Censorship

Stealing Wifi

A man in the UK has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 monthsâ?? conditional discharge for illegally using someone elseâ??s open wifi (an offence under the Computer Misuse Act see more on note below*). These (one and two) BBC stories gives more information on this but it also includes lots of interesting pre-suppositions about the dangers of open wireless Internet access points.

The main arguments in the BBC stories are that the use of someone elseâ??s wifi is mainly to enter into illegal porn sites, launch hack attacks, to steal information or worse.

Is this really what people try to do on other peoples networks? My experience is that most unauthorized wifi use is travelers checking email, or neighbors using each otherâ??s nets out of sheer incompetence. Naturally there are always going to be nasty people attempting to abuse openness but how bad can it be?

Phil Cracknell has called for an awareness campaign to inform of the dangers of openness â?? â??The perception in the past has been that borrowing a bit of bandwidth is cheeky but not really criminal behaviourâ??. But then again Phil Cracknell is chief technology officer of security firm NetSurity and may be a bit interested in increasing our perception of insecurity.

Most of the people I come into contact with (ok, so I hang with the wrong crowd) donâ??t believe that borrowing bandwidth is cheeky â?? itâ??s a simple act that does not harm anyone.

Using anything for an illegal activity is however illegal and should be punished.

—

* Added 23 April

Stealing wifi is actually an offence under the Communications Act of 2003. To be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act there has to be more than simple wifi use. Basically the Computer Misuse Act requires an unauthorised entry into the computer system. This is similar to Swedish law where “only” using someone’s wifi is not an offence while entering into someone’s system without authorisation is an offence (DatorintrÃ¥ng). This difference is quite subtle and should be investigated further since it could be argued that it is not possible to use wifi without unlawful entry.

Posted on by mklang

Employee's Privacy: No Monitoring

This comes straight from the latest EDRI newsletter:

The Welsh Government, through Carmarthenshire College, was found in breach of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for having monitored one of the college employee’s e-mails, internet traffic and
telephone calls.

As the College is publicly funded, Lynette Copland sued the government for infringing Art.8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that says “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home
and his correspondence”.

The government argued that the monitoring was carried out in order to establish whether Copland had extensively used college resources for personal communication, but the court ruled that: “The court is not convinced by the government’s submission that the college was authorised under its statutory powers to do ‘anything necessary or expedient’ for the purposes of providing higher and further education, and finds the argument unpersuasive”.

Copland claimed that her correspondence had been monitored for about 18 months by the headmaster of the college who even contacted some of the people with whom she had communicated to ask for the nature of their communications. The government admitted the monitoring but stated it had lasted only a few months.

The Court ruling was that “According to the court’s case-law, telephone calls from business premises are prima facie covered by the notions of ‘private life’ and ‘correspondence’ ” and that “It follows logically that emails sent from work should be similarly protected under article eight, as should information derived from the monitoring of personal internet usage.”

“The applicant in the present case had been given no warning that her calls would be liable to monitoring, therefore she had a reasonable expectation as to the privacy of calls made from her work telephone. The same expectation
should apply in relation to the applicant’s e-mail and internet usage.”

The college had no policy to inform employees they might be monitored and Copland had received no warning on this.

“The ruling is important in that it reinforces the need for a statutory basis for any interference with respect to private use of a telecommunications system by an employee… The lawful business practice regulations [part of RIPA] allow an employer to monitor and intercept business communications, so the Court is implying that private use of a telecommunications system, assuming it is authorised via an acceptable use policy, can be protected.” said Dr Chris Pounder, a privacy specialist at Pinsent Masons.

The Court awarded Copland 3,000 Euros in damages and 6,000 Euros in costs and expenses.

European Court of Human Rights – Copland vs. The United Kingdom (3.04.2007)
http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2007/253.html

EU court rules monitoring of employee breached human rights (5.04.2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/05/monitoring_breached_human_rights/

Court of Human Rights protects the private use of the Internet (4.04.2007)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/87867

Monitoring of employee breached human rights, says European court
(4.04.2007)
http://www.out-law.com/page-7936

Posted on by mklang

Internet Curfew

The BBC reports that one of the top engineering schools will be shutting down their dorm Internet access every night in order to improve academic performance. Students will still be able to log on to the library or their departmental laboratories.

The authorities in India’s premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay (Mumbai), have cut off internet access to students in hostels at night.

They feel that 24-hour internet access is hampering students’ academic performance and overall personality development…Ms Thosar-Dixit said they were beginning to see a drop in attendance during morning lectures and a noticeable decline in students’ participation in extra-curricular activities.

“In the morning the students would not be fresh and attentive and their socialising patterns were changing as they preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates.

This is an exciting example of technology regulation. If the school chooses to regulate in this fashion it curtails free choice among students and punishes all students – even those who have a “good” relationship to technology.  But if the school chooses to ignore the problem then the overall performance of the students (and the school) will decline.

