Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii

I don't see why, given that educating the US public about security best practices perfectly aligns with their mission. Back in 2001 they even released the first version of SELinux:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2001/se-linux.shtm...

It is only in the post 9/11 world that we somehow believe a CryptoParty is to the NSA what the tea party was to the british.

Re: Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii

#8

Post by icholboy » Thu, May 22, 2014, 10:09 AM UTC

Regardless of all the controversy, I see this man as a hero and I hope history gives him the recognition he deserves.

Re: Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii

#9

Post by gonehome » Thu, May 22, 2014, 10:12 AM UTC

revelation wrote: post #7

This article keeps saying in many words that the NSA would put Snowden on a boat to gitmo if they found out he hosted a CryptoParty. I don't see why, given that educating the US public about security best practices perfectly aligns with their mission. Back in 2001 they even released the first version of SELinux: http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2001/se-linux.shtm... It is only in the post 9/11 world that we…

The history of crypto in the US is actually much more interesting than that and for a time exporting any crypto tools was a felony (exporting munitions).

Steven Levy's book goes into pretty good detail about this: http://www.amazon.com/Crypto-Rebels-Government-Privacy-Digit...

At the time the NSA was not pleased about the release of DES and was also very concerned about PGP. There were attempts at laws requiring key escrow available to the NSA among other restrictions on foreign key size etc. It wasn't really until the late nineties that this stopped. For a time they would probably have liked to ban all citizen encryption all together, but it became obvious that this couldn't be enforced (and it's necessary for things like e-commerce).

A lot of early crypto based patents and research were retroactively classified - there was a big historical legal battle to get things where they are today.

Re: Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii

#10

Post by deanclatworthy » Thu, May 22, 2014, 10:15 AM UTC

> He was leading a local “Crypto Party,” teaching less than two dozen Hawaii residents how to encrypt their hard drives and use the internet anonymously.

I found this quite interesting. I wonder how many more of these events are happening around the world. They could teach how to use truecrypt, how to turn on two factor authentication for the popular services that use it and what it is, good password policies, and what https means for browsing the internet securely.

Edit: I found this: https://www.cryptoparty.in/