Archive | February, 2015

We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn’t to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where—if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen—we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new—and permanent—basis.

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it’s entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

Read more: Edward Snowden’s Libertarian Moment: We “will remove from governments the ability to interfere with [our] rights” »

Censorship is nothing unique to old fashioned dictatorships. There are lots of things that you are not allowed to say in todays western democracies.

In many countries you are not allowed to deny certain historic events and certain war crimes in public. Some countries have laws against blasphemy. In some you can not make statements that may be perceived as supportive for certain ideologies or militant organisations. In a few countries you may not be overly positive about homosexuality in public. In others you may not be offensive on HBTQ matters. And most countries have laws against hate speech — that are especially troublesome, as they give certain groups and individuals special rights.

Until recently, the red line was drawn where you made a public speech, published a newspaper article or distributed a leaflet or a poster. But today it has become more complicated.

Should a tweet be considered a public statement? A Facebook post? An Instagram picture? An e-mail on a mailing list? A G+ post to your personal circle of friends?

To complicate things further, the Internet knows no boarders. What is legally published in one country can be read — and illegal — in another.

With mass surveillance you must assume that the government is picking up on everything you do on your computer, smartphone or tablet. If the government wants to know what you are up to, it will know. This might lead to operations like in France recently, where the authorities have been trawling social media for people who might have defended terrorism in one way or another.

There are even cases in Britain where personal SMS/text messages have  been enough for the police to knock on the door, asking people what they are up to.

Censorship and mass surveillance is a particularly bad combination. It will create a mental Panopticon.

/ HAX

Thursday and Friday EU leaders will get together for yet another summit. There are burning issues such as Ukraine and Greece on the agenda — but also a couple of surveillance topics to watch closely.

One is EU PNR – a register on our intra-EU air travel. The idea is to collect various data about us and our travel habits, to be saved for five years.

The European Parliament has tried to block EU PNR, as it does not meet its standards when it comes to privacy and data protection. Just a few days ago the majority position was that you should not retain personal data about all air passengers in the EU — only when it comes to “a smaller target list of suspects”.

But in Strasbourg today, the Parliament adopted an notably vague resolution. From the press release…

MEPs pledge to work “towards the finalisation of an EU PNR directive by the end of the year” and encourage member states to make progress on the Data Protection Package, so that negotiations on both proposals can take place in parallel. They aim to ensure that data collection and sharing is based on a coherent data protection framework offering legally-binding personal data protection standards across the EU.

This can — or should — be read as a signal to the summit to go ahead with EU PNR. The Parliaments has just indicated that it will co-operate. This is just the kind of resolution normally adopted when EU member states applies arm twisting to the peoples elected representatives. Now, the Parliament has committed to deliver this year.

Then we have the matter of encryption. Still there is nothing from the US administration — expected to put forward its new policy on encryption any day now. But in the UK we have demands from Prime Minister Cameron, that national security agencies must be able to access all of citizens telecommunications.

This surely must be on the EU summit agenda this week. The risk, however, is if topics like Ukraine and Greece drags out — EU leaders will just rubber stamp all other prepared dossiers, like this one.

If there will be a move to sidestep encryption (and everything points in that direction) next Thursdays Global Security Summit in the US will be the time and the place. But first, EU leaders ought to coordinate.

The third point on my watch list is the role of Internet service providers and social platforms. It has been very quiet since the informal meeting with EU justice and interior ministers in Riga a week and a half ago. There it was decided to deepen cooperation with the Internet industry “and to strengthen the commitment of social media platforms in order to reduce illegal content online”.

Will this be taken to the next level by EU leaders this week? Or is regulation already being prepared in the opaque European Commission administration?

Eyes and ears, please. The EU summit kicks off tomorrow.

/ HAX