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Taking the fight against mass surveillance to the next level

By on December 8, 2014 in Big Brother, Democracy, NSA & Snowden, Privacy, surveillance

I just read Rick Falkvinges piece “You Can’t Have Consent Of The Governed Without Privacy” at Privacy Online News. He points at something very serious and all to obvious: blanket mass surveillance is incompatible with democracy.

Apart from some small semantics I couldn’t agree more. I guess you will as well.

Rick has published a lot of texts along these lines. I have too. And so have countless others. Still, the seriousness of the matter doesn’t seem to sink in with people. I guess it’s too abstract.

To some extent the same is true for the Snowden files. They are hard evidence, from inside the NSA. But still, most people seems to be unable to relate to this information.

To make people listen–and react–mass surveillance and it effects must feel real to the common man.

We need to be on the lookout for stories like this one: Looks like Chicago PD had a stingray out at the Eric Garner protest last night »

We need to find the people who have had their lives messed up by warrantless mass surveillance. They are out there and we must tell their story.

To do this we shouldn’t just look at the NSA, GCHQ and other organisations collecting information–but at their “customers”. Where do the information go? And how is it used?

In Sweden, we know that our local NSA/GCHQ partner FRA relays information not only to the military, some branches of the police and the counter espionage–but also to the government, to the political administration. But still we don’t know what kind of information or how it is being used.

We also know that the FRA has access to NSA “Spy Google” data base XKeyscore. And it is pretty obvious that it contains information about our own nationals and domestic Swedish matters. It’s at our governments fingertips. But then secrecy kicks in. We don’t know how XKeyscore is used. We don’t even know the legal basis–or where the legal mandate comes from.

This is the kind of things we must look into. Now, when we know that mass surveillance exists (told you so) we must start to find out how it is being used. That’s when it all gets really interesting. And ugly, for sure.

Mass surveillance is not “just” a fact. It is not “only” something to have theoretical discussions about. It has real implications.

/ HAX

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A never ending struggle

By on December 4, 2014 in Big Government, Data Protection, Democracy, EU, Hacktivism, Internet, Privacy, surveillance, Sweden

For some days I have been a complete political news junkie–as the latest Swedish government just went down in flames. Looking forward, naturally I have some general preferences about who should rule my country. (Even if a lame duck administration as the present one isn’t all that bad. Hopefully it will not be able to do a lot of stupid stuff.)

But when it comes to some of my favourite issues, I’m frustrated.

We have the centre-right parties (in power until September 2014)–being really bad on surveillance, ignorant at best when it comes to data protection and in the grip of the copyright industry.

Then we have the socdem-greens (that, in practice, fell from power yesterday). The Social Democrats are just as bad as the centre-right people in these matters. And the Greens are selling out on the same issues, just for the grandeur of being in government. (Come on, give the Ring back to the nice Mr. Frodo.)

The third group (causing most of the stir) are some nationalist, xenophobic and semi-populists. Again, they are just as bad. (I guess that they haven’t realised that they are a given target for government surveillance.) And in general they are occupied with nostalgia rather than issues concerning the future.

Finally we have the Pirate Party, not even in the Swedish parliament with only 0.43 per cent of the votes in the latest elections. (So I guess the general population doesn’t bother about these issues either…)

Still, the surveillance issues are important–and rather pressing. What the government does in the EU is important as we are in the process of hammering-out new European data protection rules. And an European copyright reform.

In the bigger picture a free and open Internet is essential for democracy, culture, business, science and education. Yet, in Sweden 99,57 per cent of the votes are casted on political parties more or less uninterested, ignorant or plain evil when it comes to Internet and surveillance matters.

And it seems that Sweden isn’t unique. The picture is the same in most countries.

In dark moments I think this might be just as well. There are no guarantees that politicians will do the right thing, even if they are interested. So it might be better to trust spontaneous order, peoples creativity, the market and net freedom activists to be one step ahead and to raise objections if politicians go wrong.

The problem is, politicians go wrong about the Internet, surveillance, data protection, copyright and civil liberties all the time. The fact that they are uninterested or ignorant doesn’t stop them. In most cases they just rubber stamp papers that government officials hand them, anyway. Politics is in the equation, like it or not.

So we need to apply a constant external pressure on politics. To show the way, to campaign and to hit politicians and government officials hard when they do something stupid or dangerous.

It’s a never ending struggle.

/ HAX

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LEX Integrity

By on November 17, 2014 in Big Brother, Data Retention, Privacy

TorrentFreak reports on the Swedish ISP Bahnhof and the 5:th of July foundation fighting data retention in Sweden–with free VPN for customers. Link »

More information will follow here and elsewhere at the rollout, next Monday.

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Study: Mass surveillance makes us less safe

By on October 15, 2014 in Big Brother, Privacy, surveillance

Mass surveillance does not only violate peoples right to privacy. It is not very effective, when it comes to keeping us all safe.

And–old fashioned police work, that don’t infringe on privacy in the same way seems to be more usable and effective.

This is the conclusion from a European Union-funded multidisciplinary research study. »

That seems reasonable. And if this is the case, moving resources from traditional police and intelligence missions to computerized mass surveillance will make us all less safe.

As in so many other areas of society, the authorities in question (and their staff) attempt to avoid real, hard work. It is much more comfortable to sit behind a computer screen, speculating about sociograms and illusive patterns.

But this might not really be about national security and counter-terrorism. It may be about surveillance of the general population. In that case, mass surveillance makes more sense. And in that case it is much worse, from a civil rights point of view.

/ HAX

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Mass surveillance is bad for business

By on October 9, 2014 in Data Protection, Internet, NSA & Snowden, Privacy, surveillance, US

The quote of the day comes from Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith at the Silicon Valley panel discussion on NSA surveillance, organized by Senator Ron Wyden (D – Oregon).

“If you’re a consumer or a company, you own your email, your text messages, your photos and all the content that you create. Even when you put your content in our data centers or on devices that we make, you still own it and you are entitled to the legal protection under our Constitution and our laws. We will not rebuild trust until our government recognizes that fundamental principle.”

Money talks. Mass surveillance erodes customers confidence in the tech industry. Business is lost when customers shy away from US Internet based services.

And it’s not just about business. Google’s Eric Schmidt warned about a fragmented, balkanized Internet. Wired sums it up…

“The cost will be huge in terms of shared knowledge, discoveries, and science. It will also be expensive, since the cost of running data centers in every country where they have customers may be too much for some firms to handle.”

The Civil Rights movement, Internet activists and the tech industry–now they all seems to stand together against US Government, its’ security bureaucracy and the security industry.

This might be the tipping point in our fight for a free and open Internet.

Some links: Wired » | CNet » | WP » | PC World » | The Register »

/ HAX

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