Speaker: Edward Snowden Compiled by: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
On September 18, 2024, Edward Snowden, who had exposed the "Prism Gate" incident, delivered a speech entitled "The Next Threat to Speech" at the Token2049 Blockchain Industry Conference. He pointed out that although the world has changed dramatically, the invasion of citizens' privacy by intelligence agencies has not decreased, but has become more covert and extensive with the development of technology. Large-scale surveillance has become a reality. However, this is also the uniqueness and power of encryption technology, especially Bitcoin. It is a system designed from the worst possible situation to avoid inevitable results. Golden Finance has sorted out the content of Snowden's speech as follows for readers.
Snowden's full speech
First of all, a shout out to all my friends at Token 2049 Singapore. It's been a long time since I last came to Singapore, I think it was around 2009. At that time, I was working for the CIA in the embassy not far from here. In the past 15 years, the world has changed a lot, but the practices of intelligence agencies have not changed much. I want to start with this point, because while the practices of intelligence agencies have not changed, their scale has expanded tremendously. This is what has pushed me to stand here. The question is not whether the government is spying on certain people, in fact, they have always been doing so. The difference in the past is that they did not have the ability to spy on everyone. Today, they not only have this ability, but also put it into practice. In the past, it was just some unattainable fantasy. Today, we see this surveillance everywhere.
Telegram founder Paul Durov is someone I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago. I had hoped to discuss him here because his experience is a good symbol of the profound changes that are taking place in the world today. Just a few weeks ago, we witnessed a coordinated effort by established powers to take control of Telegram by detaining Durov in France.
These forces have been publicly complaining about Telegram for years, even though Telegram is not really a secure communication tool. By the way, please do not recommend it to your friends as a secure communication tool. It is more like a regular chat room with private messaging. Telegram does have an encrypted messaging feature called "Secret Chats", but almost no one uses it. In any case, the state apparatus in the United States and Europe has been complaining that Telegram does not give them enough control to shut down channels or make user information public at will like platforms such as Facebook.
Because of some flaws in Telegram's design, it did have the ability to implement these controls. So the government knew that if Telegram wanted to, they could do these things. Telegram obviously made some efforts to resist, but it was not enough to change the situation. So what happened next? Durov was lured to France and thrown in jail under some made-up pretext. A few days later, Telegram changed its terms of service. This is the harsh reality of what you face when you don't design a service at the protocol level to resist state intervention. This is also the uniqueness and power of cryptography, especially Bitcoin. It is a system designed from the worst possible perspective to avoid the inevitable.
Once Durov was released and in a free place, he set about fixing the design problem that got him into trouble in the first place. He created a service that didn't put too much power and data in the hands of humans who were vulnerable to state interference. You have to design your system so that there's never a "touch point" that can be manipulated, or they'll find a way to manipulate it.
However, the really important lesson is not just about Durov or Telegram, but about all of us. We are entering a new phase in history. The group of countries that used to be considered more enlightened once embraced the ideas of classical liberalism. I want to clarify that by liberalism I mean the supremacy of the individual's rights to self - the right of the individual to decide and direct his or her own life, not the liberalism that today's political parties advocate. The countries that once advocated this idea are now the ones that are working hardest to overturn it. They use bureaucratic means, policy interventions and guidance to shape and ultimately control the lives of everyone within their territory and beyond. The progress of technology has made this almost possible. These problems have not fundamentally changed compared to the situation in 2015.
In defense of these countries, it can be said that they truly believe this is the path to utopia, that they know better than you what is best for you. They are the "experts". Everyone is being told how to live, whether to eat insects, etc. But it is important to remember that this story has been played out countless times throughout history. The experts once told you to go to the fields and kill sparrows, and now we are at a point where we are waiting for the next development.
If you haven't heard about the battle over Telegram, especially the new chat control proposals recently proposed by the European Union, you really should check it out. Because the European Union will once again push for the passage of these proposals in the next few weeks. In my opinion, these proposals are more about control than surveillance. They are laying the procedural framework for controlling every voice in the world.
