How to move beyond our SXSW talk: revenge of the nerds, one everyday security tool at a time.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cYou are the firefighters,\u201d National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden told a tech savvy audience here yesterday<\/a> [10 Mar 2014], during my conversation with him<\/a> at the SXSW festival. \u201cThe people in Austin are the ones who can protect our rights through technical standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Ed\u2019s comments were a call to arms for the tech community to protect its users from indiscriminate mass surveillance by the NSA and the insecurity it creates. Despite the talk from Washington DC regarding cybersecurity threats<\/a> \u2013 and you\u2019ll hear more of it today during a confirmation hearing<\/a> for the would-be next head of the NSA \u2013 it is now clear that the NSA\u2019s mass surveillance efforts are not meant for good. Whether it\u2019s systematically undermining<\/a> global encryption standards, hacking<\/a> communications companies\u2019 servers and data links or exploiting<\/a> so-called zero-day vulnerabilities, the nation\u2019s cyberspies are focused on attacking online privacy and weakening the security of systems that we all trust.<\/p>\n Forget all the government rhetoric on cybersecurity: the NSA simply isn\u2019t here to make the Internet more secure. But that doesn\u2019t mean the agency has to win. The global tech community can fight back, if developers ramp up efforts to build privacy and security into their products. By zeroing in on practical steps Ed and I discussed in our conversation here, we can build a more open, free and secure Internet.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, for far too long, security has been an afterthought. Even for a lot of my fellow geeks here at SXSW.<\/p>\n Until recently, many of the free email and social networking services used by consumers failed to integrate the most basic of encryption technology. That made the NSA\u2019s job far too easy, so the real challenge for the NSA often became processing all of the intercepted communications data, rather than grabbing it in the first place.<\/p>\n Right now, the most widely used communications tools and services \u2013 the ones we use to do business, have fun and connect with those we love \u2013 fail to deliver the reasonable and realizable trifecta of privacy, security and simplicity. As a result, people are forced to choose between technology that\u2019s incredibly intuitive but fundamentally weak on privacy (such as Google\u2019s Chrome browser and Android operating systems) and technology (like PGP email encryption and Tor) that remains far too difficult for the average person to use \u2026 even if those tools do a much<\/i> better job of protecting private data.<\/p>\n Nine months after Snowden\u2019s documents leaked in these pages, though, the standards and practices of everyday security are truly beginning to change. Over the past few years, and even more so after Ed\u2019s revelations, Silicon Valley companies have begun<\/a> to enable \u2013 by default \u2013 basic security features, such as the use of HTTPS encryption to protect data as it is transmitted from their customers\u2019 to the companies\u2019 servers. While HTTPS encryption by default is a great start, isn\u2019t enough. The tech companies must offer apps and services that are safe and secure by default.<\/p>\n 1. Disable data, all the way<\/b><\/p>\n Far too often, security is an opt-in feature that few regular people will even know about, much less seek out and enable.<\/p>\n In addition, big tech companies need to embrace end-to-end encryption technology. That is, they need to lock their products down, so they won\u2019t be able to see their customers\u2019 data. This kind of encryption technology, if deployed by several major service providers, will significantly thwart the ability of intelligence agencies, in the US and elsewhere, to engage in bulk surveillance. The more communications and data are encrypted, the less tenable mass surveillance becomes.<\/p>\n It comes down to simple economics, really: if the NSA has to spend more time finding a way to break or otherwise circumvent encrypted communications, it will be forced to do what it should have done all along \u2013 use its extraordinary powers on high-value targets, rather than the hundreds of millions of innocent people currently subject to NSA surveillance. If you question the power of encryption, consider this: the US government still doesn\u2019t know what documents Ed took, because he encrypted everything.<\/p>\n 2. Limit collection, move up storage deadlines<\/b><\/p>\n As Ed stressed, tech companies can also begin to limit the data they collect from their customers and only store it for as long as it\u2019s needed for genuine business purposes \u2013 and not one second longer. The impact of the government\u2019s ability to demand data<\/a> from companies like Google and Facebook is amplified because these tech companies collect and store everything. If the companies don\u2019t have the data that the US government and other governments are seeking, they cannot be legally compelled to hand over what no longer exists or never existed in the first place.<\/p>\n The problem, however, is a fundamental conflict of interest between the business model of so many tech giants \u2013 the collection, storage and monetization of your data \u2013 and your privacy and security.<\/p>\n This is where the average Internet user can make a difference. Right now, the digital services upon which we all rely for swift communications and easy web browsing are largely reliant on advertising dollars. They sell the data you generate to third parties, or use it to deliver targeted advertisements for those third parties. Entire businesses are devoted to collecting, analyzing and then monetizing whatever data you produce. As a result, the apps, operating systems and services they provide us are optimized for one major thing: the collection of our private data.<\/p>\n 3. Rethink our relationship with tech companies<\/b><\/p>\n We, the everyday consumers, must make privacy and security profitable. If we want these companies to put our interests first, we must pay for the services that they provide us. We must demand that those products preserve privacy \u2013 again, by default. Until this business model changes, the services that are made for the mass market will remain insecure, vulnerable and optimized for data collection.<\/p>\n By making it harder for the NSA to engage in mass surveillance, we force the agency to target the communications and devices of people genuinely suspected of wrongdoing without compromising the privacy rights of everyone else. I cannot stress enough what I said yesterday: the goal here isn\u2019t to blind the NSA. The goal here is to make sure they cannot spy on innocent people, in bulk. Starting right now.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been said that the geeks shall inherit the Earth. If that\u2019s true, it\u2019s also our responsibility to secure it. One of our own, Edward Snowden, started this revolution. Now it\u2019s time we finished it by using our skills and knowledge to preserve our privacy and civil liberties, not just the bottom line.<\/p>\n _________________________<\/p>\n Christopher Soghoian is principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n