Edward Snowden has made an anti-spying Christmas Broadcast

[colonel_mortis]

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25515948 (I don't know whether it works outside the UK, if someone posts below I will update this)

(also available at

if you're outside the UK (blocked by Channel4 in the UK) or http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/video-watch-whistleblower-edward-snowden-2958139 )
 
Edward Snowden made a speech broadcast to the world today which compared the spying which takes place today by the intelligence agencies to the spying which took place in George Orwell's Novel "1984", and said that this is far worse than Orwell imagined when he wrote the book because we carry our mobile phones, and therefore their means of spying on us, around everywhere we go. He said that

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.

Which is a very bold statement, which is not entirely true, but probably closer to the truth than we'd all like to think.

One day, the governments of the world will hopefully realise that spying on their own people will alienate a lot more people than it will appease by making them feel safer.

Edited December 26, 2013 by colonel_mortis

[Common_Courtesy]

Aye I saw that, far more interesting than the queens speech. He does make a few good points and he came across well but I wonder how much of the general population will even care. 

[colonel_mortis]

Aye I saw that, far more interesting than the queens speech. He does make a few good points and he came across well but I wonder how much of the general population will even care. 

Yeah, it's worrying. Even though I'm into tech, I didn't notice it was on and watched the Queen's speech (It was pretty boring and pointless but family...). I only saw it on the news headlines just now, and it's not even featured on their technology news page.

[Jeroen1322]

Altough i already posted it you explaned it better i only posted the video

[MzCatieB]

i agree with what he is doing... "Bang Bang Bang - Now who is that at the do...."

[Common_Courtesy]

Yeah, it's worrying. Even though I'm into tech, I didn't notice it was on and watched the Queen's speech (It was pretty boring and pointless but family...). I only saw it on the news headlines just now, and it's not even featured on their technology news page.

Not even featured? That really sucks. Stuff like this needs to get more recognition, although I doubt anyone wants to think too hard about anything over the Christmas holidays. 

[colonel_mortis]

Altough i already posted it you explaned it better i only posted the video

It's not off topic so you probably should have posted it here or general discussion. Perhaps a mod could merge the threads?

 

Not even featured? That really sucks. Stuff like this needs to get more recognition, although I doubt anyone wants to think too hard about anything over the Christmas holidays. 

The technology news is pretty bad and rarely gets updated on the BBC, but having made the video they still didn't link it. It's a pretty important story, but I guess if they think most people don't care then they won't bother.

[Jeroen1322]

It's not off topic so you probably should have posted it here or general discussion. Perhaps a mod could merge the threads?

I posted it in general duscussion

[mvitkun]

@colonel_mortis 

the video got blocked by youtube,at least in my region.

[bob345]

i cant view it, it says it was copyright claimed by channel 4 s/f (bbc link works just not youtube)

[TechSage]

Copyright claim

[Mooshi]

And Google shows how cowardly it is by bending over once again, typical.

[Humbug]

 He said that A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.

Which is a very bold statement, which is not entirely true, but probably closer to the truth than we'd all like to think.

It's not a far fetched statement. The fact is that information about all of us is being collected and stored. Majority of this information is not collected for spying purposes but rather out of necessity since we are all using online services. For example I have a whatsapp account on my smart phone, I have a facebook account, two yahoo mail accounts. All these companies out of necessity are storing a lot of information about me. If somebody were to collate all this information in these various servers and connect the dots they would have a lot of information about me. Even though it was not collected with the intention of spying on me it can be used for that purpose. Furthermore when I use Internet at home all the data packets (mostly not encrypted) go through my local ISP and if they really wanted to they could sit down and analyze it.

 

I am not paranoid about such matters and I am not really alarmed about it, but the above stands true that we are not in control of our own privacy.