A Conversation with Edward Snowden at HOPE X [video] | Hacker News Reader

A Conversation with Edward Snowden at HOPE X [video]

new.livestream.com

143 pointsetiam45 comments

The contrast of perspectives between Ellsburg's plea for the moral imperatives for leaking and Snowden's resistance to shaming those who don't leak was really interesting.

It seems like Ellsburg had developed a real contempt for all of us in America until Manning and Snowden came along.

There was no Ellsburg there, but

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

A great guy, you should read about his life. Or even easier, watch "The Most Dangerous Man in America" documentary (cca 90 min).

Are you giving him flak for misspelling Ellsberg? Because otherwise Daniel Ellsberg was the keynote speaker at HOPE X (which the keynote was right before Snowden's talk), and was the one asking the questions to Snowden.

Of course I know that Ellsberg was asking the questions and I am aware of the keynote. For me, the misspelling of the name and the dubious and trollish claim of the "contempt for all of us in America" don't appear like written by somebody who even understands what Ellsberg actually did. I can write "citation needed" since Ellsberg definitely hasn't expressed "contempt for all of us in America" but then we're dancing to the troll's tune.

Instead, I really suggest learning more about Ellsberg, it's definitely worth, in my opinion.

Eek. I didn't intend to sound trollish. I was on a mobile earlier and it didn't encourage great eloquence.

I greatly admire Ellsberg's courage and moral consistency.

Thanks a lot for the explanation droopybuns. Do see the documentary once, I'd be interested to know your impression on it.

Is there anywhere I can download it? seems like it is physical media only. no itunes, no netflix...

I don't know of any way to pay to watch it on-line directly. I guess to support the producers at this moment you'd have to order the DVD. I have an impression that the film can still be found on-line with the search engines, some place where some user posted it on some video platform and it's still not removed, but I haven't actually tried.

Yes, somebody should also suggest to the producers to make the film available for on-line purchases (I'm too lazy to be that somebody this time).

You can read the DVD reviews on amazon.com to get the idea how people respond to it. Amazon sells the DVD cheaper than the official site.

If Snowden ever does get a trial, they won't prosecute him for anything he leaked to avoid his justifiable defense. He admitted transporting classified docs to China that were never released because the information did not involve illegal surveillance. They can put him away for life just for admitting to mishandling top secret data regardless if he released it or not. Pretty sure there are clear rules on storing that data and none include taking it on laptops to China encrypted by software likely not approved. He can never come back because of talking too much to the media, all that can be used against him

Watch this http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc then imagine you are a federal prosecutor tasked with prosecuting Snowden. Go through all his interviews and find crimes he admitted to not related to the 200k docs he sent to journalists to prevent any defense. Bonus points find inconsistent statements you can manipulate to claim he is a liar to further wash away any defense. Automated tools to grab indiscriminate secret docs, illegal transportation, tons of potential crimes there based on his own admissions alone.

"He can never come back because of talking too much to the media, all that can be used against him"

He can come back if he's pardoned.

I'm not familiar with the whistleblower act but Snowden could legitimately argue that they were necessary steps towards "blowing the whistle". Snowden did not have the professional experience to be able to decide what information was safe to publish and in the public interest — so the responsible thing to do would be to present the documents to a professional while taking precautions to secure the data.

Your point is logically correct, but the grandparent is right as to what would happen in the real world.

Which is actually really scary, when you think about it! Because sidestepping the law when someone in power has been embarassed is the thing that totalitarian states do. Democracies under the rule of law are supposed to follow the spirit of the law. So maybe that's worth thinking about.

The big difference between the two is, that Edward Snowden realized that a positive vision is needed. Full respect for whistleblowing, but people need an alternative vision of society they can work towards. I would like to see more Hackers follow this approach of inspiring people to use technology to empower people. I mean we all know that evil things happen, so there is no point in repeating it all the time. The majority of people won't care. Especially here in germany the focus is way too much on influencing the world by talking. What Edward says goes in the right direction, but the vision is still too biased towards privacy concerned people. It's not about making encryption more accessable, it's about building great products people want to use and building encryption in as a byproduct. Lets take socialnetworks for example: Facebook is highly addictive, but without real value for the consumers. They don't want to connect the world, they want to generate adrevenue. It should be possible to build a platform where communication happens in a less perverted, self-centered way with encryption added on.

Surveillance will occur to the extent that we allow it to. Spies gonna spy. If we have a problem with that then we have to learn to secure our devices and we need to deploy user friendly end to end encryption for the masses. And we need trustworthy, open implementations of critical infrastructure... baseband (software radios, mobile protocols), drivers, etc.

