Snowden Explains How Our Desire to Connect Created Mass Surveillance

Former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was privy to seeing the surveillance state before the majority of people knew what was going on. Appearing at a livestream at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Snowden spoke from Moscow in a keynote address for the Canadian university's Open Dialogue Series. Snowden sees how the "systems of power" and control exploit our desire to connect.

_Source

Snowden says humanity is at an "atomic moment" in computer science.

"We're in the midst of the greatest redistribution of power since the Industrial Revolution, and this is happening because technology has provided a new capability."

"It's related to influence that reaches everyone in every place. It has no regard for borders. Its reach is unlimited, if you will, but its safeguards are not."

Our willingness to put ourselves out there into the social world has been taken advantage of int he permanency of the online realm. Every thing is a record in a database, and that means everything is being recorded, i.e. surveilled. The degree of monitoring our lives, of the expression of consciousness we exhibit, have allowed for predicting patterns of people.

New platforms and algorithms "monitor and record private activities of people on a scale that's broad enough that we can say it's close to all-powerful". Snowden explains:

"... they're able to shift our behavior. In some cases they're able to predict our decisions—and also nudge them—to different outcomes. And they do this by exploiting the human need for belonging."

"We don't sign up for this."

Indeed we don't. But according to Facebook's lawyer Orin Snyder regarding the privacy breach with Cambridge Analytica, "There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy."

He's right though. People put all their information online, and apps can get access to it via a friends page who allows the access via an app which has terms of use people don't read. Our ignorance has allowed us to awaken the all seeing eye by our very own actions.

Snowden further elaborates on the use of terms of use to syphon our data

"How many of you who have a Facebook account actually read the terms of service?. Everything has hundreds and hundreds of pages of legal jargon that we're not qualified to read and assess—and yet they're considered to be binding upon us."

"It is through this sort of unholy connection of technology and sort of an unusual interpretation of contract law, that these institutions have been able to transform this greatest virtue of humanity—which is this desire to interact and to connect and to cooperate and to share—to transform all of that into a weakness."

"And now these institutions, which are both commercial and governmental, have built upon that and... have structuralized that and entrenched it to where it has become now the most effective means of social control in the history of our species."

"Maybe you've heard about it. This is mass surveillance."

That's how we've created our own demon, and trapped ourselves in it's cage. We put our personal lives online as we connected with each other, and thought we would have privacy. Seriously? Either naive or willfully ignorant, we opens the valve and let our lives leak online. Myself, I've been more reserved about my personal life anywhere online. I don't trust the blanket openness, and I don't trust governments.

How about you? Did you get sucked into the social sharing honey pot that had us essentially provide surveillance of our lives.

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References:

• Edward Snowden: With Technology, Institutions Have Made 'Most Effective Means of Social Control in the History of Our Species'
• Edward Snowden; Live from Moscow, RussiaLIVE
• Open Dialogue Series

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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Posted from KURE