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Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.
IainB:
The Turkish parliament is reported as having just passed a fairly oppressive set of new Internet online censorship laws and penalties.
I have been interested in the developments over the years as Turkey seemed to start a reversion/return to its old ways and religio-political non-secular (Islamic) ideology and corresponding restrictions of freedom, which probably won't help its already not inconsiderable efforts to gain accession to the EU as a full member state.
However, post SnowdenGate revelations (of US NSA and UK GCHQ wholesale surveillance, coupled with the NZ DCSB role in this and the Dotcom fiasco), I did wonder whether the so-called "Western" nations hadn't effectively been demonstrating themselves as being amongst the most de facto fascistic, oppressive and least free countries on the planet. Similar thoughts would seem to be implied in this interesting take by Techdirt on Turkey's Internet clampdown.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Turkey Passes New Net Censorship And Surveillance Laws; West No Longer In A Position To Criticize
from the awkward dept
Last week we discussed the Turkish government's bizarre campaign about the supposed "problems" of online freedom. Maybe this was an attempt to blunt criticism of its new online censorship law, which has just been passed by the Turkish parliament, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
The law, which must be approved by President Abdullah Gul to take effect, will allow the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication, or TIB, to block access to Internet sites within four hours of receiving complaints about privacy violations. Turkey's web hosts will also have to store all traffic information for up to two years, according to the measure adopted as part of a legislative package.
That is, not only does it bring in harsh and swift online censorship, but requires online surveillance too. As the Guardian points out, this makes a bad situation worse:
Censorship and a very tight control of the internet are already a reality in Turkey. According to Engelliweb.com, around 40,500 websites were blocked in Turkey by the beginning of February -- 10,000 more than in April last year. The latest Freedom of the Net report published by Freedom House describes the Turkish internet as "partially free".
Despite that, Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bülent Ar?nç, is quoted as saying:
"We are freer and have more press freedom than many other countries in the world," he said.
The sad thing is, he may be right. Now that Western countries have lost the moral high ground when it comes to censoring Web sites and carrying out blanket surveillance, others plainly feel they have a free hand to bring in even more repressive laws clamping down on Internet freedom. Turkey's move is just the latest in a growing series.
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IainB:
And as if to substantiate the point...
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
How The Copyright Industry Made Your Computer Less Safe
from the welcome-to-the-world-of-drm dept
I've already written one piece about Cory Doctorow's incredible column at the Guardian concerning digital rights management and anti-circumvention, in which I focused on how the combination of DRM and anti-circumvention laws allows companies to make up their own copyright laws in a way that removes the rights of the public. Those rights are fairly important, and the reason we have them encoded within our copyright laws is to make sure that copyright isn't abused to stifle speech. But, anti-circumvention laws combined with DRM allow the industry to route around that entirely.
But there's a second important point in Doctorow's piece that is equally worth highlighting, and it's that the combination of DRM and anti-circumvention laws make all of our computers less safe. For this to make sense, you need to understand that DRM is really a form of security software.
* The entertainment industry calls DRM "security" software, because it makes them secure from their customers. Security is not a matter of abstract absolutes, it requires a context. You can't be "secure," generally -- you can only be secure from some risk. For example, having food makes you secure from hunger, but puts you at risk from obesity-related illness.
* DRM is designed on the presumption that users don't want it, and if they could turn it off, they would. You only need DRM to stop users from doing things they're trying to do and want to do. If the thing the DRM restricts is something no one wants to do anyway, you don't need the DRM. You don't need a lock on a door that no one ever wants to open.
* DRM assumes that the computer's owner is its adversary.
But, to understand security, you have to recognize that it's an ever-evolving situation. Doctorow quotes Bruce Schneier in pointing out that security is a process, not a product. Another way of thinking about it is that you're only secure until you're not -- and that point is going to come eventually. As Doctorow notes, every security system relies on people probing it and finding and reporting new vulnerabilities. That allows the process of security to keep moving forward. As vulnerabilities are found and understood, new defenses can be built and the security gets better. But anti-circumvention laws make that almost impossible with DRM, meaning that the process of making security better stops -- while the process of breaking it doesn't.
* Here is where DRM and your security work at cross-purposes. The DMCA's injunction against publishing weaknesses in DRM means that its vulnerabilities remain unpatched for longer than in comparable systems that are not covered by the DMCA. That means that any system with DRM will on average be more dangerous for its users than one without DRM.
And that leads to very real vulnerabilities. The most famous, of course, is the case of the Sony rootkit. As Doctorow notes, multiple security companies were aware of the nefarious nature of that rootkit, which not only hid itself on your computer and was difficult to delete, but also opened up a massive vulnerability for malware to piggyback on -- something malware writers took advantage of. And yet, the security companies did nothing, because explaining how to remove the rootkit would violate the DMCA.
