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Details On Worldwide Surveillance and Filtering
An anonymous reader writes "Help Net Security is running an interview with Rafal Rohozinski, a founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative, which investigates, exposes and analyzes Internet filtering and surveillance practices all over the world. Rafal provides insight on the process of assessing the state of surveillance and filtering in a particular country and discusses differences related to these issues in several regions, touching especially the United States and Europe. In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech. However, in both places surveillance is on the rise particularly as law-enforcement agencies become more adept at working in the cyber domain."
When we do it, it's to protect the children from porn and terrorism. When the godless commies do it, it's just plain evil.
Oblig XKCD
Now and then, I announce "I know you're listening" to empty rooms.
If I'm wrong, no one knows. And If I'm right, maybe I just freaked the hell out of some secret organization.
The sad thing is, we can thwart these efforts, and we have been able to thwart these efforts for a long time. The majority of people, however, do not care as much about thwarting efforts at surveillance as they do about convenience. It is too inconvenient to carry a thumb drive with some software and crypto keys around*; the extra steps of inserting that device into a computer and running the software on it is more than most people are willing to deal with.
* Yes I know that this is not as secure as keeping your crypto keys on your own hardware, but it goes a hell of a lot further than any current methods do, and would require a lot of resources on the part of the government to break across the board (e.g. a targeted attack would work, but if they are going to the effort of targeting an individual they are going to break the crypto anyway, perhaps using the drugs+wrench method).
Palm trees and 8
http://xkcd.com/538/
Argh! This country and it's lack of privacy! Big government! I've had it with america! Land of the free indeed! I'm moving to europe!
How do the United States compare to Europe in regards to surveillance and filtering?
Certainly there seems to be more momentum these days towards regulation in Europe. This is prompted by concerns over child welfare and exploitation, and also the perceived danger from radical militant groups. Europe also tends to be more of a surveillance society, particularly the UK. In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech.
Wait... we're doing something right? Yes! WOO! AMERICA NUMBER ONE! LAND OF THE FREE!
[Making fun of myself here, I've often read articles on the sad state of privacy in the US and thought "I quit, totally moving at the next available opportunity." If I'm being honest, I would have to describe myself as a fairweather fan of the US.]
In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech.
In the US, there are big telecommunication carriers who illegally spy on American citizens, and they go scot-free. The law is a weak line of defense when the government colludes against it. When the "leaders" have set their minds on something, it's going to happen. Laws will be changed, circumvented and ignored. There must be a strong factual defense line. In the case of communication that's cryptography, privacy enhancing routing protocols, redundancy and networks in the hands of the people.
Its amazing how many state an federal police task forces just view web 2.0 sites. ;)
Sit in chat rooms, forums and social networking sites trying to connect nerds and geeks in pics to real life.
The interesting part is the push for IP to home address without warrant in Canada and no court needed sneak and peek 'try before you raid' bureaucratic options.
My view is the deep fear of random flash mobs on any given topic. The more cops can just watch, the more they can build connections into protest groups.
The problem is they are still playing from the Stasi handbook.
If you have so many people willing to face jail, Iraq fresh "cops", baton charges, gassing, tasering, FIT units, Long Range Acoustic Device (L-RAD), no fly lists for life and military fusion state and federal databases, its too late
If they want control back, do a cold war USA or West Germany.
Sedate the peasants with low wage jobs, cheap cars, short cheap holidays, cheap housing, free speech for all and the dream of a better life.
If they are chasing beads and mirrors all day, no need for tanks in the streets.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...knowing that most slash dotters are consumed with rabid anti-us sentiments, and don't have the attention span to read more than a one-liner.
The reality isn't what you imply.
The US has taken a few steps backward since 9-11 - but it still has greater protections over free expression than any other country of which I am aware.
I'm in Australia. How come I can't get the original article ?
and I command you to stop using table-based layouts!
Hey, if you can't disprove it, it must be true!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"The State of World Liberty Project was founded in 2006 by Nick Wilson, an activist and co-founder of the Libertarian Reform Caucus, an organization working to turn the United States Libertarian Party into a viable political party."
Their compiled list is nonsensical at best, and relies primarily on nebulous ratings of "economic freedom" from well known right wing political groups - like the Heritage Foundation.
Also note, that if you discount the economic figures, the top dozen or so countries are scored closely enough to lack any statistical significance.
And the economic figures are all based on taxation - since libertarians have never met a tax they liked.
Further - without being intimately familiar with the culture of each country, I could not honestly evaluate them - and it's glaringly obvious that no effort was made to do so on the site you are promoting.
So in summary, you're flinging out weak, biased data to support a conclusion you've reached without making any reasonable effort to ascertain the actual facts.
