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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.
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.
Then proxy server providers get told to keep logs just like the ISPs to be perused at leisure by any LEO, who desires it. The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
Then proxy server providers get told to keep logs just like the ISPs to be perused at leisure by any LEO, who desires it. The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
Staying under the radar hoping they won't target you next ... that's not the same thing as fighting back.
The way to fix this is to make passing these kinds of laws even more detrimental to a career in politics, than, say, destroying Social Security.
Sometimes I think we should just hurry up and implement global fascism and get it over with. I'm tired of all the suspense. We can have neighbor snitching on neighbor for thoughtcrimes. We can have full-time martial law since that's cheaper than building enough prisons to house every man, woman, and child. Maybe we can make people fight their neighboring cities to save ourselves the transportation costs of fighting pointless wars overseas. That seems to be more like the society so many people really want to live in. That's why they keep swallowing the bullshit excuses for each baby-step towards its implementation.
Then when the whole thing collapses under its own weight we can all admit what we should have known from the very beginning: that the other way for politicians to feel secure is to be noble and to truly seve the people then they won't feel so threatened by unfettered exchange of information, that there was never a justification for fascism, for the nanny-state, or for ever telling consenting adults what they may do or how they may do it. Perhaps attempting to do so could be the only capital crime on the law books.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
LOL, you're confused.
It wasn't socialists, it was people masquerading as socialists. Including a few out and out fascists, such as the National Socialists of some country or another.
They also masquerade as Communists, Christians, Liberals, Libertarians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and so forth.
About the only thing they don't call themselves is anything accurate.
The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
I went to college with the guy who ran that VPN server.
The only reason he cooperated with the Feds so readily is because he didn't want them flagging him as a Person Of Interest.
LOL, you're confused.
It wasn't socialists, it was people masquerading as socialists. Including a few out and out fascists, such as the National Socialists of some country or another.
They also masquerade as Communists, Christians, Liberals, Libertarians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and so forth.
About the only thing they don't call themselves is anything accurate.
I have never personally heard of a socialist who wants a small government. I doubt it's even compatible with their particular dogma. The government most socialists seem to want is a large and powerful one. That's the main problem with socialism. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong in this scenario. Even if the people who originally set it up are noble, and good luck with that, positions of authority are irresistably attractive to sociopaths of all kinds.
When I say this, bear in mind I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. I would rather the poor have a hard time than live in a police-state dictatorship. Even if I personally had to beg in the streets for bread and water, I would prefer that to a Nazi-style regime. History keeps showing again and again that the only remotely trustworthy government is one that's too weak to do much of anything, and I'm fine with that. I would love it if the government was small and weak to where things like roads and bridges, basic law enforcement based on strict literal adherence to the Constitution, and national defense only against an aggressor who attacks us first took up every last bit of its energy and resources. Grant me that, and I'll fend for myself even if I have to eat insects and hunt wild animals to keep from starving to death.
What's the excuse of all these people who want to be taken care of by their government as though they were toddlers?
The guy who got into Palin's Yahoo used a VPN server, and those guys were more than willing to burn him when the Feds came knocking.
I went to college with the guy who ran that VPN server.
The only reason he cooperated with the Feds so readily is because he didn't want them flagging him as a Person Of Interest.
Thanks for clearing that up. None of us could have imagined that our own federal government would find ways to make someone's life miserable when that person stands between them and someone they'd really love to apprehend. That's so unprecedented.
Sarcasm aside, I would never consider running a VPN sever or a proxy of any kind unless I had a log retention policy of 30 seconds, and/or all personally identifying information was scrubbed from all logfiles prior to their being written to disk.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Posting anonymously even though it is trivial to trace. A devil's advocate's point of view:
Have you considered that a groaning police state is the normal as opposed to the exception? Look at Europe. For 1000+ years, life was so cheap that if a peasant stole more than a penny, they would be killed immediately. China was the same way -- plenty of tortures kept the proles in line. Egypt, same.
