Recently, at theWeb Summit, Edward Snowden stated that big tech companies including Facebook, Amazon, and Google have been making people vulnerable to surveillance. According to Snowden, if you take a look at the business models of these big tech giants you can easily detect that the information of users is being abused.

Snowden is known for his blunt responses on NSA surveillance programs also known as Prism in 2013. Snowden is the person who leaked the documents of most tech companies to journalists to display the type of user content being abused by these companies. Snowden started working for intelligence services in the beginning but what made him choose to blow all the steam of information abuse to journalists?

Well, Snowden started working in intelligence with an oath to secure the user information from any type of cyberattacks or bullying but later on when instead of accomplishing the oath made on the first day Snowden witnessed that NSA started surveilling people before they had broken the law at all and no one accused the companies of monitoring user information because it also benefited others as well.When Snowden saw a downfall in the accountability of the most powerful institutions in society he handed over the top-secret documents of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook to journalists. These documents contained detailed information on the deals held between the government and other tech companies and also included information about the tools that were manufactured to protect the public but instead were used to identify and monitor the public. Whenever governments and corporations start working together theres always a chance of using the power to benefit from the public rather than benefiting the public.

Read next: 1 Out of 3 Americans Dont Know How the Internet Works

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Facebook, Amazon, and Google are accused of abusing user information, here's how - Digital Information World

There is a madness to Web Summit that is difficult to convey to the uninitiated. Its like a cacophonous 19th century carnival, but in 21st century clothes. Instead of jugglers and fire-eaters and men with two heads, there are flirty robots, business meetings on cherry pickers, and a flat-capped Eric Cantona in green jeans and yellow trainers begging for 1 per cent of your wages for charity.

None of it makes much sense.

Since its co-founder Paddy Cosgrave shifted the event from Dublin after its last outing on home turf in 2015, Web Summit has more than doubled in size to over 70,000 attendees. About 77,000 people arrive onsite including media, staff and hangers on.

Thats equivalent to the population of Galway city coming each day for four days, all to be fed, watered and kept busy.

Thats not forgetting the corporate element. Including the main arena, the summit is spread across five adjacent halls, four of them jammed with stages and exhibition stands, including elaborate set-ups for some of the biggest business names on the planet, such as Google, Microsoft and Siemens.

Web Summits move from the RDS to Lisbons waterfront has certainly helped it to grow. Into what, is the question. For better or worse, whether by accident or design, Cosgraves unhinged technology jamboree is a business conference like no other. The events production is precise. Everything runs to a tee. Yet Web Summits essentially ungovernable zaniness is what sets it apart.

It kicked off on Monday evening with a rapid fire series of pitches by start-ups to an audience of about 15,000 in the Altice Arena, the main hall that acts as the basilica for this gathering of tech-religious fervour. Each start-up got two minutes to wow the giddy crowd, like an episode of Dragons Den on steroids. There was a smell of popcorn in the venue. It felt like a show was starting.

Some of the pitches were perfectly orthodox, such as Irishwoman Dee Coakleys digital payroll business, Boundless. Others were quirkier, such as Banjo Robinson, which uses technology to exchange personalised letters with children from a fictional globe-trotting cat: Weve taken the joy of writing to Santa and turned it into a subscription business, Robinson said.

One speaker, Lisbon entrepreneur Rui Sales of automotive data start-up Stratio, strode the stage manfully as if he was Portugals entry to the Eurovision. Then a Dutch business, Shleep. com, pushed its dystopian suite of digital sleep programmes for companies. The more your staff sleep, apparently the better it is for the companys performance.

And then there was Ohne, a UK start-up that runs an online community around womens periods and associated products: Because youre a human with a uterus every day, and not just the days youre bleeding from your vagina.

Its founders, Nikki Michelsen and Leah Remfry-Peploe, swore repeatedly onstage in calculated fashion during their pitch: swearing appears to be a part of its in-your-face brand.

Ohne founded for women by women who dont give a s**t who judges their choices neatly captures a particular zeitgeist. Financially-attuned feminism. The crowd almost blew the roof off the arena.

Wisdom

That evening, and over the following three days, conference attendees were treated to the wisdom of everyone from US tech-surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, to UFC star Paige VanZant and footballer Ronaldinho.

From Microsoft president Brad Smith, to former UK prime minister Tony Blair. From Amazons tech guru Werner Vogels to EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.

