Slashdot Mirror
Cybercrime Treaty Pushes Surveillance Worldwide
bs0d3 writes "As part of an emerging international trend to try to 'civilize the Internet', one of the world's worst Internet law treaties — the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime — is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention's intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Leaving out constitutional safeguards, gag orders in place of oversight, and forcing service providers to retain your data may all be coming soon."
There is no better argument for encrypting everything that can be encrypted than this.
Yeah, sure, most governments aren't going to do anything with that data NOW, but once they have it, they have it forever. And political climates can and do change. It is not inconceivable that the US will elect Big Brother bread-and-circuses socialists who model their ideas on the surveillance state of Britain, or religious whack-jobs who will simply say "God's law is higher than Man's law" and start criminalizing homosexuality, abortion, titty-pictures and religions that aren't Christian, or frothing-at-the-mouth Greenies who formalize in law the already-existing mapping of "skeptic" to "heretic". And they will be sitting upon a treasure-trove of information to identify who needs to be put in their place.
That's what ideologically-driven governments do. All of them. In the name of "social equality", God, or "global warming", it's the same.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Business for Proxy servers will be going up. The more governments intrude, the more the people will fight back.
Do we expect anything less? Who couldn't see this coming from a thousand miles away? So let's start hearing some good news about real ad hoc networks that can actually keep us out of reach.. And please, if you all are gonna squeal about using encryption over their wire, save your breath. It won't work
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Orwell will start rolling again soon enough...
This trend will only get more pronounced as population rises and Internet connectivity increases. The more people there are, the more impact every individual's actions have on everyone else, and therefore the greater the incentive everyone faces to put limits on what everyone else can do.
Many people love having freedom, but hate their neighbor's freedom (whether they realize it or not). This makes us all easy prey to the aristocracy.
Besides, anything that empowers the masses to the detriment of the aristocracy will be locked down. That is how the world has always worked. Human nature doesn't change, and the Internet won't make it change.
As a Canadian, I have no intention of going into countries where I might disappear and be tortured to see what I might know (or just because they enjoy torture) - you know, countries like Chad, Angola, and the US.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Nail flyers to telephone poles... while wearing a skimask... that you knit yourself... out of the range of camera--aw fuckit. Just shoot the sonsabitches like in Libya. More likely to lead to a permanent fix.
when the backdoor mandated by government is built right into every piece of equipment.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
And it is so with the cooperation of a public that doesn't give a shit. I've watched the internet go from something that only ran FTP and a few other basic protocols, to what it is now, and what the Eternal September brought is a massive influx of people who don't know the first damn thing about how the internet works (it's magic!) and don't give a shit about it.
An aware population can defend the internet against tyranny, but an tyrants will always beat an apathetic population. That's what we have. Try to argue that massive monitoring is a bad idea, and people look at you like you're paranoid. It isn't until things become unbearable that the vast majority will see the light, and by then, it's too late.
It's xkcd's wrench again. (paraphrased). "Hi. Here is a wrench. I will beat you on the head with it in 4 4 time until you give me the passkeys."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As usual, nothing posted here that is of any use to anyone ...
the trouble with hardware otp is that there is no passkey except the hardware itself (and the otp in it).
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
but I guess that my skull will still be crushed so if I am not a terrorist (also known as freedom fighter) who value ideals more than is own life that is a bad thing...
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
I know serious questions usually aren't asked in slashdot comments, but I do have one. If the internet keeps going this way, and all the things that made it great are slowly taken away, what is the next technology that the original early-adopters are going to move to?
Was privacy something that was always dead, only it took a few years to realize that fact on the internet? Or are there other ways of communicating beyond the internet that nerds/geeks are starting to look into?
Distributed networking, but you need to be able to trust your neihbours.
I think that it would do great things for the internet to censor anything that might be considered offensive to anyone. i don't feel that i should have to tolerate something because i don't like it, and i should be treated with absolute respect unconditionally. Cyber bullies are stupiud and mean and ir don't like them because tehy make fun of me.
Australians may recall the "Treaty" song :)
Well I heard it on the internet
And I saw it on slashdot
Back in 2011
All those posting privacy advocates
Words are easy, words are cheap
Much cheaper than our priceless profits
But your indivisible rights can disappear
Just like bloggers in the night
Treaty Yeah
Treaty Yeah Treaty Now
This net was never given up
This net was never yours
The planting of the flag with 12 stars
Never changed our view at all
Now multiple legal systems have run their course
Separated for so long
I'm dreaming of a red letter day
When the patent laws will be one
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Distributed networking, but you need to be able to trust your neighbours.
Which is how it started, back in the day, albeit with a different definition of neighbour. I expect it'll be wireless and encrypted this time around though.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I don't understand how people can possibly defend this? it does nothing to protect you from the dangers of the "wild west" internet, all it does is add more surveillance to your citizens. I mean, what do they expect this to actually achieve?
the internet is not like "the wild west" the internet is like more like international waters of infinite dimension.
Truecrypt?
If even 10% of the population encrypted everything, the government wouldn't have enough wrenches or people to use the wrenches.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
If an american citizen is brought before the International Court of Justice, the USA has threatened beforehand to use military force. Isn't that unlawful? Would the US army disobey?
Mind you, the army would off course not be asked to fight civilians. They would be asked to fight terrorists. That the individuals meant by the two words are the same does not matter.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Yeah, well..... As a Canadian citizen I am better protected in Canada than I would be anywhere else, although our constitution and rights have been granted by the government, and what the government can grant, it can take away.
Theoretically, the US is better, in that the constitution defines roles and limitations of the government (rather than the government granting rights to people). But the US is a very scary place in some ways. The Bill of Rights in the US has, in some cases, been interpreted to apply only to citizens which (I believe) is not what the Constitution says and not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
This business with Guantanamo is very scary - holding and basically torturing political prisoners in the one(?) country that US citizens are (generally) not allowed to visit. The US used to at least have the image of holding the moral high ground; that this has been lost is tragic and scary.
One nice thing about Canada is that it is small enough that it can't be as scary internationally as the US. The US, next door to Canada, is the most dangerous country to Canada. I realize that this situation would be different if we were next door to Iran.
Everything considered, the US is a somewhat scary place for US citizens and quite a scary place for non-US citizens. It is such a shame - it used to be so different. Canada has gotten scarier too, but, all told, Canada is one of the least scary countries in the world.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST