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."

Comments

Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5

[sumdumass]

Perhaps not in the form of protecting us from communists but it will undoubtedly come back in one form or another. With complacency like yours it will come back even quicker.

Not at all. There has been ample opportunity for it since then and it didn't happen. Stop being afraid of the dark. Keep your eyes open so you do not trip over something but quit being afraid.

The DMCA makes it illegal to publish an entirely open source DVD player. It effectively grants a limitless patent to the DVD CCA which controls who can make a DVD player and under what conditions. Software patents limit my ability to publish ideas I developed on my own having never heard of an obvious submarine patent that will bar me from publishing my software.

No it does not. The DMCA prevents you from publishing an entirely open source DVD player that uses other people's technology. You can make an open source player that plays DVDs that does not use their encryption. It won't play commercial DVDs until they start using the open scheme but that's not my problem. Also, software patents do no stop you from publishing your ideas. They stop you from publishing other people's ideas. I don't agree with them, but your acting like you are the one who developed the tech which is patented and your not otherwise a software patent would be a non-issue for you. And yes, I have heard of submarine patents. Those are problems with standards boards more so then with patents in and of themselves. But they do not stop you from publishing your software, they stop you from creating and publishing software using their patented technology. In short, everything you just complained about revolves around you not thinking it's fair that you can't take someone elses ideas and products and copy them.

What makes you so sure the protesters did that? COINTELPRO was an FBI program in which agents infiltrated protest groups and started riots to make the group look bad, and to give the authorities an excuse to interfere with the group's free-speech rights.

In video footage of protests, it's clearly the entirety of the protesters not just some agents. Even if agents were instigating the violence, the rest of the crowd was happily joining in. If you help rob a bank because a FBI agent starts doing it, you are no less of a bank robber then if you had taken the actions entirely on your own. If you haven't watched the footage were in the middle of it then I'm not sure why you feel competent enough to talk about it. Christ, it's only some of the most documented times in the recent history of the US. And if you were part of it or seen the footage, then you wouldn't have made the statement you did.