I really have to thank the likes of Richard Stallman and other longtime outspoken advocates of free and open source software. They sufficiently instilled the fear in me of government backdoors that allow for complete surveillance of my personal computing, including built in microphones and video cameras. I’d also like to thank Edward Snowden for vindicating them and showing the rest of the world just how vulnerable we really are.

I’ve been watching several videos from 30c3, the 30th annual Chaos Communication Conference. Let me tell you, the events and revelations of 2013 concerning government spying and the state of cryptography made for a lot of interesting talk. I’m very hopeful knowing that the hacking community at large is now fully aware of the threat matrix we’re facing and is working overtime to address it head on. The spying capabilities of the NSA and other alphabet soup agencies are no longer relegated to conspiracy theories. They are real and they are being used against us relentlessly.

Please watch this video for just a taste of 30c3, and if you like it consider watching some more talks on youtube. If there is one thing I hope you’ll take away from this speech, and others, it is that it’s time to switch to a 100% free software operating system. I choose Debian Gnu/Linux. Unlike all other non Free Software Foundation recommended distributions, it contains no binary blobs or nonfree software in any of its default repositories. There are legion of white hat hackers in the world working overtime to debug cryptographic standards, software packages, and libraries. But they cannot help you if you are running nonfree software. With that being said, enjoy the video!