Technology simply provided the backdrop for most discussions. The debates at Web Summit touched on almost every conceivable issue. It wasnt all about data and algorithms. There wasnt a hot button topic that wasnt pushed, from gender equality to climate change, political populism to corporation tax.

At his press conference on Tuesday the publicity-conscious Cosgrave speaks almost as much as most of his onstage guests the Irishman riffed on the growth of Web Summit from its humble beginnings as a product showcase in Dublin to this, its ninth and largest-ever instalment.

Web Summit is now about serious and grown-up discussions about everything from what we will do about democracy to addiction, said Cosgrave. Im never fulfilled.

He deftly deflected persistent questioning about the correlation that appears to exist between companies that pay to be exhibitors and the people chosen as the summits speakers. Cosgrave insisted exhibitors get no guarantees on speaking opportunities. But he wasnt all that convincing if his aim was to debunk the theory that there isnt any correlation at all.

Mark Roden, a former Esat telecom executive-turned EY Entrepreneur of the Year who started mobile tech firm Ding, this week attended his first Web Summit in Portugal. He was stunned by the sprawling scale of the event and agrees it is unrecognisable from its beginnings in Dublin.

I remember it at the start. It was scrappy, but very quickly it attracted big names. The local tech industry was proud of it, Roden says.

At one of the early Web Summits, I agreed with Paddy that Id lead one of his pub crawls around Dublin. I was given a sign with the number six on it, and told to wait for my assigned guests to show up, he recalls.

A huge man arrived and plonked himself down beside Roden: I asked him what he did. Oh, Im the chief technology officer of Amazon, he said. It was Werner Vogels. I hadnt a clue who he was. But the event was like that back then. You never knew who youd meet.

In addition to Web Summit, Cosgraves business now operates at least three international conferences, with others in Hong Kong and Toronto. The companys last filed accounts show revenues of 30 million. But that was for 2017. Given the Summits recent breakneck growth, its turnover is now surely far higher.

Last year, Cosgrave signed a 10-year deal with the Portuguese government for an annual subsidy of 11 million to keep it in Lisbon.

It is easy to see the commercial rationale for why Cosgrave moved it from Dublin. But with all the sports stars and celebrities and 1,500 tickets is Web Summit now just an entertainment and gab-fest?

Or is it still useful for investors and entrepreneurs outside of the value of simply being seen there?

One conversation with an investor can lead to a funding round. That sort of thing still goes on, said Roden. I met a guy from Trinidad earlier. Were going to meet up later to discuss some ideas. Things can still happen at Web Summit from those sort of casual conversations.

Pizzazz

The event may still be of value when it comes to doing business. But its growing obsession with celebrity culture and attracting star names whether they know much about the technology industry or not may run the risk of eroding the events industry cachet in future.

Each year, Cosgrave ups the ante with more pizzazz, more glamour. The trend started in Dublin in 2014 with the coup of attracting Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives. Where will it end?

Web Summit is committed until 2028 to its cavernous home on Lisbons waterfront, which takes a lot of ticket sales to fill. That is a long time to stay relevant in the notoriously fickle tech industry. With its ever-increasing focus on attracting star names to please the growing crowds, Cosgrave must hope that Web Summit isnt a supernova, destined to burn itself out.

Then again, perhaps he simply recognises that a dash of glamour is an essential ingredient when designing such a pageant.

For now at least, Web Summit has no difficulty attracting industry heavyweights to talk. One of the first speakers on centre stage on Wednesday was Microsofts Brad Smith, with a meandering but insightful presentation about the promise and perils of the digital age.

Smith also used the opportunity to kick the Irish Government over its failure to bring broadband to some rural parts of the country.

From an Irish point of view, Cosgrave may be an attention-seeker and deliberately provocative in some of his own public utterings its free publicity for the brand, after all. But he is far from a mindless technology, industry evangelist. He appears to genuinely see the value in opening up challenging and controversial debates. He also seems to enjoy the rows.

An outsider might suspect, however, that his penchant for diversity of thought isnt as prevalent among the Web Summits attendees. The overwhelming predilection of the bulk of the crowd for progressive, traditionally left-leaning ideas was painfully obvious this week.

Every mention of Donald Trump from the stages was met with guffaws. Every criticism of Brexit was met with cheering and applause, as was every platitude about protecting the environment or fighting poverty, no matter how devoid of substance or how obviously meant to procure affirmation from the youthful crowds.

If these were mostly tech employees, they lived up to the stereotype. But as long as someone is paying for them, none of this should matter to Cosgrave. Web Summit is a business, after all. A hugely profitable one.

Technology companies are traditionally focused on selling solutions. So it was interesting at the summit to witness the industrys collective soul-searching about whether it is also the cause of modern problems, such as the lack of privacy on data and the malign influence of social media giants on democracy.

The industrys saviour complex was also on show, however. The technology industry truly believes it can tackle almost every ill facing humankind, from climate change to hunger and disease. We need to use technology to solve the worlds problems, urged Smith. The crowd nodded. Maybe they are right.

Some self-deprecation still exists around Web Summit. The conference is known for its events venerating founders, the people who start successful businesses. Yet among the unofficial fringe events in Lisbon on Wednesday night was the so-called Flounders gathering, organised by Paul Hayes, who runs Dublin-based technology communications outfit, Beachhut PR.

Flounders, in a tongue-in-cheek sending-up of the worst bragging excesses of the technology industry, celebrates business failure.

Cosgrave, meanwhile, will be celebrating another packed out, profitable Web Summit. The event doesnt appear to miss Dublin at all.

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Web Summits ungovernable zaniness sets it apart - The Irish Times

Edward Snowden speaking from Russia at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

International laws aimed at protecting citizens from having their data collected by private companies and governments dont go far enough, according to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who helped reveal the U.S. governments secret surveillance programs.

Speaking via video chat from Russia at a keynote session on Monday evening at the annual Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Snowden talked about his evolution from contractor turned whistleblower before pivoting to the ongoing discussion over data privacy around the world. Asked what he thinks about the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)the European Unions sweeping data collection law that went into effect last yearhe said its a good bit of legislation, but added that the mistake is in the name. He said the law is a paper tiger, adding that companies that help governments with data collection and surveillance have made a Faustian bargain, or a deal with the devil.

The problem isnt data protection, he said. The problem is data collection. Regulating protection of data presumes that the collection of data in the first place was proper, that it was appropriate and that it doesnt represent a threat or danger. That its okay to spy on your customers or your citizens so long as it never leaks, so long as only you are in control of what it is.

Snowdenwho received asylum in Russia after the U.S. government accused him of espionage for leaking classified documents in 2013then added: If weve learned anything from 2013, its that eventually everything leaks.

If you create an irresistible power, he said. Whether its held by Facebook or an anyone, the question is how do we police the expression of that power when it is used against the public rather than for it?

While Web Summit itself is a massive conference of around 70,000 attendees from around the world focused on technology ranging from modern brand marketing to the future of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, the role of data in an increasingly regulated and uncertain world is a key theme of several talks there. Other speakers this week include Brittany Kaiser, the former business development director for Cambridge Analytica who later became a whistleblower over the British firms data collection practices.

While GDPR continues to play out in the EU, U.S. companies and others continue to prepare for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a state law set to go into effect on January 1. And while Snowden didnt directly address CCPA, he said companies that collect data often say its anonymized and abstract even though thats not always the case.

Data isnt harmless, he said. Data isnt abstract when its about people, and all the data being collected today is about people. It is not data that is being exploited, it is people that are being exploited. It is not data and networks that are being manipulated. It is you that is being manipulated.

According to Snowden, people cant trust companieswhether its a private or public company or a government. That includes telecommunications companies, social networks and hardware manufactures. He explained that communication will continue to be vulnerable until we redesign the basic system of connectivity of the internet."

The law is not the only thing that can protect you, he said. Technology is not the only thing that can protect you. We are the only thing that can protect us. And the only way to protect anyone is to protect everyone.

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Edward Snowden Thinks Even The EUs Sweeping Privacy Law Is Too Weak - Forbes

By Wes ODonnellManaging Editor, InCyberDefense, In Military and In Space News

In 2013, Edward Snowden changed the way many of us think about internet security. Whether you love him or hate him, Snowden dropped a truth bomb on the world. He made us realize that several government agencies are reading your emails and text messages, listening to your phone calls and browsing your private pictures on your phone, all for the purpose of keeping you safe from terrorists.

Whats more, these agencies allow telecom companies like Verizon, internet service providers like Comcast and big tech companies like Google to reach even deeper into your personal life. The name for all of this activity is mass surveillance.

