Part 1 of our Series: “Recovering the Web after Snowden”

“Surveillance is the business model of the internet.” In the beginning oAf June 2013, Edward Snowden´s disclosures on the ubiquitous spying system of the NSA make global headlines. Two weeks later, Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist and author, is giving this outstanding talk to Google engineers. They listen closely as Google is described as one of the “feudal security giants” of our time. They are not aware that Schneier was also one of the few citizens of the United States to be entrusted with the entire trove of Snowden´s documents. Glenn Greenwald had asked him to help out on technological details and secret service jargon.

Human society runs on trust. We all trust millions of people, organizations, and systems every day — and we do it so easily that we barely notice. But in any system of trust, there is an alternative, parasitic, strategy that involves abusing that trust. Making sure those defectors don’t destroy the cooperative systems they’re abusing is an age-old problem, ones that we’ve solved through morals and ethics, laws, and all sort of security technologies. Understanding how these all work,- and fail -, is essential to understanding the problems we face in today’s increasingly technological and interconnected world. (Bruce Schneier)