Free Internet – has it ever existed?

The fact that government suddenly revealed its plans to sign the controversial agreement ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) caused a real storm on the Internet; also many governmental websites became a target for the group of Anonymous.

Only a few weeks ago nobody has heard about this document. In Poland the first information was given by the “Dziennik Internautów” in 2009 – it was about a mysterious document being secretly prepared. I wrote about it on “Kod Władzy” blog when eight countries signed this document often ignoring the democratic procedures.

In spite of publicity around the Anonymous, their attacks are more spectacular than dangerous – they just try to attract attention to this controversial act. The declarations of publishing the politicians’ secret documents seem to be more serious. However, we can assume that the Anonymous are totally serious in their ideas. It is mainly because they have already proved their efficacy in hacking into servers of different companies and stealing data from them. This was the case of PayPal, VISA, Mastercard and Stratfor where the hackers stole e-mail addresses and credit cards numbers.

It is possible that they are not lying.

Although the controversies about this agreement caused uproar in Poland, it is not the first step towards limiting the “freedom on the Internet”. As a matter of fact, the Web has been limited since a long time ago.

The limits can concern many spheres and they also depend on cultural or religious background, on the political system or history. For example, the broadly discussed Chinese Internet; according to the OpenNet Initiative’s reports, China does not comply with the criteria in three main areas: political, social and security area.

Censorship in North Korea is not surprising, but what about imposing limits by Seoul? As we can see, also the South Korea has put some appropriate restrictions by preventing people to enter the websites which praise their southern neighbor.

The situation in the Middle East is also different. Apart from the political reasons that make entering on the websites of the Muslim Brotherhood impossible, the religious reasons are also important. They are visible in e.g. blocking the porn websites, but it is not the end of such actions. The government of Saudi Arabia makes efforts in order to prevent the internauts to come across the websites informing how to become a Christian.

Free Europe?

Maybe the examples of some Asian authoritarian countries are not astonishing, but when we speak about the European Union, which is generally considered as liberal, such limits can be a surprise for the reader. The limits concern the content appearing under a general category which is “the speech of hatred” persecuting religious and ethnical minorities. For example in France and Germany the government fights against websites promoting Nazism.

Apart from the mentioned content, the question of copyrights is also significant – it was a reason for the big debate on ACTA. We should know that this subject has been broadly discussed by European countries since a long time ago; the new agreement is only an international aspect of this discussion. Let us take France as an example. According to the latest edition of the “Internet Enemies” report (published since 2006 and edited by the organization “Reporters without borders”) this country was found in the category “Under Surveillance” after when the government introduced a new law aiming to “civilize the Internet”.

Till now, as the Reporters without borders claim, France is the only country which violates freedom on the Internet in such way that it needs to be put in their report.

Let’s return to the copyrights. The main reason why governments are trying to create new regulations is the fact that internauts can freely copy data from the Internet. People who rule the countries will be certainly interested in some publications such as the Oxford Internet Institute’s report from 2011 which shows that technological progress won’t make the freedom of speech bigger – it will rather enable the government and the police to easily control the Web. In April 2011, “The Telegraph” informed that the EU wanted to introduce

a European “firewall” which won’t be designed to protect the Internet from the attacks from outside but in order to enable blocking the servers located outside the EU. This idea wasn’t put into practice, but who knows when the politics will think about it again.

Other regulations concerning copyrights caused a real storm in the EU – the “Pirates Movement” has come into being as a result of growing popularity of the Pirates Party in Sweden. They want to abolish the existing limits concerning copyrights; they are also against the general European division into right and left.

What about Poland?

In spite of the wave of protests against ACTA, the document itself and comments about it are worth seeing. According to Tymoteusz Barański from the Republican Foundation, the Polish law gives more powers than ACTA. This information is not surprising considering the fact that the European Union’s report from 2011 showed that the Polish people are the most invigilated society in EU.

On the other hand, one of the most controversial things about ACTA is the fact that it contains many basic and general concepts. What is more, ACTA seems to be a document written from the perspective of a particular group of people. As Barański says: “ACTA is mainly focused on protecting those who have the intellectual property rights and it doesn’t determine the rules of using the protected content by every-day users.

As we can see, we cannot say that the freedom on the Internet has always existed. However, many newly introduced laws and regulations will enlarge the number of limits. Even when such commentators as Anthony Wile from the “Daily Bell” say that it is the beginning of war for freedom on the Internet, we need to remember that its freedom has been finished a long time ago.

