Former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warns: Governments are trying to weaken
the encryption systems to get access to people’s personal messages

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techstartups.com


Former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is back in the news. In September, Snowd
en warned people not to use ExpressVPN. “If you’re an ExpressVPN customer, you s
houldn’t be,” Snowden said. The warning came after it was revealed that Daniel G
ericke, CIO of ExpressVPN, is one of the three former U.S. intelligence operativ
es who agreed today not to fight charges they illegally helped UAE hack people.

Two months later, Snowden is sounding another alarm bell about governments aroun
d the world are trying to weaken the encryption systems to get access to people
’s personal messages. Speaking from Russia via video link at a press conference
Thursday marking the first “Global Encryption Day,” Snowden said that government
s are piling pressure on tech giants like Facebook and Apple to grant authoritie
s access to encrypted messages.

Privacy “was meant to be the individuals’ power,” Snowden said. “It was meant to
 protect us, to shelter us from the institutional behemoths that sort of marched
 in the cities of our day, whether it’s the modern time or the time before.” He
continued, “It was an insulating layer that allowed those of us who wield very l
ittle power in society, because we are individuals, to think and act and associa
te freely.”

During the conference, Snowden also called out Facebook and other tech giants. H
e said:

“The same companies that have worked so hard to spread encryption over the years
 are now beginning to fear the next step. “Groups like Facebook want to have as
much information as possible. So now they’re limiting where they’ll use end-to-e
nd encryption. They’ll say, for things that we don’t want to have a business lia
bility for, we’ll adopt end-to-end encryption.”

Snowden later added, “They’re not socially-minded. They don’t care. They care ab
out their interests.”

For over eight years, Snowden has been warning about how ‘the most powerful inst
itutions in society have become the least accountable.’ Snowden’s name first mad
e the headlines in 2013 after he leaked classified documents with journalists th
at detailed surveillance programs run by the NSA that tapped people’s cell phone
 and internet communications.

Since then, Snowden has been warning about how the U.S. government agencies are
using military-grade spyware to spy on citizens. Snowden warned in September abo
ut how smartphones have become the most “the most dangerous item” we possess. In
 a blog post, Snowden showed three hidden microphones embedded in his smartphone
.

In 2019, Snowden said the thing that “chilled” him the most in his discovery of
the spying operations was that “intelligence collection and surveillance more br
oadly was happening in an entirely different way,” and was “no longer the target
ed surveillance of the past.”

Below is a video of the first event of the Global Encryption Day press conferenc
e.

Shared from NewsBreak

References

   1. https://share.newsbreak.com/3888d80t