Speaker: Edward Snowden Compiled by Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
On September 18, 2024, Edward Snowden, who had exposed the "Prism Gate" incident, delivered a speech entitled "The Next Threat to Speech" at the Token2049 Blockchain Industry Conference. He pointed out that although the world has undergone earth-shaking changes, the invasion of citizens' privacy by intelligence agencies has not decreased, but has become more covert and extensive with the development of technology. Large-scale surveillance has become a reality. However, this is also the uniqueness and power of encryption technology, especially Bitcoin. It is a system designed from the worst possible situation to avoid inevitable results. Golden Finance has compiled the content of Snowden's speech as follows for readers.
Full text of Snowden's speech
Thank you very much. First of all, to all friends in Token 2049 Singapore. It's been a long time since I last came to Singapore, I think it was around 2009. At that time I was working for the CIA in the embassy not far from here. I think a lot has changed in the world over the past 15 years, but the practices of intelligence agencies have not really changed much. I want to start with this point because while the practices of intelligence agencies have not changed, their scale has expanded tremendously. That's what's driving me here. The question is not whether governments are spying on certain people, in fact, they have always been doing so. The difference in the past is that they didn't have the ability to spy on everyone. Today, not only do they have this ability, they put it into practice. In the past, it was just some unattainable fantasy.
Today, we see this surveillance everywhere. Telegram founder Paul Durov is someone I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago. I had hoped to discuss him here because his experience is a good symbol of the profound changes that are happening in the world today. Just a few weeks ago, we witnessed a coordinated operation by the old powers to try to control Telegram by detaining Durov in France.
For years, these forces have been openly complaining about Telegram, even though Telegram is not really a secure messenger. By the way, please do not recommend it to your friends as a secure messenger. It is more like a regular chat room with private messaging. Telegram does have an encrypted messaging feature called "Secret Chats," but almost no one uses it. In any case, the US and European state apparatuses have been complaining that Telegram does not give them enough control to shut down channels or make user information public at will, as platforms like Facebook do.
Due to some flaws in Telegram's design, it does have the ability to implement these controls. So the government knows that if Telegram wants to, they can do these things. Telegram obviously made some efforts to resist, but it was not enough to change the situation. So what happened next? Durov was lured to France and thrown in jail under some made-up pretext. A few days later, Telegram changed its terms of service. This is the harsh reality of what you face when you don't design your service to resist state interference at the protocol level. This is what is so unique and so powerful about crypto, and Bitcoin in particular. It is a system designed from the worst possible scenario in mind, designed to avoid the inevitable.
After Durov was released, as soon as he reached a place of freedom, he set about fixing the design problems that got him into trouble in the first place. He created a service that would not put too much power and data in the hands of humans who are vulnerable to state interference. You have to design your system so that there is never a single “touch point” that can be manipulated, or they will find a way to manipulate it.
The really important lesson, however, is not just about Durov or Telegram, but about all of us. We are entering a new phase in history. The group of countries that used to be considered more enlightened once embraced the ideas of classical liberalism. I want to be clear that by liberalism I mean the supremacy of the individual’s right to self – the right of the individual to decide and direct his own life, not the liberalism that today’s political parties are branding. The countries that once championed that idea are now the ones working the hardest to overturn it. They shape and ultimately control everyone’s life within their territory and beyond through bureaucratic means, policy interventions and guidance. Advances in technology have made this almost possible. These problems have not fundamentally changed compared to the situation in 2015.
In defense of these countries, it can be said that they really believe this path to utopia and think that they know what is best for you better than you do. They are "experts". Everyone is told how to live, whether to eat insects, etc. But it is important to remember that this story has been played out countless times in history. Experts once told you to go to the fields and kill sparrows, and now we are at a point where we are waiting for the next development.
The fight over Telegram, especially the new chat control proposals recently proposed by the European Union, if you haven't heard about it, you really should go and learn about it. Because the European Union will once again push these proposals through in the next few weeks. In my opinion, these proposals are more about control than surveillance. They are laying the procedural framework for controlling every voice globally.
