Not long ago, I wrote about the changes that have taken place since Edward Snowden revealed the extremes the US government had reached in order to "keep us safe". Today, on the Joe Rogan podcast, Snowden gave one of the best interviews I've heard from him. During the interview, he was able to talk about his childhood, his enthusiasm for technology since a young age, his various jobs in the intelligence community and finally, the catalysts that led him to share the bulk of documents confirming the US...

#snowden #privacy #newera Edward Snowden is back in the news. Snowden is promoting a new book, Permanent Record. In the book, a memoir, he goes on to provide a more in-depth record of what happened. This is not a book review, rather a look at how things have changed, if at all, since his revelations, back in 2013. I have been working in technology for a long time, circa 2001. I got my first computer back in the early 90s, during the Prodigy and AOL days. I still...

Smartphones have most definitely changed the way we communicate with each other. This revolution in communications began not with Smartphones or the iPhone, but with the internet and computers. Already, back in the late 90s, in the era of instant messenger and the early days of VoIP technology, distances across the globe became obsolete. Communicating with a friend across the street, or on the other side of the world, happened at the speed of light. In the 90s and early 2000s, the communications revolution belonged to wealthy countries....

For most people, in the days of a consistent stream of shares and updates to social media, anonymity is the exception, rather than the rule. Way back, when the internet first became popular in the US, think early 90s, anonymity was the norm. In fact, that's one of the reasons it took so long for e-commerce to take off, the internet was too anonymous. Fast-forward 20 years and everyone is on the internet. Anonymity has vanished. Big companies know who we are either through cookies, logins or other...