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July 13, 2019
from
RT Website
© Global Look Press / Jaap Arriens
Snowden
Warns - Big Tech Will
"Indenture
Entire Populations into Servitude"
to Corporations
and Governments...
Tech giants such as
Google or
Facebook store vast amounts of
personal data for their own gain but they are also "happy to hand
over" this data to governments, making people vulnerable to
persecution,
Edward Snowden warned.
Any person can pretty much be sure that,
"everything you've
done, everything you've typed into their search box, everything
you have clicked on, everything you've liked" is duly recorded
and stored in the enormous databanks of the big tech
corporations,
...the NSA whistleblower
said addressing the UK
Open Rights Group Conference (ORGCON19)
in London via a video link from Moscow:
"Your communications,
as they happen largely today, don't actually take place between
you and the person that you are talking to.
They happen between
you and Facebook, who then provides a copy of it to the person
you are talking to, or you and Gmail, who then gives a copy of
it to the person that you are talking to and every time these
transactions occur through these service providers, they keep a
record of it."
The corporations do that
primarily to advance their own financial and economic interests, yet
they seek to not only,
"better their class"
but also to "better their state",
...and are, thus, more
than happy to share the data they obtained with governments, which,
in turn, make a use of it in its mass surveillance programs, Snowden
warned.
"We see that
governments increasingly care less and less about compliance,
and care more and more about power" he said,
...adding that
the governmental security structures, which were supposedly created
to protect the people against the threat of terrorism, are in fact
used against pretty much anyone from critically-minded journalists
and dissidents to immigrants and minorities.
The corporations, which now virtually control the most part of
Internet communications, have been long abusing their position of
power, forcing people into relations one would never "meaningfully
consent to" while staying largely unaccountable.
The law simply has not caught up
to the fact that a technological
corporation
now can indenture entire populations
into servitude to
the corporate good,
rather than to individual or public good.
His warnings came soon after Facebook agreed to give French
authorities data on hate speech suspects.
Earlier, the tech giant's
lawyer openly stated that the social network's users do not actually
have any privacy at all when it comes to their personal data.
Yet, the whistleblower added a portion of optimism to his otherwise
grim speech by saying that the people are waking up to this
situation and
"that things are
going to get better",
...because of the efforts
of people who are not indifferent to this issue.
Snowden has been living in a self-imposed exile in Russia ever since
he exposed
the NSA's vast surveillance network
back in 2013, bringing to light information about the US security
agency's mass surveillance activities targeting millions of
Americans as well as foreign leaders.
He has been charged with
espionage by Washington and faces arrest if he were to return
home.
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