Tossing aside that Assange didn't actually make this statement: In 1996, the possibility that the NSA was sniffing the Internet was largely considered "tinfoil" even by most tech experts.
But anyone who read Bamford knew there was good circumstantial evidence that mass surveillance was occurring -- except back then, the bad word was "ECHELON", not "PRISM".
It's important to remember that while Snowden brought this to the masses (and to that we owe him a great debt), long before Snowden, we had Mark Klein, Binney, Cryptome, and James Bamford.
The NSA has been under strong suspicions for decades at this point. Back in the 80s, the exposes were about their mass surveillance of telephone calls. This was even in the popular press. There was a particular 60 Minutes episode that described a post worker shocked that she was intercepting a mom talking about her kid's soccer game in English.
Having lived through multiple very public NSA scandals over the decades, I think the only effective change will come from the grassroots: strong crypto, secure software, privacy focused. It sure as hell won't come from our lawmakers.
>Tossing aside that Assange didn't actually make this statement: In 1996, the possibility that the NSA was sniffing the Internet was largely considered "tinfoil" even by most tech experts.
In 1997 I was working at a company where we built and delivered all software by SUn and many other companies.
We had a Cisco 3640 that I inherited when I got there and I needed to recover the password.
I hired a CCIE to come in and walk me through the recovery and rebuild of this and the other Cisco gear I had at the time.
During the hours that we spent rebuilding the network, we talked a lot about security in general, cisco in specific, and I recall him telling me then "Cisco is required by the NSA to provide them a backdoor into all our routers".
I don't remember and can't find a citation as to when this became public knowledge but feel like it was not much later.
In face of future technology, it does not seem like strong crypto is the answer. Imagine, for instance, mass-scale audio surveillance, perhaps with lasers or microdrones or something. (I'm thinking decades out so I can handwave magical nanotech.) DNA sweeping to collect skin shedding or other stray cells to determine who was where (if face/body recog isn't enough).
We simply leak too much information everywhere to hope for technological solutions.
But anyone who read Bamford knew there was good circumstantial evidence that mass surveillance was occurring -- except back then, the bad word was "ECHELON", not "PRISM".
It's important to remember that while Snowden brought this to the masses (and to that we owe him a great debt), long before Snowden, we had Mark Klein, Binney, Cryptome, and James Bamford.
The NSA has been under strong suspicions for decades at this point. Back in the 80s, the exposes were about their mass surveillance of telephone calls. This was even in the popular press. There was a particular 60 Minutes episode that described a post worker shocked that she was intercepting a mom talking about her kid's soccer game in English.
Having lived through multiple very public NSA scandals over the decades, I think the only effective change will come from the grassroots: strong crypto, secure software, privacy focused. It sure as hell won't come from our lawmakers.