• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • Stephen Foskett
      • My Publications
        • Urban Forms in Suburbia: The Rise of the Edge City
      • Storage Magazine Columns
      • Whitepapers
      • Multimedia
      • Speaking Engagements
    • Services
    • Disclosures
  • Categories
    • Apple
    • Ask a Pack Rat
    • Computer History
    • Deals
    • Enterprise storage
    • Events
    • Personal
    • Photography
    • Terabyte home
    • Virtual Storage
  • Guides
    • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • The iPad Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • iPad Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • Toolbox
      • Power Over Ethernet Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder DOS Batch File
    • Linux Logical Volume Manager Walkthrough
  • Calendar

Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

You are here: Home / Features / Edward Snowden Is Right: We Must Protect The Internet

Edward Snowden Is Right: We Must Protect The Internet

March 19, 2014 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, appeared at TED2014 via telepresence. His video, embedded below, must be watched. You may think he’s a hero or you may think he’s a villain, but he’s unequivocally right about one thing: We must protect the integrity of the Internet and online communications or we risk disrupting the world economy and all of our lives.

aadd75a2a5f185ca28179519cab86ff0ad367eb1_240x180

Most people feel that the Snowden saga is all about the NSA and the government, and there is some truth to that. Snowden released information about the NSA’s capabilities and revealed just how little oversight there is of the agency within the United States government. But some people just aren’t worried about that. They trust the government and believe that the NSA is acting in the national interest.

“The public interest is not the same as the national interest” – Edward Snowden

But what about our own individual needs? Most Americans, and many people all over the world, rely on the Internet for their daily lives. We do our banking from computers and phones, we shop online from Amazon to our favorite specialty retailers. And we communicate with family and friends through Facebook, email, and so many other social sites. Like Snowden said to Tim Berners-Lee in this TED talk, we all live in the Internet.

Yet the NSA’s “Bullrun” project sought to weaken the very protocols that secure Internet commerce. This revelation is huge, not because it gives a shadowy American agency access to private communications but because it threatens every legitimate thing we use the Internet for. And by extension, it threatens the entire Internet economy, from web services to hardware and software companies to individuals going about their daily lives.

“They tell corporate partners that these are safe standards … but in reality they are giving bad advice to these companies that makes them degrade the security of their services. They’re building in back doors that not only the NSA can exploit, but anyone else who has time and money to research and find it can then use to let themselves in to the world’s communications. This is really dangerous because if we lose a single standard, if we lose the trust of something like SSL which was specifically targeted by the Bullrun program, we will live in a less-safe world overall. We won’t be able to access our banks, and we won’t be able to access commerce.” – Edward Snowden

This is not hyperbole. If a weakness or hole is found in SSL or TLS (the standards that keep web transactions secure), no company, in good conscience, could continue to use the Internet for business. Say goodbye to “one-click shopping” on Amazon, to easy stock transactions at E-Trade, and even to eBay! None of those companies could continue allowing simple Internet transactions to proceed without another form of verification.

Everyone is touched by secure Internet transactions today, and if all that fell apart the entire world economy would crash. This would be a global shock, sending the economy into a massive depression and causing ripples that would affect even non-connected people. All because the NSA wanted to be able to peer inside SSL.

Watch the video. Think for yourself. As for me, I’m not sure if Snowden was more heroic than reckless, but if I had to pick one I’d have to support him. Especially after hearing him speak. We need Edward Snowden sounding the alarm, and we need to listen.

You might also want to read these other posts...

  • Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From…
  • How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier
  • Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1
  • Liberate Wi-Fi Smart Bulbs and Switches with Tasmota!
  • Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

Filed Under: Features, Personal Tagged With: Chris Anderson, commerce, economics, Edward Snowden, NSA, security, SSL, TED, Tim Berners-Lee, TLS

Primary Sidebar

A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

Alan Turing

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via email and you will receive my latest blog posts in your inbox. No ads or spam, just the same great content you find on my site!
 New posts (daily)
 Where's Stephen? (weekly)

Download My Book


Download my free e-book:
Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts!

Recent Posts

How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12

February 3, 2022

Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion

January 24, 2022

How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier

January 14, 2022

Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

November 28, 2020

Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply

October 18, 2020

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020

Running Rabbits: More About My Cloud NUCs

September 21, 2020

Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

September 10, 2020

Remove ROM To Use LSI SAS Cards in HPE Servers

August 23, 2020

Test Your Wi-Fi with iPerf for iOS

July 9, 2020

Symbolic Links

    Featured Posts

    Infographic: Real-World Port Throughput Relative To Thunderbolt (Formerly Light Peak)

    February 21, 2011

    Why Buy a NEX-7? Why Sony NEX At All?

    October 17, 2011

    A Watch Guy’s Review of the Apple Watch

    April 27, 2015

    New England Takes On Seattle To Determine Who’s Number 2 … In Tech!

    January 19, 2015

    On the Death of Innovation, or “These Kids These Days!”

    May 21, 2012

    The Ideal pfSense Platform: Netgate RCC-VE 2440

    September 21, 2015

    Cisco’s Trojan Horse

    September 15, 2014

    Microsoft: Kill the Craptops Before They Destroy Windows!

    January 7, 2013

    How To Keep Your Family Activities In Sync With A Shared Google Calendar

    April 18, 2010

    Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

    November 28, 2020

    Footer

    Legalese

    Copyright © 2022 · Log in