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

1989 was a year of disruptive change. The Berlin Wall came down, promising hundreds of millions of people an end to oppression, mass surveillance and restrained markets. The same year the World Wide Web (the http protocol) was born, bringing us all new ways of communication, cooperation and creativity.

The irony of it all is that Big Government and Big Business don’t approve of a free and open internet. So they try to regulate, to hinder free flows of information, to spy on people and to suppress the free market.

— o —

When scientists at Cern launched the WWW (http) they decided not to patent it–but to hand it over to all of mankind. This is the reason we have one common, global network today–instead of a compartmented Internet run by different companies.

Suddenly everyone could share information on a global scale. And information is power. This is where trouble begins. Those in power are not interested in letting go.

Big Government gets panic-stricken by the prospect of losing control. And Big Business (especially in the information monopoly industry) dislike change and fear a truly free market.

When these interests meet, it is a perfect marriage. Governments want control (and covert access to information). Big Copyright wants laws to protect them from technical progress, an ever changing market, new competition and–ultimately–from their own customers.

Big Government and Big Business do not want information to be free. The circle is closing.

So we get mass surveillance. We get laws restricting flows of information and free speech. We get governments going after people exposing the truth. We get limitations of competition and free enterprise. We get special interests manoeuvrering around the democratic process. We get regulations replacing free markets and spontaneous order. Back to the future.

This is the crossroad where we stand today. Should we allow Big Government and Big Business to build new walls? Or should we use technology, encryption, disruptive tools like Blockchain, openness and political activism to defend a free and open society?

Because this fight is not just about the Internet.

/ HAX