Hi, and Merry Christmas. I'm honored to have the chance to speak with you and your family this year.
Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.
Great Britain's George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book -- microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us -- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go.
Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves -- an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.
The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together, we can find a better balance. End mass surveillance. And remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.
For everyone out there listening, thank you, and Merry Christmas.
This is hyperbole and also it's just not true in any real sense. We can still have private moments and we can certainly still have "unrecorded, unanalyzed thoughts".
I really wish Snowden wouldn't overstate the current state of affairs, the facts alone are enough.
I'd be very curious to hear from a millennial (or younger) on the subject; anyone Snowden's age or older is probably too far removed from the next generation to assess it well.
The sentiment is incomplete. Privacy exists, but private from whom? The younger generations still have a reasonable expectation of privacy against their parents. But probably much less of one against Facebook, Google, or the government.
Public by default also doesn't imply a total lack of privacy. Younger people overshare all the time on social networks, but there's still an (unreasonable) expectation that these things are quasi-private. Think of it as talking loudly in a mall with your friends. Yes, anyone can overhear. But no one actually expects anyone to care or pay attention to your conversation.
EDIT: Should also point out that millenials and other generations are not homogeneous groups. I imagine that white upper middle-class Christians would likely have different expectations of privacy in America than someone who is black, poor, and Muslim.
If you actually premeditate a private moment, it's fully possible to make it so.
My kids have privacy.
I was hoping for a little bit more. Certainly he could have said more. By being overly concise he overstated things, this was not good.
I know he does not think he 'matters' (it is the story that 'matters'), however, it would have been good to hear from him how well things are going and how he is going to spend time this Christmas (presumably not at his mum and dad's place).
Imagine the sort of things the government could get by mashing together our electronic signals, all of which you might want to keep private:
1. Who you will most likely vote for
2. Where you have been at all times.
3 Who you spoke to on the phone, text message and bulletin boards.
4. Your sexual orientation, shared trauma, or mental problems.
5. Your sexual kinks and porn preferences.
6. Your religion.
7. Your medical history (and from 23andMe, your DNA)
8. What films you watch, music you like and books you read (and from ebooks, for how long you spent doing so).
9. Who you met physically (if both are carrying tracking phones).
10. Everything you bought via paypal, credit cards or bank transactions.
11. Your credit history, savings history and financial proclivities.
12. Your possessions that are recorded, such as houses, cars.
13. Every country you visit abroad. Every plane ticket and use of your passport (including photo and fingerprints).
14. Your complete criminal record.
15. And already coming to the youth of today: cheaper insurance via car tracking = how you drive, how fast, cornering speed, where you go and where you stay.
16. Your genealogical data if given to any family tree site.
17. The names and all the data above for your friends and family, their friends, and so on, in a great big network.
Is that a loss of privacy? I'd say so.
It's a huge amount of data they have access to if unrestrained: all your opinions on bulletin boards, web searches, sites visited, physical locations visited, friend networks, phone conversations, face on cameras and photos via recognition, Medical records, library records, travel records, TV records, financial records, email, photographs, videos - and in future people will be using the internet and things like smart phones more, not less.
And of course this isn't even including the more extreme stuff they can do but probably only do rarely, such as watching you through your smart TV, computer or phone, listening to everything you say through your phone even when it isn't on, etc.
Heck, even searching google for types of recipe you enjoy might reveal you're Jewish when cross-referenced with things like friend networks and location. From an EU data protection (and last century's history) point of view, there is a lot to be concerned about.
>2014
Chrome needs he setting: Privacy [Content Settings] Protected Content
Some content services use machine identifiers to uniquely identify you for the purposes of authorizing access to protected content.
[x] Allow identifiers for protected content (computer restart may be required)
EDIT: Found a mirror on a not-shit site http://vimeo.com/82666985
You can also get the video file using the youtube_dl script:
youtube-dl 'http://vimeo.com/82666985'I bet every year now he'll put out nothing more than a couple 2 minute videos, and give one major nytimes interview.
In this way, every word that he says will get a helluva lot of attention... even a decade from now.
Saying "Happy Christmas" is just wrong man!
Note to self: add the <sarcasm> tag next time :).
Happy present day guys :) ...