Given the post-Snowden world we live in today, people are suddenly taking computer security and privacy more seriously than they have in the past -- and that, as Doctorow notes, represents another opportunity to start rethinking the ridiculousness of anti-circumvention laws combined with DRM. Unfortunately, politicians who are way behind on this stuff still don't get it. Recent trade agreements like the TPP and ACTA continue to push anti-circumvention clauses, and require them around the globe, thereby weakening computer security.
This isn't just an issue for the "usual copyright people." This is about actually making sure the computers we use are as secure and safe as they can be. Yet, in a world with anti-circumvention provisions, that's just not possible. It's time to fix that.
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Some people (not me you understand), might say that through **AA-driven DRM, SOPA/PIPA and NSA surveillance, the US Corporatist-led government has been and still is deliberately facilitating a prolonged and hugely successful pincer move on Internet freedom and privacy, making a hypocritical travesty of the American Constitution in the process, but I couldn't possibly comment.
IainB:
Very thought-provoking post from Quotulatiousness.ca:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
The Internet and the defenestration of the gatekeepers
February 5, 2014
Filed under: Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: EdwardSnowden, Internet, Propaganda — Nicholas Russon @ 08:51
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith talks about the recent movie The Fifth Estate, prominent whistleblowers, and how the Internet upset so many top-down information models:
The top three “whistle-blowers”, of course, in no particular order, are Assange himself, Bradley/Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. I’m interested in these individuals for a number of reasons, not the least of which, is that I wrote about them (actually, I anticipated them) long before most people in the world ever knew they existed.
Including me.
Eleven years ago, in a speech I delivered to the Libertarian Party of New Mexico entitled “Empire of Lies“, I asserted that every human being on Earth is swimming — drowning — in an ocean of lies, mostly told by governments of one variety or another. I pointed out that lies of that kind — for example, the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” that never happened, and yet cost the lives of 60,000 Americans and 2,000,000 Vietnamese — are deadly. I proposed, therefore, that any politician, bureaucrat, or policeman caught telling a lie to any member of the public for any reason — a well as any among their ilk keeping secrets — ought to be subject to capital punishment, preferably by public hanging.
On network television.
Some time later, I stumbled on what I think is the true historical significance of the Internet. For as long as human beings have been communicating with one another, except among family and friends (and even then, sometimes) communications have been vertical and one-way, from the top down. Just to take it back to the Middle Ages, you can’t talk back to, or argue with a church bell. You either do what you are trained to do when it rings — wake, pray, eat, go to bed — or you do not, and suffer whatever consequences society has arranged for you to suffer.
This sorry situation was not improved materially by later “great” inventions like the printing press, movies, radio, or television. Such innovations only made it easier and more convenient to issue orders. The elite laid down the law to the peons (that’s us) and there was no way of contradicting them. Letters to the Editor are limited to 400 words.
But the Internet, and all of the technical, political, and social phenomena associated with it, turned this communications hierarchy sideways. Almost overnight, it was now possible for anybody on the planet to talk to anybody else, and to speak privately with a single individual, or to millions, without obtaining anyone’s permission, judged not by their power or authority, but by the cogency of their arguments.
Atlas didn’t shrug, Authority wigged.
Traditional Big Media, newspaper, magazine, and book publishers, movie studios, radio and television network executives, held onto their monopoly gatekeeper position, inherited from a more primitive era, desperately and at any cost. Only they were fit to judge what word could be sent by mere individuals to the Great Unwashed (that’s us, again). What it cost them is their very existence. They were incapable of divining that the Age of Authority, including theirs, was over.
For governments all over the world, subsisting as they all do on lies, intimidation, and violence, it was a nightmare. They have tried to fight back, but they will lose. The tide of history is against them. The idea of “peer-to-peer” communication is out there, and — short of the mass slaughter some of them seem to be preparing against us: a measure of their utter despair — it can never be called back or contained.
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40hz:
Awesome! :Thmbsup: (both for the argument and use of the word 'defenestration') 8)
I think the analysis is spot on even if I'm not sufficiently sanguine as to agree about the inevitability of his conclusion.
IainB:
Awesome! :Thmbsup: (both for the argument and use of the word 'defenestration') 8)
I think the analysis is spot on even if I'm not sufficiently sanguine as to agree about the inevitability of his conclusion.
-40hz (February 09, 2014, 07:38 PM)
--- End quote ---
Some people (not me, you understand) might say that defenestration would be too good for some of these "gatekeepers" and their ilk, and that being put on the rack and then being hung, drawn and quartered would be more fitting for their oppressive crimes, but I couldn't possibly comment.
I'm none too sanguine about the outcome either.
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