Journalist and privacy activist Glenn Greenwald (L), American whistleblower Edward Snowden (R)<\/p>\n
Nearly seven months after journalist and privacy activist Glenn Greenwald publicized Edward Snowden\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s first revelations of the vast scope of the NSA\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s digital surveillance, his life has changed absolutely.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Living in Brazil, he is advised not to travel. He\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s a hero to privacy activists, and demonized by governments and national security agencies. And in a video keynote address to the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Hamburg today, he promised that he and Edward Snowden aren\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t anywhere near finished.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cThere are a lot more stories to come, a lot more documents that will be covered,\u201d Greenwald said. \u00c5\u201cIt\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s important that we understand what it is we\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re publishing, so what we say about them is accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n Greenwald\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s role as keynote speaker at a conference attended in large part by programmers and hardware hackers was sign of how badly the half-year of revelations of digital surveillance by the NSA and its allies has shaken the hacker and privacy communities.<\/p>\n Much of the CCC\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s four days of talks and workshops are dedicated to exploring the implications of Snowden and Greenwald\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s revelations, from discussions about NSA attacks on the Tor private-communications network to a call by Julian Assange for hackers to fight back against the intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cThis is a digital agent orange. It took the leaves from the forest where we used to live and flourish,\u201d said Tim Pritlove, one of the annual event\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s organizers.<\/p>\n In his keynote speech, former Guardian columnist Greenwald paid rueful due to his own onetime lack of encryption skills, but said that most journalists covering national security had been no different as recently as a year ago. That has now changed, both among journalists and the interested general public, he said.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cOne of most significant outcomes of the last few months has been the increased awareness of the importance of encryption and privacy,\u201d he said. \u00c5\u201cIt\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s a remarkable sea change.\u201d<\/p>\n But even outrage won\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t change policy through traditional democratic processes, he said. The power of the NSA and the security establishment is too strong, and democratic governments are proving unable to resist the seduction of surveillance-derived knowledge.<\/p>\n More promising have been signs of allies showing genuine signs of indignation, and indications that important companies are feeling economic effects as a result. Most recently, he said, Boeing lost a $4 billion contract in Brazil in part because of that country\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s anger at the extent of US spying.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cPower sectors don\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t get persuaded by lofty arguments. It\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s important to devise ways to raise the costs to the systematic invasion of our privacy,\u201d he said. \u00c5\u201cWhen it\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s no longer we in fear of them, but they in fear of us, that\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s when these policies will change.\u201d<\/p>\n After six months of stories based on Snowden\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s revelations, Greenwald said a single theme had overshadowed any of the stories\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 individual elements.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cIt is literally true, without hyperbole, that the goal of the NSA and its partners in the English-speaking world is to eliminate privacy globally,\u201d he said. \u00c5\u201cThey want to make sure there is no communication that evades their net.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he was working on a new story indicating that the NSA was \u00c5\u201cobsessed\u201d by the idea that people could still use some Internet devices and mobile phones on airplanes without being recorded. \u00c5\u201cThe very idea that human beings can communicate for even a few moments without their ability to monitor is intolerable.\u201d<\/p>\n While much of the public reaction to the stories has been encouraging, he directed bitter criticism at the governments of countries that had protested the US government\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s actions, but had done nothing to help Snowden, who remains in Russia under certain threat of prosecution should he return to the United States.<\/p>\n \u00c5\u201cFor Germany or Brazil to defy the United States, there is a cost to that. But there was even greater cost to Edward Snowden to come forward in defense of your rights, and he did it anyway,\u201d Greenwald said. \u00c5\u201cThey have an ethical and moral obligation to do what he did for them, which is to protect his rights.\u201d WIRED<\/em><\/p>\n ISH\/ISH<\/p>\n<\/div>\n