Want to know why we had some free reign? The Black Plague. Once there were too few backs for the upper class to rest their feet on, then equality actually became possible.
It can be said the only working form of government is a groaning police state that is swift and brutal. Once you get beyond a certain population point, some people wear the boot, others are the face where the boot is firmly planted.
I'm sure we have just seen the start of this. Yes, in the Middle East, some countries threw out one harsh dictator for another, but in the US and Europe, those countries are just too far advanced where revolution would ever happen. All it takes is an Apache with its standard front peashooter and any crowd would be immediately dispersed. Riots? A couple hellfire missiles and some ammo and that is the end of that. So, realistically, revolution will never happen in the US even if the government started having Hunger Games tomorrow.
Yes, this is sad, but welcome to the future -- this is how mankind has lived life through 99% of history, with the time from the Rennaissance to the present only a brief respite due to depopulation from disease. Expect to see every single thing on the Internet monitored with groups planted to be "hacker-terrorists" so there is always an excuse to pass tougher laws at any moment.
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
Sarcasm aside, I would never consider running a VPN sever or a proxy of any kind unless I had a log retention policy of 30 seconds, and/or all personally identifying information was scrubbed from all logfiles prior to their being written to disk.
Why log at all?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
You assume that the U.S. military would be used by the government to put down any significant rebellion, but I do not think this is very certain; it may seem counter-intuituve, but the U.S. military culture has a strong streak of distrust of high authority. There is a lot of thought and language devoted to classifying orders as lawful and unlawful. Some few will no doubt go along with any order, but as a whole I think it's hard to say where they would come down in the long run.
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?
The police seem to be getting kitted up with all the military hardware:
Why do the police have tanks?
Then there is Operation Fast and Furious
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The US is scary, but at least it has a real Constituion. This constituion is being ignored in many cases, but at least some people care about this.
Canada is currently less scary than the US, particularly if you are a Canadian citizen. But I live in a city with a zillion cameras, which I hate. What I hate even more (and what scares me even more) is that the cameras went up and no one seems to care. I don't know how much debate there was about them, but Canada has very little except tradition to prevent it from turning into a police state.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
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.
any source for proxies being charged for criminal offenses? surely a "no evidence of any actions on that persons computer" mixed with "an open proxy available to all on the internet" would be a sufficient defense for anything serious, you might get nailed with "miss use of computer" charge though
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.
An aware population can defend the internet against tyranny
there is significant awareness on the Internets population about this sort of thing, why do you think groups like lulsec and anonymous are being so aggressive lately?
Mazlow's pyramid. I'd rather deal with a larger government that can provide basic services should something happen than have to worry about if I have enough cash for the doctor, enough cash to feed family, a place to sleep, private security so some crackhead doesn't shoot me for a gang initiation rite.
There is a happy balance of a government that can provide basic security for its citizens, but not become an overbearing police state. Ideally the best government is one where everyone participates in. This is why I like the idea of a permanent draft -- if politicians want a war, the populace has a major stake in it, as opposed to "just" volunteers. Plus, a permanent draft would teach people that firearms are "just" tools, nothing more. This way, someone toting a handgun in a waistband looks just as goofy as someone toting a rake around in the public's eyes.
Regardless of government, what is needed is that the government and the citizens to completely interact. Once the town hall meetings disappear and government separates from the citizens, it becomes quite easy for it to become corrupt.
Business for Proxy servers will be going up. The more governments intrude, the more the people will fight back.
Or maybe there will be an increase in TOR usage.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
SWAT teams are well equipped, but still a very long way from Apaches and Hellfire missiles.
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.
Ditto with Australia - it's essentially the Westminster 'tradition' of good governance and accountability that keeps places like Canada and Australia free. Now to be fair, this is more than a mere tradition - it is essentially common law, and has as much strength as any other law. But you're right to say it's not formally written down in a document that is as strong or explicit as something like the US Constitution.