That's really what this is about. Governments aren't worried about some secret conversations, nor are they trying to get the keys to some conversations. They just see people communicating in ways they don't like, and think that these communications may be false information, fiction, or something they consider harmful to society, and they want to block it. This is very dangerous, and once it gets out of control, it will be irreversible.
This reminds me of the changes in modernity. This is not the conversation I expected to have when I woke up yesterday. I spent most of yesterday reading about the Israeli president, and according to all the reports, some of the actions looked nothing like terrorist tactics: consumer electronic devices exploding simultaneously in multiple countries, pockets, hands, faces, and even cars losing control.
While this is not the first time we've seen something like this, it is the first time we've seen a "broadcast" bomb attack on this scale. A message sent over a public communication system can trigger electronic devices that are in a state of alert. The devices don't know who or where they are, or whether they are adults or children using them. Apparently, the manufacturers don't care about these issues.
Even without explosives, the batteries in your phone, laptop, or electric car contain a lot of energy. These devices may not explode in the same way, but they could catch fire. In the future, your device could catch fire while you sleep because of a malfunction while charging, all it takes is the press of a button. But who are we to blame?
I recently saw someone suggest that we don’t need to discuss the anarchist roots of Bitcoin, or the privacy, or the unblockable design, or the fact that it can’t be censored or stopped, because it makes billionaires uncomfortable. They want to invest in something that can be regulated, controlled, and made to work for them.
I think that’s completely wrong. We have to discuss the core rules and values of cryptocurrency — that’s what makes it special. I don’t care if it makes billionaires uncomfortable, or if it makes JPMorgan Chase slow down its allocation of funds. They don’t have a vote. Frankly, they’re on this train whether they like it or not. The dollar is over. As Alton said, currency debasement is built into our economic model. We can see changes in money supply and deficit spending. It may not happen this year, it may not happen next year, it may not even happen in the next five years.
But the outcome is very clear from the historical development. We are at the end of the paper money era, it is declining, and it will end. It has nothing to do with the flag of any country, it is about the way the system works. There is no solid foundation, there is no strong foundation. So as a community, we need to focus on maintaining the factors that make the currency thrive, rather than the factors that cause other currencies to fail. I think it also means recognizing that a lot of other crypto projects don't actually make much sense, except to dilute the base of the currency, although this is not the case for all projects.
Of course, there are still some good projects, but everyone in this room can think of examples that are nothing more than scams even if we package them well. This phenomenon has happened again and again.
People see it as gambling, or like buying lottery tickets.
But think about the impact on the system. If we don't control it, it will become a toxic waste. Everyone should realize what it is. Many people haven't realized it yet, and I think people are waking up as a community, but more and more participants are participating. As people often say, there are new "suckers" every day. But we shouldn't take advantage of these people, but we should work on building a new world.
If this community just helps some useless person buy an even more useless expensive watch, we have to ask ourselves, which system is better? We have to be able to answer this question because we have occupied a prominent position in the world. We have to do better. If we want to live better, then we have to focus on not being part of the existing system. We have an extraordinary opportunity, we have changed the world in many ways, and the world is starting to listen and accept these changes. They are starting to recognize the value of cryptocurrencies and start to participate in them. We don't even need to argue. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of this moment in history, which is a moment created by us for us, and we will pass it on to future generations.
In summary, when you watch all this happen, watch the desire for speech control, watch the rise of these emerging disruptive technologies, you realize that they can be great forces or they can be terrible forces. It depends on who holds the levers of power and how we disperse them. When you see consumer electronics go from individual, targeted cases to large-scale broadcast attacks, you see leaders in our field trying to reject the valuable traditions of our past that created the cryptocurrency space. I think the lessons are very clear.
So we should rebel against bureaucracy, reject modernity, embrace tradition, and you will save the world. That's all we need to do. Thank you!
JinseFinance
Cointelegraph