politics

Islandic Terrorists

This is something I missed. Apparently the British Prime Minister has declared that the Icelandic people are terrorists.

The UK has used anti-terrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by a troubled Icelandic bank. This is an awful example of how legislation is abused to enable it to do something it was never intended. It has also worsened the effects of the economic breakdown on ordinary Icelandic people.

In order to “help” him to see his mistake (which is costing them dearly in this time of economic turmoil) there is a website with a petition and lots of pictures of non-terrifying Islanders.

On Wednesday October 8th, the British Government invoked anti-terrorist legislation, which was in effect aimed at the people of Iceland. This devastating attack on our society was received with disbelief here in Iceland, where it turned a grave economic situation into a national disaster. The people of Iceland have always considered themselves great friends of the United Kingdom. Our nations have a long history of mutually beneficial trade and have been close allies in NATO and Europe.

Read more, sign the petition and check out the pictures. But above all point out to Mr Brown that he must be off his nut.

Posted on by mklang

Protecting Digital Rights

Internet service providers are hardly known for their efforts to protect the rights of their clients. This is hardly surprising considering they low amount of money they make per client compared to the legal costs which would be entailed in attempting to defend a client. For example: A cheap web hosting service costs less per year than a lawyer costs per hour. It’s not too difficult to work it out.

At the same time the ISPs are our lifeline and basis of our ability to participate in a digital society so this lack of help is a serious flaw. So it was nice to see that the Council of Europe have published Human rights guidelines for Internet service providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for internet service providers (ISPs). While underlining the important role played by ISPs in delivering key services for the Internet user, such as access, e-mail or content services, they stress the importance of users’ safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the providers to be aware of the human rights impact that their activities can have.

in addition to this document the Council of Europe have also published Human rights guidelines for online games providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for online games providers and developers. While underlining the primary value of games as tools for expression and communication, they stress the importance of gamers safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the games industry to be aware of the human rights impact that games can have.

Documents such as these are the early steps at ensuring the protection of individuals online rights and as such should be applauded even if it is kind of worrying that we still see a need to attempt to define rights in online environments as something fundamentally different from human rights in the offline world.

Posted on by mklang

42 days

This autumn the Government wants to push through a bill allowing police to lock people up for 42 days without charge if they are suspected of a “terrorism-related offence”.

What about the old argument that “if you are innocent then you have nothing to fear”? Well thats false and you should know better. Take the example of Hicham Yezza

Hicham Yezza, an employee of the University of Nottingham, was arrested and detained without charge for saving a declassified, freely available document entitled ‘al Qaida Training Manual’ onto his computer. Hicham was sent the document by his friend Rizwaan Sabir, who he was helping with his research into terrorism for a Politics PhD. Hicham never opened the document, it sat forgotten and unread on his computer.

On May 14, Hicham and Rizwaan were arrested; it was 48 hours before Hicham was told why he was being held. He was detained without charge for 6 days.

The proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill would allow the police to lock you suspects not for 6, but for 42 days.

Support the Amnesty campaign & Encourage the Brits to sign a no to 42 days petition.

Posted on by mklang

Universities pimp out students

Information and news tends to come from many strange source but I was really surprised to find a nasty piece of news in the Göteborg Uni student newspaper. To put it bluntly Göteborg University has made a series of larger or smaller errors. Some just bad ideas while others really bad ideas.

In order to ensure that all students can be reached and to be able to take full advantage of information technology someone decided to provide all students with “official” emails ending with @student.gu.se – on the face of it this may seem like a good idea but I really have no idea why. It would have been better to allow/demand/require all students to register an email address but I don’t want to get into that part right now.

The second mistake was to decide to manage the email system themselves. Which resulted in a couple of years of mismanagement, a lot of frustration and a final collapse of the whole system. Ok, so I am exaggerating it was not a collapse but basically the university admitted defeat – and it is here where the local student newspaper comes in – and have handed the administration of the email to Google.

Now this is a development which has been happening without much fuss all over the world Trinity College Dublin, Arizona State University and Linköping University (another Swede) but it kind of hits me square in the nuts when my home university adopts the scheme.

So why does it bother me that Google has taken over student email at Göteborg Uni? Why does it seem that I am the only one who is bothered by what is supposed to be a comforting fact that the students will still have @student.gu.se as their mail?

What really bugs me is that the university has basically sold its students. Not only that, but the university is a public authority and as such should not be promoting a private company in this way. The University of Gothenburg has approximatly 50,000 students (25 000 full-time students) and 5,000 employees.  This public authority is then used to demand of it’s 50 000 clients that they must become reliant on a private company.

