[discuss] Blogpost: So What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

Thu Jan 2 20:56:47 UTC 2014

I disagree with this bit:

On 01/02/2014 04:24 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
> But the revelations have just kept on coming and the tech community like
> everyone else recognizes the scope and depth and ultimately overwhelming
> power of an agency with access to the full might and resources of the
> richest, most powerful country on earth led by a President who himself seems
> to be either in thrall of the surveillance machine or indentured to it for
> reasons we may never know. They, now equally stand blinded by the headlights
> of a headlong careening tank, are recognizing with appalled
> self-incriminations what a horror they have allowed and contributed to being
> born.
> 
> Quite clearly technical solutions won't work (or at least won't scale) if
> the dominant power doesn't want it to work, and anyway who would trust that
> anti-surveillance solutions were working after all we know of how the
> corporate sector and the tech community has been (willingly or or no)
> brought in as semi-aware co-conspirators.

While we can't solve the problem via solely technical means,
there are technical things that we can and should be doing
that can increase the costs and visibility of pervasive
monitoring. And I don't think that the technical community are
blinded by headlights at all. That's not to say that there's
yet rough consensus on all the details, but I don't think the
above matches the current reality very well.

S.