Edward Snowden: Permanent Record
I&#x27;m going to &#x27;recycle&#x27; an older comment of mine, pertaining to the comments about the book. The original comment can be found here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20583363" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20583363</a><p>I was annoyed that someone called Ed Snowden a &#x27;Traitor&#x27;. Hopefully it gets a bit more recognition in this thread<p>__________________________________<p>For me he made the Great Game of Privacy a lot fairer. You should read the excellent entry on Wikipedia about the aftermath of the leaks[0]. If the leaks meant that privacy-loving folk went &#x27;dark&#x27; in light of the leaks, then this is a net plus. Snowden&#x27;s actions possibly hindered NSA in catching undesirables, but it&#x27;s a small price to pay for a bolstered Internet and privacy-respecting comms. And who&#x27;s to say that the apparatus even worked that well in foiling the efforts of plotters? Bill Binney[1] consistently drives his message home that the NSA&#x27;s surveillance apparatus is very inefficient at foiling plots, and I agree with him.<p>Even if it stopped one plot in all the time of its existence, it&#x27;s still an enormous effort and an enormous amount of money spent just to foil one plot. Old fashioned police work is better at foiling plots because it doesn&#x27;t have to rely on big data algorithms sifting through the noise of Internet traffic (most of which is innocuous). Old fashioned methods work because they employ simple detective work - it doesn&#x27;t need the NSA at every choke point and decrypting countless crypto.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Snowden_Effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Snowden_Effect</a><p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;William_Binney_(U.S._intelligence_official)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;William_Binney_(U.S._intelli...</a>