Wired/Platon
In a must read interview, Wired talked with Edward Snowden. The article discusses Snowden's motivations for his whistle-blowing and revels for the first time that an automated program that can respond offensively and defensively to cyber attacks. Snowden claims that this a complete violation of everyone civil rights because in order to work it would have to monitor all communication. It is also possible that the system could start a war if it automatically responded to a "spoof" attack based in a country that blames an innocent third country. He also made the claim that the NSA accidentally shut off the entire internet for the country of Syria during their civil war. Snowden also claims that there may be additional secrets in the documents he took that even he does not know the impact of.
My Comment:
In reading Snowden's motivation, it reminds me of how my own views changed politically. Back when Bush was president I supported the government and defended them throughout. Obama's election was when the first cracks of distrust started to appear. I couldn't believe that he had been elected and i never bought into his promises. I was disappointed by his first term, but by his second scandal after scandal completely destroyed whatever faith I had in the government. The NSA revelations were the last straw of course but it was the last in a long line of scandals that utterly changed my worldview. For the last couple of years it seems that every month or two it is revealed that the government did something unconscionable. I don't know how anyone can still support them.
As for the revelations themselves, the so-called MonsterMind is obviously the big scoop. The idea that a military operation (and cyberwarfare is of course military) could be automated with no human involvement is just insane to me. How on earth can you trust a machine to know the difference between a real attack and a false alarm or even if it is being spoofed or not? The Syria revelation is important too because it makes the NSA look completely incompetent. How could a government agency that spends billions of dollars accidentally take down another countries internet by accident? Don't get me wrong here, I believe Snowden is telling the truth, but still, how could they screw up that bad. Also, the fact that the NSA hands over data, un-redacted, to the Israelis was mentioned again. I only mention it because it should have been much bigger news when it was first revealed.
The article was great and I recommend reading the whole thing. There wasn't a whole lot of revelations other then the MonsterMind and Syria claims but reading about Snowden's motivations and history was fascinating. Read it now and read it all.
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