It's 2014 and I still can't get an decent open source workgroup switch let alone a complete cell phone and base station to go with it. ASOP, OpenBTS, and the Wedge are encouraging, but none of these are enough.

Anyone remember the anti-sec movement? Well, they got what they wanted. Nobody discloses anything good for free anymore. Pretty much all the 0 day is now in the hands of established power, just another tool of control in their increasingly well equipped tool belts. The rest of us are either completely defenseless, or mostly defenseless and paying by the hour. I hope they're happy with how it's all turned out.

Livestream is blocking my access to this video (server error 500). Could anybody please provide a download or a torrent link, thank you very much!

Download from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXFaU1TWRWk

Thank you very much!

Does anyone find it slightly odd that Snowden was (quite obviously) joining the presentation over a Google hangout? I suppose it's better than a Skype call, but shouldn't he know better? I would expect him to insist on using Jitsi or something similar, like Jacob Appelbaum does for his appearances.

He explained that once in an interview - basically, for public communication, there is no reason for him to care, so he uses whatever suits the other party the best.

... because the NSA might be able to monitor his public broadcast?

Presumably they might be able to find the IP address he is using. It's very likely that he's running it through a few layers of VPN/proxy/Tor though.

True, on both counts.

I helped set the presentation up. Jitsi is actually the ideal choice, but it's too unstable for something like this. Google Hangouts was used at Snowden's request.

I think the most interesting thing from this was his hint that he personally might be working on software built to maintain the users privacy. He also referred to SpiderOak (Dropbox competitor) and the "zero-knowledge" method.

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.

That's quite an oversimplification.

Surveillance provides knowledge.

Knowledge is power.

Also oversimplified, but I'm pretty sure that's the line of reasoning. I'm not convinced that it's wrong.

But if you work from the premise that if totalitarianism is evil, and an inevitable function of power, which itself is an inevitable function of knowledge, then you've proven that knowledge is fundamentally evil, haven't you?

There may be some dimension of truth here but i'm not entirely sure the premise does more good than harm.

You're missing an important qualifier: "concentrated"

The second meeting took place in October 1988 at a summer resort in Western Virginia, sad and grey this particular autumn. The Americans turned up in force. Bill Bostwick, from the Department of Energy was the Chairman, Barry Leiner from the Department of Defense and Vint Cerf were present. The European representatives were thin on the ground: a German and British representative plus François Flückiger.

In 1991, 80% of the internet capacity in Europe for international traffic was installed at CERN, in building 513.

“You can't solve social problems with software.” – Marcus Ranum

And your point is?

the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

Many European states (e.g. the Netherlands) have been surveillance states for a long time. People seem happy with it: As long as you live a standard life, get a mortgage, a house, children, pay taxes to support the ever growing police state, nothing will happen to you.

Downvoter: I'll take that as a compliment.

Yeah keep going, if it makes you feel good.

The fun part about dealing with people who are attracted to catchy slogans and binaristic thought generally is that they tend to get really touchy when you call them on it.

Which is what seems to be happening, here.

Quite to the contrary it seems, but I digress.

"That's quite an oversimplification." is no less a catchy slogan, and labeling it "binaristic thought" is no less binary if that's all you write.

Sorry if it came across that way, but if so, it wasn't my intention.

It's just that I find it weirdly and sadly ironic that quite frequently, among those in our community who are the most strident and radicalized in their opposition to the surveillance state -- we find such incredibly simplistic and/or manipulative styles of thinking, and an impulsive tendency to resort to various forms of intellectual bullying... that are the standard tools of the systems that they fancy themselves to be in opposition against.

Complaining (or even mentioning) downvotes is usually a bad rhetorical strategy. Just ignore the votes altogether.

Excellent point.

It's also, by it's nature, off-topic (unless it expounds on the reasoning), and therefore worthy of it's own downvotes for that reason alone. It's not all that different than real life, it's just harder to ignore the social cues when they are represented by a number.

We asked our community if Edward is either a "Traitor or Hero" - a stunning 72.85 % think the latter :) https://pinpoll.net/poll/1804

The two aren't mutually exclusive. He's kind of like Batman. He might operate outside of the law but he's a hero to the people and fights corruption in the system.

Solid points, dbrian! Also reminds me of Julian Assange.

And the lesson I took from my comment: never ever post a link to your own website (even if there's relevant content behind it), people here seem to immediately think of spam and downvote :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com