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This week EU justice and home affairs ministers met in Riga. Associated Press reports…

Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters in Riga that the EU needs to deepen cooperation with the Internet industry “and to strengthen the commitment of social media platforms in order to reduce illegal content online.” (…)

“We are now taking this cooperation further by deepening dialogue … in order to develop concrete, workable solutions,” Avramopoulos said.

So, basically they repeat what they said at their emergency “look as if you know what you are doing” meeting in Paris.

But what does it mean? It’s totally unclear. So, the ministers are dropping the ball in the lap of their national leaders at the next EU summit. Who, probably will pass it on to the EU-US security summit in February. Maybe the US security apparatus will have an idea or two…

Much is at stake: A free and open Internet. Freedom of speech. Religious freedom.

We might have reached a point where politicians have run out of symbolic political gestures. If so, it’s dangerous. Now, all they have left is going after our human and civil rights.

/ HAX

After Spanish and German newspapers unsuccessfully tried to get Google to pay for publishing snippets of text from articles when linking to them–the EU might be picking up the idea.

In Spain and Germany Google simply stopped linking, resulting in the newspapers quickly withdrawing their claims. But in Spain there has since been a discussion about forcing Google to link–and to pay for doing so.

Now European newspaper publishers seems to have hooked the European Commission on the same idea.

The concept is plain stupid. It fails to understand the dynamic of linking on the net. It would distress the very nerve system of the Web.

And it would stop inovation and new entrepreneurs dead in the tracks.

Google might be able to pay newspaper publishers, if forced. At the same time that would give Google a de facto monopoly on linking to newspaper articles. No new or small companies would have the economic muscles to do the same.

This is yet another issue that we need to watch, closely.

/ HAX

Update, here we go…

Some newly released documents from the Snowden-files indicates that British GCHQ targets journalists. It starts with journalists communications being trawled in during a wider operation in 2008. The Guardian reports…

Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency.

But this is not only done in connection with wider operations. Journalists are being specifically targeted.

New evidence from other UK intelligence documents revealed by Snowden also shows that a GCHQ information security assessment listed “investigative journalists” as a threat in a hierarchy alongside terrorists or hackers.

One restricted document intended for those in army intelligence warned that “journalists and reporters representing all types of news media represent a potential threat to security”.

In a democratic society, the press has an important role to scrutinize what is going on in politics and in the administration. Media freedom is important if we want a reasonably correct picture of current events, for journalists to be truly investigative–and for all of us to be able to properly analyse what our elected representatives are up to.

So, what can we conclude from government surveillance of the media?

The obvious answer is that politicians (and bureaucrats) do not want to be held accountable for their actions. They want to be able to conduct secret policies in the shadows. They fear the truth.

But we cannot have that in a democratic society. If we are not allowed to know what the political ruling class and their little helpers are up to–elections becomes pointless.

/ HAX

The Guardian: GCHQ captured emails of journalists from top international media »

Monday, British PM David Cameron passed yet another red line. Now, he wants the security services not only to collect all metadata about peoples telecommunications–but also the content.

The Guardian reports…

Speaking in Nottingham, he said the intelligence agencies need more access to both communications data – records of phonecalls and online exchanges between individuals – and the contents of communications. This is compatible with a “modern, liberal democracy”, he said.

No, Mr Cameron. In a liberal democracy you do not snoop on ordinary peoples communications. In a liberal democracy you trust the people.

In a liberal democracy the state is there to serve the citizens. Not the other way around.

The whole point of a liberal democracy is that you judge people based on their actions. Treating everybody as a suspect, as a potential wrongdoer is not the liberal way to go–it is the ultimate collectivism.

In a liberal democracy you respect the individual as a free citizen. You do not treat her as a serf.

/ HAX

The Guardian » | The Telegraph » | BBC »

Update: UK government could ban encrypted communications with new surveillance powers »

Update 2: Cory Doctorow – What David Cameron just proposed would endanger every Briton and destroy the IT industry »

The PewResearch Internet Project has released a very long (over six individual, thematic webpages), very interesting, must read piece on the future of privacy.

2,511 respondents (“experts and Internet builders” including most people who are anybody in the net business) have given their view on security, liberty and privacy online.

Link: The Future of Privacy »

Here you will find the optimistic, the dystopian, the visionary, the defatist and the defiant voices. Among others.

