Tag: internet

The UN Is Threatening Privacy Under Pretense of New Cybercrime Treaty

The US digital rights group EFF is describing the latest UN Cybercrime Treaty draft as “a significant step backward” and a case of “perilously broadening its scope beyond the cybercrimes specifically defined in the convention, encompassing a long list of non-cybercrimes.”

This “dance” – with some reported progress, for things to then again get worse – is not exactly new in the now lengthy process of negotiating the document, amid criticism not only from observers among the involved rights non-profits, but also UN member-countries.

EFF is also convinced that these latest developments are not accidental, i.e., a case of oversight, but rather an essentially purposeful wrong step that diminishes chances of the treaty, once/if adopted being the result of proper consensus.

When it all started, the Treaty was presented as a “standardized” manner for the world to combat cybercrime.

What has been happening in the meanwhile, though, is a seemingly never-ending stream of additions and expansions of the document’s original powers, to the point where it has now, in the words of EFF, “morphed into an expansive surveillance treaty.”

A major concern is what EFF calls possible overreach as national and international investigations are carried out. And instead of improving on these concerns, the new draft is said to have held on to past controversial rules, only to add even more.

This time, it’s in the form of “allowing states to compel engineers or employees to undermine security measures, posing a threat to encryption.”

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Pro-Israel Trolls Mob Social Media

Almost as important as its military campaign for Israel is its battle to control its public image.

Even as it kills thousands of people in Gaza, the small Middle Eastern nation is spending millions of dollars on a propaganda war, purchasing ads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other online apps.

At the same time, an army of pro-Israel trolls has invaded the Community Notes function on X/Twitter, attempting to influence the online debate around the ongoing crisis.

Since Oct. 7, Israel has inundated YouTube with advertisements, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs spending nearly $7.1 million on ads in the two weeks following Hamas’ incursion. According to journalist Sophia Smith Galer, this equates to almost one billion impressions.

With its campaign, the Israeli government overwhelmingly focused on rich Western nations, its top targets being France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. In France alone, the ministry spent $3.8 million.

Other branches of the Israeli government undoubtedly also spent money on ads. The overwhelming message of the campaign was that Hamas are terrorists linked with ISIS and that Israel — a modern, secular democracy — is defending itself from foreign aggression.

Much of the content blatantly violated YouTube’s terms of service, including a number of ads featuring gory shots of dead bodies. Another ad that piqued public attention was played before videos aimed at babies. Amid a scene of pink rainbows and soothing music, text appears reading:

“We know that your child cannot read this. We have an important message to tell you as parents. 40 infants were murdered in Israel by the terrorists Hamas (ISIS). Just as you would do everything for your child, we will do everything to protect ours. Now hug your baby and stand with us.”

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Backpage: The Monumental Free Speech Case the Media Ignored

After a dozen years of legal tussles, seven years in the crosshairs of ambitious prosecutors, and five-and-a-half years fighting a federal case that saw his business forcibly shuttered, his assets seized, and his longtime partner dead by suicide, alt-weekly newspaper impresario Michael Lacey was found guilty Thursday on just one of the 86 criminal charges levied against him in connection with the online advertising platform Backpage. But the government’s fanatical pursuit of Lacey and his four other Backpage co-defendants is far from over. 

Lacey, an award-winning investigative journalist, was found guilty of international concealment money laundering, which could land him in prison for up to 20 years, and not guilty of international promotional money laundering. But after a week of contentious deliberations, the jury could not come to agreement on the other 84 charges, prompting U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa to declare a second mistrial in this case. That means Lacey could face a third federal trial essentially for the crime of running a classified ads site that knowingly enabled and profited from illegal, if consensual, transactions involving sex.

Thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the speech and conduct of website consumers is considered to be the legal responsibility of the speakers themselves, not the owners of the platform. This has been a thorn in the side of politicians and other would-be censors ever since. In 2013, Kamala Harris and 46 other state attorneys general sent a joint letter to Congress urging a rollback of Section 230; the letter started like this: “Every day, children in the United States are sold for sex. In instance after instance, state and local authorities discover that the vehicles for advertising the victims of the child sex trade to the world are online classified ad services, such as Backpage.com.”

