Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Snowden to the IETF: Please make an internet for users, not the spies...

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has urged the world's leading group of internet engineers to design a future 'net that puts the user in the center, and so protects people's privacy.

Speaking via webcast to a meeting in Prague of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the former spy talked about a range of possible changes to the basic engineering of the global communications network that would make it harder for governments to carry out mass surveillance.

The session was not recorded, but a number of attendees live-tweeted the confab. It was not an official IETF session, but one organized by attendees at the Prague event and using the IETF's facilities. It followed a screening of the film Citizenfour, which documents the story of Snowden leaking NSA files to journalists while in a hotel room in Hong Kong.

"Who is the Internet for, who does it serve, who is the IETF's ultimate customer?" Snowden asked, rhetorically. The answer was users, not government and not business.

But, he said, the current internet protocols were leaking too much data about users. "We need to divorce identity from persona in a lasting way," he argued, highlighting how the widespread use of credit cards online was connecting identity to online activity. Full story...

Related posts:
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  3. Snowden says Australia watching its citizens ‘all the time,’ slams new...
  4. 'Privacy isn't dead' Snowden’s South American legacy grows as Brazil’s...

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