Slashdot Mirror
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???
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.
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'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.
Be seeing you...
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]
Well, you say 'the only people who feel this way usually work for the NSA'? I disagree.
Everyone at the NSA is aware of their "First Commandment"; “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.” Something that went out the window during the Bush Administration under Gen. Hayden (former NSA directors have stated publically he broke the (FISA) law. One even flat out said he should have been court-marshialed). Snowden isn't the first to blow the whistle over at the NSA in the last few years, Thomas Drake being one I can think of off the top of my head and he was a senior official at the NSA! So I think the people at the NSA rtake their jobs seriously, their directors not so much. I'd lay blame where it's due I think.
Oh and what happened to Thomas Drake? Jailed! as were others (there were, what, like, 5 people from the NSA who have spoken out since around 2006? That's a lot!) I have to ask myself, if I were Snowden and watched senior officials being jailed for revealing the NSA is spying on everyone, would I skip town? You bet yer fat arse I would! I'd skip town, get all the docs to the newspapers, and make those rat bastards answer to the People!
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.
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
Because Slashdot has become a temple of the first Church of Snowden
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.
Right even one who has a different opinion than yourself is obviously in the employ of the Satan.
It seems all one has to do here to get their post moderated as "insightful" is ejaculate some pro-Snowden commentary even as dumb, trollish, dismissive and broad brushed as the one above.
The guy's only rival is the pope for most influential person of the year, period.
As stated by a 14-year-old whose concept of "technology" obviously ends at the edge of his computer desk.
In fact it's likely the trolls and their bait that agree with you.
Snowden is a poor excuse for a sysadmin, and he is a criminal. By saying that I don't condone the actions of the NSA. However, only the truly naive did not expect what was going on was actually going on.
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.
That is intellectually dishonest demagoguery.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
His actions have:
* Influenced an ever-increasing number of governments', organizations', and companies' technology implementation decisions (hardware purchasing, location, routing).
* Re-ignited interest in the long neglected field of user-end encryption and security
* Revealed the widespread "false sense of security" in widespread encryption, in the form of an intentionally-flawed encryption standard, which affects everything from E-Commerce to Electronic Medical Records
"Influencing" technology by creating new technology is possibly the *least* wide-spreading way of doing it. Even disruptive tech's influence is more based on how well it's marketed.
It is not for his technical prowess.
Do they really have worse personal liberties than the US, though? If he came back, he'd be jailed, most likely without a fair trial, and maybe even "disappear" mysteriously, all because he told the truth. Calling him a criminal is like calling the Founding Fathers criminals because they rebelled against Great Britain.
I think he signed an agreement not to divulge classified information. Heroic as his actions may look, there is a lot of real security provided to us by the NSA. Does the date 9/11/2001 ring a bell? There are actually people out there who hate Americans, and they don't care if you lean left, right, or sideways. We are still at war. Now Putin has Snowden. Good luck ever getting out of Russia Ed.
To serve only self is the ultimate slavery.
Are you sure that bitcoin is liberating? The block chain thing sounds awfully non-anonymous.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Same comment applies.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell