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.

A threat against freedom of association and assembly

Data retention might be used by the authorities to connect the dots between people, creating sociograms.

But it’s not only about who you talk with on the phone, text or e-mail. Data retention also includes people’s mobile positions. This makes it easy to draw conclusions about who you are meeting with, where and when.

While data retention makes it possible to determine people’s general positions, there are even more precise tools such as IMSI-catchers a.k.a. “Stingrays“. Small, portable fake cell phone base stations like these are perfect for identifying people participating in a political meeting, a rally or a debating society.

This is a law enforcement dream coming trough. But it’s also obviously problematic when it comes to freedom of association and assembly.

This equipment opens the door for wholesale registration of people’s political affiliations.

The freedoms of association and assembly are essential in a democratic society. It is a prerequisite for the existence of traditional political parties. It is necessary to make political activism possible. And it is fundamental to the people’s right to organise, protest and oppose those in power.

What intelligence organisation or government could resist using such a tool to keep track of opponents and dissidents? And if not today, what about tomorrow?

This is not only about possible government abuse of power. It can just as well be used by foreign powers. Or by criminals and terrorists, as IMSI-equipment is available on the open market. Imagine the damage that can be done. (It is possible to collect identities and print a hit-list almost instantly.)

This is not some dystopian prediction. Data retention is very real and Stingrays are most certainly already in the wrong hands. All you can do to protect yourself is to leave your mobile at home. But I guess people won’t.

/ HAX

Meanwhile, in Germany…

(T)he publishers insisted that Google’s News search was somehow illegal and taking money away from them, and thus they demanded money from Google. When Google responded, instead, by removing the snippets providing summaries to their stories, the publishers claimed it was unfair and blackmail. In short, not only do these German publishers want Google to pay them to send them traffic, they want such payments and traffic to be mandatory. (…)

If you thought the situation was over, you underestimated the short-sightedness of VG Media and the German publishers. They’ve now apparently filed a lawsuit against Google over all this, taking the issue into court. Again: this is all because Google is sending their websites traffic… for free.

German Publishers Still Upset That Google Sends Them Traffic Without Paying Them Too; File Lawsuit »

Turning friends into threats

Some weeks ago there was some attention and upset reactions about the Chinese concept of “Sesame Credits”. It’s all about what you say, read, buy and do on the Internet. Your credit status then might decide if you can get e.g. a bank loan or permission to travel abroad.

Nasty indeed. But what make the whole thing really upsetting is that your credit status also will be affected by what your friends do online. This really is a diabolic tool for “social control”. (Video»)

It is easy to believe that it is only those communists in China and such anti-democratic regimes that could apply a system like this.

But, actually, most western democracies can easily do the same thing with data retention. This is a perfect tool for building sociograms. A sociogram is a map showing who is connected to who when it comes to the internet and telecommunications. How the authorities look at you can be determined by the friends you have (and by what friends they have).

So, even if you have “nothing to hide” — you still certainly do have something to fear.

And it’s not just about data retention. The same (or even more detailed) information is collected by Facebook and Google. It most certinly can be obtained by the authorities — and is probably also for sale out there. It would be very strange if various intelligence agencies don’t already have access to this information.

In this way, Big Brotherism is breaking down trust between people in our societies. And that is a very bad thing.

/ HAX

Internets imprisoned and fallen

I feel that I ought to pay tribute to Ian Murdock, father of Linux Debian, former Sun VP and Linux Foundation CTO. And I do, by linking to this piece at ArsTechnica, painting a much better picture than I ever could:

Ian Murdock, father of Debian, dead at 42 — Former Sun VP and Linux Foundation CTO died under suspicious circumstances »

As this, according to Murdock’s tweets appears to be a suicide and me not knowing anything much about the circumstances, my first thought was to leave it there. But the Internet led me on. Apparently there had been some confrontation with the police. (Murdock’s tweets ») And that is a red flag.

