assange, also addressed the Logan Symposium held in Berlin Renowned NSA whistleblower calls for \u2018radical\u2019 popular action to take control of information technologies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}