Just a few quotes. Let’s start with Vint Cerf…

“The public will become more sophisticated about security and safety. Corporations and service providers will feel pressure to implement practices including two-factor authentication and end-to-end cryptography. Users will insist on having the ability to encrypt their email at need. They will demand much more transparency of the private sector and, especially, their governments. Privacy conventions will evolve in online society—violations of personal privacy will become socially unacceptable. Of course, there will be breaches of all these things, but some will be accompanied by serious social and economic downsides and, in some cases, criminal charges. By 2025, people will be much more aware of their own negligent behavior, eroding privacy for others, and not just themselves. The uploading and tagging of photos and videos without permission may become socially unacceptable. As in many other matters, the social punishment may have to be accompanied by legislation—think about seat belts and smoking by way of example. We may be peculiarly more tolerant of lack of privacy, but that is just my guess.”

Justin Reich at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society…

“The risks of privacy violations are too abstract and distal, the benefits of surrendering privacy too immediate and valued. A very small number of organizations will continue to battle on behalf of the public for stronger privacy protections, probably having some success against the most extreme transgressions, but businesses will lobby against protections under the banner of consumer choice, and harms against consumers will remain too difficult to communicate. This might be different if we have a Hoover-esque government transgression. Broadly, people do not care about Internet privacy. And, as youth who grow up in a culture of exchanging data for service get older, the public will, on average, care even less about their privacy and data security by 2025. If the Snowden revelations do not shift public opinion, what will?”

Barbara Simons, a highly decorated retired IBM computer scientist, former president of the ACM, and current board chair for Verified Voting…

“Unfortunately, I think the most likely scenario is that technically savvy people might be able to communicate privately, but most folks will not have that option. I hope I’m wrong… It would help if people would stop saying that privacy is dead—get over it. There is no law of physics that says that it is impossible to have privacy. We can have privacy, if that is what we as a society choose.”

Nilofer Merchant, author of The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy…

“Privacy will be reformed by 2025 by new ‘protocol’ leaders who advocate for new freedoms. Freedom in 2025 will be understood as being able to manage your data, your privacy.”

Jeremy Epstein, senior computer scientist at SRI International…

“Consumers do not care enough about their privacy to create the incentives necessary to protect privacy rights. As a result, I doubt that there will be a method for offering individual choices for protecting personal information. Consumers will continue to complain about privacy, but they will not be willing to do anything about it. We will still give up our information for a ten-cent discount on a cup of coffee or shorter lines at the tollbooth. It will be similar to the (mythical) boiling frog—we will continue to lose privacy one degree at a time, until there is none left at all.”

Niels Ole Finnemann, professor and director of Netlab, DigHumLab in Denmark

“The citizens will divide between those who prefer convenience and those who prefer privacy.”

And these are just a few of a huge number of interesting, insightful, thought-provoking responses and comments.

This is a must read piece. Really!

The Future of Privacy: Part 1 » | Part 2 » | Part 3 » | Part 4 » | Part 5 » | Part 6 »

Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge on Bitcoin. Part 1 of 3. (Youtube»)

Bitcoins, Blockchains and crypto currencies still are something new for most people. Bitcoins might be quicker and cheaper to use than banks and credit cards. But it will take some time before they are used in Mr Smiths everyday life.

Still, Mr Smith will be very lucky to have the Bitcoin option–some day.

The US Dollar might be strengthening for the moment. But the underlying problems with the US economy are still there. It’s not in balance. And the system as such is not a sound free, self-regulating market.

In Europe, with its common currency, it’s even worse. The ECB is kicking the can down the road, trying to stay clear from new difficulties. But the system–binding the value of money in disconnected economies to each other–is doomed. This will cause new crises until the day EU manage to centralise all economic power to Brussels and Frankfurt. And then, that centralisation will kill off the economy.

The Russian Rubel is weakening. And it’s very difficult to predict where the Chinese economy is going.

Gold might be an alternative. But it has to be traded, stored and eventually turned into some fiat currency anyhow.

Then we have Bitcoin: A virtual currency with a relatively controlled expansion of its volume. Without government interference. And, in many ways, more secure than state fiat money.

It doesn’t have to be a doomsday scenario. It doesn’t have to be the obliteration of the dollar or the euro. And it’s not even about the future.

If people in Cyprus would have had their savings in Bitcoins–instead of euros in the bank–it wouldn’t have been possible for the government to partly confiscate them the last time the euro crisis hit the country. If nothing else, people should learn from this that their money are not safe in the bank and that their fiat money is not protected by the state.

When the next crisis hits a currency (and it will happen, over and over again)–Bitcoin might be the only reasonably safe and useful alternative. It might be the only feasible option for most people. It might be what saves us when politicians, bureaucrats and banksters fucks it all up, again.

