Category: Democracy

Big Entertainment and Big Media declaring war on VPN

TorrentFreak reports from New Zeeland…

“A pair of Internet providers who defied TV company demands to switch off their VPN services will be sued in the coming days. CallPlus and Bypass Network Services face legal action from media giants including Sky and TVNZ for allowing their customers to use a VPN to buy geo-restricted content.”

This was somehow expected. The copyright industry is very annoyed when it comes to VPN services.

There is reason to believe that the New Zeeland cases will be the start of a series of similar court cases around the world. The entertainment and media industries are essentially multinational. Most likely, this is just a pilot case.

Once again Big Business wants to shut down legitimate Internet services, just to protect their outdated business models. But they can never win. Instead, they should accept and embrace the simple fact that the Internet provides one global media market.

It is ridiculous to believe that people all over the world would refrain from watching their favourite TV series and films if VPN services where to be shut down. It would only bring new life to traditional illegal file sharing.

One must remember that people using media services via VPN are not pirating. They are paying customers – only in another country. All Big Entertainment and Big Media might accomplish by going after VPN services is to turn these paying customers into non-paying pirates.

The fact that the copyright industry refuses to adopt to a global, connected market is nothing new. This seems to be a never ending story.

But VPN is not just about light entertainment. VPN is serious stuff. It is used by companies, organisations, governments and private individuals for security and privacy reasons. It is a way to get round censorship. It is a part of the toolbox that dissidents, opposition groups and activists  use to communicate securely.

There is no way Big Entertainment and Big Media should be allowed to shut down this important instrument of freedom, security and anonymity. Instead, they must learn to adapt to the real world market.

TorrentFreak: TV Companies Will Sue VPN Providers “In Days” »

/ HAX

Agent provocateur

The Intercept has a captivating piece on the new documentary film (T)ERROR.

Apparently, the FBI has some 15,000 informants — or domestic spies — in the US. Most of them are involved in counterterrorism stings. The purpose is to to find would-be terrorists before they attack. Which might be a good idea. In theory.

In practice, however, much of these activities seems only to create a police state — where it is more important to frame people rather than capturing any actual, real terrorists. It all bears resemblance to the old East German Ministry for State Security, the Stasi.

According to the film, FBI informants often provoke or even pay people to take part in suspect and illegal activities. Thus creating pseudo crimes, that would never have taken place otherwise.

In the main case of the film, due to pure incompetence, the FBI unknowingly alerts the person subject to such an entrapment about what is going on. Eager to clear his name, this man contacts lawyers and journalists — and happens to get in touch with the film crew.

Now, this story is being told from both sides…

“The documentary then becomes a house of mirrors, with each side of the FBI’s counterterrorism operation being reflected onto the other, revealing a mash-up of damaged people being exploited by overzealous government agents, with no sign at all of anything resembling terrorism or impending danger to the public.”

This is a disturbing, tragic side of surveillance and the war on terror that is hardly ever exposed.

The US government setting up operations aimed at provoking targets that poses no real threat to society is a waste of taxpayers money, draining resources from investigating real criminals and terrorists — and might actually radicalise the persons targeted, for real, by pissing them off.

Read the whole piece in The Intercept: The FBI Informant Who Mounted a Sting Operation Against the FBI »

/ HAX

The war on truth about… truth

One common practice when it comes to surveillance is to prohibit ISP:s, telecoms operators and tech companies to disclose that there is or has been any warrants or other demands for information from the authorities. (In the US this is known as national security letters.)

Some companies have worked their way around this by so called warrant canaries. In short this means that they state in e.g. their transparency or annual report that there has been no secret warrants. If they, the next year, leave that information out — they have communicated that there has been one or several secret warrants. But in an indirect, subtle way — without breaching the actual secret warrant in question.

This practice is now going to be illegal in Australia, when it comes to the government spying on journalists. BoingBoing explains…

Section 182A of the new law says that a person commits an offense if he or she discloses or uses information about “the existence or non-existence of such a [journalist information] warrant.” The penalty upon conviction is two years imprisonment.

This making it illegal… to or not to indicate to the public that… you are or are or are not not… telling the truth. Or a lie.

Orwell would have been amazed.

Or, in plain words: The Australian government does not appreciate the truth.

/ HAX

The worst of two worlds

For the sake of argument: Let’s assume that we are stuck with mass surveillance and Big Brotherism.