Home made satellites - a new frontline is open

The Internet is rising. It is a source of knowledge, opinions and revolutions. It is the Internet which was used to inform and gather protesters in Egypt and Tunisia. The people from the "Occupy" decided to protest also in the web.

The authorities are looking forward to establish, very often undercover, some kind of new law, which will be able to take control over the Internet, or at least get the knowledge about the most active participants in the web. 

These efforts seem to be more and more intense recently, that is why during the last Chaos Communication Congress which took place in Berlin between December 27-30 2011, an idea of hacker satellite network was discussed. 

The project is going to be called Hackerspace Global Grid and is going to allow communication out of government control as well as the access to 2P2 network. 

It is proposed that the satellites would be sent on the Earth's low orbit. This way a new network which will be created will allow the internauts to remain independent from local web providers but will also make them harder to find. 

Small satellites network on the low orbit is becoming possible even for a average person, proper network can open a new frontline in the cyberwar and make partizans hidden somewhere in the urban jungle much stronger. 

source

Google makes intelligence work much harder

Sir David Pepper - former director of GCHQ, the royal agency for electronic communication has claimed that because of the Google the work of the intelligence had become much harder. 

He called this “the Google effect”, because as he stated the existence of popular search engine had simplyfied the research of information in the web. So much information being available in the web had  raised the “threshold for producing intelligence” for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. 

“Intelligence producers have had to become very sensitive to this phenomenon and very careful not to put effort into producing intelligence that purports to be secret which is in fact not secret at all.” - he said during the Annual Lecture in the Institution of Engineering and Technology. 

After “the Google effect” hi-rank officials who use the intelligence started to excpect the information much faster than before. “If the intelligence readers are used to getting information online very fast they’re going to expect the intelligence agencies to be able to do much the same thing,” he added. 

Source: The Telegraph

Internet - the enemy of the state

The war in the Internet has begun. In the name of safety comes growing limitation of the greatest achievement of our civilisation: the access to information and unlimited exchange of thoughts. Is the Internet becoming the enemy of the authorities?

There was a great discussion recently in Poland after the „visit” of Internal Safety Agency (ABW) in the house of one of the internauts, the owner of satirical, in his opinion, website about Polish president. The satire was over when very serious members of ABW had shown up. The fact that the unit which is normally interested in more serious crimes had entered into the flat of a common 25-years-old shows us, that the web is not area of unlimited freedom anymore. What is more, does the sociotechnic of an „armed intervention” was to stop just an attempt of insulting the highest-rank official of the state? What did it mean? The boy could be called to the nearest police station as well. The interest of the authorities in the Internet, as a newest trend, can be noticed not only in Poland, but in the whole world.

The interest of the elits with the Internet, as a recent trend can be seen not only in Poland but in the whole world. Recent event on the Middle East had taught us two things. The first one the experience, that the dictators popular and long-term supported ‘master’ cannot be sure of his position, becase due to the old rule, that every Ceasar has his own Brutus. The tools can always be found. He is dependent on how long the richest and most influential of this world would consider him as ‘useful’.

The second thing is, that even if the revolution had started in one place, thanks to the Internet and the newest communication tools, the place where it was inspired can be in completely other place. In this context, the Internet started to play the role of a useful tool for a political communication. Does the worries about the uncontrolled unrest motivates the authorities and centers of political influence to control not only letters sent by emails but also phone calls, bank accounts and many other aspects of citizens life, with the Internet on top of it? Does something, which not long ago was said to be the best area of mass social invigilation had become hard to be accepted by the authorities? Only because it’s getting out of control? In the past, they were checking the trash bins to learn something about the enemy. Today, it is also being done unofficially by checking in phone and computer. The only difference is that after such control of a trash bin there was a lot of stench remaining on the hands, while after the invigilation on these electronical devices there is only a little dust on the white gloves.

From all over the world we can hear the news saying about another attempts to start the control of the web. Coming G8 summit, especially that initiated by Nicolas Sarkozy special technological forum, called e-G8 can be signifficant. The forum itself, even if it was motivated by laudable ideas, can have also negative consequences. Groups of internauts are planning to protest in order to defend the Internet against the authorities. On the one hand, creators of Google, Facebook or Wikipedia were invited, while these companies and projects are those who were accused of gathering the information about their users and censoring the content. Crucial to the whole case would be the fact, that all these Internet companies are being located in the United States, where controversial Patriot Act is working.

