Web Summit 2019: Snowden's warning to the start-up society

At the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon's Altice Arena, colorful light cubes are flashing on stage on Monday night. It's like teleshopping, as more than a dozen startups present their products - mattresses, digital children's games, a recruiting platform.

Afterwards, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden talks about the downsides of digitization, surveillance, data gathering from governments and businesses. As he has been teleconferencing from his Moscow asylum for years, appears larger than life on a giant screen.

The videoconference at the Web Summit was Snowden's first public appearance since the 36-year-old submitted his autobiography "Permanent Record" in mid-September. In the book, Snowden describes how, as an IT expert for the US intelligence agencies CIA and NSA, he worked to create the "permanent record" - "to store all the files ever collected or created forever, and thus a perfect one To create memory ", as he writes in his memoirs.

Warning about data abuse

"My generation, but especially the generation after me, has nothing left - it uses all these services, and so a permanent record of everything you've done is possible," says Snowden to the conference attendees. "If you have your cell phone with you, even when it's just plugged in your pocket, it registers your presence at this event."

Most of the data collected today is personal, the whistleblower warned. It is not primarily about the data itself, but ultimately about the exploitation and manipulation of people. The business model of companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook is "abuse," Snowden criticized - even though corporations would argue that their practices are legal.

No summit of net activists

It seems contradictory at first that the tech giants Snowden denounces are numerous at the Web Summit - companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Huawei. According to the organizers, 70,000 people will gather in Lisbon this week, including more than 11,000 CEOs.

Europe's largest tech conference is not a network activists' summit, but an industry conference. It's about trends like flying cars, artificial intelligence and investment strategies. That the whistleblower will be the opening speaker at the Web Summit is a signal that even a conference focused on start-ups and business topics like the Web Summit can no longer exclude things like surveillance, privacy and regulation - on the contrary.

Brittany Kaiser will also be involved in several panels - she has worked in a senior capacity for the scandal firm Cambridge Analytica, now she is committed to privacy and warns against influencing dialects in social networks.

EU Commissioner for Competition Law, Margrethe Vestager, who is taking millions of penalties against corporations such as Google, is once again a guest this year. Company representatives also talk about privacy, security and regulation in the program. Only how a regulation should be implemented exactly, there is still disagreement.

An uncertain future for whistleblowers

Snowden, for example, considered the European General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO), which provides for fines for data breaches, as a "good approach" - but it was not a solution. As long as not every year fines in the maximum possible amount of four percent of the annual turnover of the respective company are imposed, the regulation was "a paper tiger," he restricted. "The companies that most threaten us are those with the most lawyers."

Although Snowden received a lot of applause from the participants at the Web Summit, whistleblowers are currently in a serious position. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is imprisoned in London, whistleblower Chelsea Manning is to be forced to testify before a grand jury.

Against Snowden is already in the US a warrant, now the Ministry of Justice has also filed against him because of the book release - the government wants to secure the revenue he earned with the bestseller. Snowden's asylum in Russia is guaranteed until next year. Recently, he said in a ZDF interview that he had asked for asylum in 27 countries, including Germany, France and Norway - so far apparently without a positive decision.