In Snowdens 2019 memoir Permanent Record, he makes the case for universal adoption of encryption. Snowden notes that encryption is the only way to prevent unconstitutional searches of your private data and foil cybercriminals.

But what exactly is encryption and how can you implement it? Its not as hard as you think.

Encryption 101

Securing conversational data is a task that neither citizens nor businesses can continue to ignore. According to Business 2 Community writer Carey Wodehouse, Encryption scrambles text to make it unreadable by anyone other than those with the keys to decode it, and its becoming less of an added option and more of a must-have element in any security strategy for its ability to slow down and even deter hackers from stealing sensitive information.

If good encryption is capable of hindering investigations by FBI experts, consider what it could do for you and your companys sensitive information.

Asymmetric Encryption Used in Online Banking and for Secure Communications

Today, most online banking and secure communications are performed using something called asymmetric encryption.

Zainul Franciscus of How-To Geek explains asymmetric encryption like this: First, Alice asks Bob to send his open padlock to her through regular mail, keeping his key to himself. When Alice receives it, she uses it to lock a box containing her message and sends the locked box to Bob.

Bob can then unlock the box with his key and read the message from Alice. To reply, Bob must similarly get Alices open padlock to lock the box before sending it back to her.

The critical advantage in an asymmetric key system is that Bob and Alice never need to send a copy of their keys to each other. This prevents a third party from copying a key while that information is in transit.

256-Bit Encryption Is Incredibly Strong

Most people see the term 256-bit encryption online, but they have absolutely no idea what it means or how strong it is. A 256-bit key can have 2256 possible combinations.

How strong is 256-bit encryption? Patrick Nohe of the The SSL Store says that A 256-bit private key will have 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936 (thats 78 digits) possible combinations. No supercomputer on the face of this earth can crack that in any reasonable timeframe.

Signal: A Free, Open Source Messaging App

Normal SMS text messaging has some well-known security holes and Facebook messaging, while slightly more secure, uses your data for advertising. But there is a free, open-source and secure messaging app that works on all mobile devices and also allows you to make secure calls and send secure photos: Signal.

Thanks in part to the DNC leaks and various government cyberattacks, the United States Senate approved the use of the app Signal for staff use in 2017.

Signal is one of the best ways to keep your conversations private. In addition, it is free to use and ad-free, sparing you from annoying pop-up advertisements.

Signal is also open-source, meaning security researchers can inspect the code to ensure that the app is doing what it is supposed to.

An Increasing Need for Privacy

A common argument against encryption is the statement I dont care about privacy because I have nothing to hide. But thats like saying, I dont care about the freedom of speech because I have nothing to say.

While privacy isnt strictly provided for in the U.S. Constitution, it is what many Americans consider to be an implied freedom. There is, however, an amendment that restricts unreasonable search and seizure. The Fourth Amendment prohibits a search and seizure by a government official without a search warrant and without probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is present.

The messaging platform WhatsApp uses the same technology as Signal. But since WhatsApps recent acquisition by Facebook, many of its billions of users are increasingly worried about their data privacy and specifically how Facebook will use their WhatsApp conversations for advertising purposes.

The advent of quantum computing may make traditional encryption obsolete. But until then, the Signal app is one of the only ways to guarantee that your conversations stay private.

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Edward Snowden and the Senate Use the Signal App: Should You? - InCyberDefense

Uh, my name is Ed Snowden. Im, ah, twenty-nine years old. Hello, world. With those words, Edward Snowden revealed himself to the world. In a video posted by The Guardian on June 9, 2013, he claimed sole responsibility for revealing information about mass surveillance taking place by governments. This video marked a complete upturning of Snowdens life. A few days later he was charged with espionage by the American government, and became a fugitive.

Snowden is probably one of the most famous whistleblowers in the world. He was the person who revealed some of the most dangerous secrets from the most powerful country in the world, in terms of intelligence and military capabilities. As a result of his actions, he fled the United States of America to go and live in Russia. Snowden is high on the wanted list in America and if captured is likely to face many years in detention. Snowdens crime according to the American government: collecting secret intelligence documents and handing them over to journalists. Those documents were vetted by journalists and then published.

Still living in exile, Snowden has now penned a book about what prompted his decision in 2013 to reveal those documents to the media, and in turn, have them released into the public space.

