Snowden Movie Talk
· 4 min
I have watched the movie yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I wanted to share my thoughts about this period of
time and the ethical dilemmas it presents. In the recent time, I become more aware of the importance of privacy. Back in time to my third year in high school, I got a virus on my laptop that courpted my files and hackers left a README.txt file asking for ransom. I was lucky enough to have backups with my friends who helped me recover.
Now in 2025, I realized that hacking is not just about stealing data, or making stateless attacks. Now governments and corporations have the power of collecting trillions of real-time data points about individuals, making thousands of alternatives and more advanced xkeyscore programs. AI invasion and acceleration is mainly based on the free data recources that these companies are controlling, and all are legalized by the Terms of use agreements that we all accept without reading. AI Agents and hackers are simply doing the same but those are getting your permission to do so. I mean not all of them of course, but it’s undeniable that these free agents are digesting your personal data in some way.
Articles like this from Meta and other companies are trying to alleviate the concerns of users by providing some control over their data (no one can really check that is 100% true).
However, my problem with AI goes beyond data collection. And no I’m not concerned to be replaced (hopefully not soon at least). Ai was introduced in a very furios way, and people (including me) are still not completely aware of its implications, specifically career wise. For instance, Vibe coding is a catastorphe, especially for juniors and students. Anyway it’s a different topic.
To sum up, I think our life is losing a lot of meanings and values as we advance, and I think we should all take a step, like Snowden one’s, to at least protect our data and privacy. I don’t think it will be that effictive tho, they are everywhere. Anyway enjoy the movie if you haven’t watched it yet.