Edward Snowden has shared his top 3 privacy tips for internet users via remote interview at the New Yorker Festival.
Snowden is pushing for government reform to bring all electronic surveillance programs into the public eye and offered his advice on what users can do to protect their privacy.
Snowden began by calling out those who say “they don’t have anything to hide” suggesting that a comment like that is “inverting the model of how rights work.”
“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide’, you are saying, ‘I don’t care about this right’. You are saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights.”
Snowden is continuing to call for government reform but in the mean time, he offered his top privacy tips for users who are concerned about the safety of their online information.
1.) Get Rid of Dropbox
According to Snowden, Dropbox does not support encryption however, Dropbox has stated that “all files sent and retrieved from Dropbox are encrypted while travelling between you and our servers.” Snowden’s argument however is that the files should be encrypted on your computer as well, not just while in transit.
2.) Don’t Use Facebook or Google:
According to Snowden, both these sites are “dangerous” services that people should avoid. He also suggested that everything posted on Facebook or sent via email, no matter what your security settings are could be accessed.
3.) Don’t Send Unencrypted text messages:
Despite Apples latest iOS beefing up the encryption technology, Snowden was not impressed saying that law enforcement officials can still ask for access to people’s phones. He suggested using phones like RedPhone or SilentCircle.
Snowden is currently taking shelter in countries such as China and Russia and refuses to come back to the US to stand trial until he is offered and open a fair trial with a jury.
“I’ve told the government again and again in negotiations, you know, that if they’re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial….and I’m able to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so. But to this point they have declined,” he stated.
Beyond offering his tips for privacy control, Snowden also revealed why he decided to leak the classified documents to the public:
“We can have secret programs. You know, the American people don’t have to know the name of every individual that’s under investigation. We don’t need to know the technical details of absolutely every program in the intelligence community. But we do have to know the bare and broad outlines of the powers our government is claiming…and how they affect us and how they affect our relationships overseas. Because if we don’t, we are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders- we are subjects, and we have rulers.”