I still remain unaware of any specific country with greater overall freedom than the US.
Nothing you've posted could rationally be expected to alter that fact.
Now here is a /. that I could wrap my arms around: pointers to research, tools, and good news. The country I live in comes up no evidence of filtering whatsoever. The Psiphon open source so far only has a windows installer/instructions as far as I can tell, but I guess as a project this may grow into something we can all use for protection...hard to see it right now however...more testing needed.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I judiciously avoid terms that will make my internet experience suspect for the key word scanners. Words like Keyhole, Echelon, Einstein might cause notice of your inputs so just be care{click, dial tone}
Invenio via vel creo
...where men are women, women are men, and little girls are FBI agents running honeypots...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
How exactly does software expose government surveillance on an intermediate network you have no control over? How does anything?
The only way you know if someone is spying on your data is if someone goes public with it, and it seems pretty stupid to assume that those exposed cases are in any way representative of the actual state of spying.
I don't see any discussion of South America. There is almost no serious Internet censorship in any of the countries. Most have higher political and economic priorities over trying to be thought police of their citizens. I suspect that most of the monitoring going on is really related to true national security issues, not simply trying to control and manipulate the populations.
About a week ago Chile tried to introduce a law in to congress that would require ISPs to monitor and cancel accounts of users for P2P content. It was shot down with only 1 vote in favor in congress. Try that in the U.S. or European countries? Even if it was not constitutional, you would still see some right-wing "save the children" type try vote for it in mass and not even bother reading it.
Living in Chile
Apparently these folks have no relevant information about the United States or Canada. This after the PATRIOT ACT, Total Information Awareness, etc. I mean, nobody spies better than the USA, on its citizens and the rest of the world. By the looks of their little map, the project defines some other out there who censors, like Iran, and we over here that do not.
Their map is not complete. Both Canada and the United States have PROVEN selective censorship of "views in opposition to those of the current government, [...] related to human rights, freedom of expression, [and] minority rights." In the past decade vigilantes have pressured LEGAL resources of this type off the web because they were for boylovers. But these acts of censorship do not count. They do not appear in the annals of human rights organizations from which they obtain their data. I guess because boylovers are not human?
From the Interview:
"Banning some content, such as child pornography is of course legitimate. Other types of content, such as "terrorist content", is problematic as there is no proper legal definition and the term is open to broad interpretation."
I've said before that anti-pedophilia is more fundamental to the West than anti-terrorism, and this statement reinforces that view. Anti-pedophile censorship is viewed as "of course legitimate" while battling terrorist information is "problematic." This coming from the critic of filtering and online censorship. That different jurisdictions define child pornography in very different ways, that in some jurisdictions text, fiction, and art, and nudity is banned (see the latest censorship at the Tate museum). Even the term child pornography is question since child is defined as anyone under the age of 18. "Experts" have declared that we will be experiencing an "epidemic" of teen-made pornography using webcams. By my calculations, according to published numbers, about %15 of "child pornography" is self made webcam porn. Expect that number to rise as web connected cameras saturate our society. Why should this material be categorized with rape videos? That's just the beginning of the questions we might ask about the issue of "child pornography." The "of course" this professor treats himself to is ideological, not empirical. It sticks because nobody questions his lack of questioning.
But at least we know one thing: "of course" we're going to end up with an invasive system of Internet surveillance and censorship in the West. We don't even need to ask any questions about that. Great. This coming from the surveillance and filtering watchdog.
Nobody gives a damn about any of this because (a) railroading pedophiles into concentration camps sounds like a pretty darned good idea to many Americans, and (b) kids and teens are the targets of constant social control by their parents and schools; nobody owes kids a "normal" sex life. If 13 year olds like to cum, you just deny it, ignore it, hide it, censor it, speak out against it. And if someone is interested in watching, you prosecute it. "Of course."
From the interview:
"If we believe that openness really is a better path, then we have to make sure that we address the legitimate concerns of policy makers and law enforcement agencies by providing them with tools that are relevant to policing in the cyber domain without necessarily resorting to tactics that potentially lead to abuse - first and foremost censorship and unnecessary surveillance."
Translation: if you believe in openness, you have to support state directed censorship and surveillance, by another name. And the censorship and surveillance watchdog group will be the ones to provide the tools.
Now that's what I call interesting.
Why would the guy being interviewed go so far as recommending Psiphon for people that are living under totalitarian states when Psiphon specifically states on its website that it doesn't provide anonymity? I would think that if he was going to make a recommendation to help with people trying to get around oppressive information filters he'd also want to try to protect them, so why not suggest something like TOR?