Back to Ars Technica:

On Monday at 2:13pm Eastern Time, Murdock apparently posted that he was going to kill himself:

» I’m committing suicide tonight…do not intervene as I have many stories to tell and do not want them to die with me #debian #runnerkrysty67 «

Also on Monday, Murdock wrote a string of posts that indicate he had a confrontation with police. Inquiries to the San Francisco Police Department by Ars went unanswered. Update: Public records indicate Murdock was arrested in San Francisco on December 27 and released on bail, but no details were available on the charges.

Of course, I know nothing about the circumstances. And I shouldn’t speculate. But the story of Aaron Swartz falls into one’s mind. He was a champion for a free and open internet, who actually managed to accomplish things and who stopped harmful political bills. He was prosecuted in a very strange federal case of possible copyright infringements and faced $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison. He declined a plea bargain and shortly after that he killed himself. (Also see the documentary: The Internet’s Own Boy The Story of Aaron Swartz ») There are some disturbing similarities with the Murdock case.

But it might just be similarities. And people do fall over the edge sometimes. But standing eye to eye with the judicial system and the police definitely can push someone over that edge. Trust me on that one.

Do you remember Michael Hastings, the successful investigative reporter? His car mysteriously ran into a palm tree and exploded in LA, shortly after he had told his associates that he was on to something big, once again. And his targets were usually the darker side of government and its functionaries.

Journalist and internet activist Barrett Brown clearly was pushed into a corner by the authorities, resulting in him currently spending 63 months in federal prison. It all happened when he was working on ProjectPM, investigating outsourcing of government intelligence operations to private contractors — and the inner workings of the cyber-military-industrial complex.

Chelsea Manning is spending 35 years in prison, basically for having exposed the truth about the government’s politics and actions to the public. This imprisonment is right out offensive.

Wikileaks editor in chief Julian Assange is confined to the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where his freedom of action is quite limited. This following a European Arrest Warrant after some rather vague accusations about sexual misconduct in Sweden. And NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is stuck in Russia, after the US retracted his passport. In both these cases it’s about people who have made information public — that the people in a democracy ought to have the right to know about anyhow.

There is a disturbing pattern emerging. If you push the envelope too far, bad things happen to you.

No, I am not a conspiracy theorist. Clearly Brown, Manning, Assange and Snowden had it coming. Murdock and Swartz obviously were under harrowing pressure. And there is no hard evidence of foul play in the Hastings case, just strange circumstances. But still, it’s all very troublesome and sad.

Are journalists, internet activists and whistleblowers the imprisoned and fallen political dissidents of our time? Is the truth and a free flow of information really that dangerous to the Establishment? If so, what kind of a society is this?

Our thoughts are with Ian Murdock’s family and friends.

/ HAX

Citizens or serfs?

One way of looking at society is that it consists of free individuals – citizens – joined in a community. And in a democracy, the people elect a group of peers to manage a limited amount of things that are better handled together. But people are, in general, responsible for their own lives. This is a firm and sound bottom to top approach.

Then we have the opposite, the top to bottom point of view. Here politicians and bureaucrats are the nuclei of society. It is what they want that is important and they claim to have some sort of right to decide over other people. This ruling class can enforce its will with the help of its armed wing, the police. In this society, the people is totally subordinate to the state and its needs (and whims). This type of society is predisposed for central planning and control. And it is less resilient, as it will have many potential single points of failure.

Today’s modern western societies mainly fall into the latter category. We, the people are not free citizens — but serfs.

The concept of mass surveillance makes perfect “sense” from this perspective. You will have to control the people, supervising that it is doing what it has been told to do. And those in power often find it useful if the people fear the state, at least to some degree.

Meanwhile, governments are becoming less transparent. Ever more deals are struck behind closed doors. Democracy has become an empty excuse for rubber-stamping laws and rules that mainly benefit the system, those in power and their special interest friends.

Recently, the US took the top bottom approach to new extremes. The tax authorities, the IRS, now has the power to revoke people’s passports. If you owe taxes to the government, you can be prevented from leaving the country. What is this, if not serfdom?

The question is what to do about this development towards an ever more totalitarian society. Why are there no steadfast and reliable political forces trying to lead society right again? (Yes, I know. Libertarian political leadership is in so many ways a contradiction in terms. But what is the alternative?)

/ HAX