Snooper's Charter Down but Not Out

As I mentioned back in October, the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been considering the Draft Communications Data Bill, aka Snooper's Charter, seemed to be doing a rather splendid job. It asked witnesses extremely perceptive questions, and seemed unwilling simply to accept the UK government's line that we needed these draconian powers because "terrorism"...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Electronic Versions Of Textbooks Spy On Students As They Read Them

The rapid uptake of ebooks by the public shows that there is a widespread recognition of their advantages. This would be good news for the publishing industry as it faces the transition from analog to digital formats, were it not for the fact that some publishers keep finding new ways of making ebooks less attractive than physical versions. 

On Techdirt.

Australian Government Announces That It Is Dropping Mandatory ISP Filtering...But Still Wants Filtering

Techdirt has been writing about Australia's plans to join the online censorship club for almost three years. Now, in a surprise move pointed out to us on Twitter by @Asher_Wolf, the Australian government has announced that it is dropping the plans -- sort of: 

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How A Drone Might Save Your Life

There is a natural tendency to accentuate the negative when it comes to drones -- concentrating on how these "spies the sky" represent a threat to privacy and civil liberties. But as Techdirt has reported before, there are other applications that many might find not just acceptable but welcome. And that's not surprising: like the Internet, drones are just a neutral tool, and as such can be deployed for both good and bad purposes. 

On Techdirt.

EU Surveillance Team: We Need More Surveillance To Justify More Surveillance

Whether or not you believe that CCTV surveillance makes the world a safer place, there's a big problem with deploying it more widely: you still need someone to look at that footage and pick out the things of interest, and it's much harder adding new personnel than adding new cameras. 

On Techdirt.

Indian Politician Plans To Install Surveillance Cameras In His Ministers' Homes And Offices

Recently, Tim noted that, for some strange reason, politicians don't like having the same level of surveillance applied to them as they wish to inflict on the public. Here's a nice case from the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, found via Evgeny Morozov, where politicians aren't being given any choice: 

On Techdirt.

CryptoParty Like It's 1993

As Techdirt stories regularly report, governments around the world, including those in the West, are greatly increasing their surveillance of the Internet. Alongside a loss of the private sphere, this also represents a clear danger to basic civil liberties. The good news is that we already have the solution: encrypting communications makes it very hard, if not entirely impossible, for others to eavesdrop on our conversations. The bad news is that crypto is largely ignored by the general public, partly because they don't know about it, and partly because even if they do, it seems too much trouble to implement. 

On Techdirt.

Snooper's Charter: 19,000 Emails Against, 0 In Favour

Back in August, I urged people to respond to the consultation on the truly dreadful Draft Communications Bill, aka Snooper's Charter. Obviously, I wasn't alone in doing that: many organisations concerned about the impact on civil liberties in this country have done the same. For example, both 38 Degrees and Open Rights Group (ORG) provided suggested texts and asked people to contact the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been considering the Bill - and doing rather a good job of it, I must say.

On Open Enterprise blog.

German Gov't Inadvertently Reveals Police Monitor Gmail, Skype, Facebook & Use Snooping Malware

Transparency is worth having for itself, since governments often tend to behave a little better when they know that someone is watching. But occasionally, requests for data turn up something big and totally unexpected because someone failed to notice quite what the information provided implies. 

On Techdirt. 

Creepy Smartphone Malware Re-creates Your Home For Stalkers

It's become something of a cliché that anyone with a mobile phone is carrying a tracking device that provides detailed information about their location. But things are moving on, as researchers (and probably others as well) explore new ways to subvert increasingly-common smartphones to gain other revealing data about their users. Here's a rather clever use of malware to turn your smartphone into a system for taking clandestine photos -- something we've seen before, of course, in other contexts -- but which then goes even further by stitching them together to form a pretty accurate 3D model of your world: 

On Techdirt.

Let's Clean up the Clean IT Project

Any EU project called "Clean IT", with all that implies for elements that are regarded as "dirty", is worrying enough. But combined with a stated intention of "reducing the impact of the terrorist use of the Internet", the concerns naturally grow. After all, it is precisely by invoking the vague and emotional threat of "terrorism" that the UK government has sought to short-circuit criticism of many of its most illiberal policies, most recently with the ill thought-out Draft Communications Bill.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Megaupload Farce Stirring Up Backlash Against Copyright Overreach

Just when you think the Megaupload farce can't get any more ridiculous, it does. Following revelations that New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau illegally intercepted communications in the Megaupload case and provided those details to law enforcement authorities, the country's Prime Minister has been forced to apologize personally to Kim Dotcom: "Of course I apologize to Mr Dotcom, and I apologize to New Zealanders." From his position of increasing strength as more and more missteps by the New Zealand authorities come to light, Dotcom graciously accepted those apologies. 

On Techdirt.

Cambodia Wants Mandatory Surveillance Cameras In Internet Cafes

Large-scale surveillance of private communications is becoming depressingly routine, even in supposedly enlightened democracies. In less freedom-loving locations, Internet cafes are viewed with particular suspicion, and subject to tight controls. But it looks like Cambodia is taking surveillance of Internet cafes in particular, and communications in general, to new heights/depths: 

On Techdirt.

EU Officials Propose Internet Cops On Patrol, No Anonymity & No Obscure Languages (Because Terrorism!)

Back in February we wrote about the ominously-named "Clean IT" project in Europe, designed to combat the use of the Internet by terrorists. At that time, we suspected that this would produce some seriously bad ideas, but a leaked document obtained by EDRI shows that these are actually much worse than feared (pdf), amounting to a system of continuous surveillance, extrajudicial removal of content and some new proposals that can only be described as deranged. 

On Techdirt.

Syrian Activist Arrested By Secret Police Merely For Having Livestreaming App Installed On His Phone

Police and security forces around the world -- and that includes in the West -- hate being recorded when they're overstepping the mark in the execution of their duties, since it allows the public to challenge official accounts, and even to use videos to seek redress. But there's one thing worse than being recorded, and that's being livestreamed: even the most nimble authorities can't confiscate the recording from its creator, since it's already been uploaded for the world to see. 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Looks To Backdoor In ACTA By Pushing For Same Results Through 'Voluntarism'

This year saw two huge victories for digital activism: against SOPA in the US, and against ACTA in the EU. The big question is now: what will be the next moves of those behind SOPA and ACTA as they seek to regain the initiative? For SOPA, we've had a clue in the call for a "Son of SOPA" from the US Chamber of Commerce. But what about the European Commission? 

On Techdirt.

Europe Already Has Draft Standard For Real-Time Government Snooping On Services Like Facebook And Gmail

As the old joke goes, standards are wonderful things, that's why we have so many of them. But who would have thought that ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, has already produced a draft standard on how European governments can snoop on cloud-based services like Facebook and Gmail -- even when encrypted connections are used? 

On Techdirt.

London Police Want To Crowdsource Guilt-Free Surveillance

One of the earliest proposals for mass surveillance was the Panopticon: 

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Draft Communications Data Bill: Daft and Dangerous

We knew it was coming, and here it is: the Communications Data Bill (.pdf.). First the good news: 

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK 'Snooper's Charter' Seeks To Eliminate Pesky Private Communications

As expected, the UK government has published its Draft Communications Bill (pdf) -- better known as the "snooper's charter," since it requires ISPs to record key information about every email sent and Web site visited by UK citizens, and mobile phone companies to log all their calls (landline information is already recorded). 

On Techdirt.