The Latest in IT Security

Channel 4 has a reputation for delivering an alternative Christmas message every year as a counterpoint to the Queens annual Christmas address, and 2013 is no different: it tapped NSA leaker Edward Snowden to speak directly to UK citizens about privacy issues and, according to Channel 4, why he believes mass indiscriminate surveillance by governments of their people is wrong. In the brief, sub-two-minute video, Snowden — who is still in Russia after traveling there from Hong Kong earlier this year — says that Great Britains George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information, a reference to the dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four whose parallels to modern-day mass surveillance have become increasingly alarming as the full extent of the NSAs capabilities have come to light. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.