Seven weeks before her election to the U.S. Senate, Harris, along with her Texas counterpart Ken Paxton, brought the first criminal case against Lacey, his partner Jim Larkin, and other executives at Backpage, who were paraded in a Sacramento courtroom cage wearing orange jumpsuits. That case was tossed out by a judge who pointed out: “Congress did not wish to hold liable online publishers for the action of publishing third party speech….It is for Congress, not this court, to revisit.” 

But just three days before leaving the A.G.’s office for the Senate, Harris filed yet another Backpage case, which was yet again thrown out (partially) because of Section 230. Once in Congress, Harris helped push through the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA, which does peel back Section 230 to make websites liable for the “facilitation” or “promotion” of prostitution by their users, even though prostitution itself is not a federal crime. 

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5 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR THE ONLINE PRIVACY CRACKDOWN

The internet is about to change. In many countries, there’s currently a coordinated legislative push to effectively outlaw encryption of user uploaded content under the guise of protecting children. This means websites or internet services (messaging apps, email, etc.) could be held criminally or civilly liable if someone used it to upload abusive material. If these bills become law, people like myself who help supply private communication services could be penalized or put into prison for simply protecting the privacy of our users. In fact, anyone who runs a website with user-uploaded content could be punished the same way. In today’s article, I’ll show you why these bills not only fail at protecting children, but also put the internet as we know it in jeopardy, as well as why we should question the organizations behind the push.

Let’s quickly recap some of the legislation.

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Is a Cyber 9/11 Coming?

Talk of a “Cyber 9/11” has been circulating for years.  With the next presidential election twelve months away now, some folks are predicting that a major cyber event will happen before then, throwing a monkey wrench into the 2024 election process.

What the heck is Cyber 9/11?

What does Cyber 9/11 mean?  Is there a real risk?  What should we be preparing for?

There are two aspects to the Cyber 9/11 concept.  The first is the disaster itself; 9/11 was a catastrophe that ended the lives of over 3000 people in one day.  There are fears that if power grids were hacked or enough damage was done to logistical centers, the ensuing chaos would cause deaths.

Quite memorably, back in 2000, a disgruntled public works employee in Australia hacked into the water treatment system and caused raw sewage to pour into public areas, flooding a Hyatt hotel.  One man acting alone caused a disgusting, expensive mess. Of course security experts are concerned with what a team of angry individuals could do.

The second aspect to a potential Cyber 9/11 is the change in the regulatory landscape that occurred after 9/11 in 2001.  I remember flying as a teenager in the 90s. So many things changed later.  The airport changes were most obvious to regular citizens, but the passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 was far more consequential.  It dramatically changed the way surveillance was conducted.

Under the Fourth Amendment, private citizens are supposed to be protected from warrantless search and seizures.  The Patriot Act really weakened that. Law enforcement is now allowed to delay the notice of search warrants.  They don’t need nearly as much oversight from judges to conduct phone and internet surveillance.

These Constitution-weakening changes occurred after 9/11 in 2001.

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PRISON TELECOM GIANT DELETES MONTHS OF INCARCERATED WRITERS’ WORK

I sat there, staring at an inbox that now read zero. Just hours ago, it had the number nine, all drafts of pieces I had crafted, refined, and stored on an e-messaging service provided to me and other people incarcerated in the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC). Now, all of my work—easily over a hundred hours spent on stories that I planned to send off to editors in hopes of getting published—was just gone.

Last week, people in prisons across Washington awoke to find that Securus, the controversial prison telecoms giant, had deleted all draft messages from our email inboxes without warning. This was the third time this had happened to us in a year. It was a crushing realization for many, but perhaps especially for writers like me, who have no choice but to use that drafts inbox as a repository for our work. Unlike most computers or smartphones, the Securus tablets DOC provides do not allow users to save text files outside of the e-messaging app. The drafts folder is our hard drive, the only place we can save articles, essays, poems, novels, and other writing we may one day hope to share with the world.

The pain of losing entire drafts and having to start all over again is bad enough. But for those of us in prison who have turned to writing as both a career and a form of therapy, the loss is only compounded.

“I feel devastated, and it makes it hard to continue writing,” Darrell Jackson, one of my fellow writers, told me last week. “Here I am writing deep pieces about trauma and structural racism, and my work just keeps disappearing, only for me to have to rewrite the piece and process all that trauma again and again.”

