Hello People of the Internet. I do not feel comfortable, being spyied upon, for some immature government’s happines? Are you happy with it?
Yes?
Then leave this blogpost, it is not for you, and you will find nothing of good use for you.
No?
This blogpost is for you.
I saw a video some time ago, presented by Mikko Hypponen, Chief Security Researcher of F-Secure company. In his Speech he said that if someone stranger asked Mikko Hypponen, if he is doing anything wrong, well he said he is not. Then he was asked why bother hiding, Mikko answered it is personal matter, and it is not your business or concern. HE IS RIGHT. My private life, my private chats, my private skype or phone cnvversations are NOT YOUR BUSINESS OR CONCERN! PERIOD! That the picture, and I do not care if you like it or not. Will I encrypt? HELL YEAH! And again I do not care if you like it or not. If you don’t – then you will bite the short end of the stick. The governments are using cheap excuses like child pornography, or terrorists attacks to try to mislead us, to justify, their violation of our rights. Do not allow them to do so. Internet People, you are the one with the ultimate power in your hands. Do not give that power to the governments, use it to defend yourselfs. Put the governments where they belong to – down in your legs, to know their place in future.
ENCRYPT ALL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Here is a text I found, linked ot an initative picked up by F-Secure Company and Mikko Hypponen and David Hasselhoff:
Make your voice heard. Contribute to our manifesto for digital freedom!
It all has started at re:publica, Berlin, where F-Secure's Mikko Hyppönen, world-renowned security and privacy expert, discussed with Freedome Ambassador David Hasselhoff about the defining issues of today: digital freedom and privacy. Now you can join forces with them and contribute to the manifesto for digital freedom. We will provide the platform, but the manifesto itself will be licensed under creative commons. The goal of this crowdsourcing project is to raise awareness for #digitalfreedom and its fragile state in today's society. Together. With you.
Why Privacy Matters?
This manifesto is about digital freedom. It’s about the kind of world we want to live in. It’s about our privacy, now and in the future. Because our privacy is ours and it doesn't belong to anyone else. Privacy matters. Without privacy there can be no freedom. It is the most important part of democracy, freedom and human rights. You should be free to vote against politicians you don’t like without being afraid that they will find out who you are, without being intimidated, without being punished. Otherwise there can be no democracy. You should be free to be who you, to think your own thoughts, to discuss your own ideas in private, as well as in public, without fear, without persecution. Otherwise there is no freedom.
That’s why you have a right to keep your politics, your sexuality, your views, and your beliefs to yourself. And no government, or police force, or intelligence agency should ever have the right to breach those rights. But with mass surveillance security services around the world already did. Now they can follow everything about us without our permission. And they do it in secret.
Remember when secret police were scary, bad people? Now they’re supposed to be our friends, promising that they work behind the scenes to keep us safe. We've been told that we should trust them. The problem is that they already lied to us.
So we say our privacy is ours. My privacy is mine and your privacy is yours. It doesn't belong to anyone else. Private data of any sort should only ever be shared with consent. It should never, ever be taken.
Aside from the importance of privacy from the individual perspective, an argument can be made for the importance of privacy from a social perspective. Just as individual humans adapt and grow to survive in their environments, so do societies. It is worth noting that social environments are composed of other persons and that societal environments are composed of other societies. Whether at a societal, social or individual level, freedom to adapt and grow is ensured by privacy.
The ability to adapt or grow is founded on the identity of the adapting or growing thing. It comes down to a matter of harmony; if an identity is too broadly defined, it interferes with potential others and if too narrowly defined then it is not differentiated from potential others. So privacy, by disallowing elements from being interfered with by others and still leaving the same room for those others enables fruitful social growth.
In fact, the manner in which persons may contribute to this document illustrates this point. If the contributions were too restricted, so would the resultant document be too restricted and unrepresentative of the persons it applies to. If the contributions were not restricted enough, it would similarly be unrepresentative as some individuals would annihilate the work of others.
That’s why we need privacy. That’s why we need digital freedom. That’s why we've created this manifesto.
#Theme 1 Mass surveillance
We have stepped in the World of which Orwell warned us. It's sold "for our protection". It's used against us. It has to be stopped right here or ten years from now we are dreaming about "those days when technology wasn't used to spy on people without any right" or "of free network where you can find independent information".