Such a society can be very unpleasant and very difficult to live in.

There is a trend among politicians and bureaucrats to regulate and micro manage more and more about our lives. Today, all western countries have more laws, regulations and rules than anyone can grasp and relate to. Every day most of us break the rules. Often several times every day.

Many of these rules are irrational, moralistic, prejudiced, paternalistic, subjective, stupid, unnecessary or malicious. Some laws creates crime where there is no victim. Some are outdated. Some are simply wrong.

In a total surveillance society this abundance of rules will lead to a situation where each and every one of us might be investigated, “corrected” and / or punished. Especially people in opposition, those who don’t fit in a “one size fits all” society and those who would like to live a free life (taking responsibility for their own actions). If people in power and their functionaries think that you are annoying — there will always be a reason for them to make an example of you, as a warning to others.

For a Big Brother society to be at all tolerable to live in — it must be open minded, tolerant and liberal. It must have fewer intrusive rules and more freedom.

But that is not the direction society is going, is it?

Today we live in a society where every day, we are under more surveillance, subject to more intrusive rules and under stricter control. That is a very toxic mix.

/ HAX

Why privacy matters

Privacy is the bedrock of individual freedom. It is a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association. These principles enable inquiry, dialogue, and creation and are central to Wikimedia’s vision of empowering everyone to share in the sum of all human knowledge. When they are endangered, our mission is threatened. If people look over their shoulders before searching, pause before contributing to controversial articles, or refrain from sharing verifiable but unpopular information, Wikimedia and the world are poorer for it.

Wikimedia about their lawsuit against NSA and the US Department of Justice – to challenge mass surveillance.

Links:
Wikimedia v. NSA: Wikimedia Foundation files suit against NSA to challenge upstream mass surveillance »
Stop Spying on Wikipedia Users »

Free speech – a matter of terms and conditions?

This week we learned that Google is banning sexually explicit content from its blogging platform, Blogger. As a private company Google can have any rules, terms and conditions they want for their services. And they should and must have that right. Even so, this is problematic.

My Swedish blog is on Blogger. And I must ask myself — if Google introduce rules against sex and nudity, what will come next? Will it be OK to criticise or mock religion? Will it be OK to argue for legalisation of certain drugs? Will it be OK to use the blog to make information from “illegal” whistleblowers public?

In Bloggers terms and conditions Google states that you cannot blog on certain topics / in certain ways. Among other things they mention hate speech (a tricky definition, depending on who you ask), crude content (what about proof of war crimes?), copyright infringements (often used to curb inconvenient information) and illegal activities (a tricky one when governments are trying to keep their dirty little secrets under wraps by going after the messenger).

This is not just about Blogger / Google. Similar T&C can be found at most social networks, in agreements with internet service providers and others. This is problematic in several ways…

  • When a platform is dominant (like Google, Facebook and Twitter) their corporate policy against certain content can lead to a de facto censorship –as banned information will have difficulties reaching a wide audience by other channels.
  • It gets really scary when private companies value their relations with the government so high that they are willing to assist in going after people that officials have difficulties in blocking by legal means. (E.g. when Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Bank of America decided to give the US government a hand in cutting the funding to Wikileaks.)
  • As a user, I’m uncomfortable with having moral (and other) standards decided for me by corporate lawyers and board members personal values and hang-ups. This will give rise to self-censorship and it will inhibit creativity. And such standard may often be overly anxious and uptight as the companies tries to please everybody.

But I’m not sure what to do about this. Saying that social net platforms should accept everything that’s legal doesn’t work — as this will vary from country to country and as many jurisdictions have absurd bans on free speech. And as a blogger your purpose often is to dispute what is deemed illegal.

In the words of HL Mencken…

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Another idea might be to start alternatives to Facebook, Google & Co. A huge project, for sure. Without any guarantee for success. I fear most people simply don’t care.

This blog is a privately hosted WordPress blog, which is a solution when it comes to blogging. But the threat against free speech online goes far beyond just blogging.

This is a discussion to be continued.

On a final note: It’s puzzling that Google bans sexually explicit content from Blogger — when a simple Google picture search on such matters will produce the most esoteric results.

/ HAX

Read more: Engadget — Google’s banning sexually explicit content from its blogging platform »

The EU and a global ban on encryption

Will encryption become illegal? Will governments demand “golden keys” to commonly used encryption? If governments will go after encryption, will they make a difference between encryption used in Internet “base traffic” and encryption used by people to protect their mail and hard drives? What about apps? Nobody seems to know. All we do know is that governments would like to have access to all our communications.

