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Plans For Widespread Monitoring of Communication In Europe Revealed
TrueSatan writes "A leak from the Clean IT project reveals how it has been subverted from its original, much more innocuous, goals into a surveillance horror story with democratic freedoms and personal rights being the victims."
The leaked document in question. Gems include member states repealing anti-filtering laws and a mandate that ISPs be held liable for not reporting terrorist use of their networks. The Clean IT Project counters that there's nothing to see here (amazingly, through a series of tweets with a journalist).
Problem solved.
Are consultants and hardware manufacturers. The government has no idea what to do with this information, and its going to spend an enormous amount of money for what will end up being a data vault that is locked away because its too big of a failure to admit they were wrong in the first place to attempt this.
I made a real try at reading the doc in a dispassionate, scholarly fashion, but couldn't make it past page ten: I kept seeing in mind's eye the substitution of other words for "terrorist," leading to "anybody we don't like" and ending with "everyone except us." Knowing that this and the many similar plans would have been a Stasi wet-dream didn't help.
An article from March 19, 2012 shows that The Ban On Encryption is already a Work In Progress.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The various groups such as the police, moral majorities, or whomever will keep badgering the politicians for these types of laws to "protect the children" or "protect our rights" but in reality these laws are all of the type: music leads to dancing which leads to the unspeakable. The only thing to finally put a stop to them is to enshrine privacy rights in whatever constitutions, bills of rights or whatever structure has the final common sense say in any modern legal system. A well written code should last for decades as it should not be technology specific just information specific. It should spell out what data the government can gather without a warrant. It should also spell out that corporations can only gather the information required for billing customers who have agreed to be billed. Any other information gathering should be a civil rights violation. So if the police record license plates as you drive by then boom they are busted. Or if we get some cool medical implants that record stuff and the hospital gathers it and passes it on to a drug company or insurance company then busted.
Personally I would even like to see my grocery store stopped from gathering my shopping habits. Basically tally my total charge me and then forget that I was there. I want it so that the police aren't even allowed to ask for data from a company's computer unless they have a warrant. Not even a peek.
If these things aren't stopped now then the new normal will be a government and corporations who will be able to know way too much about you. A grocery store that pulls up your phone IMEI and asks the phone company who you are. Then asks to see what sites you have been surfing to see what they can sell you. What is stopping the phone company and your ISP from selling this data?
I can see a 13 year old boy called into the principal's office and expelled because of the "disgusting" sites they were surfing at home the night before. If the ISP were owned by some bible thumper what law is stopping them from handing this data to anyone? Right now as long as you put it into the terms of service where we all blindly click "I agree" the company should be pretty safe. Also those terms of service almost always blah blah about sharing with 3rd parties.
My guess as to the main reason that this isn't done more is that most people don't have the skills to properly mix and match such different data sets. Plus some companies might be reluctant to really piss of their customers. But when any of these companies are on the ropes financially they will make any deal with any devil that comes along.
Well the way things are going in the EU it doesn't seem likely it will be around in 10 or 12 years time. They are already breaking up in terms of monetary union. Besides which, every story like this attracts a whole flurry of comments like "OMG the government is gonna be watching us - time to go live on the moon" I dont see what is wrong with trying to stop people accessing information which is clearly only there to either assist in weapons making or to provide resources for people who want to cause widespead terror. What is more frightening is the demands the British government are seeking to put on Wikipedia regarding the monitoring and blocking of certain web pages to british citizens http://www.publictechnology.net/news/wikipedia-boss-wont-support-technologically-incompetent-uk-govt-web-plan/37139 The Home Office has admitted it cannot force foreign companies like Google and Facebook to hand over sensitive personal data and is relying on people like Wales to agree to do so voluntarily. Elsewhere World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee also weighed in against the bill. "In Britain, like in the US, there has been a series of Bills that would give government very strong powers to, for example, collect data. I am worried about that," he told The Times. "If the UK introduces draconian legislation that allows the Government to block websites or to snoop on people, which decreases privacy, in future indexes they may find themselves further down the list."
If they hated us for our freedoms, we must be pretty well liked by now.
Gosh darn it! There goes my fantasy that Europe is better than the US.
