MacWorld 2014: The NSA and You [Live Blog]
Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying have rocked the technology world. What will the the long-term effects be, and how will it affect you? Join an all-star panel, featuring Josh Centers to discuss living in a modern surveillance state.
The panel is each discussing the latest headlines relating to encryption, security, whether government is benign, Patriot Act, etc……
Constitutional issues, oversight, what is ‘collection’ of data?, how safe is encryption?
FISA court issues
One of the panelists recently had a visit with the NSA – Quinn Norton.
We should be more concerned with privacy than we really are.
It’s still early, but in the future we’ll care more as this becomes more obvious to us, but by then all our info will be out there – mostly done voluntarily by ourselves!
We’ve exchanged privacy for convenience.
Until we ‘suffer’ a crisis of our privacy most of us wont change our behavior.
Privacy and living in the modern world is a compromise. You choose to deal with Amazon, Netflix, etc. But the NSA uses these connections for their data collection purposes.
It’s a massive, complicated, interconnected web of electronic data that we are linked to that could be harmful at a future date for individuals.
Over-collection of data and secrecy of these programs
Can we trust Apple with our data?
Apple sees protecting our privacy as a competitive advantage, but not at the expense of usability.
It’s hard for Apple to access your iCloud Keychain
iMessage encrypts each message in a group mailing for example
Like a ‘peer-to-peer’ situation’
But even good, respectful companies that you trust can make a mistake which may violate your privacy
What can people do????
Well, not passwords and encryption anymore. That’s ok, but now we know that’s not enough
Live in a cave with no electronic devices……….not practical
‘privacy nihilism”
Just don’t put it on the internet if you want it private
‘0 Day’ discussion…??? “zero”-Day…. – a privacy setting or restriction on governments??
You can win this game by being expensive, not perfect. You can be careful, but you have to spend a lot of money to make it more difficult for the NSA to ‘mine’ you.
Layers of protection, make it more difficult or expensive for the NSA
Political and legal measures?
Lobby congress, write letters, support the right legislation like the “Freedom Act”.
Put pressure on these companies like Apple to support our privacy.
Remember SOPA, activism works
Most employees at the NSA, etc are good people they are just trying to cover themselves if something were to happen
end of talk
