Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden himself is going to be 'involved in' working on the problem of embedding security into technology

HOPE X. Edward Snowden speaking via video link at the HOPE X conference. Screen shot from video feed.

MANILA, Philippines Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden called on developers over the weekend to build systems that protect personal privacy and security by design.

Speaking via videolink at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference (HOPE X), Snowden once again asked the technology sector to increase privacy-protecting technology in tech products.

According to TechCrunch, Snowden discussed the importance of building new privacy-protecting protocols and technological infrastructures.

"It doesnt end at encryption; it starts at encryption," noted Snowden. "Encryption protects the content but we forget about associations. These programs like Section 215 [of the Patriot Act] and mass surveillance in general is not about surveilling you, its not about surveilling me. Its about surveilling us collectively. Its about watching the company, for everybody in the country and on a global scale.

"This is basically a big data program which provides the raw data that can then be analyzed, it can be filtered, it can be subjected to rules, for example. It says everything you do is being analyzed, its being weighted, its being measured and thats without regard to whether or not youve done anything wrong."

According to tech website Re/Code, Snowden also said, without elaborating, that he was going to be "involved in" working on the problem of embedding security into technology himself.

"We the people you the people, you in this room right now have both the means and the capability to help build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocols upon which we rely every day," Snowden said.

"And thats what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in, and I hope youll join mein making that a reality," he added.

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Snowden urges work on technology that will protect privacy

Racy photos seen as a "fringe benefit" of surveillance positions, says Edward Snowden. Photo: NBC

Washington: Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said the oversight of surveillance programs was so weak that members of the United States military working at the spy agency sometimes shared sexually explicit photos they intercepted.

He also said the British government often pioneered the most invasive surveillance programs because its intelligence services operate with fewer restrictions designed to protect individual privacy than its counterpart in the US and other allies.

The interview in London's Guardian, was conducted in Moscow where Mr Snowden has been marooned for a little more than a year. He fled there from Hong Kong after he gave journalists hundreds of thousands of classified documents he downloaded from the NSA, which specialises in electronic surveillance. He had most recently worked for the agency in Hawaii.

Mr Snowden said that some of the US military personnel working on agency programs were between the ages of 18 and 22 and did not always respect the privacy of those whose communications were intercepted.

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"In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they're extremely attractive," he said. "So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker. And their co-worker says: 'Oh, hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.'"

Mr Snowden said that type of sharing occurred once every couple of months and was "seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions". He said that this was "never reported" and that the system for auditing surveillance programs "is incredibly weak".

"Now while people may say that it's an innocent harm - this person doesn't even know that their image was viewed - it represents a fundamental principle, which is that we don't have to see individual instances of abuse," he said.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said that the agency had zero tolerance for wilful violations of authority or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.

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Snowden: At NSA, racy photos were shared

Edward Snowden - 7/10/2014 Guardian Interview (full)
7/10/2014 Edward Snowden Moscow interview with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and intelligence correspondent Ewen MacAskill. Read the full Guardian article here: http://is.gd/gXngtO.

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Edward Snowden - 7/10/2014 Guardian Interview (full) - Video

Edward Snowden poses for a photo during an interview at an undisclosed location in December 2013 in Moscow, Russia.

Image: Barton Gellman/Getty Images/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-07-19 22:00:11 UTC

Edward Snowden made an impassioned call on Saturday for hackers and technologists to help would-be whistleblowers spill more government secrets.

Speaking via remote Google Hangouts video feed from Russia, Snowden addressed his comments to an audience at this weekend's Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York.

Arguing that "technology empowers dissent" as well as "democracy," Snowden said that the only way to enable whistleblowers is to give them better tools to pass secrets to journalists, protecting their communications, their identities and preventing them from going to jail for it.

To do that, Snowden said, he needed the help of the hackers, coders and developers gathered in the crowded rooms of the conference, as well as the ones watching via live stream online.

"We the people, you the people, you in this room right now have both the means and capabilities to help build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocols upon which we rely everyday," he said during a conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, who himself became a whistleblower when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971.

Snowden also confirmed, as he hinted in his recent Guardian interview, that he plans to work on building those kinds of technologies, although he didn't give any more details.

