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A free and open Internet is crucial for a free and open society

By on August 9, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Business, Big Government, Censorship, Civil liberties, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Hacktivism, Intellectual Property, Internet, Transparency, War on Terror

We live in interesting times.

There is Big Brotherism, censorship of social media, information warfare, the war on terror, the war on drugs and politicians curtailing our civil liberties one small piece at a time. Soon we might have an entirely erratic president in the White House (who e.g. has threatened to close down the Internet) in control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In Russia, it’s all war rhetoric these days. In Turkey, the failed coup d’état has lead to an even more totalitarian political climate. Nationalism, protectionism, xenophobia and authoritarianism seems to be in demand. Corporatism has a firm grip over western politics, and the democratic deficit is growing. Things are shifting.

It is easy to be pessimistic and wise to be cautious.

My hope is with free flows of information. Not top down, but between people.

Information is power. An integrated network of citizens on the Internet limits the possibility for those in power to get away with bullshit. So, politicians hate it. (And they often gang up with other enemies of free information – e.g. the law- and intelligence community, the copyright industry and practically everybody who will never miss an opportunity to throw a moralistic, self-righteous fit.)

On the Internet – people can scrutinize the power elite. Citizen journalists and activists have platforms to publish significant and delicate information – that the ruling political class would prefer to keep away from the public eye. Knowledge, facts, and information are searchable at our fingertips. Lies can quickly be exposed. Authority can be questioned in a meaningful way. Spontaneous networking knows no borders and can give people a chance to look into, understand and change politics.

A free flow of information promotes cooperation. Often in new and unexpected ways. People in different places and countries will work together, spontaneously. The academic world will blossom. Relationships will develop. Good things will happen. Progress will occur. And people will never go to war against each other again. Stability, prosperity, and liberty will be the preferred position.

That is why a free and open Internet is important.

/ HAX

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Government using private sector censorship for political objectives

By on July 24, 2016 in Big Data, Big Government, Censorship, Civil liberties, Democracy, EU, Facebook, Freedom of Speech, Google, Human rights, Rule of law, social media, Transparency, Twitter

Censorship is censorship. If you block someone from speaking freely or delete people’s content from the Internet you do censor them.

But there are different sorts of censorship.

One is when the government silences opposition, controversial voices or whatever. That is, in general terms, a violation of freedom of speech and our civil rights. That should not be accepted in a democratic society.

Another form of censorship is when Twitter censors Milo Yiannopolous, when Google censor artist Dennis Cooper or when Facebook is accused of downgrading news depending on political affiliations.

These are private companies and they choose to whom they want to provide their services. This is clearly stated in these companies voluminous terms and conditions.

So, OK – social media giants can censor people (and ideas). But should they?

The fact that Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter can censor people in a legally »correct« way in no way should protect them from being criticized for doing so.

And they should be criticized! Especially as their dominance on the social media scene is almost total. Their actions have political consequences. And they might very well have a political agenda.

(As a libertarian I run into this issue a lot. Just because I dislike something, I do not have the desire or right to outlaw it. But still, as a consumer, user or concerned citizen I am free to criticize e.g. censorship – and to loudly point out its risks and problems.)

But recently the lines are getting blurred. As I have pointed out in previous blog posts, governments (most recently the EU) are teaming up with major social media players to use the latter’s legal framework to silence voices that politicians dislike. Thus circumventing the legal system and the rule of law – and moving government censorship out of democratic control.

This is a serious, mounting problem.

/ HAX

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The DAO: When Blockchain technology outsmarts itself

By on June 18, 2016 in Blockchain, Economics, Ethereum, Transparency

Blockchain technology has gained interest far outside the Bitcoin society. Today e.g. banks, financial institutions and keepers of public records show an active interest – as the technology builds on an underlying ledger that cannot be manipulated.

Meanwhile in the Blockchain community people have developed several virtual currencies. One of them is Ethereum. Wikipedia explains…

“Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality. It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether.”

And out of the Etherum project came concepts like DAO, standing for Distributed / Decentralized autonomous organization. Back to Wikipedia…

The DAO is a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund.

The DAO has an objective to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing both commercial and non-profit enterprises. It has been instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain, and has no conventional management structure or board of directors. The code of the DAO is open-source.

The DAO is stateless, and is not tied to any particular nation state. As a result, many questions of how government regulators will deal with a stateless fund have not yet been dealt with.

The DAO was crowdfunded via a token sale in May 2016. It set the record for the largest crowdfunding campaign in history.

Brilliant, really. And extremely interesting.

Then came the “Sorry Dave, I cannot do that” moment. Wikipedia…

In June 2016, it was revealed that hackers had exploited a vulnerability in the DAO code to enable them to siphon off perhaps as much as $50million in funds from the DAO. Stephen Tual, COO of Slock.it, the company that had worked on the development of the DAO, announced that they were working with the Ethereum Foundation to modify the underlying protocol to freeze the accounts of the hackers, and also said that the DAO would be wound up as a result.

Some say the DAO was hacked. Others claim the money was stolen. But apparently someone just seems to have taken advantage of the rules inscribed in the code, initiating a fork.