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Musk to provide Starlink access to Gaza

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he will provide satellite internet access to “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza via his Starlink network. Phone and internet lines went down in the enclave after a heavy Israeli bombardment on Friday.

Musk made his announcement on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, stating that SpaceX’s Starlink division would “support connectivity” with the besieged strip.

There are apparently a number of Starlink terminals in Gaza, but in a separate post on Saturday, Musk said that none of these devices had attempted to communicate with the satellite network. “It is not clear who has authority for ground links in Gaza, but do we know that no terminal has requested a connection in that area,” he wrote on X.

Internet and cell phone services stopped working in Gaza on Friday night after a wave of Israeli airstrikes. Gaza’s largest telecommunications operator, Paltel, announced that its infrastructure had been totally destroyed in the bombing, which preceded the deployment of Israeli ground troops to the enclave.

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UK government keeping files on teaching assistants’ and librarians’ internet activity

The government has been monitoring the social media accounts of “dozens” of ordinary teaching staff, including teaching assistants, and is keeping files on posts that criticise education policies, the Observer has learned.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper revealed how the Department for Education is monitoring the social media activity of some of the country’s leading education experts. Now evidence has emerged that the monitoring is much more widespread, covering even the lowest paid members of staff.

Ordinary teaching and support staff said this weekend that they were “gobsmacked” and angry after discovering that the department had files on them. Many outraged educators have rushed to submit subject access requests [SARs] compelling the DfE to release any information it holds under their name, after discovering there were files up to 60 pages long about their tweets and comments challenging government policy or the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.

Nikki Cleveland, a higher-level teaching assistant and primary school librarian, who mainly posts uncontroversial children’s book reviews, discovered from a SAR that the DfE had a file alerting colleagues to tweets from her complaining about lack of funding for school libraries and about Ofsted. She said: “I was gobsmacked that I was even on their radar.”

Cleveland expressed anger that while the department was flagging tweets about schools struggling to balance their budgets, meet the growing needs of pupils without enough staff and deal with unreasonable demands from Ofsted, “nothing has changed”.

“The whole thing makes me even more cynical that no one in the government or the DfE cares about what is happening in schools on a day-to-day basis,” she added.

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US Senator Michael Bennet Invokes EU’s Censorship Demands, Calls For Big Tech to Censor “Misinformation”

Senator Michael Bennet has criticized tech behemoths such as Meta, X, Google, and TikTok, accusing them of having lax policies that seemingly sanction the spread of untruths.

The turbulent situation between Israel and Hamas was recently seized upon by Democratic Senator Michael Bennet as another pretext to launch an offensive against the digital landscape.

Bennet targeted X, Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet in a letter dated October 17, imploring them to “extinguish the proliferation of inaccurate and misleading content” related to the Middle East conflict.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

On the surface, the Senator’s request appears aligned with social responsibility while mitigating harm. However, the true objective surfaced, revealing Bennet’s obsession with enhancing the influence of censorship-prone entities that preside over content veracity.

Bennet’s stance is in alignment with European Union officials who are exerting pressure on these tech giants to aggressively deal with misinformation, via a letter addressed to the executives.

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Internet Censorship, Everywhere All at Once

It used to be a truth universally acknowledged by citizens of democratic nations that freedom of speech was the basis not just of democracy, but of all human rights.

When a person or group can censor the speech of others, there is – by definition – an imbalance of power. Those exercising the power can decide what information and which opinions are allowed, and which should be suppressed. In order to maintain their power, they will naturally suppress information and views that challenge their position.

Free speech is the only peaceful way to hold those in power accountable, challenge potentially harmful policies, and expose corruption. Those of us privileged to live in democracies instinctively understand this nearly sacred value of free speech in maintaining our free and open societies.

Or do we?

Alarmingly, it seems like many people in what we call democratic nations are losing that understanding. And they seem willing to cede their freedom of speech to governments, organizations, and Big Tech companies who, supposedly, need to control the flow of information to keep everyone “safe.”

The locus for the disturbing shift away from free speech is the 21st-century’s global public square: the Internet. And the proclaimed reasons for allowing those in power to diminish our free speech on the Internet are: “disinformation” and “hate speech.”

In this article, I will review the three-step process by which anti-disinformation laws are introduced. Then, I will review some of the laws being rolled out in multiple countries almost simultaneously, and what such laws entail in terms of vastly increasing the potential for censorship of the global flow of information.

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