Recently, at the Web Summit, Edward Snowden stated that big tech companies including Facebook, Amazon, and Google have been making people vulnerable to surveillance. According to Snowden, if you take a look at the business models of these big tech giants you can easily detect that the information of users is being abused.
Snowden is known for his blunt responses on NSA surveillance programs also known as Prism in 2013. Snowden is the person who leaked the documents of most tech companies to journalists to display the type of user content being abused by these companies. Snowden started working for intelligence services in the beginning but what made him choose to blow all the steam of information abuse to journalists?
Well, Snowden started working in intelligence with an oath to secure the user information from any type of cyberattacks or bullying but later on when instead of accomplishing the oath made on the first day Snowden witnessed that NSA started surveilling people before they had broken the law at all and no one accused the companies of monitoring user information because it also benefited others as well.
When Snowden saw a downfall in the accountability of the most powerful institutions in society he handed over the top-secret documents of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook to journalists. These documents contained detailed information on the deals held between the government and other tech companies and also included information about the tools that were manufactured to protect the public but instead were used to identify and monitor the public. Whenever governments and corporations start working together there’s always a chance of using the power to benefit from the public rather than benefiting the public.
It’s been six years since Snowden leaked the surveillance activities of various tech companies to journalists and he also believes that now the world is getting more aware of the privacy problems faced by tech companies than ever.
Read next: 1 Out of 3 Americans Don’t Know How the Internet Works
Snowden is known for his blunt responses on NSA surveillance programs also known as Prism in 2013. Snowden is the person who leaked the documents of most tech companies to journalists to display the type of user content being abused by these companies. Snowden started working for intelligence services in the beginning but what made him choose to blow all the steam of information abuse to journalists?
Well, Snowden started working in intelligence with an oath to secure the user information from any type of cyberattacks or bullying but later on when instead of accomplishing the oath made on the first day Snowden witnessed that NSA started surveilling people before they had broken the law at all and no one accused the companies of monitoring user information because it also benefited others as well.
When Snowden saw a downfall in the accountability of the most powerful institutions in society he handed over the top-secret documents of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook to journalists. These documents contained detailed information on the deals held between the government and other tech companies and also included information about the tools that were manufactured to protect the public but instead were used to identify and monitor the public. Whenever governments and corporations start working together there’s always a chance of using the power to benefit from the public rather than benefiting the public.
Comment by Snowden on GDPR
GDPR - the EU-wide data protection legislation was introduced in May 2018 and there is not much positive feedback from Snowden regarding that. According to Snowden, GDPR is just a paper used to fine companies for data protection violations. Despite the fact that various tech companies have been fined millions of euros for violations of data protection but according to Snowden the problem with GDPR is that it shouldn’t fine for violation of data protection but instead should fine for the collection of data by various tech companies. Since the incident of 2013, everything eventually leaks.It’s been six years since Snowden leaked the surveillance activities of various tech companies to journalists and he also believes that now the world is getting more aware of the privacy problems faced by tech companies than ever.
Bottom Line
Snowden directly accused big tech companies of collecting user data and providing its access to law enforcement authorities. Although there is no official response from Google, Amazon or Facebook regarding the accusations and we are left with no choice but to trust these tech companies with our data.Read next: 1 Out of 3 Americans Don’t Know How the Internet Works