Now, it becomes very technical. If you are interested in the details, I suggest you read this piece by Bloomberg View columnist Matt Levine: Blockchain Company’s Smart Contracts Were Dumb »

It will be interesting to see what happens now – if The Dao irreversible code is to be confronted with some relevant jurisdiction’s law, in court. Or if there will be a rollback, a back-dated hard fork in the ledger.

Blockchain technology is still very young and there is a lot of learning by doing. And learning the hard way.

If you inscribe functions to code that cannot be changed there are both great opportunities and risks. You need to be proactive, to foresee future problems and developments – and to refrain from functions that can be misused.

Smart contracts cannot save stupid people.

Let’s hope that people have learned from this experience for the future. Blockchain is still a great, smart concept. Ethereum is still very interesting. And, in a wider perspective, DAO is a brilliant idea. I hope it will not be derailed by this temporary bump in the road.

It’s all in the code, stupid.

/ HAX

Updates: Wired » | IBT »

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Chelsea Manning winner of Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize

By on May 10, 2016 in Civil liberties, Hacktivism, Manning, Transparency, Wikileaks

Chelsea Manning, the former Army soldier convicted of the biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, was honored in absentia Monday at a London ceremony for her role in providing Wikileaks with secret documents concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Manning, 35, was named the winner of this year’s Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize during an event hosted by Blueprint for Free Speech, a Melbourne-based nonprofit, at the London offices of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“The award recognizes the exceptional importance of the disclosures by Manning in revealing the illegal practice of torture and detention, and in increasing the public understanding of the impact of war on civilians.”

The Washington Times: Chelsea Manning honored with award, cash prize for WikiLeaks disclosures »

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The Goovernment

By on March 14, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Data, Civil liberties, Data Protection, Democracy, Google, NSA, Privacy, surveillance, Transparency

You know the saying that Google will know if you are gay before you do?

Almost the same, but a little different, can be said about the government.

The government knows who you have been talking to on the phone and who your friends are – and who their friends are. The government knows where you have been and who else might have been in the same place at the same time. The government knows when you connected to the internet, who you sent an email and the people that have emailed you. Data is stored about your every text message, and in some countries that go for the content of the messages as well.

In the UK Big Brother will even keep an eye on your web searches, if the government gets it its way.

The government knows who your friends are and what people you are trying to avoid. It can tell who you do business with and what people you sleep with. It can figure out your hobbies and your whereabouts. And it can flag you if a friend of your friend is someone the people in power do not approve of.

With Google – at least, it’s about selling you stuff, to expose you to “relevant” ads and to make a buck. (But World Domination, really?)

But with the Goovernment – it’s all about control. And power. Over you. For real.

Put one on top of the other, and it gets even more scary. (The government doesn’t need Google to cooperate in this. Much of the data is out on the market.)

All of this while government doings are getting more opaque, more secretive and more dubious.

This is not the way to do things in an open, democratic society.

/ HAX

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Citizens or serfs?

By on January 2, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Government, Civil liberties, decentralization, Democracy, Rule of law, Transparency

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

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Short-circuiting democracy the EU way

By on December 2, 2015 in Big Government, Democracy, EU, Transparency

Laws should be made in a transparent way and in a dialogue with the rest of society.

In the EU, lawmaking (directives) is supposed to meet such criteria: It often starts with a public consultation followed by a proposal from the European Commission. Member states are heard in the Council and the people’s elected representatives can amend and adopt or reject such proposals in the European Parliament. The Council and the Parliament will have to agree for a directive to be passed. A proposal can be rejected up to three times in the Parliament before it has to be withdrawn by the Commission. (It can then be re-written or withdrawn altogether.)

This is a slow process. And that is a good thing. Laws should not be rushed trough.

But the EU is an inpatient organization. Often there are special interests pushing for a directive, pressure from abroad or some other hidden agendas pushing the legislative dossiers.

So the EU is using an instrument called trialogues to speed things up. These are not supported in the treaty of the European Union. They are just… used.

The purpose of a trialogue is to speed up legislation. In this process representatives from the Commission, the Council and the Parliament hold meetings behind closed doors – negotiating for some sort of a compromise. The records are secret and often it is also a secret who attends these meetings. There is no transparency and no way to hold anyone accountable.

These trialogues are ever more common. Some years, there can be up to 700 of them. Today most legislative dossiers are exempted from the regular democratic process in the EU and settled in trialogues.

The result is that the public and the media is being kept away from the process. Civil society, activists and the academic world have no way to influence what is going on — not even if something is going terribly wrong.

Trialogues are especially common when it comes to matters concerning mass surveillance, copyright and telecommunications (such as Internet related issues). Here the power elite and special interests are particularly intent to avoid public scrutiny.

After a trialogue, the Council and the Parliament still will have to adopt or reject the proposal. But in general, it is always adopted by mildly embarrassed politicians — who know that there are back-room deals that should not be scrutinized too carefully.

When I used to work in the European Parliament, there was a joke that was too close to the truth for comfort: In the EU, first they decide. After that, there might be a discussion. And after that, in some cases people even might bother to find out the facts.

In the EU, the democratic process has been short-circuited.

/ HAX

Links:
• Civil society calls for reform of trialogues in a letter to EU Commission, Parliament and Council »
• Ombudsman opens investigation to promote transparency of “trilogues” »
• The Council challenges the right of the European Ombudsman to conduct an inquiry into secret “trilogues” (in which most EU legislation is decided) »

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