{"id":12383,"date":"2020-08-10T01:21:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T05:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=12383"},"modified":"2020-08-21T14:35:29","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T18:35:29","slug":"edward-snowden-encryption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/edward-snowden-encryption\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowden: Encryption Is Critical to Protect Your Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What are Edward Snowden’s thoughts on encryption? How important is encryption to your security? How does encryption work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Ed Snowden, encryption is an important security tool. He used encryption to protect his own files. Read more about Snowden, encryption, and privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Edward Snowden: Encryption in Action<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ed liked teaching and wanted to help the public defend itself against mass surveillance. For Snowden, encryption was critical. Even though he was leaking information about mass surveillance, he knew that wasn\u2019t going to be enough to allow people to retain their privacy. <\/strong>He taught a workshop on encryption. This was also practice for explaining things to a layperson\u2019s audience, which he\u2019d have to do when he blew the whistle. Many of the people who showed up weren\u2019t particularly worried about mass surveillance, they just wanted control over their privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ed knew better than anyone that it\u2019s hard to be anonymous on the Internet. He got in touch with journalists using a variety of different identities and used encrypted email.<\/strong> He had to convince and\/or teach the journalists to use encryption too. 
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What Is Encryption?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Encryption is the only way to really protect yourself against surveillance<\/strong>. Think of encryption as a much more advanced version of a cipher. When you encrypt data, you\u2019re using a key to transform it into gibberish. Therefore, anyone trying to look at your data won\u2019t be able to make sense of it because they don\u2019t have the key.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encryption algorithms are very complicated math problems\u2014problems so complicated even computers can\u2019t solve them. Usually, the longer an encryption key is, the safer it is, because the math is harder. The math and computing power required to break a 4096- or 8162-bit encryption key don\u2019t exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, the government doesn\u2019t try to break the encryption, they go after the keys or the locksmiths:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n