June 5 marked the first year anniversary of the Snowden revelations. ExpressVPN is one of the top VPNs that supports people’s rights to online privacy. On this anniversary, they share their thoughts on the exposure of mass surveillance that began with Edward Snowden telling the press about NSA spying.
A Cascade of Revelations
The past 12 months have been filled with one disclosure after another about government surveillance and mass data collection. It all started with the NSA PRISM program and how it was engineered to snoop on everyone’s activities and private conversations. But there have been other, connected activities of the US and other governments around the world that are also very significant. They each impact us in different ways.
As the press went through the different documents that were shared with them by Edward Snowden, they discovered deep and wide-ranging spy activities conducted by the global intelligence community. Independent research also revealed more connections and illicit activities. One important relationship that was revealed is the agreements between the NSA and the GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA. The NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans, but the GCHQ can. The GCHQ faces similar legal limitations. So they got together to exchange information so they could get around the law.
Another major revelation was XKeyScore, which is a tool used to search for data. This tool is a very powerful search engine that can use a few keywords to find almost anything about anyone. The NSA also has an extremely large database called the company store where all the information that the NSA has collected is stored. The NSA has also spoofed connections to popular websites like Facebook so they could intercept user data. And they have a new program called Quantum, which uses malware to spy on computers so they can take everything they want from those personal and corporate computers. The most recent NSA scheme is the gathering and cataloguing of people’s faces from different images that are posted online.
These are just some of the things we have learned about mass surveillance in the US in the past year. There have been major upheavals in other parts of the world as well. The Brazilian prime minister saw red and pushed for privatization of the Brazilian Internet. French Internet users learned how their providers were snooping on them for the government. Other EU countries demanded a review of their data retention law alongside privacy rights.
Online privacy has been the hottest topic in the past year because of all the spying revelations. People are more aware of their vulnerability online and have been looking for ways to protect themselves. ExpressVPN has been available to Internet users around the world as a tool to help them secure their Internet privacy. It has also helped them secure their phone conversations by providing anonymity for VoIP services. But there is a lot more that Internet users can do. ExpressVPN recommends a review of the different tolls and tips found on https://www.resetthenet.org/, which were developed in coordination with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/). ExpressVPN also encourages Internet users everywhere to spread the word. One very important step towards online privacy is to get everyone you know and share content with online to get secured.