The decision to turn of the Internet at night may be well-intentioned but the question of concern is not the regulators intention but rather the results of the regulation. In addition to the results an important consideration in regulation must be the signal regulation sends to the regulated. In this case the students are told that their behavior patterns are incorrect and unacceptable. Whether this is true or not is not the relevant issue. Right and wrong change over time.

I disagree with blanket prohibitions such as these. The paternalistic approach creates a great deal of tension between groups. Between them and us. The regulated and the regulators. I know for a fact that it is not only students at the IIT in Bombay that have “unusual” nocturnal habits. Therefore the school is attempting to impose a normality on a weaker group while the regulators themselves do not subscribe to the concepts of normality they are trying to impose.

Orwell again: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Posted on by mklang

You can't say Prison

Say Guantanamo, and most people will think of human rights abuses and prisoners in orange clothes being mistreated, maltreated, denied basic human rights and denied legal representation. All this by a free democratic country. Karen Greenberg (Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and is the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib and editor of The Torture Debate in America.) writes an interesting note on the blog TomDispatch about how Gunatanamo may be addressed by the media.

It is very difficult not to think Orwellian thoughts about the control of language being the control of society.

  1. Guantanamo is not a prison.
  2. Consistent with not being a prison, Guantanamo has no prisoners, only enemies.
  3. Guantanamo is not about guilt and innocence — or, once an enemy combatant, always an enemy combatant.
  4. No trustworthy lawyers come to Guantanamo.
  5. Recently, at least, few if any reliable journalists have been reporting on Guantanamo.
  6. After years of isolation, the detainees still possess valuable information — especially today.
  7. Guantanamo contains no individuals — inside the wire or out.
  8. Guantanamo’s deep respect for Islam is unappreciated.
  9. At Guantanamo, hard facts are scarce.
  10. Guantanamo houses no contradictions.
  11. Those who fail to reproduce the official narrative are not welcome back.

Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside – knowing that these are the people claiming to be fighting for freedom and democracy worldwide…

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang

You can't say McJob

After films and books like Supersize Me and Nickel and Dimed. Not to mention things like McLibel (documentary, book and lawsuit). It may be understandable that McDonald’s have had enough of bad publicity. So bad has the publicity become that the word McJob has now become synonymous with a badly paid shitty jobs. It’s even in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)

The word McJob, as the OED definition makes clear, is “depreciative.” It goes on to define the term as: “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.” It found its way into the dictionary in March 2001, 15 years after it was apparently coined by the Washington Post. (Speigel Online)

But now McDonald’s has had enough and is demanding that the word McJob be stricken from the OED.

“Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And it this case, they got it completely wrong,” Walt Riker, a Mickey D’s McSpokesman complained to the Associated Press. “It’s a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that’s been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years.” (Speigel Online)

Apparently McD is arguing that the definition is outdated and old-fashioned. That may be true but the last time I looked into a McDonald’s the people working there sure seemed to have really classic McJobs.

Posted on by mklang

On not pulling my weight

Sometimes I really feel that I don’t have the energy to mobilize against the next stupid/dangerous/horrifying/hair-brained scheme proposed by some evil/half-witted/misguided (take your pick) parliament. So I relax and let others write and argue for causes that I also should be arguing. It’s complacency legitimized with sentiments such as “I have a lot to do right now” or “I don’t have time to understand this new threat” etc.

This has been the way in which it was with the new Swedish proposal on digital surveillance. Yes, yes I know that this is not going to be a good thing. Yes, yes I know that the politicians are either intentionally lying to the people or are too stupid to understand what they are actually doing (I often wonder which is worse?) – but look I really don’t have the time or energy right now. Lots of work, lots of personal shit, lots of everything. So I lean back and let others write. The more I read the more I realize that my words are unnecessary.

Then today I read Oscar Swartz blog on the topic (his blog is excellent – unfortunately, or naturally, in Swedish) and I realized something. It’s not a matter of whether or not my voice is needed. Of course it isn’t needed. Not mine, personally. But by leaning back and letting others do the work I am making others work a little bit harder. It’s like being on a tug-of-war team that may still win even if one team member isn’t pulling his/her weight. Damn! I knew I should have been active earlier. Guilt bores its way under my skin, my orginal annoyance at the suggestion has been fermenting for much too long.

So here it is.

The proposed FRA law in brief is that the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt – FRA) shall be given the power to listen to all cable based communication (yes that means everything on the Internet) which crosses Sweden’s borders. The idea is that only international communication (i.e. communication exiting Sweden) will be monitored. Basically since even most national Internet communication passes over international borders the focus on international communication is only a way of pacifying the general population.

Basically the idea is to force all Internet and Telecom providers to copy all communications to state surveillance systems. This means telephones, email, chat, websites, comments on blogs – the works.

Naturally in the age of doublespeak the proposed mass violation of integrity is legitimized by the need to protect the democratic country. People will lose their rights and be viewed as criminals as a default. This will not protect the country. It may help catch people after they have done something but it will not (it cannot) prevent actions.