His optimistic plea for better, more secure technology was echoed by Ellsberg, who encouraged both people in government as well as those working at corporations to come forward and expose crimes and corruption in other words: to start leaking secrets.

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Edward Snowden Calls on Hackers to Help Whistleblowers ...

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia, speaks via video connection to a crowd of hackers in New York City.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Daniel Ellsberg, who famously released the Pentagon Papers, and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden spoke to a packed crowd of computer experts on Saturday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City.

It was a call to digital arms: Create easy-to-use software that lets insiders spill secrets of corporate or government malfeasance to journalists or politicians without getting caught.

"A lot of blood has flowed because people bit their tongues, swallowed their whistles and didn't speak out," Ellsberg said. "You people need to do what you can ... to make it possible for people to do this without spending their life in prison."

Related story: FBI sends agents to Holocaust museum for history lesson

A clampdown on government whistleblowers began during the Bush administration -- and has only intensified. The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

"You are the people who can make it possible for democracy to survive that attack on whistleblowers," Ellsberg told the crowd of hackers.

Snowden, in exile in Russia and speaking via a video connection, urged professionals to develop computer programs that hinder mass surveillance by encrypting all communication, thus making it private.

It's a technological answer to a civil rights problem, he explained.

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Snowden to hackers: Protect whistleblowers

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia, speaks via video connection to a crowd of hackers in New York City.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Daniel Ellsberg, who famously released the Pentagon Papers, and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden spoke to a packed crowd of computer experts on Saturday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City.

It was a call to digital arms: Create easy-to-use software that lets insiders spill secrets of corporate or government malfeasance to journalists or politicians without getting caught.

"A lot of blood has flowed because people bit their tongues, swallowed their whistles and didn't speak out," Ellsberg said. "You people need to do what you can ... to make it possible for people to do this without spending their life in prison."

Related story: FBI sends agents to Holocaust museum for history lesson

A clampdown on government whistleblowers began during the Bush administration -- and has only intensified. The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leaked to journalists more than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

"You are the people who can make it possible for democracy to survive that attack on whistleblowers," Ellsberg told the crowd of hackers.

Snowden, in exile in Russia and speaking via a video connection, urged professionals to develop computer programs that hinder mass surveillance by encrypting all communication, thus making it private.

It's a technological answer to a civil rights problem, he explained.

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Snowden asks hackers to protect whistleblowers

Rights activist: Hundreds of hackers crowded into an auditorium to hear Edward Snowden speak from Moscow. Photo: Channel 4

New York: Edward Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of US surveillance programs, called on supporters at a hacking conference to develop easy-to-use technologies to subvert government surveillance programs.

Mr Snowden, who addressed conference attendees on Saturday via video link from Moscow, said he intends to devote much of his time to promoting such technologies, including ones that allow people to communicate anonymously and encrypt their messages.

"You in this room, right now, have both the means and the capability to improve the future by encoding our rights into programs and protocols by which we rely every day," he told the New York City conference, known as Hackers on Planet Earth, or HOPE. "That is what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in."

Hundreds of hackers crowded into an auditorium and overflow rooms to hear him speak from Moscow, where he fled last year.

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Mr Snowden leaked documents that detailed massive US surveillance programs at home and overseas revelations that damaged international relations, outraged some Americans and sparked protests from countries around the globe.

Mr Snowden did not discuss the status of a request he made earlier this month to extend his Russian visa, which expires at the end of July. The US wants Russia to send him home to face criminal charges, including espionage.

At the HOPE hacking conference, several talks detailed approaches for thwarting government surveillance, including a system known as SecureDrop, which is designed to allow people to anonymously leak documents to journalists.

Lawyers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation answered questions about pending litigation with the NSA, including efforts to stop collection of phone records that were disclosed through Mr Snowden's leaks.

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Edward Snowden seeks to develop anti-surveillance technologies

Edward Snowden made an impassioned call on Saturday for hackers and technologists to help would-be whistleblowers spill more government secrets.

Speaking via remote Google Hangouts video feed from Russia, Snowden addressed his comments to an audience at this weekend's Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York.

Arguing that "technology empowers dissent" as well as "democracy," Snowden said that the only way to enable whistleblowers is to give them better tools to pass secrets to journalists, protecting their communications, their identities and preventing them from going to jail for it.