Permanent Record is Snowdens in-depth look at his childhood and his fascination with computers and information. It reveals the man behind all the information overloads that have filtered through the internet and media since the revelations.It goes into his upbringing and how all of that led to his decisions.

The book is not all serious. There are moments of lightheadedness. A particular story that sticks out is about his romantic life. Snowden speaks about meeting Lindsay Mills who would later become his wife. The pair met through one of the first iterations of dating websites, where users would rate each other. When he made the decision to become a whistleblower, he doesnt tell Mills of his plan and she is made to think hes disappeared. Snowden was quite afraid she wouldnt forgive him. She later comes to Russia, forgiving him for his actions. And the pair got married a few years ago.

The first thing I ever hacked was bedtime, says Snowden in the first chapter of his book. Snowden guides the reader through his first encounters with the internet, being part of the generation who lived in a time where the internet didnt exist. He then goes through his schooling, and eventually finds himself deep within American intelligence and in charge of dangerous systems.

It was his childhood fascination that led him to the Central Intelligence Network (CIA). He traces how he eventually found himself in the position of creating a mass surveillance network to spy on people around the world. In the book, Snowden reveals how he helped to build and then later expose this system.

In June 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong. While there he revealed thousands of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. Soon after stories around the mass surveillance being carried out by the American and British governments on their citizens were published in The Guardian, the Washington Post, and Der Spiegel.

After all this information was shared with the world, the American government used all their power and intelligence available to them to find out who was the source. It was at this point that Snowden mentions in the book that he knew he had to come forward. Snowden has worked intimately for the organisation. He knew how the NSA and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and all its branches worked.He knew what fate awaited him but he also knew he had to reveal himself.

The book was published in America on 17 September 2019. This is the day celebrated as Constitution Day in America which marks the adoption of the constitution. This is a date of significance to Snowden in the book. On the day it was published, the US department of justice filed a lawsuit against Snowden saying he breached nondisclosure agreements signed with the American government. They have reportedly seized the proceeds from the book sales.

Agree with Snowden or disagree with him, the book is an important read. In the years following his revelations and his subsequent escape to Russia, Snowden has been called a number of things including Russian spy, traitor amongst other things. However, there is no denying the seriousness of government surveillance which affects all citizens, especially anyone who uses the internet.

Even in South Africa, the government has been accused and found to have spied on its citizens. Just days before Permanent Record was released, the South Gauteng High Court found that parts of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication Related Information (Rica) Act were unconstitutional. This was after it was discovered that investigative journalists were under state surveillance under Rica.

And its not only journalists who are at risk with reports showing that the law makes it very easy for the South African government to spy on citizens. There has also been increasing surveillance in public spaces through the cameras being installed. All of this shows the huge threat that mass surveillance from the government and other institutions pose to the general public.

For that reason, and for a good behind-the-scenes story, Permanent Record is a definite recommended read.

Permanent Record is published by Pan Macmillan in South Africa. It is available online and in all good bookstores.

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Why Whistleblower Edward Snowden Revealed Secret US Information - The Daily Vox

Bonjour! Today we did a serious analysis of Edward Snowdens Twitter activity. Lets dive in. The main metrics are as follows as of 2019-11-07, Edward Snowden (@Snowden) has 4164275 Twitter followers, is following 1 people, has tweeted 4387 times, has liked 280 tweets, has uploaded 365 photos and videos and has been on Twitter since December 2014.

Going from the top of the page to the bottom, their latest tweet, at the time of writing, has 17 replies, 109 retweets and 265 likes, their second latest tweet has 19 replies, 63 reweets and 565 likes, their third latest tweet has 148 replies, 894 retweets and 6,515 likes, their fourth latest tweet has 9 replies, 48 retweets and 171 likes and their fifth latest tweet has 75 replies, 1,296 retweets and 3,470 likes. But we wont bore you going through all these numbers

MOST POPULAR:

Going through Edward Snowdens last couple pages of tweets (including retweets, BTW), the one we consider the most popular, having let to a very respectable 148 direct replies at the time of writing, is this:

That seems to have caused quite a lot of discussion, having also had 894 retweets and 6515 likes.

LEAST POPULAR:

Now what about Edward Snowdens least popular tweet in the recent past (again, including retweets)? We believe its this one:

That only had 3 direct replies, 63 retweets and 176 likes.

