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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."
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.
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?
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.
Right... because compared to China, Russia, the UK, France, Mexico, Syria, etc, the USA clearly stands out as a bastion of evil.
Even though it still remains, the U.S. (inc.), like the MAFIA will collapse due to the rot within.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
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?
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.
google is your friend.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Right... because compared to China, Russia, the UK, France, Mexico, Syria, etc, the USA clearly stands out as a bastion of evil.
Let's not forget that the Dutch are masters in spying: over 25000 wiretaps on land-lines, and over 150.000 (yes, 150k) taps on internet traffic. Keep in mind that this little state, about twice the size of the SF Bay Area, only has about 15 million citizens. That's nearly 1 in 10 being monitored. (source)
And then a Dutch MEP wants to criticize the US? ROFL.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
This law might not work as intended, but to call it the dumbest populist idea ever goes a bit too far. ThisMEP does not fall into the category of populist politicians and she is also not dumb, but rather wel-informed.
Check this:
http://www.marietjeschaake.eu/2013/09/media-eu-should-stop-the-spread-of-digital-arms-vieuws/
It's Member of European Parliament.
I wish more authors/websites would use the tag.
http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/abbr
I partly agree with you (with 1 and 2), in theory.
The point is that it's hypocritical to call a country evil and meanwhile make money on selling them software that allows them to be evil (and knowing in advance it will be used as such).
Also, even though I might have knowledge on how mass censorship works, that doesn't mean I can apply that knowledge. I know how pizzas are made, still I prefer to buy pizza ready made because it's easier, faster or cheaper. By selling mass surveillance or mass censorship software to regimes know to be suppressing their citizens, you help them do it. It's a bad thing.
Even though it still remains, the U.S. (inc.), like the MAFIA will collapse due to the rot within.
The US will still remain, and still be a major power, after the "collapse". The US economy and political system may be living on borrowed time (and money), but its not as bad as the Soviet Union in its later days. The Soviet collapse may have been painful, but Russia is coming back, and so will the US. I just hope it's more like Britain and France, rather than some other past empires like Turkey or Portugal.