National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers said Thursday that “encryption is foundational to the future,” and arguing about it is a waste of time.
The Intercept: NSA Chief Stakes Out Pro-Encryption Position, in Contrast to FBI »
Author: HAX
Henrik “HAX” Alexandersson is a Swedish writer, thinker and political evangelist. Between 2009 and 2014 he worked in the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party.
Sweden to censor the Internet?
Is Sweden to join the likes of Turkey, China and Cuba?
It turns out that the Swedish government is looking into the possibility to censor non-licensed online gambling sites.
The pretext is the health and safety of the Swedish people. But the real reason is rather glaring: Money.
The state-owned national gambling company, Svenska Spel, sends a lot of money to the treasure. But that’s just the beginning. Let’s follow the money.
The Social Democrats, who are in government at present, are also the owners of one of the few licensed Swedish gambling companies, A-lotterierna. From this, the party pockets some five million euros a year.
Furthermore, the Swedish foreign minister — Margot Wallström — was recruited from a senior policy position at another licensed gambling company, Postkodlotteriet. This company has been sending millions of euros to the Clinton Foundation. Just between friends.
So, of course, the Swedish government doesn’t want the Swedish people to go to other, foreign gambling sites. The money should stay in the country, preferably in Party hands.
This is preposterous.
So the idea, now being aired, is to block access to all non-licensed gambling sites. (And there are quite a few in the world.)
Opening the doors for Internet censorship — what could possibly go wrong?
I can imagine the ruling political class could fancy blocking quite a few sites that annoys it, if that option becomes available.
Swedish Internet censorship is still under consideration. Now, the civil rights movement will have to sound the alarm and try to stop the idea before it reaches Parliament.
The Swedish government also has a plan B: To block payments to non-licensed gambling companies.
That also is a terrible idea, but in a different way.
/ HAX
Mass surveillance drives writers to self-censorship
Writers are important. Facts or fiction — they are supposed to give us new insights, push boundaries and question those in power.
So it’s quite alarming that one in six US writers has “avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance”. Another one in six has seriously considered doing so.
(This is from a report, post-Snowden from Pen America. Via Robin Doherty.)
Literature defines our society. And now mass surveillance is defining literature.
We will never know what books, pieces and reviews that never got written because of Big Brotherism. Or what speeches that never were given. But we do know that this will make humanity and society intellectually poorer.
And it’s not just here and now. Culture is a process where you often build on earlier works and insights. Self-censorship will multiply its effects over time.
Mass surveillance has an undeniable chilling effect on a free and open society.
/ HAX
VPN providers vs. Netflix
“VPN providers have unanimously condemned Netflix’s crackdown on subscribers who use so-called unblocking services. Several VPN companies have announced counter-measures, while others raise the issue of Net Neutrality, suggesting that there are better ways to tackle abuse.”
Torrentfreak: VPN Providers Condemn Netflix Blocking Crackdown »
Ellsberg on Snowden
Free flow of information is a facilitator of democracy
During the cold war, the Soviet Union deployed radio jammers in the bay of the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia. The purpose was to limit people’s access to Finnish television in the then Soviet Baltic states.
It didn’t work. When Finnish television aired the soft porn movie Emanuelle, the streets of Estonian capital Tallin were empty. And after every episode of Dallas, people in northern Estonia kept friends and relatives in other parts of the country up to date with the doings of JR & Co by mail. (There is a very interesting and amusing film about this, Disco and Atomic War.)
When the Berlin Wall fell, people in the GDR had a rather good picture of life in the west from radio and television, transmitted from the BRD and West Berlin. And they knew that the world was watching and supporting the change that was going on.
Free flow of information is a facilitator of democracy.
Today, we have the Internet. It’s global, it’s instant and even in places where the regimes try to build digital walls, there are often ways to connect to the global network.
The Internet is as important for people who live under political and religious oppression today, as radio and television were during the cold war.
With access to strong encryption and other tools, the Internet also allows people within such countries to communicate in a relatively safe way with each other. This is essential to build a democratic opposition, enable activism and build alternate structures.
It has turned out that it is very difficult to introduce and uphold democracy by military means. And the Arabian Spring shows that freedom and democracy cannot be won overnight. It is a frustratingly slow process, that frequently backfires. But to succeed it is essential that people in totalitarian and failed states can find support, inspiration and good examples from us in the (relatively) free world.
The fight for a free and open internet is not only about our freedom and privacy. It’s about a democratic and peaceful world.
“Just giving people information isn’t enough”
But just giving people information isn’t enough; unless you give them an opportunity to do something about it, it will just make them more apathetic. So the second part of the site is building tools to let people take action: write or call your representative, send a note to local papers, post a story about something interesting you’ve found, generate a scorecard for the next election.
EFF on the upcoming book on Aaron Swartz — The Boy Who Could Change the World.
ECHR on mass surveillance
Routers, a tool for Big Brother?
Routers, for example, capture ‘chatter’ from smartphones, tablets and wearables, including successful and failed attempts to log onto a network, as well as the time they attempted to connect.
In addition, routers capture a media access control (MAC) address from mobile devices, which are unique identifiers for each phone, laptop or tablet that try to connect to the network.
EFF @ 32c3: Crypto Wars Part II
Here is an interesting video from the 32c3 congress in Hamburg in December: Crypto Wars Part II — The Empires Strike Back.
Speaker: Kurt Opsahl, EFF
https://youtu.be/BweBCNBxJxM
Description:
Governments around the world are seeking to put a stop to secure end-to-end encryption, from the UK’s Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, to Australia’s Defence Trade Controls Act, to India’s draft proposal to require plain text copies of all secure messages, to the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation’s public pressure on global companies like Apple and Google to weaken their security and provide law enforcement access to plain text content.
Yet it is impossible to give these governments what they want without creating vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors. Moreover any attempt to prevent people from writing and publishing strong encryption without backdoors conflicts with the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This presentation will address the history of crypto wars, update the audience with the latest information on government proposals from around the world, and discuss how we can fight for a future that will allow for secure communications for everyone. The discussion will also include information about EFF’s effort to protect and promote strong encryption, including the Secure Messaging Scorecard, Encrypt the Web report and the Who Has Your Back reports.
The presentation will explain how the unintended consequence of these efforts to provide law enforcement unfettered access to communications for users’ privacy and the security of the Internet far exceeds the benefits that would be gained. The proposals are often made in the name of protecting national security, but are likely to have severe economic, political and social consequences for these nations and their citizens, while doing little to protect their security. Contrary to these government proposals, encryption has a critical role to play in national security by protecting citizens against malicious threats. The harm to the public that can be presented by lax digital security has been illustrated too many times: weak or flawed cryptography led to vulnerabilities such as Logjam and FREAK that compromised the transport layer security protocols used to secure network connections worldwide. Encryption is not only essential to protecting free expression in the digital age – it’s also a critical part of national security.
This presentation will address the history of crypto wars, update the audience with the latest information on government proposals from around the world, and discuss how we can fight for a future that will allow for secure communications for everyone. The discussion will also include information about EFF’s effort to protect and promote strong encryption, including the Secure Messaging Scorecard, Encrypt the Web report and the Who Has Your Back reports.