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Dutch MEP Petitions To Ban Export of Surveillance Software
Trailrunner7 writes with this excerpt: "A Dutch member of the European parliament is supporting a grass-roots effort to restrict the export of surveillance software such as FinFisher and others, which are used by some governments and law-enforcement agencies to monitor their citizens' activities. The effort, dubbed Stop Digital Arms, is supported by Marietje Schaake, a member of the EU Parliament's International Trade committee. The petition itself is on the Change.org site, and it calls upon members of the European Union 'to give the European Commission the mandate to draft the laws and develop initiatives necessary to stop digital arms trade' ... In a report called 'For Their Eyes Only' released earlier this year, the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the university of Toronto detailed the spread of this software around the world and identified a slew of FinFisher command-and-control servers in countries such as Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, among many others."
and sanction the fuck out of the US until they either revolt and kill their leaders or collapse
if they didn't ban just export but import as well.
Can we add Carrier IQ and other spyware to the list? I'd also like to know how much data NSA got from Carrier IQ and how much Carrier IQ and the telcos that forced it to be installed, got paid by the NSA.
Be careful such a well-intentioned ban doesn't backfire.
Instead of banning software, how about reacting to what people DO with software?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
To translate: Dutch politicians attempt to ruin their own software industry, do nothing to stop digital surveillance.
Sounds hypocritical and ridicules considering goal
Banning the export of software is in itself censorship and counter-productive to the goal given that it's impossible to achieve the objective (reduction of censorship) desired. Plus its a bit hypocritical.
The goals here might be well-meaning (I'm doubtful of that although will assume it for the point of this discussion) like that of censoring child pornography / piracy / hateful materials / racism within the countries of production (making that assumption based on the fact most countries seem to have implementing filtering now at a national level to solve the above goals). However it's not at all effective when bypassing these systems is well known.
There are numerous proxy sites to work around the problem and applications like Tor. Perfectly legal in most of these countries and even should application (not software)-specific proxies that restrict or are intended to get to censored sites also get censored there are non-application specific solutions like VPN, Tor Browser Bundle, Pirate Browser, and similar solutions to work around that. Solutions that have been well-publicized in the countries banning such exports.
It's not that difficult to develop in-house filtration systems either and such bans will simply export production and jobs elsewhere.
I'm against this and I'm against censorship. Lead by example and eliminate ones own filters first. Then fund projects like Tor. Then maybe (further evaluation needed) fund attacks on select sites that are accessed by the populous in censored countries. If well-planned a good percentage of the computer using population of censored countries will have the tools and information needed to bypass censorship in there home countries.
By all means, let's drive it underground... and make it all classified..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Nothing will happen. Remember EU is not a democracy, and the EU parliament is a fake parliament. It does not vote the budget. It cannot start a directive initiative (only the EU commission can). The commission can remove amendments done by the parliament, and it already did it in the past. And of course the EU commission can ignore a proposal from the parliament. The only real power of the EU parliament is to reject a directive within the co-decision method.
Most of the time, the EU parliament vote non binding resolutions that are only relevant to the press. EU ideologists can then quote nice resolutions that will have no consequence in the real world, and tell us how good the EU is for EU citizen. But this kind of propaganda is getting less effective, as people face a harsh reality every day.
It may be possible to ban the SALE or TRADE of such software, but you can't very well stop someone from GIVING it away. After all, they can stand on the border and hold up printouts of the source code and invite people standing 5 feet away from them to take photos of it.
Well, I guess you COULD ban it if you are in a country that doesn't have or even pretend to have free-speech protections.
All any such ban will do would be to drive the R&D to other countries.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
it calls upon members of the European Union 'to give the European Commission the mandate to draft the laws and develop initiatives necessary to stop digital arms trade'
Amazing. The response of the Europeans is apparently to demand their governments give up control over their own intelligence agencies and the ability to develop cyberweapons, crippling their telecommunications infrastructure... Because one government agency in the United States got caught peeping through the windows.
Explain to me the logic here, because to me it looks like the Europeans are shooting themselves in the foot while screaming "Look what you made me do! Now you'd better stop or I'm gonna do it again!"
