In the past few days the 30th CCC took place, and this being the year of Edward Snowden, it is worth going through some of the published video recordings.

Here are two interesting talks.

First there’s Claudio Guarnieri and Morgan Marquis-Boire on detecting internet monitoring and attack infrastructure and how those are being used to target activists and investigative journalists.

And then, please do take an hour to watch Jacob Appelbaum (“I am available for questions until I am assassinated”) on what is happening, in conjunction with the material published by the German Spiegel.

The worst part is not that the NSA has these capabilities but that they are often based on deliberately weakening hardware and software or keeping intentionally silent on vulnerabilities, which means that anyone may exploit those weaknesses as well. In the name of security the NSA and other agencies are actively reducing overall security in other words.