Slashdot Mirror
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
If you go to that link, mouse over the comic to see the ACTUAL actual reality of the situation 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"
It has those protections because people are so sensitive about those backward steps. Once people stop caring so much (which may have already happened with most people), those freedoms will be eroded.
Palm trees and 8
>> 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.
You must not be aware of at least six other countries then, since the US ranked 7th over-all in the 2006 State of World Liberty Index (www.stateofworldliberty.org), and one should reasonably doubt the USA has moved up the scale since.
Both Canada and Sweden have significant restrictions on what can be said in public.
They do this is the guise of protecting against "hate speech."
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.
As opposed to the complete joke that is FOIA in the US, and the Patriot Act? The various porn regulations in the US, capriciously decided on a state-by-state basis? The DMCA? Software patents? Disney and the insanely extendend copyright laws? The very strange regulations in the US about publication of encryption technologies? "Hate speech" is an understandable concern both for crime prevention, and for free speech reasons. But in my opinion as an outsider, both Canada and Sweden are noticeably better about it.
For US citizens, the McCarthy era is still in living memory, for some of us. So are the 1960's and their repression of anti-Vietnam speech. I like to think we've progressed, and the Internet is very useful for getting around the current round of restrictions. But make no mistake, they still happen, sometimes in new guises.
It's interesting that you perceive the parent post as an attack on your country, not on a general mentality.
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.
Swedish army (FRA) is snooping practically every packet going out of Finland.
BTW, Slahsdot does not have ssl connection ...
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
Wow, I can't believe you got modded up for that snibbling rant. All you did was criticize some programs way out of context as if you didn't understand them and bark about something that happened, was ended, and everyone agrees should never happen again.
The 60's are over, we have all moved on and no one things they should return. McCarthyism is long dead and will not resurrect in out lifetime and it's pointless to drag out FOIA, DMCA, Software patents and so on. The DMCA and Software patents do not limit speech, they limit what you can do with other people's speech. The FIOA is just rubbish, it's more then most countries have. And the Anti-Vietnam war speech often consisted of quite a bit of inflammatory speech and acts that provoked the other side. I mean calling soldiers baby killers, spitting in their faces, throwing pigs blood on them when they return, getting doped out of their mind and ignoring the fact that 90% of the soldiers were compelled by law to server their country during the war time. This doesn't even begin to mention the bombings by the anti war groups, the YAF who promoted anarchy and wondered why the man came down on them after they broke a dozen laws or the riots they created across the country like the big one in Detroit. Hell, a lot of the protesters provoked the other side just to get headlines when they broke and retaliated.
...where men are women, women are men, and little girls are FBI agents running honeypots...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But I find the US none the less more scary for the ways they back up this surveillance.
As a single example, can you name a single western style democratic country where the government can legally set up and maintain something like Gitmo?
And the lack of recourse, for example no or hardly no limits on the retention of data or (well communicated) ways to be informed about what agencies store about you and how to appeal.
Or the way pieces of sensitive legislation are sneaked through by tacking it to big non related bills.
Don't get me wrong, I really like many aspects of the US but when it comes to perceived security risks it's still exhibiting 'Old West' policies of 'shoot first, talk later'.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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
McCarthyism is long dead and will not resurrect in out lifetime
Absolutely correct. Communism was a somewhat defined enemy that more-or-less went away after the USSR collapsed. On the other hand, "terrorism" is a much more handy nebulous enemy that can be used to ruin people's careers, freeze their assets, prevent them from traveling, and so forth, without the pesky problem of having the enemy ever disappear. Even better, we can just round up people (including US citizens) who have backgrounds and names that sound Muslim with the choice of imprisoning and possibly torturing them for a few years without charges, sending them to a foreign country to be tortured, or just killing them.
Your right McCarthyism is dead. The various fascists in government gotten much better about how to engage in political repression of the citizenry.
I am officially gone from