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No Question: Snowden Was 2013's Most Influential Tech Figure
Nerval's Lobster writes "Lots of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and developers made headlines in 2013—but in hindsight, Edward Snowden will likely stand as this year's most influential figure in technology. In June, Snowden began feeding top-secret documents detailing the National Security Agency's surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers. Much of that information, downloaded by Snowden while he served as a system administrator at an NSA outpost in Hawaii, suggested that the U.S. government swept up massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans as part of its broader operations. Whatever one's feelings on the debate over privacy and security, it's undeniable that Snowden's documents have increased general awareness of online vulnerability; but whether that's sparked an increased use of countermeasures—including encryption tools—is another matter entirely. On the developer side of things, when you consider the sheer amount of money, time, and code that'll be invested over the next few years in encryption and encryption-breaking, it's clear that Snowden's influence will be felt for quite some time to come—even if the man himself is trapped in Russian exile."
I think it was the guy mentioned in this article.
I think it was the guy mentioned in this article.
I think it was the guy mentioned in this article.
...that the federal government has. And it's not the muslim jihadists they're worried about. It's us.
Why the hell is this here? There have already been like 50 other stories about how important Snowden was/is and now /. feels it's important to post a ridiculously redundant story of their own that is JUST A BUNCH OF OTHER LINKS to other news sites? WTF /.?
Seriously...
wtf???
Edward Snowden had zero influence on technology.
Der Spiegel reported on the NSA’s access to smartphones and, in particular, the iPhone back in September. Today, these reports expand to the NSA’s apparent ability to access just about all your iPhone data through a program called DROPOUTJEEP, according to security researcher Jacob Appelbaum.
The NSA claims a 100% success rate in installing the malware on iPhones. Functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted.
It is unknown whether the backdoor was developed in cooperation with Apple, but Appelbaum doubts it. Video of Appelbaum's full speech is included in the article.
Are we just a mouthpiece for them, now? Two front-pagers on this non-story is a bit much for casual interest, don't you think?
Non-tech newspaper says something demonstrably non-tech about tech, and everyone here jumps on it because blah blah blah hipsters? What the hell? There was a time we would decry such a story... why are we promoting it like it's the best thing since I was on the cover of Time Magazine?
William Binney & James Bamford? They just aren't the media personality Snowden is?
Most influential maybe in terms of politics, but technology? What was the technology he pioneered or employed? Copy? Not very influential in my opinion.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
So sad that a criminal is listed as an influential person. Especially one so cowardly and spineless as to flee instead of actually staying and working towards what he believed in. I hope he lives to a ripe old age and has to spend his life constantly hiding in the shadows in fear. In countries with worse personal liberties and freedoms than the one he fled from.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I think Iron Man 3 is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.
One of the few good things I can say about this mess is that applied cryptography is back... something that hasn't been really fundamentally worked on since the mid-1990s when SSL/TLS and SSH were hammered out. People seem to be interested in PGP again, and cryptocurrencies are the rage with preeve saying one Bitcoin is worth $760 at this time.
Of course, one has fears about yet another Internet-related bubble... but this is a place where people coming in to build new stuff is a very good thing. In fact, re-evaluating virtually everything isn't such a bad idea, provided it doesn't mean a blind wheel reinvention.
Some inventions (such as perhaps having SSL use multiple root certificates and a threshold of trust) will have immediate payback. Others (like using FPGA cores to flip to a Harvard architecture to execute security sensitive code) are less real-world, but can eventually become useful at mitigating various types of attacks.
With CPU-level hypervisors, deduplication and copy on write, giving each application not just its own individual memory space, but its own filesystem and system libraries becomes doable. This can further keep things separated.
Of course, this can go one of two ways. We can get actual crypto that works, or a new generation of hucksters selling us black boxes with "trust us, this is secure. No, really, it is secure." as the only proof, similar to how a lot of cloud providers have SLAs of "don't worry, we are secure. We have passwords and firewalls".
Snowden began feeding top-secret documents detailing the National Security Agency's surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers.
Does anyone know how Snowden decides which paper to leak which document to? For instance, The Washington Post seems to get more than its fair share. IIRC a plurality go to The Guardian. Is there some strategy behind where he leaks what? A cynical person would assume there's a bidding war going on, but most (legit) newspapers view it as unethical to pay for stories. [PDF]
So TFS (summary? its not actually summarizing anything) only links to one website... Slashdot. Specifically a submission from earlier today.
Why is this a submission and not a comment on the other thread?
Edward should be listed as a hero in 2013. Too bad that Corp US will try and make him out to be some sort of terrorist when he should be a national hero.
I think 2013 was the year when both Snowden and Satoshi Nakamoto became influential anti-establishment figures. Both of them threw down the gauntlet to the powers that be (Snowden the security/serveillance establishment and Nakamoto the central bank/finance establishment) and helped to level the playing field, empowering individuals. Of course, Nakamoto went public with Bitcoin in 2008, but 2013 was the year it took off. It will be a decade before we understand whether either Snowden or Nakamoto succeeded in derailing the totalitarian dystopias that are looming. Interestingly, Snowden illuminates the dangers of technology for freedom, whereas Nakamoto shows us how tech can be a liberating force.
People are touted as being "the most influential" who are nothing more than drama fodder for the 24x7 news organizations. Snowden will soon be a memory, heck he's almost a memory now, and bitcoin and its ilk will fare no better over time. It used to be that people expected 15 minutes of fame, now with the pace of information flow they should expect 15 ms of fame at best.
Remember when Candidate Obama was railing against President Bush and the abuses of the PATRIOT Act?
Who could have guessed that CHANGE would really mean an increase in the size and the scope of the Surveillance State in every way imaginable.
So sad that a criminal is listed as an influential person. Especially one so cowardly and spineless as to flee instead of actually staying and working towards what he believed in. I hope he lives to a ripe old age and has to spend his life constantly hiding in the shadows in fear. In countries with worse personal liberties and freedoms than the one he fled from.
I'm sorry you feel this way. Very few people here feel that way, in fact, the only people here that feel that way you do usually work for the NSA.
The NSA and their numerous sockpuppets enabled through Palantir technology [1] - that could be millions of "people" who "support" the NSA. They exist everywhere, even heavily moderated forums like /. and dailykos.
Let's see if the sockpuppets mod this comment down - it's happened before when I brought it up.
[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The guy's only rival is the pope for most influential person of the year, period.
In fact it's likely the trolls and their bait that agree with you.
It is not for his technical prowess.
Corollary of Betteridge's Law:
When a headline begins with "No Question:", then there most definitely is one.
Nothing has really changed, stop deluding yourselves.
You are one stupid muthafucker.
I'll be you feel safer from the government with that AR-15 under your bed don't you?
Here's a hint, even with the NSA bullshit, nothing's going to fucking happen.
But with those freedom loving banks and oligarchic corporations, your freedom loving ass is going to live out the rest of his life as nothing more than a gun-toting serf.
For what he did is epic pwnage!