/ HAX

Today Stockholm’s appeal court has rejected a demand to lift the arrest warrant against Julian Assange. This leaves him in limbo in Ecuador’s London embassy.

There is much to be said about the Swedish case against Assange. (It’s very thin.) One could speculate about the risk of Sweden handing him over to the US. (There might be a risk, but that is also the case in the UK.) But let me focus on something else: The Swedish prosecutor in this case, Marianne Ny.

Ny has stubbornly refused to go to London to interview Assange. She refused to do it when it could have been done at the Swedish embassy. And she refuses to do it now, at the Ecuadorian embassy.

Ny has claimed that prosecutors don’t travel abroad to interview people. She has claimed that it is too expensive. And she has presented the rather odd argument that Assange might not want to answer her questions anyway.

Recently the UK Foreign Office said it would “welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy and would be happy to facilitate such a move”. Link »

And today the Swedish appeal court made a special point about the prosecutors’ failure to examine alternative avenues of investigation. Link »

One could suspect that prosecutor Ny is acting in line with the interest of those who think that the best place to have Julian Assange tucked away is in limbo at the Ecuadorian embassy.

And one thing is for sure: Prosecutor Ny is not telling the truth when she claims that Swedish prosecutors do not go abroad to interview people.

A year and a half ago–when I worked in the European Parliament–I had a Swedish prosecutor, a Swedish police inspector, two members of the Belgian Federal Police and one (rather poor) translator barge into my flat in Brussels. At 7 o’clock in the morning.

The reason was a rather mundane tax dispute between me and Swedish authorities.

They looked around in my apartment (and impounded some letters from the Swedish tax authorities to me!), then invited me to a “voluntary” interview at the Belgian Federal Police headquarters the next day (where I was refused to have a lawyer present).

This clearly demonstrates that Swedish prosecutors happily do go abroad, even for minor cases (especially when it includes visiting an exciting foreign city).

It also demonstrates that Swedish prosecutors do not care care a bit about costs. The price tag for this whole operation, with international police assistance, must have been enormous. And absolutely not proportionate, taking the amount of money in my tax case into consideration. (If they had sent me a letter, I would happily have travelled to Stockholm to meet with them.)

This is how Swedish authorities act in a rather insignificant case about taxes. It makes it even more remarkable that they refuse to move at all–when it comes to an high profile case as that of Julian Assange, with its high level political and geopolitical implications.

Prosecutor Marianne Ny should be removed from the Assange case. (Especially as Chief Prosecutor Eva Finné already dismissed the whole case back in August 2010, before Ny suddenly entered the scene to reopen it.)

/ HAX

Government mass surveillance has vitalised efforts to make the Internet more secure and anonymous.

Today EFF announced “A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web”. And Wired reports “Whatsapp Just Switched on End-to-End Encryption for Hundreds of Millions of Users”. At the same time Blockchain technology is being used not only for virtual currency, but also for projects like safe cloud computing.

Every day now, we see “the Internet” fighting back.

At the same time this will raise the stakes. Governments around the world are not amused. Many police-, intelligence- and surveillance authorities demand back doors or a ban on encryption all together.

Needless to say, the latter will not happen. In many cases such a ban would be impossible to enforce. And a large portion of private (and public) business relies on encryption to be able to conduct their business.

Some countries have tried. In a piece in The Register way back at 1999  we can read the following report from France…

“Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term. Right now, apart from a handful of exemptions, any unauthorised use of encryption software is illegal. Encryption software can be used by anyone, but only if it’s very easy to break. Many French users and businesses have complained that this is not only an infringement of privacy but makes it impossible to provide e-commerce transactions that can be trusted to be safe and secure.”

We might laugh–but the mindset of the authorities seems to be the same, even if they have to stand down in the face of reality.

In the news this week, we have the ongoing fight between Apple, Google and the FBI…

Huffington Post: FBI Director Calls On Congress To ‘Fix’ Phone Encryption By Apple, Google

Time: FBI Director Implies Action Against Apple and Google Over Encryption

Wired: The FBI Is Dead Wrong: Apple’s Encryption Is Clearly in the Public Interest

In this case, Apple and Google acts from the purest of motives: money.

They have realised that mass surveillance is bad for business, especially for overseas business. The same is true for Microsoft, Amazon, Dropbox and others.

What NSA and their international counterparts have managed to do is to (more or less) unite business and internet activists against a common enemy.

There might be reason for cautious optimism.

/ HAX