Details On Worldwide Surveillance and Filtering 125
An anonymous reader writes "Help Net Security is running an interview with Rafal Rohozinski, a founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative, which investigates, exposes and analyzes Internet filtering and surveillance practices all over the world. Rafal provides insight on the process of assessing the state of surveillance and filtering in a particular country and discusses differences related to these issues in several regions, touching especially the United States and Europe. In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech. However, in both places surveillance is on the rise particularly as law-enforcement agencies become more adept at working in the cyber domain."
Just Remember. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just Remember. (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot pedophiles! The internet is filled with old creepy men who want to have sex with young girls and boys! I saw it on the news!
Tor, email anonymizers and encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
* Yes I know that this is not as secure as keeping your crypto keys on your own hardware, but it goes a hell of a lot further than any current methods do, and would require a lot of resources on the part of the government to break across the board (e.g. a targeted attack would work, but if they are going to the effort of targeting an individual they are going to break the crypto anyway, perhaps using the drugs+wrench method).
Re:Tor, email anonymizers and encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
> The majority of people, however, do not care as much about thwarting efforts at surveillance as they do about convenience
That, or they just don't know or understand the issues. To most people, computers are magic.
But yeah, I agree with your basic point. We already have the ability to make this a non-issue, and we're not doing it.
Re:Tor, email anonymizers and encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
Even then, convenience, as the parent mentioned, is a huge factor. How many of you set up user accounts on family member's machines, telling them "Do not surf the net or do anything else with the admin account EXCEPT install software YOU choose or other administrative functions!" only to have them use the admin account anyway and catch one of those malware programs that installs behind the scenes - all because there's an app, and there's always at least one fucking app that cannot run unless it's run by an admin account!? (I'm looking at you Kodak!)
Moving (Score:3, Insightful)
Argh! This country and it's lack of privacy! Big government! I've had it with america! Land of the free indeed! I'm moving to europe!
How do the United States compare to Europe in regards to surveillance and filtering?
Certainly there seems to be more momentum these days towards regulation in Europe. This is prompted by concerns over child welfare and exploitation, and also the perceived danger from radical militant groups. Europe also tends to be more of a surveillance society, particularly the UK. In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech.
Wait... we're doing something right? Yes! WOO! AMERICA NUMBER ONE! LAND OF THE FREE!
[Making fun of myself here, I've often read articles on the sad state of privacy in the US and thought "I quit, totally moving at the next available opportunity." If I'm being honest, I would have to describe myself as a fairweather fan of the US.]
"They" don't give a damn about the law (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, censorship is more difficult to implement if for no other reason than the court systems offer greater protections for freedom of speech.
In the US, there are big telecommunication carriers who illegally spy on American citizens, and they go scot-free. The law is a weak line of defense when the government colludes against it. When the "leaders" have set their minds on something, it's going to happen. Laws will be changed, circumvented and ignored. There must be a strong factual defense line. In the case of communication that's cryptography, privacy enhancing routing protocols, redundancy and networks in the hands of the people.
Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:1, Insightful)
...knowing that most slash dotters are consumed with rabid anti-us sentiments, and don't have the attention span to read more than a one-liner.
The reality isn't what you imply.
The US has taken a few steps backward since 9-11 - but it still has greater protections over free expression than any other country of which I am aware.
Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tor, email anonymizers and encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why unauthenticated encryption should be the default, for everything (email, web, etc). That's something people can do without understanding anything, and frustrates surveillance immensely, even if it doesn't rigorously prevent it. And then, if they care and can learn, they can securely exchange keys to get authenticated encryption.
Sure, the masses would be MitM vulnerable, but right now they're even worse off, and can be effortlessly sniffed.
Shame on the FF3 team.
I am Jesus (Score:3, Insightful)
and I command you to stop using table-based layouts!
Hey, if you can't disprove it, it must be true!
Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:3, Insightful)
It's interesting that you perceive the parent post as an attack on your country, not on a general mentality.
nor a credible citation (Score:5, Insightful)
"The State of World Liberty Project was founded in 2006 by Nick Wilson, an activist and co-founder of the Libertarian Reform Caucus, an organization working to turn the United States Libertarian Party into a viable political party."
Their compiled list is nonsensical at best, and relies primarily on nebulous ratings of "economic freedom" from well known right wing political groups - like the Heritage Foundation.
Also note, that if you discount the economic figures, the top dozen or so countries are scored closely enough to lack any statistical significance.
And the economic figures are all based on taxation - since libertarians have never met a tax they liked.
Further - without being intimately familiar with the culture of each country, I could not honestly evaluate them - and it's glaringly obvious that no effort was made to do so on the site you are promoting.
So in summary, you're flinging out weak, biased data to support a conclusion you've reached without making any reasonable effort to ascertain the actual facts.
I still remain unaware of any specific country with greater overall freedom than the US.
Nothing you've posted could rationally be expected to alter that fact.
Re:nor a credible citation (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell it to the Dixie Chicks.
Of course, now you're going to say that it wasnt the *government* which tried to censor them, it was just people who didn't like what they had to say. Sigh. A nation that turns to censorship every time someone says something they don't like is destined to become a police state.
Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps not in the form of protecting us from communists but it will undoubtedly come back in one form or another. With complacency like yours it will come back even quicker.
The DMCA makes it illegal to publish an entirely open source DVD player. It effectively grants a limitless patent to the DVD CCA which controls who can make a DVD player and under what conditions. Software patents limit my ability to publish ideas I developed on my own having never heard of an obvious submarine patent that will bar me from publishing my software.
What makes you so sure the protesters did that? COINTELPRO was an FBI program in which agents infiltrated protest groups and started riots to make the group look bad, and to give the authorities an excuse to interfere with the group's free-speech rights.
How do you know? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only way you know if someone is spying on your data is if someone goes public with it, and it seems pretty stupid to assume that those exposed cases are in any way representative of the actual state of spying.
Re:I am Jesus (Score:1, Insightful)
There were lots of "true enough" important beliefs that they could not possibly prove scientifically at that time.
So they've been using "adhoc frameworks for provisional inference from limited information" instead.
e.g. Winter comes every X moons, and is likely to come again, we better store up food for it.
Re:nor a credible citation (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I see your point. We don't run out and buy the records of people we don't like, we don't go to their movies so that's censorship?
You sir are a raving loon!
Re:Tor, email anonymizers and encryption (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, the masses would be MitM vulnerable, but right now they're even worse off, and can be effortlessly sniffed.
Wow, I must be incredibly uninformed about what is possible with unauthenticated encryption.. please, tell us how to do unauthenticated encryption that requires a MitM attack rather than just passive sniffing to defeat.
Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:4, Insightful)
But I find the US none the less more scary for the ways they back up this surveillance.
As a single example, can you name a single western style democratic country where the government can legally set up and maintain something like Gitmo?
And the lack of recourse, for example no or hardly no limits on the retention of data or (well communicated) ways to be informed about what agencies store about you and how to appeal.
Or the way pieces of sensitive legislation are sneaked through by tacking it to big non related bills.
Don't get me wrong, I really like many aspects of the US but when it comes to perceived security risks it's still exhibiting 'Old West' policies of 'shoot first, talk later'.
Re:Nice job going for the cheap +5 (Score:3, Insightful)
McCarthyism is long dead and will not resurrect in out lifetime
Absolutely correct. Communism was a somewhat defined enemy that more-or-less went away after the USSR collapsed. On the other hand, "terrorism" is a much more handy nebulous enemy that can be used to ruin people's careers, freeze their assets, prevent them from traveling, and so forth, without the pesky problem of having the enemy ever disappear. Even better, we can just round up people (including US citizens) who have backgrounds and names that sound Muslim with the choice of imprisoning and possibly torturing them for a few years without charges, sending them to a foreign country to be tortured, or just killing them.
Your right McCarthyism is dead. The various fascists in government gotten much better about how to engage in political repression of the citizenry.