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Really, how much surveillance is enough?

By on June 12, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Government, Civil liberties, Civil rights, Deep State, Democracy, Human rights, Police state, Rule of law, surveillance

Imagine mass surveillance as a line from 0 to 100. Zero is total anarchy and no control at all. One hundred is total control and surveillance of all the people, in all places, all the time.

So, where are we today? At 45? 60? 75?

Second, in which direction are we moving? Right you are, towards 100.

At which point will this become dangerous, for real? Should we say stop? Can we say stop? Is it too late to say stop? Discuss.

There are international conventions for moments like this. They enshrine our fundamental human rights. One of them is the right to privacy. The right to be left alone.

However, we constantly hear Big Government say that we must compromise, that we must strike a »balance« between security, crime fighting, copyright protection, child protection, the war on drugs, the fight against tax evasion, trafficking, terror propaganda, hate speech, the occasional outburst of moral panic – and our fundamental rights.

The only way to strike such a »balance« is to restrain and undermine citizens rights. And that must not happen. This is the red line. This is why these fundamental rights are set down in very serious European, EU, and UN Conventions.

You simply do not fiddle around with fundamental human rights.

Still, this is exactly what governments all over are doing – striking a »balance«. Taking away our rights towards the ruling political class and our bureaucratic overlords. And this is always done formally correct, within our democratic parliamentarian systems. Because there are not enough people who say No.

Considering that our fundamental human rights are there to protect the people from the state – I really think that the people ought to defend and protect them better. Because our elected representatives will not. They are not on the peoples’ side on this one. They are the state, they are Big Government. They have a different agenda.

To be overly clear: This is about the state taking away your protections against… the whims of the state and its functionaries. This is very bad.

Furthermore, we can not know who might rule the state tomorrow. Please, learn from history. Don’t put dangerous tools of control and mass surveillance in the hands of dangerous people.

All of this must end now – or we will no doubt slide into a more authoritarian society.

/ HAX

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Theresa May should blame herself, not the Internet

By on June 5, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Government, Civil liberties, Civil rights, Deep State, Democracy, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Human rights, Internet, Privacy, Rule of law, surveillance, UK, War on Terror

To nobody’s surprise also the London Bridge assassins were known to the authorities. One of them has been in a tv-documentary about jihadism. And he was reported trying to convert children he met in a park to Islam. According to himself, he would be prepared to kill his own mother in the name of Allah.

Responsible for the authorities that are supposed to handle things like this was – between 2010 and 2016 – now Prime Minister Theresa May.

Today her only comment is that she would like to censor the Internet.

Censoring information and maximizing surveillance of the people is not the way to defend democracy. That would rather be to support the terrorists strive to destroy our open and free society. And it would do very little to stop religious radicalization.

To Theresa Mays defense, it should be said that it is not all that easy to know what to do. You can hardly lock people up who have not (yet) committed any crime. You cannot jail people because of their skin color, their cultural background, their faith or their political beliefs. And you should not punish entire ethnic groups because of the deeds of a few.

There must be better ways to defeat terrorism.

/ HAX

A few links:

London Bridge terrorist ‘was in Channel 4 documentary about British jihadis’ »

Theresa May Blames The Internet For London Bridge Attack; Repeats Demands To Censor It »

‘Blame the internet’ is just not a good enough response, Theresa May »

Tim Farron warns of win for terrorists if web is made surveillance tool »

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G7 Group unite to limit free speech

By on May 26, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Data, Big Government, Censorship, Civil rights, Deep State, Democracy, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Global Politics, Human rights, Internet, Police state, Rule of law, social media

Dear all,

Please take notice that the G7 meeting just decided to beef up censorship and control of the Internet.

If you make censorship possible at all – sooner or later it will be used by sinister minds.

Please – do not limit the freedom of speech. We cannot silence or put people in prison, simply because we do not agree with whatever they are saying. (Unless they are a direct threat to other people’s immediate security. And if so, only after a fair trial respecting fundamental human rights.)

Giving Big Government and Big Data control over the freedom of the word – that must not happen.

