For Swedish followers: 5th July podcast #4 on Snowden, Tor, Search Engine Manipulation and some smut.
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Enjoy!
Archive | June, 2016
‘State of Surveillance’ with Edward Snowden and Shane Smith
Youtube: ‘State of Surveillance’ with Edward Snowden and Shane Smith »
Who should Police the Internet?
Privatised law enforcement undermines democracy and creates serious risks for fundamental rights, particularly for freedom of expression. Despite this, in current copyright debates, the focus is far too often on how private companies should police the internet, not on the need of a copyright reform.
Internet companies will always take the easiest option. If they fear laws, punishment or bad publicity, it’s always easier and safer for them to delete legal content along with possibly unauthorised or illegal content, just in case.
EDRi: Copyfail #3 – Google and Facebook becoming the Internet police force »
Now, please focus on Tor and its future
The Tor community is boiling with infighting as high-profile member Jacob Appelbaum have left the project — after allegations of sexual misconduct (and alleged sociopathic behavior).
I know nothing about what’s really going on. I don’t know the involved parties. And the more I read, the more muddled the whole affair seems to be.
(This has been all over the news, there are allegations, rebuttals, counter-arguments and a lot of discussion and speculations.)
My main concern is: What about Tor?
Tor is an important tool for people all over the world, who need to be anonymous on the Internet. In some cases, it’s really a matter of life or death.
No matter how you view the Appelbaum case. There is an obvious risk that all of this will derail the entire Tor project.
Having seen the Swedish and the German Pirate Parties going down in flames after infighting, I can recognize some sort of underlying tone in the Tor dispute. Conflicts in tech-oriented communities often tend to spiral out of control and reason.
This will lead to no good, believe me.
Now, please focus on Tor and its future.
/ HAX
Does Google rule the world? Really?
“The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and Its Unparalleled Power To Influence How We Think”- Robert Epstein of American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
This is really interesting, even if it in part might be dangerously close to conspiracy theories.
At least, I think that Search Engine Manipulation might be possible and very effective. But is it really done – intentionally or unintentionally? It is difficult to say, especially as all search results seems to be personalised.
Big Brotherism – the next step
A British startup has created a system for offering landlords continuous surveillance of their tenants’ online activity to determine whether they are likely to be asset risks. The system, named Tenant Assured, connects to the tenants’ social media accounts and mines their status updates, photos and private messages, feeding them to an algorithmic model, which is claimed to find potential signs of financial stress (which include posts with keywords like “loan” or “staying in”) or crime. The landlord gets an online dashboard, showing the tenant’s social connections, and a histogram of their online activity times, as well as flagging up any potential danger signs, as well as a five-factor psychometric profile of the tenant, annotated with what a landlord should look for.
Via Metafilter: Renting in the panopticon »
Main article, Washington Post: Creepy startup will help landlords, employers and online dates strip-mine intimate data from your Facebook page »
Embarrassed German intelligence official trying to discredit Snowden
German intelligence mandarin Hans-Georg Maassen of the Verfassungsschutz has told the Bundestag’s NSA committee that it is “highly plausible” that whistleblower Edward Snowden is a Russian spy.
Obviously, it is very hard if at all possible to know if anyone is a Russian spy. There are even speculations about Chancellor Merkel (who is of East-German descent). But speculations are just speculations.
And when it comes to Maassen, he has some pretty strong incentives to smear Snowden — as the whistleblower’s revelations have left German intelligence with egg on its face.
One should consider the fact that Edward Snowden did not choose Russia as his refuge. The reason he is stuck there is that US authorities had revoked his passport, stranding him in Moscow when in transit. And because all relevant western countries (including Germany) have refused him sanctuary / asylum.
If the German government were to let him into the country, Snowden could be in Berlin pretty quickly. But somehow, I presume Mr. Maassen wouldn’t be all too happy about that.
For the rest of us, it would be of great value and importance to have the whistleblower out of Russia and cooperating with western democratic oversight bodies, e.g. the Bundestag’s NSA committee.
/ HAX
Link: Verfassungsschutzchef hält russische Agententätigkeit Snowdens für plausibel »
Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Let’s Unfuck the Internet!
This is exciting…
The web is a little fucked up right now. Governments are spying on civilians, some block specific websites, and companies like Amazon have a stranglehold on the cloud services business. But what if we could create a decentralized web, with more privacy, less government control, and less corporate influence?
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, wants to do exactly that. Sir Tim recently gathered some top computer scientists in a San Francisco church at an event called the Decentralized Web Summit, where attendees brainstormed ways to make the internet more broadly distributed. The smartest technologists on the planet showed up to join the discussions including early internet architect Vint Cerf and Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.
Gizmodo: The Web’s Creator Now Wants to Unfuck It »
So, why?
“The temptation to grab control of the internet by the government or by a company is always going to be there. They will wait until we’re sleeping, because if you’re a government or a company and you can control something, you’ll want it,” he said.
The Inquirer: Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Internet has become ‘world’s largest surveillance network’ »
UK spies cannot handle all the data
“British spies may have put lives at risk because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, leading them to miss clues to possible security threats” according to documents in the Snowden files, now published by The Intercept.
A common analogy when it comes to mass surveillance is “trying to find a needle in a haystack”. Thus, having a bigger haystack might make it harder to find the needle.
Sure enough. The Intercept writes…
Silkie Carlo, a policy officer at the London-based human rights group Liberty, told The Intercept that the details contained in the secret report highlighted the need for a comprehensive independent review of the proposed new surveillance powers.
“Intelligence whistleblowers have warned that the agencies are drowning in data — and now we have it confirmed from the heart of the U.K. government,” Carlo said. “If our agencies have risked missing ‘life-saving intelligence’ by collecting ‘significantly’ more data than they can analyze, how can they justify casting the net yet wider in the toxic Investigatory Powers Bill?”
The British government’s Home Office, which handles media requests related to MI5, declined to comment for this story.
And this is not just a general opinion. There are figures.
A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications. Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.
The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial intelligence could have been missed.
“Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”
Then, there is mission creep…
Carlo, the policy analyst with Liberty, said the revelations about MILKWHITE suggested members of Parliament had been misled about how so-called bulk data is handled. “While MPs have been told that bulk powers have been used only by the intelligence community, it now appears it has been ‘business as usual’ for the tax man to access mass internet data for years,” she said.
We told you this would happen.
/ HAX
Links:
• The Intercept: Facing data deluge, secret U.K. spying report warned of intelligence failure »
• Supporting document: Digint Narrative »
• Supporting document: Digint Imbalance »
• BoingBoing: MI5 warning: we’re gathering more than we can analyse, and will miss terrorist attacks »
EDRi on hate speech, social media, EU and the rule of law
On 31 May, the European Commission, together with Facebook, YouTube (Google), Twitter and Microsoft, agreed a “code of conduct” on fighting hate speech.
In a society based on the rule of law, private companies should not take the lead in law enforcement, theirs should always have only a supporting role – otherwise this leads to arbitrary censorship of our communications. (…)
In practice, as illegal activity will be banned by terms of service, it will never be “necessary” to check a report against the law. (…)
In the code of conduct, there is not a single mention about the essential role of judges in our democratic societies. There is no mention about the enforcement of the law by public authorities. At each crucial point where law should be mentioned, it is not.