Even if they have tried to keep it under wraps EU member states would like to circumvent encryption. In a leaked dokument from the informal meeting with EU justice and home affairs ministers the other week (PDF), we have it in writing…

“Since the Snowden revelations, internet and telecommunications companies have started to use often de-centralized encryption which increasingly makes lawful interception by the relevant national authorities technically difficult or even impossible. The Commission should be invited to explore rules obliging internet and telecommunications companies operating in the EU to provide under certain conditions as set out in the relevant national laws and in full compliance with fundamental rights access of the relevant national authorities to communications (i.e. share encryption keys). “

So, we pretty much know what the EU stance will be at the Global Security Summit, in the US nest week.

Interestingly, the European Parliament seems to have an opposite position. In its resolution on mass surveillance of March 2014, the Parliament states that…

[The EP] calls on the Commission to […] ensure a high level of security of telecommunication networks and services, including by way of requiring state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption of communications.

[The EP] calls for the EU to take the lead in […] rerouting of Internet traffic or full end-to-end encryption of all Internet traffic so as to avoid the current risks associated with unnecessary routing of traffic through the territory of countries that do not meet basic standards on fundamental rights, data protection and privacy.

[The EP] calls for the promotion of … encrypting communication in general, including email and SMS communication.

Apparently the European Parliament takes a very different stand, compared to EU member states.

And the Council of Europe (a parlament-like assembly with representatives from most European countries, including non-EU states) makes its position clear in a report…

“The assembly is deeply worried about threats to internet security by the practice of certain intelligence agencies […] of seeking out systematically, using and even creating “back doors” […] which could easily be exploited also by terrorists and cyber-terrorists or other criminals. […] The creation of “back doors” or any other techniques to weaken or circumvent security measures or exploit their existing weaknesses should be strictly prohibited.”

Again, this is a clear standpoint, the very opposite to that of EU member states.

To continue, we have a study from the European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment unit stating…

“The only way for citizens to counteract surveillance and prevent breach of privacy consists in guaranteeing uncorrupted end-to-end encryption of content and transport channel in all their communications.”

“The EU should invest in resilient open source implementations of different encryption specifications that can be verified and validated for correctness … providing users with unbreakable cryptographic protection. … The EU should invest in making users aware […] how [they] can reduce their digital footprint by following behavioural rules and applying encryption and anonymising principles.”

To put it simply: EU member states would love to have a ban on encryption or a “golden key”. Other relevant European institutions take an opposite standpoint — valuing and defending encryption.

But it will be the EU member states (and the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator) who are present at the Global Security Summit in Washington the coming week. And they will try to make their position global policy.

There is a way to get an encryption ban / golden key out of the summits agenda. That is to make this a public issue, to get the media involved and for people to speak out against this madness.

What we do right now will define our future.

/ HAX

Links:
• Not this again! Europe mustn’t backtrack on its support of encryption and rejection of surveillance »
• Next Week, World Leaders Will Meet to Talk About How Much They Hate Encryption »
• Council of the European Union (EU member states) PDF »
• Council of Europe (PDF) »
• UK Surveillance Consultation Suggests It Is End-Point Security, Not Encryption, That Cameron Wants To Subvert »
• In two weeks time, world leaders may decide to undermine encryption »

The real impact of surveillance

Job-seekers under surveillance can lose income needed to survive if their online activity fails to match up to job search demands. People interested in campaigning hestiate over getting involved with movements for social justice when the police count activism as akin to domestic terrorism.

It’s clear that surveillance affects a broad group of people, with real painful consequences for their lives. We’ve seen journalists being monitored, lawyers having their client confidentiality broken, victims of police misconduct being spied on and environmental campaigns infiltrated. These people are not criminals, and yet when we have a system of mass surveillance, they become targets for increasingly intrusive powers.

We also know that state surveillance stigmatises certain groups of the population, it targets communities and networks. Innocent people who share similarities with suspects, (similar Skype chat user names, nearby places of worship, physical location) fall under intense scrutiny, like having their private web cam chats examined. Mass surveillance disproportionally affects marginalized groups and fosters mistrust.

Read more at Open Rights Group: The real impact of surveillance »