We enjoy the rights we do because the courts have traditionally recognised those rights, and formed hundreds of years of precedent that those rights exist. Government power in, say, the UK, is limited by Parliamentary tradition and protocol as much as it is limited by hard letter law ... but those traditions and protocols essentially do form an unwritten Constitution of sorts. In Australia it's a little more formal - the Australian Constitution is essentially similar to the US Constitution, minus the Bill of Rights. Not sure about Canada to be honest ... am I right in guessing it's probably somewhere in between the situation in Australia and the UK? (Yes I could Google it but I'm lazy...)
There is one small glimmer of hope from Birmingham in the UK. The police got as far as installing a large number of CCTV cameras in a mostly Asian area of the city but the residents objected. Eventually the cameras were removed without being turned on. They had to play the race card but this is the only such incident I know of.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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!
TOR. Enough said.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
He used a commercial VPN? Haha I didn't realize he was an idiot.
A commercial VPN is only slightly better than a direct connection from home. A random Proxy server would be a better option. Tor is a good option. A proxy chain with Tor in it is an excellent option and costs nothing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Check the other story on the front page.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It depends on VPN providers. Some are explicit in their SLA that they keep logs for "x" amount of time, and what they keep logs on. This is done to prevent abuse, as well as look for intrusion attempts or malicious activities. After a period of time, say 6-24 hours, the logs get erased via a wipe command in the rotation script and life goes on.
There are multiple levels of security a VPN provider provides, and there are trade offs. Couple examples:
VPN provider 1 is fast and US based. However they have a policy to turn any and all logs over on request of any LEO who asks. For defending against FireSheep attacks, this provider is decent, same with making sure no ISP is using Phorm-like tools to mess with traffic. For anonymity or posting controversial stuff, definitely not the case.
VPN provider 2 is slower, and offshore. They are in a country where if someone does something really bad, the LEOs can pull the logs. However, it takes an actual due process. This provider is good for when you need to hit a P2P site for some reason. However for normal use, they are too slow for everyday Web browsing.
There is always the option of VPN chaining. You can use a http proxy over a PPTP/L2TP connection for example, or use a VPN proxy on the physical machine, with another VPN running in a VM.
With all the snooping and Phorm-like attacks on Web traffic, VPNs have gone from something to use if one wants to discreetly use a P2P service to something that is a must use to protect one's privacy, and even one's security (as ad injectors can easily inject malware which the destination website would be blamed for.) Especially with the bar so low to do attacks on unencrypted connections with tools like FireSheep.
Canada had a Bill of Rights (from 1960) but (I had to Google this) it was considered to be ineffectual. In 1982, we got a"Charter of Rights and Freedoms". However, the latter has a "limitations" clause and a "notwhithstanding" clause which the government can involke if it thinks it is important enough.
What it boils down to is that we have a pretty good set of "rights" but, unlike the US bill of rights and constitution in general which (is supposed to) fundamentally limit the rights of government, our rights and constitution were provided by the government, with loop holes.
An example of loopholes: The "limitations clause" was used to uphold laws against objectionable conduce such as hate speech. I like having a few loud-mouth holocaust deniers around - they are like the canaries in the mine - if they were allowed to be objectionable and offensive, it was a good sign for general freedom - if the government can criminalize objectiionable speech.... it can criminalize anything.
So, the Canadian situation is better than places, but what the government can give, it can take away.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
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
I've been telling people for years now that the Charter actually deminishes peoples rights. Legal Maxim: We're born without a name and number, and are under no obligation to use one. In court, stop using the name, start remembering who you are. Calling yourself a name that belongs to the government puts you in controversy and therefore dishonor. ie. you lose every time.
Shooting Hellfires at civilians would be fucking retarded and set the whole country and probably world against whomever did it. They have plenty of tech for dealing with riots and demonstrations that doesn't involve blatantly setting off a civil war.
Take the Red Pill.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Clarification: He has done things that would get him in more trouble than hacking Palin's e-mail.