To make matters worse – oh yes it can be worse – the surveillance is not being carried out by the police. Why is this important?

Well the police have to follow due process. This means in practice that when the police want to bug someone they need to have probable cause to suspect a crime. This new system will make this unnecessary. Everyone will be under surveillance and the state may now order special surveillance on individuals or groups who are not suspected of crimes but who hold political views which are “wrong” – oops now we lost freedom of thought.

Sweden has a long tradition of presenting itself as a bastion of democracy. But this is old stuff. The last decade has seen Sweden shed these ideas and attempt to rush to the forefront of lowlife nations who feel the need to enact a surveillance regime which would have made big brother green with envy.

So what can be done? What did Oscar do to get me going? He just reminded me that the most important feature in a society is the ability of its members to remain active against opposition. To talk, to write and to maintain a voice of dissent – especially when the odds are stacked against us.

Posted on by mklang

Technology and Human Rights

On Friday it’s time for me to give a lecture on Technology and Human Rights for the local masters course on human rights. The nice part about this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to collect and explore different strands of my work and present them to a new audience. My interest in this area began some time ago and resulted in 2005 in the collected edition Human Rights in the Digital Age which I edited together with Andrew Murray.

Discussing technology and rights can at times feel a bit banal. Human rights activists struggle to free people from torture and death so isn’t technology a small waste of time? There is no way in which it would be fair to compare technology and rights to the work of activists against the death penalty. But there is a major problem if all issues must be resolved in the order of magnitude. Speech rights may be less important to someone facing the death penalty but this does not mean that we should ignore speech rights until we have managed to abolish the death penalty.

For the lecture on Friday I am planning to look at three different areas.

The first area is going to be the use of the Internet as a “place” for political participation. I want to discuss the Internet as an area of political discourse and in particular show its possibilities and its fundamental flaws and limitations. This area should include freedom of speech and freedom of association.

The second area is privacy. In particular I want to focus on the merging of online and offline data. Or to put it another way the combination of spatial information (where you are) with the information traces stored in databases (who you are) to show the advanced control mechanism being created.

The final area is the aggregate use of technology. In this section I want to show the audience that with each piece of technology we may implement for our comfort we also form and shape our lives. In particular we also shape the way in which our lives may be controlled by others. This incremental implementation of technology does not bring large protests since no large rights are threatened overall. However the net long term result is darker than anything Orwell would have dreamed about.

Eric Drooker

The overall goal is to make the audience a bit paranoid about technology – to make them question the choices we are all making in our rush towards a more convenient way of life. Not bad for a Friday…

Posted on by mklang

Anonymous Online

Most people have heard of the Zen koan “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The purpose of the koan is not to have an answer but rather to be a point of departure for deeper reflection. Unfortunately for most of us with a western education we tend to attempt to answer the question with a yes or no – therefore defeating the purpose. My question of the day is a variation of the koan: If a protest is not heard – does it make a sound?

The ability to communicate in particular mass communicate is becoming easier. With all due respect to the numerous digital divides (age, knowledge, access, infrastructure etc) the ability to communicate via the internet is still growing. The question is whether this technology will serve the purpose of those attempting to conduct resistance or protest actions. The drawback with mass communication is that the communicator is all too easily identified and can be punished by those she is protesting or communicating against.

So there is a need to both be able to conduct mass communication via the internet and to remain anonymous. There is (thankfully) a growing number of relatively user friendly methods, in addition to tips and tricks, which the anonymous protester can use.

Many of these are to be found in the following guides:

Posted on by mklang

Internet as Democracy

Among the many misconceptions about internet communication is the democratizing effect.

This myth begins with the idea of the marketplace of ideas. This is fundamentally an idea that as long as ideas are allowed to freely compete the best idea will emerge. This is a myth since it does not explain why bad ideas and regimes gain in power. If we add to this the techno-optimism of the early internet (which is still sometimes present) which put forward ideas such as John Gilmoreâ??s famous quote: â??The Net treats censorship as a defect and routes around it.â?? Similar sentiments were reflected in Yochai Benklerâ??s new book â??The Wealth of Networksâ?? (download as pdf here).

These sentiments are overly optimistic and mythical since the reality is far less utopian. It is important to understand the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Stated simply the Internet is all the hardware and cables which connects the world of computers. The Internet is the necessary technology on which different applications can be run. The World Wide Web (WWW) is one such application which is run on the Internet. eMail is another. Filesharing is another etc. You can have file-sharing without the WWW but you cannot have any of the applications without the Internet.

Since the Internet is based on physical cables and physical equipment. Technical, social, economic and legal pressure can ensure that regulation (both good and bad) can be applied to the Internet. Thus we can see that Internet censorship is a growing phenomena. Among those studying and reporting on this phenomena are the Reporters without Borders and the Open Net Initiative.

What their work clearly shows is that by using a mix of hi-tech and low-tech states are ensuring that the Internet is not an automatic democratizing tool.

Posted on by mklang