I just keep hearing “they have all your data” and I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
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Edit: thanks to everyone whos contributed, although I still remain confused and in disbelief over some of the things in the comments, I feel like I have a better grasp on everything and I hope some more people were able to learn from this post as well.
In: 19605
In a nutshell he revealed data that showed that the US government, and multiple allied governments had the ability to do things like listen to everyone’s phone calls, read their texts, their emails, follow their internet searches, track their locations (via GPS in phones) and also remotely activate people’s cell phone cameras and microphones to listen and see what people are doing in real time.
In short, it was estimated that the data revealed that the US and it’s allies had transparency into roughly 80% of all digital communications in the US.
It’s less that this was “Bad” honestly, more that these agencies shouldn’t have been doing A. to US Citizens, and B. on US soil and C. that the major data providers, the Verizons, AT&Ts, etc, were providing the “keys” to their networks for the government to provide this access.
In Cryptography, there’s something called Elliptic-curve cryptography. It’s a fancy cryptographic thing that is very hard to break. The premise is that you have some fancy mathematical equation, and you start at one point. You take the line tangent to that point, and it will cross the graph again at exactly one other point. You do the same process over and over again, and basically traverse this graph.
In order for it to work, both parties need to agree on the equation of the original graph. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology basically prescribed one such curve to use and everyone agreed and started using it. A lot of stuff these days is encrypted with that Elliptic-Curve Cryptography.
But since NIST published it, they (or whoever gave them the curve) could possibly know the secret backdoor for it. Snowden leaked memos implying that the NSA had such a backdoor and could basically undo a whole bunch of crypto. As such, the NSA has been able to intercept a significant amount of stuff that we thought was encrypted, including cell phone calls, encrypted web traffic, all sorts of stuff.
We already knew that the NSA and CIA was conducting large scale illegal surveillance against all American citizens. This was revealed by previous whistle blowers who followed the proper procedures for reporting illegal activity. They even testified in congress about it. However their claims were dismissed by the government and instead budgets for large scale data storage and analysis facilities were approved to handle all the data the NSA claimed they did not collect. But it was an open secret and even Obama’s first election campaign used the promise to end mass surveillance of Americans as a key talking feature.
Snowden did not go the official route but instead leaked massive amounts of proof of the surveillance. Not only how it was conducted, who were conducting it, who were targeted (everyone), how the were able to justify it and how they manipulated judges and politicians to be allowed to continue with it. Unlike previous leaks the important aspect here is proof, anyone can discredit a witness testimony but it is much harder to discredit massive amounts of proof, much of which could be verified by others.
The evidence showed the scale of this operation and what kind of details the government were able to collect. And not only were American governments doing this but they were cooperating with intelligence agencies in other countries doing the same thing there as well. And when Obama said to end mass surveillance the Snowden documents showed that the opposite was true and that the efforts just increased after he took office.
What was an even more shocking revelation was that even with so much proof of illegal activity nobody was held responsible. None of the people involved in the massive government surveillance have been put to questioning over it and they are continuing like they did before.
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What most people already suspected. There is no privacy. Everything you say or write within view of, or earshot of cameras and microphones can be observed if someone with access to these government programs wants to. Texts, emails, phone calls, anything digital is basically published and on record. What gets me is that everyone in the 70s was so concerned about “Big Brother,” watching them and that whole generation now put microphones and cameras everywhere. Not to mention your phone wich does all these things and most people always have on them.
that the US was actively and directly working with telecoms to tap literally everything
that the US was intercepting hardware orders from cisco, modifying the materials inside with listening devices and then sending them onward to the customer
he revealed that the lying liars in the three-letter agencies are liars and that congress is complicit
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1) The government was not only actively listening to calls and reading emails, they were tracking metadata of nearly all Americans
2) The US was exposed for using those same domestic spying powers on foreign corporations such as Petrobras in Brazil
3) Obama administration charged Snowden under an antiquated law called the Espionage Act meaning that Snowden’s trial would effectively be secret and he could not even voice his reasons for breaking the law at trial
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