That's really what this is about. The government isn't worried about some secret conversations, nor is it trying to get the keys to some conversations. They just see people communicating in ways they don't like, and they think these communications may be false information, fiction, or something they think is harmful to society, so they want to block it. This is very dangerous, and once you get out of control, you can't get it back.
This got me thinking about the changes in modernity. This was not the conversation I expected to have when I woke up yesterday. I spent most of yesterday reading about the Israeli president, and by all reports, some of the actions looked nothing like terrorist tactics: consumer electronic devices exploding simultaneously in multiple countries, pockets, hands, faces, and even cars losing control.
While this is not the first time we have seen something like this, it is the first time we have seen a "broadcast" bomb attack on this scale. A message sent over a public communication system can trigger electronic devices that are on standby. The devices do not know who or where the owner is, let alone whether it is an adult or a child using them. Apparently, the makers do not care about these issues.
Even without explosives implanted in them, the batteries in your phone, laptop or electric car contain a lot of energy. These devices may not explode in the same way, but they could catch fire. In the future, your device could catch fire while you sleep due to a malfunction while charging, all with the push of a button. But who are we to blame?
I recently saw someone suggest that there is no need to discuss Bitcoin’s anarchist roots, or privacy, or unblockable design, or the fact that it cannot be censored or stopped, because that makes billionaires uncomfortable. They want to invest in something that can be regulated, controlled, and made to work for them.
I think that's completely wrong. We have to discuss the core rules and value of cryptocurrency - that's what makes it special. I don't care if it upsets billionaires or if it slows down JPMorgan Chase's allocation of capital. They don't have a vote. Frankly, they're on this train whether they like it or not. The dollar is over. As Alton said, currency debasement is built into our economic model. We can see changes in money supply and deficit spending. It may not happen this year, it may not happen next year, it may not even happen in the next five years.
But the outcome is pretty clear from the way history has played out. We are at the end of the paper money era, it is declining, and it will end. It has nothing to do with the flag of any country, it has to do with how the system works. There is no solid foundation, there is no strong foundation. So as a community, we need to focus on keeping the things that make currencies thrive, and not the things that make other currencies fail. I think that also means recognizing that a lot of other crypto projects don't really make a lot of sense, other than diluting the base of the currency, although that's not true for all of them. Of course, there are still some good projects.
But everyone here can think of examples where even though we packaged them nicely, they were nothing more than scams. It happens time and time again.
People see it as gambling, or like buying a lottery ticket.
But think about the impact this has on the system. If we don't control it, it will become a toxic waste. Everyone should realize what it is. Many people haven't realized it yet, and I think people are waking up as a community, but the participants are getting bigger and bigger. As they say, there are new "idiots" every day. But we shouldn't take advantage of these people, but we should work on building a new world.
If this community is just helping some loser buy an even more useless expensive watch, we have to ask ourselves, which system is better? We must be able to answer this question because we already occupy a prominent place in the world. We must do better. If we want to live better, we have to focus on not becoming part of the existing system. We have an extraordinary opportunity, we have changed the world in many ways, and the world is beginning to listen and embrace those changes. They began to recognize the value of cryptocurrency and began to participate in it. We don't even need to argue. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of this moment in history, a moment that was created for us by us, and that we will pass on to those who come into the future.
In summary, when you watch this happen, and watch the desire for speech control, and watch the rise of these emerging disruptive technologies, you realize that they can be great forces or they can be terrible forces. It depends on who holds the levers of power and how we disperse them. When you see consumer electronics go from individual, targeted cases to large-scale broadcast attacks, you see leaders in our field trying to reject the valuable traditions of our past that created the cryptocurrency space and created the cryptocurrency industry. I think the lessons are very clear.
Therefore, we should rebel against bureaucracy, reject modernity, embrace tradition, and then you can save the world. That's all we need to do. Thank you!