As if this wasn’t enough the recent Swedish FRA law allows surveillance of all communications that pass through Sweden. Since Google’s servers are outside Sweden this means that all the students email will be under surveillance.

This is wrong in so many ways but nobody seems to be reacting to the fact that univesities are pimping out their students for the sake of technical simplicity – when this is not necessary!

Posted on by mklang

In praise of fearless academics

In the olden days Swedish professors had extraordinary job security. Much like a judge, a Swedish professor could not be fired for his or her opinions. The reason for this job security was to ensure and encourage an independent acadmia who would, without fear, couragously attack established, encrusted thought, to bravely rattle cages and knock over pedastals. In theory at least this was what was supposed to happen. In practice not a lot of knocking down took place.

Less than two decades ago this changed. The traditional job security was removed. More academics were produced. More professors, associate professors and PhDs were pushed through the academia factory. At the same time web communications made talking noisly an easy occurance. But when a blogger shouts on the web – does anyone listen?

Many PhD students, part time teachers, project based researchers and jobless PhD’s murmer (not loudly) about the dangers of blogging your mind or writing couragous, critical arguments in the media. Of course your future employers google you – what were you thinking? You didn’t think you could be appointed to the committee after writing “that” in the local newspaper?

But this picture is not as bleak as it may seem at first. There is a group of disrespectful, uncringing, loud academics who speak their minds. Online and offline. Some are quitely and discretely punished but in the long run developing reputations for being fearless, courageous and blunt is an advantage to the academic – even if he or she recieves a few knocks on the way.

Just wanted you all to know that you are seen and appreciated – you know who you are!

—

ps this post has nothing to do with, but was inspired by a particularly fearless local academic Prof Bo Rothstein who consistenly charges forward knocking over pedastles, rattles cages and challenges hypocracy wherever he sees it.

Posted on by mklang

Frenchmen risk being banned from the Internet

The French have gone and done it! Times Online reports:

Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy.

“There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts.

This is, as I have argued earlier (last time in January), a really bad idea. Why is banning people from the Internet a bad idea?

The Internet has been promoted and become our most basic communications infrastructure (my focus here is Europe since this is where the the French are).

1. The punishment does not fit the crime: We have changed the way Banks, Post Offices, ticket sales, hotel booking, insurance (etc, etc) work and banning someone from the Internet will be tantamount to branding a symbol of guilt onto the person. Not to mention the increased costs involved in time and money. Indeed why should copyright violation prevent me from online banking?

2. Group punishment: If an Internet connection is involved in copyright violation this does not mean that all those dependent upon that connection should be punished. The actual violator may be underage or the network may be open to others.

3. Privatizing the law: The ability to punish copyright violators should not be delegated to private bodies. Internet providers are not equipped to mete out legal punishments.

Earlier, when arguing against proposals such as these I wrote:

The proposals seen above are simplistic, naive and dangerous they show a fundamental lack of understanding not only of technology or its role in society but also a lack of understanding of the role of communication in a democratic society. The actions of the politicians proposing such measures show that they are not acting in the interests of the individuals they are there to serve.

Even if the French have chosen to go the other way – I still believe that they are wrong…

Posted on by mklang

Torture Established

CNN reports that the organization Physicians for Human Rights have conducted clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The report from Physicians for Human Rights shows that the prisoners have been tortured

“We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse, often causing lasting suffering,” said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study.

In a 121-page report, the doctors’ group said that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.

The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003. “There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes,” Taguba says. “The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.”

The rights group demands:

• “Repudiate all forms of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”;

• Establish an independent commission to investigate and report publicly the circumstances of detention and interrogation at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay;

• Hold individuals involved in torturing detainees accountable through criminal and civil processes; and

• Monitor thoroughly the conditions at U.S.-run prisons all over the world.

Posted on by mklang

The Swedish Surveillance State

I am almost ashamed for not blogging and discussing this in more detail. There have been plenty of media, discussions, and a blogging frenzy in the past two weeks…

Short of actually doing the work myself I simplified life – or gave way to my laziness and re-post this post from the EFF

A proposed new law in Sweden (voted on this week, after much delay) will, if passed, allow a secretive government agency ostensibly concerned with signals intelligence to install technology in twenty public hubs across the country. There it will be permitted to conduct a huge mass data-mining project, processing and analysing the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals. Allegedly these monitoring stations will be restricted to data passing across Sweden’s borders with other countries for the purposes of monitoring terrorist activity: but there seems few judicial or technical safeguards to prevent domestic communications from being swept up in the dragnet. Sound familiar?

