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Edward Snowden at IETF 93

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Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#111

Post by thephyber »

jokoon wrote: post #94

If a republican is elected, ed might stay away from the US for a long time.

To be honest, it doesn't seem to have to do with political party affiliation.

President Obama's administration has been arguably more hawkish against national security disclosures (when they don't benefit the administration) than Bush's was[1], and his administration has set up quite a few cases that involved tapping the communications of journalists.

I liked Candidate Obama quite a bit and am fairly disappointed in President Obama's policies. " The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers."[2]

[1] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house...

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#112

Post by mnot »

rodionos wrote: post #18

This is the first time I've read his point of view first hand and actually listened to his presentation. He seems to be incredibly smart and well-versed in his subject domain.

That was the reaction of many people in the room too; he came across as not only smart and well-considered, but also deeply technical.

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#113

Post by mnot »

jingo wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #17

When asked about DNSSEC, which is a forklift upgrade of a core Internet protocol that has the deliberate effect of giving NSA and GCHQ control of TLS keys for hosts in .COM, .UK, .NET, .ORG, and .IO, this was Snowden's answer: Edward Snowden: So, I agree with you and I mean this is what's important about the IETF. Just because I say it, doesn't mean it's gospel. I can be wrong about an incredible amount of things. No…

"... armour the requests themselves to make sure that they don't become the new vector, they don't become manipulated." I interpreted this to mean encrypting each DNS packet. Maybe I misread the statement? DNSSEC of course does not protect the contents of the packet. Instead, DNSSEC more or less is just another CA system (or an adjunct to the existing one), running over UDP.

That would be DPRIVE, which he mentioned as well -- http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dprive/charter/

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#114

Post by mnot »

hellbanner wrote: post #9

Props to Mnot (or whoever did it) for providing links out of the transcript.

Thanks, it seemed like the right thing to do :)

I had the transcript done by a professional, and then went over it and corrected. That said, there are still some places where it may have errors, so if you find an odd statement, take it with a grain of salt and check the recording.

Corrections taken in comments, of course (don't think gist does pulls :(

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#115

Post by trhway »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #46
travjones wrote: post #26

I think it's a shame how mainstream media suggests that Snowden is a "coward" for not "coming home to face his charges." It's clear that he released confidential docs to reporters and this would be incredibly easy to prove in court, thereby landing him in prison for the rest of his life. I don't know any sane person that would surrender to this type of treatment, considering that he wouldn't be able to defend his act…

Agreed, did you see https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow... > If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a j…

>> If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions.

basically the government (caught red handed in violation of fundamental rights of the people) insists how civil disobedience must be done where is the main point of civil disobedience is ...? In particular interesting how they're trying to insist that civil disobedience can't be without martyrdom, and thus implicitly they try to scare people away from civil disobedience. Nice.

>Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions.

right now he is suffering from consequences of his actions - he sacrificed his good life in the US.

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#116

Post by mnot »

rafaelferreira wrote: post #45

The interview would've probably been a lot more fruitful if questions centered around what he knows about the surveillance capabilities of the agencies he was involved with, in technical detail, than asking for his opinions on technology policy, an area where he is admittedly not an expert.

Other people came away with similar thoughts. Perhaps we'll hear more about that from him in other channels.

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#117

Post by thephyber »

alextgordon wrote: post #71
superuser2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin does not solve this problem; you can follow the money from the exchange to the consumer's wallet to the merchant. It's only anonymous if you're using a tumbling service, and transferring your money to a tumbling service is an unambiguous broadcast to the entire world that you are committing the federal crime of money laundering. If they ever increase in popularity, you can bet that regulators will routinely t…

I am not intimate with US law, but what about altcoin exchanges? I don't think that converting your bitcoins to say Litecoins is illegal.

TL;DR: IANAL but money laundering laws are usually designed to prosecute a wide range of methods and usually involve attempting to prove intent as opposed to whitelisting specific methods of laundering.

The long explanation:

It's complicated. US law tends to be specifically designed for one application in mind and then ends up being expanded as new applications rear their heads.

The IRS (tax collection entity for the US federal government) classified BitCoin as an investment a few years ago (as opposed to a currency). This suggests that other non-state created digital crypto-currencies are considered investments as well (IIRC Canada's mint was trying a digital currency, hence the "non-state created" phrase).

Money laundering statutes aren't new enough to know about [1] crypto-currencies, but they are effective with dealing with the conversion of money to products/services and back for the purpose of obscuring the original method of obtaining the currency. I don't know much about money laundering except what I see in movies+TV (specifically Breaking Bad).

I've heard that buying large value gift cards (plastic charge card versions of "gift certificates") are required to be reported to authorities by the retailers.

Recently a school sports coach was prosecuted for violating money laundering statute when he divided up one payment of $10,000+ into multiple smaller [1] http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html [2] although the US Patriot Act allows federal investigators to use _any_ change in financial habits to trigger an investigation, not just transactions above the $10k level

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#118

Post by irishcoffee »

danenania wrote: post #107
eli wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is something reasonable people can disagree about. The rule of law should apply to everyone equally. I get that Ed Snowden is a likable guy and the documents he released may even have been a force of positive change in the world, but that doesn't necessarily absolve him of having to face trial. You can't go easy on him just because you agree with his politics. Our whistleblowing laws are woefully inadequ…

Ok, many members of the Bush administration ordered torture and medical experimentation on human beings, a flat out war crime. James Clapper lied under oath to Congress. Hillary Clinton kept classified material on a personal server at her house. These are all serious crimes with plenty of publicly available evidence that they were committed. The people who committed them are all inside the country and easy to find, s…

> many members of the Bush administration ordered torture and medical experimentation on human beings

The way you phrased this made me curious, so I looked it up. I don't know if it was your intention, but the way you phrased it made it sound like they were preforming medical procedures, possibly heinous medical procedures. In fact, the experiments were collecting data[0]:

"...and crossed the line into human experimentation by collecting and analyzing data that were then used to refine harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation and waterboarding..."

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with it, but I had visions of people having limbs attached to them, superhuman drugs injected into them, and death left and right, like some kind of V for Vendetta shit. This does not seem to be the case.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917950/

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#119

Post by irishcoffee »

danenania wrote: post #105
travjones wrote: post #26

I think it's a shame how mainstream media suggests that Snowden is a "coward" for not "coming home to face his charges." It's clear that he released confidential docs to reporters and this would be incredibly easy to prove in court, thereby landing him in prison for the rest of his life. I don't know any sane person that would surrender to this type of treatment, considering that he wouldn't be able to defend his act…

What I wonder is where the line is for people who automatically defer to government authority in these situations. How bad do the transgressions have to be before a whistleblower is justified in coming forward through any means necessary? For many, spying on billions of innocent people in direct violation of the country's constitution isn't sufficient, so what would be? What if Snowden had instead revealed proof of p…

> "...in direct violation of the country's constitution..."

I'm too lazy to try and verify this myself. You seem to have information on how to verify this. Can you point me in at least a vague general direction so I can read up more on it?

Re: Edward Snowden at IETF 93

#120

Post by irishcoffee »

rafaelferreira wrote: post #45

The interview would've probably been a lot more fruitful if questions centered around what he knows about the surveillance capabilities of the agencies he was involved with, in technical detail, than asking for his opinions on technology policy, an area where he is admittedly not an expert.

Occams razor would conclude that he doesn't know. He ripped a ton of documents off multiple servers because he was an IT admin and had access, and rolled out.
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