Anyone else read that? The part that pushes "internet companies" to REQUIRE and verify what they consider "real" identities, including "real" pictures of users on social-media sites? How can that not lead to, essentially, government-enabled internet stalking and the complete extinguishing of legally-protected anonymous speech?
And who the fuck are they, or anyone, to declare what a "real" identity online means, or should mean?
Whoever is involved in this effort must never work in IT or government ever, ever again.
I've just found a 'radicalizing' document, clearly a piece of propaganda designed to convince me that Europe is a surveillance state run by some mixture of terrified ninnies and cynical grifters! But I can't find the reporting button to alert the proper authorities and have it taken down, what do I do?
The wrong people are already in charge. EU Commission is appointed, not elected, They don't take their direction from EU voters, they take their direction, mostly it seems from non-EU governments and lobbyists. ACTA was the rule not the exception.
I'm amazed they're using terrorism, the copyright lobbyists suggested CP as their primary weapon. Give us copyright filtering or you diddle kiddies:
See this article:
http://boingboing.net/2010/04/28/music-industry-spoke.html
"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".
The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title "Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?". The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others...
"One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand," Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.
Yes we need to be protected but not at the cost of our freedom.
I find it ironic that the states who want to fine Google for Street View and recording stray broadcasts are preparing to DPI the entire internet.
Yes, I said "ironic." Come at me, pedants.
DATABASE WOW WOW
It's like rain on your wedding day.
I'm pretending the groom is the weatherman.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I'm a Trotskyite, you insensitive clod! (Not really!)
Who is John Cabal?
U-S-A! U-S-A! Oh, wait... WTF?
Some day I am going to have to explain to my son how we managed to defeat a genocidal megalomaniac bend on world domination, narrowly avoid nuclear annihilation, and rebuild an entire continent in the 20th Century, but that in the 21st Century somehow pirates and terrorists are the biggest threat to Western Civilization. But my biggest fear is that he is growing up in a world where the bar for personal privacy, security, and liberty has been set alarmingly low.
Those of us who experienced privacy in the pre-WWW, pre-datamining era--the before time, the long-long-ago--still have a viscerally negative reaction when we learn about how Company X is collecting information on us in some new-and-intrusive way. Even when it's to protect us from pirates and terrorists, we at least object to it even though we have, thus far, just rolled over, muttering under our breath as a glorified hall monitor looks at pictures of our naked bodies before we are allowed to board an airplane. And we still get angry when we find out that a government is spying on us and listening in to our conversations--digitally encoded or otherwise.
People born after 2000 will have no memory of a smart-phone-free world by the time they are of voting age. They won't find it unsettling that you have to enter a credit card number before you can log into your iThing or that their toaster needs to know their birth date. Let's just hope that the elderly continue to have a disproportionate influence in electoral politics--at least until I die.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Human beings are just a pebbles throw away from greatness. We can get the freedom, and empower people to develop something like the internet but they just fall slightly short when it comes to designing these technologies with the level of care that is needed.
We wouldn't even be having this conversation if the guys who designed the internet built Tor into it from the beginning. If they were clever enough to devise a method for communication digitally over telephone lines, why couldn't they go a step further and make routing encrypted, or even have bit torrent built into the kernel. Have anti root kit, built into every kernel/root. Until we humans start properly, and I mean really properly designing technology (we need to be more conservative), we will always be facing these obstacles.
Pirate Party Switzerland (Pascal Gloor, who also posted a blog about the Berlin meeting, in french) Link to his blog post
you missed out on page 11 then. It's wonderful:
"a. No wording of European standard service/business conditions or abuse policy should be recommended. What should be recommended is a best practice how to [_*]handle[*_] abuse, and how to make such policy transparent;"
There, you have it folks. The mob run Europe too, they might even be more set up there who knows. I'm not going back there if I can help it. It's so brazenly thuggish, that it's remarkably easy to decipher. This is their wish list of course though. They don't have a chance of getting most of this imo.
Resist!
That's because the anti-Google propaganda in Europe was driven by European publishers, TV stations, and lobbyists who saw the Internet in general, and Google in particular, cutting into their profits. Add to that the usual dose of European anti-Americanism, and you have the basis for the extreme hostility to Google. European corporations, their lobbyists, and the governments they have in their pockets have no problem with violating the privacy rights of European citizens themselves. Neither do the various "state security services" of the oh-so-democratic European governments.
