The enemy stands at our gates

Twitter, TOR, encryption and P2P-solutions for safe communications have been important tools for democracy activism in many far away countries. And now we in Europe must realize that a free and open Internet might be of the utmost importance–for exactly the same reason–for us.

Government is getting more and more non-transparent. War on terror is eroding democracy. War on drugs is wearing down the rule of law. The close cooperation between some European countries and the NSA is undermining our civil rights.

And in some places authoritarian tendencies are now being hailed to become official policy. For example in Hungary, where prime minister Viktor Orbán recently declared that the era of liberal democracy is over. Now he points to countries like Russia, Turkey, Singapore and China as successful role models.

This is serious stuff. We didn’t stop the ruling political class from obtaining very strong and far reaching tools for mass surveillance. And now–an EU nation is actually deliberating to leave the road of democracy and civil liberties.

Actually, most tools for surveillance and censorship that are used to control people in dark places are not created exclusively for those countries. It is the default configuration for practically all our telecoms systems, placed there on request from our own police forces, our own intelligence bureaucrats and with the blessing from our own politicians.

And then, suddenly the political system changes towards authoritarian and totalitarian standards.

Oups.

We urgently need to reinforce our systems for encryption, anonymity and safe communications. The enemy stands at our gates.

/ HAX

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One Response to The enemy stands at our gates

  1. HAX July 31, 2014 at 7:03 pm #

    The whole Orbán speech is here:
    http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp
    As usual he is all over the place, some wine, some water. But there is no doubt about him going to some dark places.

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