To do that, Snowden said, he needed the help of the hackers, coders and developers gathered in the crowded rooms of the conference, as well as the ones watching via live stream online.

"We the people, you the people, you in this room right now have both the means and capabilities to help build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocols upon which we rely everyday," he said during a conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, who himself became a whistleblower when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971.

Snowden also confirmed, as he hinted in his recent Guardian interview, that he plans to work on building those kinds of technologies, although he didn't give any more details.

His optimistic plea for better, more secure technology was echoed by Ellsberg, who encouraged both people in government as well as those working at corporations to come forward and expose crimes and corruption in other words: to start leaking secrets.

"We need more whistle blowers [] and you people have to do what you can to make it possible," Ellsberg said, specifically citing projects like SecureDrop, the WikiLeaks-style platform created by the late Aaron Swartz. Ellsberg, however, also warned that there will always be risks in leaking secrets, and people will just need to accept them.

The conversation between Ellsberg and Snowden was highly anticipated, with all the conference rooms at the Pennsylvania Hotel filled with people watching the two leakers on screens put up by the organizers.

However, the discussion wasn't limited to Snowden's call to action. At one point, Snowden said that he had bad short-term memory, and joked that "a lifetime with memes and lolcats will do that to you." Toward the end of the event, addressing the crowd, he said he believed that there are people from the NSA in the [conference event] room right now.

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Edward Snowden Calls on Hackers to Help Whistleblowers Leak More Secrets

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says UK surveillance law "defies belief"
PROVIDED BY http://CNNNEXT.COM The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has condemned the new surveillance bill being pushed through the UK #39;s parliament this week.

By: giovanni betances

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says UK surveillance law "defies belief" - Video

Edward Snowden during his interview (Photo: Alan Rusbridger for the Guardian)NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave a video interview to the Guardian this week to discuss the state of internet privacy, the changing landscape of investigative journalism, and what his life has been like since he released the classified documents last year that exposed the U.S. government's global surveillance program. In one of the more poignant moments of the interview, Snowden spoke thoughtfully and bluntly about what his future might be if he leaves asylum in Russia and returns home to the U.S.

"If I end up in chains in Guantanamo," Snowden told his interviewers, "I can live with that."

Snowden also called on lawyers, journalists, doctors, and others who handle sensitive information to use alternative "zero-knowledge" security software and search engines that would protect confidentiality of sources and clients online better than Skype, Dropbox, or Google, for example. In some cases, he said, the big companies are actively anti-privacy, noting that Dropbox just added surveillance advocate Condoleezza Rice to their board of directors and calling them a "wannabe PRISM partner."

Technology can be useful for privacy, he said, as long as we don't "sleepwalk" into accepting new apps. "We shouldn't trust them without verifying what their activities are, how they're using our data, and deciding for ourselves whether it's appropriate where they draw the lines," he said.

Google and Skype have been useful for hosting public chats and interviews, Snowden said, but he would never rely on them in his personal life.

Currently, with a lack of reliable privacy software and the consequences of unlimited government power, journalism has become "immeasurably harder," Snowden said. The first contact with a source, "before encrypted communications are established, is enough to give it all away." He said new training for professionals who handle private information is necessary to ensure safety for the "average member of our society," particularly as technical literacy has become "a rare and precious resource."

There should be no distinction between digital information and printed or spoken information, Snowden said. "If we confess something to our priest inside a church, that would be private, but is it any different if we send our pastor a private email confessing a crisis that we have in our life?"

Before leaking the NSA documents to the public, Snowden said he first tried to address the matters that concerned him internally, asking colleagues and supervisors about the more nefarious elements of the program.

"I said, 'What do you think about this? Isn't this unusual? How can we be doing this? Isn't this unconstitutional? Isn't this a violation of rights?'" he recalled.

He was particularly worried about the fact that the many of the NSA's invasive systems were used for fun. Snowden described a troubling work environment where unlimited access to private information was regularly taken advantage of by individual employees. If the surveillance program happened to pick up a person's nude photographs, for example, co-workers would distribute them around the office, where a culture of lax supervision meant that no one was ever held responsible.

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Edward Snowden: 'If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That'