If I want to sack Gordon Brown, I can vote for David Cameron, there is a clear choice which causes the change. ....' because you don't know whose standing and no party can tell you at national election time who they will vote for at the next EU opportunity.
If I want to sack Barosso that's not possible. The EU elections are out of sync with national elections, the candidates for the EU job aren't even known at voting time, let alone who would vote for whom. So it's not 'vote for Labour is a vote for Barosso, a vote for Cons is a vote for
So, IN NO WAY, can European voters choose even INDIRECTLY who will run the EU Commission.
2014 change will not fix this, it token change. A non choice choice.
Why do government always think that monitoring and surveilance is the key to preventing terror, solve major crimes etc.?
Unless the go all the way and aim for the full Orwellian package with Big Brother, thought police etc. it will give nothing but a false sense of security. It's too easily circumvented, if it works at all. It is basically yet another form of security theater just like the 'security checks' at the airport, and it's just a futile and worthless waste of money.
I think it's a matter of bad advice from greedy 'advisors' on the payroll of businesses provide these futile products. Even politicians cannot be that stupid without help.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Why do you say Germany is Royal family ridden?
Because there is mainly German aristocratic blood running through the British royal family?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Capitalsme is dying and it is time for the workers to bury it!
You expect me to bury it? I want minimum wage, 20 holiday days a year, paid sick, and a pension before I even consider burying anything for you
-- A Worker
... and the real question is : why do the few want to monitor the many?
There really is only one answer. It is so to commit wrongs against the public in all the many ways monitoring can provide such.
Wars are started and played by the few with the bravery of being out of range.
The results of war are proving to be far more damaging to the public than, if at all, the few instigating the wars.
By monitoring the public and controlling the media a feedback loop for manipulation is created.
Additionally should the few decide to kill off a portion of the public then having control over the things you'd want control over become available to use, I.e. traffic, communications, energy, food , etc. Standard warfare manual stuff.
The expense of monitoring is paid for by who else but the tax payers and the crime reduction amount (not considering the crimes such monitoring makes possible) is not justified for such expense. This alone is should send a red flag.
This is the wrong approach to crime reduction. The better approach is to work towards applying that which inherently causes a reduction. Knowledge begets knowledge and specific knowledge begets more of its own, I.e. warfare begets more warfare... and so it is also with peaceful a direction of improvements to teh environment and lifestyles will beget more of that.
It is not the people who need to be monitored, it is those who are supposed to represent the people in need of being monitored in what they do in that job. This no different than and employer knowing what their employees are doing.
De-jure, the European Council must select a candidate taking the EP election results into account. This means appointing the candidate from the biggest party group. If they would appoint another one, that candidate will never pass the parliaments vote.
Effectively, this is the same as the rules in most memberstates. Any PM in the Council who objects to this appointment is violating the treaty. In addition, the selection is also to big an issue to ignore the parliament on this. They have been plenty pissed about lesser issues...
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Since your president is put there by the electoral college.
Useful protip: I have a prime minister.
Om, nomnomnom...
You: We can't vote for the EU Commission
Me: Name n* countries where you can vote for top people in the executive?
Also me: The President of the Commission has to be elected by the Parliament, so you get to vote for a candidate who gets to vote for the President.
And the council is appointed by the governments of the member states, who are, in theory, democratically elected (mostly indirectly). However, following the Lisbon Treaty, the power balance is swinging more in favour of the Parliament, and they're increasingly throwing their weight around (e.g. ACTA). Yes, there are more improvements needed (such as giving the Parliament the power to start legislation), but in time it will happen.
*Off the top of my head, I can't think of any, so n=1. However, I have limited knowledge of most government structures, so there probably is one somewhere. Perhaps try for n=3?
"council is appointed by the governments"
This is not correct, the council IS the governments of the member states, which makes the anti EU thing, where he hates the EU but loves the national government really silly.
"Name n* countries where you can vote for top people in the executive?"
This only happens in presidential systems where the president has powers... I suppose, in the EU this is only France. Maybe the British eurosceptics want to fire the Queen and elect their monarch instead; this would be consistent with their insisting on the lack of EC president election being a major issue. Somehow I doubt it though :)
"Civis Europaeus sum!"