The passing of the FRA law (or “Lex Orwell”, as the Swedish are calling it) next week is by no means guaranteed. Many Swedes are up in arms over its provisions (the protest Facebook group has over 5000 members; the chief protest site links to thousands of angry commenters across the Web). With the governing alliance managing the barest of majorities in the Swedish Parliament, it would only take four MPs in the governing coalition opposing this bill to effectively remove it from the government’s agenda.

As with the debate over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in the United States, much of this domestic Swedish debate revolves around how much their own nationals will be caught up with this dragnet surveillance. But as anyone who has sat outside the US debate will know, there is a wider international dimension to such pervasive spying systems. No promise that a dragnet surveillance system will do its best to eliminate domestic traffic removes the fact that it *will* pick up terabytes of the innocent communications of, and with, foreigners – especially those of Sweden’s supposed allies and friends.

Sweden is a part of the European Union: a community of states which places a strong emphasis on the values of privacy, proportionality, and the mutual defence of those values by its members. But even as the EU aspires to being a closer, borderless community, it seems Sweden is determined to set its spies on every entry and exit to Sweden. When the citizens of the EU talk to their Swedish colleagues, what happens to their private communications then?

When revelations regarding the United Kingdom’s involvement in a UK-US surveillance agreement emerged in 2000, the European Parliament produced a highly critical report (and recommended that EU adopt strong pervasive encryption to protect its citizens’ privacy).

Back then, UK’s cavalier attitude to European communications, and its willingness to hand that data to the United States and other non-EU countries, greatly concerned Europe’s elected legislators. Already questions are being asked in the European Parliament about Sweden’s new plans and their effect on European citizen’s personal data. Commercial companies like TeliaSonera have moved servers out of Sweden to prevent their customers from being wiretapped by the Swedish Department of Defence. Sweden’s own business community have expressed concern that companies may move out of Sweden to protect their private financial data.

Sweden has often led the charge for government openness and consumer advocacy, and has, understandably, much national pride in seeing its past policies exported and reflected in Europe and beyond. Before Sweden’s MPs vote next week to allow its government surveillance access to whole Net, they should certainly consider its effect on their Swedish citizens’ privacy. But it should also ponder exactly how their vote will be seen by their closest neighbors. If the Lex Orwell passes, Sweden may not need something so sophisticated as a supercomputer to hear what the rest of the world thinks about their new values.

Posted on by mklang

Confused Politicians on Copyright

Without being too cynical it is easy to see that politicians are struggling with online copyright violation. Even the terminology is confused – copyright violation is too difficult and most people will talk about file sharing and thereby confusing technology with law.

In Sweden, where computer literacy is high and fixed price broadband is the norm, intentional copyright violation through filesharing is rife. In addition to this the moral concepts surrounding these acts have been fundamentally re-interpreted. Due to its relative ease, low cost and widespread acceptance – illegal file sharing is not considered by many to be morally wrong. Some not insignificant numbers also argue that it should not even be illegal.

Naturally politicians are concerned. Not all are cynically using the debate to forward their own popularity – some are sincerely concerned about the rift between law and morality in this question. Swedes, believe it or not, are a rather moral bunch. Sure we have reputations for free sex, expensive alcohol and high suicide rates but this is no longer a true picture if you compare Sweden to the rest of Europe. What I mean by being moral is that Swedes are relatively honest and prefer not to cheat – so when the rift between morality and law is apparent it is a greater reflection of a problem in Sweden than in some other countries.

So the Pirate Party wants to abolish copyright, The Swedish Left Party recently decided to strive to legalize online file sharing. Now the Centre Party are calling for change in a recent report by their spokesman on Copright Annie Johansson (report in Swedish Pdf) on the future of copyright.

Their report is interesting in that they want to attempt a re-evaluation of copyright in order to make it into a fair balance of rights. The report is also heavily influenced by the concept of Fair Use and the Creative Commons system which is good on the one hand but unfortunately the concepts are misunderstood in the
report. The fair use system is not easily applied in the Swedish concept due to different legal cultures and histories. And the Creative Commons licensing system cannot go beyond the legislation in hand.

Are politicians weary about talking to experts?

Despite these minor misunderstandings there seems to be growing political will to discuss the purpose of copyright. This could become very interesting.

Posted on by mklang