The main key-words used by the politicians to force through the parliaments their regulations are: pedofilia, copyrights and terrorism. While the reason why pedofilia should be chased by law is not difficult to explain and its hard to doubt on good intensions of policy makers, much more controversial are two other explanations. On the G8 summit we can also expect strong representation of ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). The agreement, which includes the richest countries of the world had set themselves an objective to force the regulation defending intelectual property rights. These seemingly noble motives can in fact be dangerous for the basic citizens' freedoms. The most interesting seems to be the engagement of the governments in these branches of economy, from which the states do not take any direct profits. This fact can lead us to conclusion, that the intelectual property laws are only a fig leaf in service of the more radical limitations of the web.

The third, and the most important key-word is terrorism. It is the feeling of danger which was the reason used by the members of George W. Bush administracy to enforce Patriot Act I have mentioned before. This law allows American secret services to follow their citizens, their emails, accounts and to gather information about them. Today, the newest boogeymen seem to be the statements of the prisoners kept in Guantanamo. These documents were published by Wikileaks just few days before the day when Osama Bin Laden was alegedly shot and killed. It seems that the time has come to release similar document in Europe. When we look how much Nicolas Sarkozy is being determined to provide stronger invigilation and limitations of civil liberties, everything seems to be unavoidable.

However George Orwell in his famous „1984” did not predict the Internet, but he made his point in predicting the existence of a Big Brother. We are, as it becomes clear, eavesdropped and invigilated. What is most interesting, or rather sad, we need to be informed about that by a foreign institution – European Comission, which in the report published April 18th 2011 had stated, that Polish citizens are one of the most invigilated people from the whole European Union. To answer the question, is it a result of the immaturity of our special services, their independency or their permanent „political war”, is very hard. In a context of historical reflexion, we can claim, that one more oldest occupation of the world can be added – between prostitution and politics, it also spying. It is with us since the beginnig of time. The only exception is that very often prostitutes and spies always serve the politicians not opposite. Without doubt, both are the reasons of their falls, when the political option had changed or someone else had paid much more.

The efforts to subdue the web, which we can notice also in Poland still, did not succeed. Thus, in many countries they are still trying. In Poland there are discussions with the government. In Spain, there is a law which allows the government to grow the abillities of the government to interfere on web (what is most interesting, the bill was supported by both, ruling coalition and opositionist People's Party). In the United States, despite the fact that the COICA bill had lost in Congress, there are still many efforts to force another bill controling the web – this time called PROTECT IP.

Despite the fact, that internauts are organising themselves more and more efficiently and starting to fight for their freedom, it is possible, that the liberty will be sold for safety. The best thing to do is to frighten public opinion with the „dark people”. All the time they are finding another boogeymen. We heard about the dangers over the German nuclear power plants. What is more, maybe the newest reason to start panic would be the information, that the „death” of Osama Bin Laden would result in another terrorist attacks in Europe? The question is, will the bombs be set by the terrorists from Al-Kaida or another Muslim organisation? And if they set them, who will inspire them?

Who has got an interest in creating the atmosphere of fear, and as a result, strenghtenning influence on the Internet and its control? Who can take a profit on that? The same situation we had with the swine flu, when the pharmaceutic companies had earned bilions, which can look strange if we consider how many people had died in recent years and the noise done by the media. There are not many things which happen nowadays without those who earn and those who earn as first.

It would be naive to think, that nobody profits on these regulations. Old war, where people were fighting eye to an eye, was the war, when people like Stanislaw Wokulski main charakter of „Lalka” novel were taking profits. Today they are replaced by the „armaments” against these, who are setting up the bombs. Biblical Eden is not very inspiring, because we don't know much how to earn on it. Does the European Union directive, which forced all the Internet providers on EU territory to store all e-mails and talks made through the web (VoIP) had made us safer? It was, after all, motivated as a reaction to the bomb attacks in London in 2005. Does the terrorist running with the dynamite attached to his leg makes a statement about that in the Internet and makes the online shopping? How much would cost the analysis of every word to find the proper one? How much and who would profit of that?

When knot is thightenning, we can in effect loose a chance for free access to information, our civilization's greatest success. What is most important, we can loose a freedom to express opinions. Opinions, which as an effect we can learn what is actually going on.