THE VERDICT:

We did a huge amount of of research into Edward Snowdens Twitter activity, looking through what people keep saying in response to them, their likes/retweet numbers compared to what they were before, the amount of positive/negative responses and more. We wont go into that any more, so our verdict is this: we believe the online sentiment for Edward Snowden on Twitter right now is excellent.

Thats all for now. Thanks for coming, and drop a comment if you agree or disagree with me. However, we wont publish anything overly rude.

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Edward Snowden The Twitter Master (2019-11-07) - Global Real News

Dicky tummy aside, Parker does enjoy her "nosh", ordering more bread to mop up the sauces. Her roasted lamb rump with marinated red peppers and my grilled King George whiting with salmoriglio and lemon are accompanied by twice-cooked russet potatoes with garlic and rosemary and a green salad.

Parker has built an international reputation with her major installations and sculpturesthat juxtapose violent destruction with domestic objects such as silverware, jewellery and haberdashery items, as well as "feminine" activities such as craft and embroidery.

The exhibition of 40 works spans three decades and includes a visitor favourite from the Tate Gallery - Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991). For this work, she stuffed an ordinary garden shed full of junk, had it blown up by the British Army and then reconfigured the mass of burnt wooden shards and destroyed objects.

Shadows of an exploded shed: Cold Dark Matter.

There's also Thirty Pieces of Silver (198889), consisting of 30 suspended pools of silverware collected by Parker from friends, car boot sales and charity shops, then flattened by a steamroller; and Subconscious of a Monument (200105) which displays thousands of dried lumps of earth excavated by engineers from under Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Her installation War Room (2015) utilises discarded strips of red paper from the Poppy Factory in Richmond, London. The exhibition also includes three works from her 2017 stint as the first female election artist for the UK's general election including Thatchers Finger (2018), a shadow-play featuring a sculpture of the former prime minister.

A sewing circle of hardcore British prison inmates known as Fine Cell Work were central to Magna Carta (An Embroidery) (2015), a 12-metre piece of embroidery, hand-stitched by more than 200 people to recreate the charter's Wikipedia entry on its 800th anniversary.

"They were brilliant stitchers but some of them had been inside so long they didn't know about the internet," she said. "We had to tell them Wikipedia was like a dictionary."

Disconcertingly, she discovered her best embroiderer had bludgeoned someone to death with a baseball bat. In addition, a host of famous folk were assigned to stitch an appropriate word or phrase including whistleblowers Julian Assange (freedom) and Edward Snowden (liberty), musician Jarvis Cocker (common people) and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (users manual).

"I went to meet Julian Assange at the [Ecuadorean] embassy but he was so f--king egotistical it was a joke," she said. "He was a real creep. He wanted to put a lipstick heart on the work. I said no. I was quite annoyed." In contrast, Edward Snowden was "very sweet and nice. He sent a lovely note apologising that his sewing wasn't very good."

Parker grew up in a half-timbered cottage on a small holding in rural Cheshire. "It was almost like peasant farming," she tells me. The middle of three daughters, Cornelia was her father's surrogate son and bore the brunt of her father's overbearing character.

"He was not very nice psychologically. It was all very disturbing. You never knew when he was going to get angry; you were on tenterhooks. He wouldn't allow me to play because I was supposed to be helping. I fed the cows, I could milk them by hand, muck out the pigs, sweep the yard.

"If it wasn't for him being a bully, I would have enjoyed it."

Grilled King George Whiting with salmoriglio and lemon.Credit:Louise Kennerley

The artist attributes her father's behaviour to a bad childhood marred by Crohn's disease. He was pampered by his mother and a victim of his own father, a former prisoner of war who was scarred from the battle of the Somme.

"My grandfather was a real character, funny and entertaining and I liked him being around. But I think he had been responsible for bullying my father. They came from a grim background."

Although he ruled the roost, Parker's father could be incredibly pleasant and was well liked outside the family home. "He had a great sense of humour." While he thought studying art was a waste of time - "he wanted me to leave school at 16 and work in a factory" - he made quite an impression at one of Parker's shows when he turned up a flat cap and, anonymously, quizzed exhibition-goers about what they thought of the work. "He was in his element."

It was all very disturbing. You never knew when he was going to get angry; you were on tenterhooks.

In contrast, Parker's mother encouraged her daughters to study. She was German, had been a young nurse in World War II and then an Allied prisoner of war. "They needed her to nurse the guys."

