Category: Big Brother

The War on Cash

Holger Steltzner in Frankfurter Allgemeine...

Beim Feldzug gegen das Bargeld geht es um mehr als das Bezahlen. Ginge es nur darum, könnte man die Leute einfach selbst entscheiden lassen, wie sie künftig zahlen wollen. Es geht um das Ende von Privatheit und selbstbestimmter Entscheidung, um Lenkung von Verhalten und um den Zugriff auf das Vermögen. Der Bevormundung des Bürgers wäre in einer solchen Welt keine Grenze gesetzt, Geld wäre kein privates Eigentum mehr. Der Übergewichtige könnte mit seiner Karte auf einmal die Kalorienbombe nicht mehr zahlen, der Alkoholiker sich die Weinflasche nicht mehr besorgen, und am „Veggie Day“ dürfte man mit seinem Smartphone kein Fleisch mehr kaufen. Der Zugriff des Fiskus auf das Konto des Bürgers wäre selbstverständlich. Und in totalitären Staaten gäbe es kein Entrinnen vor Überwachung und Unterdrückung. (…)

Andere Motive sind für den Krieg gegen Cash wichtiger, aber über sie wird weniger geredet. Hier kommen die Notenbanken ins Spiel, auch die Europäische Zentralbank, deren Präsident Draghi schon laut darüber nachdenkt, wie er am besten die Abschaffung der 500-Euro-Note kommuniziert, die der EZB-Rat noch gar nicht beschlossen hat. Ohne Bargeld wären die Bürger den Negativzinsen der Zentralbanken ausgeliefert. Davon träumen auch viele Finanzminister und keynesianische Ökonomen.

Bargeld ist Freiheit » | Google Translate »

Update: Translation to Swedish in the comments, thanks to Christian Engström.

EU: The War on Cash

Right now, the 4:th EU directive against money laundering is being implemented in the member states.

Among the stricter rules for handling cash, the directive outlaws payments in shops for more than 10,000 €. Some member states chose to go even further limiting the highest amount to 5,000 €.

Thus, making anonymous purchases of e.g. expensive IT-equipment impossible…

An EU-US Privacy Shield?

Last October the EU-US “Safe Harbour” agreement was canceled by the European Court of Justice. This agreement was created to ensure that European personal data was to be treated with care when handled by US companies. But the ECJ found that the agreement did not meet the requirements of the Data Protection Directive, because of NSA access.

ArsTechnica then reported…

“The most significant repercussion of this ruling is that American companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, may not be allowed to send user data from Europe back to the US.”

Link: Europe’s highest court strikes down Safe Harbour data sharing between EU and US »

Today the media has reported that a new agreement has been reached: The EU-US Privacy Shield.

Such an agreement has been a top political priority for the EU as well as the US — as the respective administrations have not wanted data protection to get in the way of business as usual.

But is there a real agreement? Not really. All there is, is a “framework agreement”, basically saying that the EU and the US agree to agree at some point.

Today ArsTechnica writes…

“What that means in practice is that the Commission has negotiated some breathing space to strike a deal with the US.”

“The US has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens,” EU Commissioner Andrus Ansip has declared. No further details on this, though…

Link: Last gasp Safe Harbour “political deal” struck between Europe and US »

Apparently the EU and the US have no such thing as an actual deal to show. But there is a lot of hot air coming out of Brussels and Washington.

Earlier today, before the news about an “framework agreement” from Brussels, ArsTechnica had an interview with Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who took this case to court to begin with.

“On the subject of any potential new agreement, he argues it would be no better, and that a sector-specific approach to EU-US data transfers would be preferable. “If this case goes back to the ECJ [European Court of Justice]—which it very likely will do, if there is a new safe harbour that does not meet the test of the court—then it will fail again, and nobody wants that,” he says.”

Link: Why Safe Harbor 2.0 will lose again »

Apart from the EU and the US having agreed to agree — everyone seems to be just as much in the dark as before. (There is also the hidden agenda of mass surveillance and intelligence cooperation that led to the end of “safe harbour” in the first place, to be taken into consideration.)

I suppose the new agreement, when it is finalized, will end up in the European Parliament for final approval. Then, if not before, we should know. And it is encouraging that the Parliament has been very vigilant concerning EU-US data protection issues in the past.

/ HAX

Tools of oppression

Today is January the 27:th, Holocaust Memorial Day. A day of remembrance. But also, a day to ask ourselves what we have learned from history.

One example is that records set up with the very best of intentions can be misused. From Wikipedia…

In the Netherlands, the Germans managed to exterminate a relatively large proportion of the Jews. The main reason they were found so easily was that before the war, the Dutch authorities had required citizens to register their religion so that church taxes could be distributed among the various religious organizations.

Unintended consequences, indeed. But this is exactly the kind of risks we must consider when handling personal data or rolling out mass surveillance. You never know why, how and by whom these tools will be used.

Can we trust that all future political leaders and bureaucrats will be decent people? Of course not. Can we be sure that we will live in a democracy 25, 50 or some 100 years from now? No, we can’t. Can we even take our national sovereignty for granted in the future? Sadly, no.

The only thing we can be certain of is that bad things will happen, sooner or later. So it is thoughtless to give the government tools that can be used to harm and oppress the people. And if we still do, we must make sure that we can disable them if there is a risk that they will be abused or fall into the wrong hands. Even when the change to the worse is gradual.

But that’s not what’s happening, is it? Evidently, today’s political leaders have learned nothing from history.

/ 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

 

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.

Daily Mail: Forget fingerprints, ROUTERS could soon help police solve crimes: Data collected by Wi-Fi devices can find and identify criminals »

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.

Youtube »