/ HAX

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Open letter to the EU on German »NetzDG «

By on May 24, 2017 in Censorship, Civil rights, Democracy, EU, Free Information, Germany, Rule of law, social media

This bill asks social media companies to take down content, including perfectly legal material, that social media companies like Facebook can arbitrarily label as “hate speech”, “fake news”, “pornographic content”, among other categories. In addition, the draft law de facto imposes filtering of content, despite the fact that such technology cannot understand context and will, therefore, inevitably lead to still more legal content being deleted. The basic aim of the bill is, of course, well-intentioned. However, the way this bill is drafted appoints social media companies as arbiters of legality and “the truth”. Furthermore, this bill breaches EU law, which establishes that all restrictions to fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, must be provided for by law, necessary and proportionate (Article 52 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union). In addition, EU law also prohibits imposing general monitoring obligations on companies. If adopted, this unprecedented law would serve as a bad example for other states, including countries with serious democratic deficits.

EDRi » EU action needed: German NetzDG draft threatens freedom of expression »

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Ecuador on Swedens unfair treatment of Assange

By on May 15, 2017 in Assange, Deep State, Rule of law, Sweden

Ecuador has written to the Swedish government complaining of a “serious lack of progress” in the investigation involving a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Radio Sweden: Ecuador concerned by Sweden’s “lack of progress” in Assange case »

Radio Sweden: Assange lawyer calls for Sweden to drop charges after US statement »

BBC: Julian Assange: Ecuador ‘concerned’ over lack of progress »

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UK: AI to decide who gets bail

By on May 11, 2017 in AI, Big Brother, Civil rights, Human rights, Law enforcement, Rule of law, UK

Get arrested in Durham, England, and artificial intelligence could help decide whether you’re held in custody or sent home—but it’s not yet clear if the algorithm is more accurate than police officers when it comes to assessing whether someone is likely to reoffend.

So, basically, if someone will be detained or not is to be decided by the behavior of others.

Vice Motherboard: An AI Will Decide Which Criminals in the UK Get Bail »

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EU AVMSD: It’s not censorship to censor legal content

By on April 27, 2017 in AVMSD, Big Brother, Censorship, Civil rights, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Rule of law, social media

The EU is in the process of updating the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD).

As one could expect, this opens the floodgates when it comes to regulating and censoring content such as video (and even animated GIF:s) on a number of platforms. This includes otherwise legal content.

Today the EU E-Commerce Directive gives service providers and platforms some reasonable protection. EDRi explains…

That Directive protects freedom of expression by ensuring that internet companies are not unduly incentivised to delete content. It does so by limiting liability to situations where they fail to act diligently upon receipt of a notice of the illegality of the content in question.

But with the revised AVMSD things might change…

The Council and the Parliament want a wide variety of content to be regulated – anything that (based on the wisdom of the provider, in the first instance) might impact the physical, mental and moral development of minors. At the same time, video-sharing and (some) social media platforms are expected to restrict content that is an “incitement to violence or hatred” by reference, for example, to sex, racial or ethnic origin, disability, age, or sexual orientation.

The content that the providers will be required to regulate is not, or not necessarily, illegal. As a result, it is argued that this privatised regulation of freedom of expression does not breach the E-Commerce Directive, because the obligation is to regulate content. In short, restriction of legal content is not a breach of rules that cover illegal content.

So… according to EU logic, it’s not censorship if you censor legal content?

The Council also wants video-sharing and social media platforms to regulate live-streamed video.

This revision is turning into a mess. And for once it’s not the copyright industry that is pushing the changes. It’s politicians – aiming to regulate what you can or cannot say (or even joke about).

If this becomes law, platforms like Youtube and Facebook will have to introduce new terms and conditions narrowing down the scope of what is acceptable for users to upload. Doing so, they most certainly will be overly cautious – to stay on the safe side when it comes to EU regulation.

It all boils down to the EU – once again – pushing private companies to use their terms and conditions to limit in other ways legal free speech.

EDRi: AVMS Directive: It isn’t censorship if the content is mostly legal, right? »

/ HAX

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