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Others have said similar things already, but this will never work. Any tool that can be used to do something useful, can be used to harm someone else. That is true for most tools we humans use and also applies to most "cyber tools". Using a network scanner to find intruders or bad configured systems is good, using it to find someone that wants to get information out of a censored government is bad. Using a load tester to see if your system can handle the users it's designed for is good, but using it to take down some system that is run by someone you oppose of is bad.
She has no idea that the tools exclusively marketed as cyber weapons are nothing more than window dressing for existing things. Any government spending money on this either needs the window dressing and can't make their own, or is too stupid to understand this sort of thing. The more they spend money on cyber weapons, the less they will spend it on potentially more harmful things. Please let them be, it's a snake oil market and anyone buying the snake oil deserves what they get for their money.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The Ducth are fishing Finns everywhere.
Someone should the MEP with a clue by four or a brick then see the MEPs outlaw the whole construction industry.
Well if it keeps it out of the hands of the NSA I say ban away.
A new law that does nothing positive, but can be easily abused. They totally don't understand anything. They should get the "Dumbest populist idea ever" award.
Its not like the company wont take the source and have people from somewhere else keep working on it. The only result of this would be losing a bunch of jobs.
I try to keep an open mind about surveillance and data farming. The benefits could be substantial although the potential for abuse is also very real. Many people only consider terrorism in relation to spying. But we may have the potential to stop almost all crime in its tracks. Whether it is illegal narcotics traffic or being able to quickly find a missing child the possibilities are almost endless. And these systems could also apply to large businesses such that the financials are constantly studied to detect fraud, bribery and deceit.
Think about it a bit. Most people carry a cell phone these days and that means their movements can be tracked. Yet most people do not feel threatened just because the government can easily know where they are. All in all we simply do not understand the many benefits we might enjoy in a society that has very dense surveillance of us at all times.
Because of its default setting to send all your "Dash" content searches back to the mothership at Canonical?
Let me get popcorn and a folding chaise lounge to watch Mark Shuttleworth's fireworks about *that* one....
Why are the majority of people in this thread assuming this is an response to the Snowden releases? To me this seems to be a law which has nothing to do with the NSA's activities but instead to prevent oppressive regimes from purchasing european made software which will allow them to suppress their citizens even further by spying on them etc. Haven't we already got similar laws to prevent sells of software used by oppressive regimes which could enable them to censor their citizens?
I never heard of MEP. i wish articles would stop using some acronyms because not everyone knows what they mean.
What a spectacularly idiotic policy. Not only is it blindingly hypocritical, but it also further confirms the generally held theory that rampant stupidity and lack of critical thinking skills are requisite to being a policymaker regardless of geographic location. Bravo!
For the benefit of those who, likewise, have yet to master the elusive art of thinking (but, also for the amusement of those with a clue):
1) Software is nothing more than applied knowledge, whence comes the term "application."
2) Not only is this MEP joker proposing that sticking a ban-aid over a problem will somehow cure it, she also thinks that outlawing the proliferation of knowledge will somehow work. Why wouldn't it? It's not like anyone in a position of power throughout history has ever tried that one.
3) The proposal is completely ineffective because, notably, the entities whose actions prompted this proposal are sovereign states who are not the least bit accountable to EU law in the first place, and because such entities have no need to rely upon an exporter to obtain what they could acquire through espionage.
4) This proposal is particularly amusing for the property of it being a ban on the proliferation of knowledge of how to surreptitiously acquire knowledge; in essence, an attempt to stop *other people* (like, say, a government) from knowing how to know things they shouldn't (like say, your business).
Yes, this is an attempt to stop others from doing the exact same thing government is doing to others (snooping), because others did it to the government and the government is offended by it, despite the fact that others should not be offended if the government does it to them.
When in government, the moral compass always points outside.
When America does it based on ITAR to keep foreign nations like China, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea from using it, they are the bad guys.
When another nation does it, then it is good. Good figure.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Would exporting the source code be allowed as information just wants to be free