![]() ![]() The Honolulu CryptoParty was the first and last time I met Edward Snowden. At the end of the night, I said goodbye and headed out to Zippy's for a late snack. Having already set up exit relays himself, Snowden was extremely familiar with the configuration file and the various options that are available. We ended with an impromptu joint session on how to set up and run a Tor exit relay. If you are coerced by authorities into revealing the password for your "encrypted storage" you need only reveal the password for the volume with the least incriminating content - one containing pictures of cats, maybe? Snowden continued with TrueCrypt's "hidden volumes", a feature that divides your encrypted storage into separate "volumes" with separate passwords. He pointed out that while the only known name associated with TrueCrypt is someone in the Czech Republic, TrueCrypt is one of the best open-source solutions available. At one point, Snowden himself asked me to explain something called "pluggable transports", a Tor component that helps people in countries such as China and Iran connect to the Tor network, even though the majority of the servers in the network are blocked.Īfter wrapping up my presentation, Snowden connected his laptop to the projector and began talking about using the TrueCrypt software for encrypting hard drives and USB sticks on Macs, Linux and Windows. The audience were interested in how The Tor Project is funded, how safe the tool is to use, and how one can use anonymously set up a website using Tor hidden services. I discussed the characteristics that distinguish Tor from other solutions and what the tool can and cannot do. I talked about how people normally browse the web and how communications can be intercepted as it travels from one computer to the next. I began by explaining that Tor is a tool that anyone can use to browse the Internet anonymously. Having arrived without a laptop or slides, I decided to use the whiteboard. ![]() He stood in the back of the room with a laptop and a projector, his girlfriend controlling the camera a few feet away. Little did I know his work was under an NSA contract and that he had already downloaded the material that he would leak.Īs the attendees arrived, we quickly discussed how the event would run: Snowden would welcome everyone and kick things off with a short introduction, and I would follow with a presentation about Tor. I got the sense that this was not a topic he wanted to say much about - though it was not something I found odd or unusual. He hemmed and hawed a little and told me he worked for Dell. Standing next to Lindsay in the back of the tiny room, I asked Snowden what he did for a living. He also introduced me to his then-girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, saying she would film the event. He gave me a tour of the place and the room that we would present in. Snowden greeted me and simply introduced himself as "Ed". HiCapacity was located in the back of the Fishcake furniture store. The event was scheduled for December 11, 2012, the second to last day of my vacation. The wiki page listed 11 potential workshops, but only two names: "Cincinnatus" and "Runa S. Snowden used the handle "Cincinnatus" to organize the event, which he announced on the CryptoParty wiki - a website for all events with the name being organized all over the world - and to the HiCapacity hackerspace, which hosted the gathering. The grassroots CryptoParty movement began in late August 2012 as a way to introduce the basics of practical cryptography - Tor, full disk encryption and OTR/off the record messaging - to the general public. ![]() It began as an exchange of emails about Tor stickers and t-shirts. He first contacted me on November 27, 2012, using as his email address - the same account he would use in his first approach to Glenn Greenwald just four days later. Snowden sent me an encrypted email after reading a Reddit thread about my role as a core member of The Tor Project. I had thrown a CryptoParty with him in Honolulu, Hawaii six months earlier, though I had no idea at the time that he was working for the NSA or that this polite and confident man I knew as "Ed" would soon become the source of the most significant leak of classified material in U.S. Even more shocking to me when I saw someone tweet a photo of this "Edward Snowden" sitting at a laptop with EFF and Tor stickers was that I recognized him. The extent to which this young sysadmin would expose the previously secrecy-shrouded NSA was shocking to the general public. On June 9, 2013, the world learned the identity of an NSA whistleblower who had secretly met with journalists Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill in Hong Kong and given them thousands of documents about the spy agency's mass surveillance programs. ![]()
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