Here is my persional review of a good film to watch (DRAFT)
Its a feel good movie about brave people changing the world, and they are and they do. But its not a movie about the world changing.
The film reinforces my view that strong digital privacy like DRM in music, software and books is “broken” just like the 20th century copyright world. We as a culture need to get over this and move on. Many people knew this already. It's simple logic and lived experience to know that anything digital is open to copying and passing on. Your communication/identity is digital, so it's “open”.
The Snowden leeks, and the film about them, is important for the pre-digital majority who did/do not understand this, the head-in-the-ground worldview. The issue for me is that the film does not actually communicate the nature of open. It's probably why it won the Oscar, in that it allows people's heads not to move, which like many things in the modern world is a dangerous denial of reality we live in.
We need to pull our heads out of the sand and learn to live in the open, because that is where we are and where we will continue to be. Think for a moment: all the state spying, and power, goes out the window, when WE have the “open” knowledge and connections to self-organise. You as an indiviual can only hide from your friends, no matter how you try, and by doing this you're empowering your enemies and disempowering your friends. This film won an Oscar because it lets a whole generation of people keep looking the other way. They don’t have to turn to look at “open”.
For the technically curious, on the end credits it give a list of privacy tech that lots of people know are broken. Just takes a “google” search:
* The tor project – is not secure http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/tor-is-not-as-safe-as-you-may-think/
* Tails – uses Tor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_%28operating_system%29
* Debian/linux is nice, and being open source could be more secure, maybe, who actually knows?
* Off-the-record messaging – being p2p security might work, but equally vulnerable to screen/key logging etc.
* GNU privacy guard – being p2p can work https://vimeo.com/56881481
* Truecrypt – failed in a public way, like most open projects nobody knows if its secure or not http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsecur/opinion-truecrypt-the-nsa-and-the-myth-of-open-source-security.html
* Securedrop is you guessed it based on our “friend” Tor
Traditional media loves them because they don’t make traditional media think (no head turning involved). Yes, with P2P encryption you can get a limited privacy, anonymity is more vapours, and actually the film knows this, but it isn’t the message, if it was it wouldn’t be Oscar material.