She was working for the estate office for the Duchy of Lancaster, saving to go to Canada, when she met Parker's father, who had worked on the land through the war and, although in his early 30s, was still living at home. "He hadn't had much time to meet women. She was a rare sighting." At school, her German first name drew negative attention. "My sisters were called Jennifer and Alison so they were never bullied."

Parker's mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia exacerbated by "her war experience, menopause, marrying my father ... the way she behaved to us girls was like jealousy. We took attention away from her. She just disappeared into mental illness so that was sad."

Both parents died within seven weeks of each other in 2007, "which was quite tough".

So does her predilectionfor exploding and destroying objects have its roots in her damaged childhood? "I know psychoanalysts could have a field day," she said. "My father was dreadful and he was not containable. Blowing up a shed or steamrolling silver is."

A self-confessed maverick, Parker also concedes she enjoys working with "authoritarian figures. I was used to my father so it's very good."

As well as the military, her technical collaborators have included police, engineers, gun manufacturers and explosives experts and manufacturers. She once toyed with consulting the IRA for their expertise, "but, bing bing, I went for the British Army as it was a little easier than terrorists."

Roasted lamb rump with marinated baby peppers: "Lovely".Credit:Louise Kennerley

Her works are part of an ongoing continuum, which also draw on cartoon and movie tropes of her childhood - Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin's slapstick violence and the Roadrunner where his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote, is forever being flattened by a steamroller or pursued off a cliff.

"I was very attracted by that," she laughs as our main courses arrive. "No one gets hurt in my explosions. It is a controlled thing. I think violence is around us all the time - in real life, in film, in TV - and perhaps my fascination with it is because it is around us all the time. In a way it's fictional, in a way I am trying to make it real."

It is clear that Parker's brain buzzes with bright ideas. Luck and opportunity are grabbed with enthusiasm. Visiting Hartford in the US, she noted the Colt factory was in town and wangled an invite which resulted in her work Embryo Firearm (1995) and inspired her to shoot a string of pearls into a man's suit, piercing the fabric with their terminal velocity.

At a dinner, she sat next to the owner of an explosives factory. "I really wanted to do something with Semtex," she said. "Did you know they make it in different colours? It's actually benign until you put an electrical charge through it so I had an idea! I was going to get schoolchildren - oh God! - to model it like plasticine.

"Then we would present it to say something about their naivety and their innocence that would ring true as in so many countries children are victims of explosives ... but it didn't go ahead. Something happened. Maybe it was 9/11."

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This show has offered some peculiar challenges for the MCA. Several items from in Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View were forbidden entry to Australia including a toy donkey with its stomach hanging out as its skin was suspected to have originated from an endangered species. The gallery had to apply for a gun licence to display certain works and also applied to the relevant authorities for a pile of incinerated cocaine for her piece Exhale Cocaine,which has been shown in the UK and Peru.

"When cocaine has been seized by Customs and Excise and incinerated it just becomes a powder," she said. "A waste product. In Lima they gave me an enormous pile, signed off by the president. It looks quite nice but I couldn't take it out of the country."

A week after our lunch, I learn that her request for incinerated cocaine has been declined, although the waste soil excavated from beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa to stop further subsidence has been allowed into Australia.

"I met the engineers a few years before; they were going to suck out a wadge of earth but I had to wait for it." Pregnant with her daughter, Lily (now 20), when the excavation finally happened, she found her truckload of soil was completely wet at first "so I got children to make creatures they thought they would find under the tower".

Parker is currently working on a new show. "All my work is part of a continuum," she said. "I have lots of conversations and then ideas emerge. I think 'if I do this, this might happen'. A lot of my work is about hunches. A good idea will stick around and I will worry away at it."

She looks up from her lamb for a minute. "This is lovely."

Cornelia Parker will be at the MCA until Febuary 16. The artist will be in conversation on Saturday at the MCA at 1.30pm with chief curator Rachel Kent.

Rosetta Trattoria, 118 Harrington St, The Rocks, 8099 7089

Lunch, Monday-Saturday, 12-3pm. Dinner, Monday-Wednesday, 6-11pm; Thursday-Friday, 6-11pm; Saturday, 5.30-11pm; Sunday 5.30-9.30pm.

Shona Martyn is Spectrum Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald

Excerpt from:
Exploding memories of a childhood: Lunch with artist Cornelia Parker - Sydney Morning Herald