A person's digital possessions should be afforded the same protection and respect as a persons physical belongings. Soon everything will be connected causing the lines between the digital and physical realms to blur. Before this happens the ground work needs to be laid otherwise all trust in technology will be lost.
The two great innovations of our time, the cell phone and the Internet, have been turned into surveillance tools to be used against us. And the problem with programs like PRISM is that they aren't just about doing surveillance on people suspected of crimes. They’re also about spying on people governments know are innocent. Everyone is targeted by mass surveillance of NSA. It is authorized by the current and ex presidents of United States, and should be considered as a crime. Surveillance is grown out of control, and even after Snowden leaks we know only know bits and pieces.
Some countries are in unique position to watch over the rest of the world. Just because their laws allow it and the rest of the world comes to use their services doesn't make it right to collect and store all the communication.
No one should be spied on merely because there is a way and a means available to spy on them.
Just because we have the technology we do not have to use it in a bad way. The fact that our devices offer an easy way to track and monitor your behavior does not mean that it should be used without your notice.
Digital citizens must get better information about what information is leaking out. Why not create a system like the TOC we have in the food industry.
People own data that they create or receive as part of private communication. This data is private and shall not be collected, searched or otherwise used by any other party. This protection shall affect data stored on people’s own devices, in cloud accounts and data in transfer. Authorities investigating crime and other real security threats shall target named suspects when collecting data of this kind.
Every such action shall be based on a warrant granted by a legal and transparently acting court of law and supported by a substantial suspicion. Bulk data collection by authorities is a gross violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12. This article shall be revitalized in the digital world and enforced globally.
If we trade in privacy today, it will be gone tomorrow. The generations to come then won't have a choice anymore. This is kind of like working to save the environment. If we destroy the environment, it'll be gone for our children. The same goes here, I guess.
People should be educated to use Internet intelligently. A means to do so would be to create encryption and decryption tools. Such tools would be used off line to process messages. This should always be done for everything, creating such a demand in decryption time for any surveillance agency that would make the cost of spying everything we communicate online extremely costly. Of course, it would make internet usage slower, but it is worth thinking if one of our problems in this society is the obsession to have everything, including information, for yesterday.
People need to be aware of which of their data is actually precious, because sometimes, when we are talking about intangible things such as data, people are not really ascribing much value to it, until it's too late... When it has already been used against them.
We should not accept that others control our data. Data about us is our data, even if others generated and cumulated it into a new database. In particular 'open data' should only be processed with 'open algorithms'. The risks of discrimination in many big data analytics application are so high, that all big data algorithms should be open source and reviewable.
Metadata of all digital communications must be as private and protected by law as the content of the communication is.
It is not accepted that your government or service provider enters your house and follows everything you do. Why is it accepted that governments or companies like Google may access your private phone that you pay a decent amount of money for. This action allows them to follow your every step and all your communication?
Requests for data searches by legitimate law enforcement authorities should not be based on concepts derived from outdated and irrelevant technology. They should not presume the application of one country's code of law and conduct onto another country, but on a mutual framework that observes common human and property rights.
Intellectual property rights are used by artists, inventors and corporations to signify ownership of the objects and ideas they created. In the same vein, data property rights should be upheld that state that data produced by the individual belong to them, not to the companies that make use of the data.
Why should you allow mass surveillance and thus allow infringement of your rights as a free citizen?
In addition to having international treaties that oblige every signing nation to refrain from systematic mass surveillance, it is imperative that every single private company takes encrypting their customer data and data traffic seriously. The future demands that we have more local cloud storage services. Lets make that a thriving business!
Digital freedom must be secondary free Internet. You can't convert a Military ARPA based System to a free one. otherwise we "patch" the current Internet for Security Reasons.
All digital surveillance should be targeted, it is a clear violation of human rights to monitor everything in case someone is doing something bad. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? All permissions for targeted surveillance should go through legitimate courts, not some super secret court which has no responsibility on the consequences.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 12) puts it in a clear and unambiguous manner:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
#Theme 2 Digital persecution
Information gathered from mass surveillance should be one of those "inadmissible as evidence" kind of information. When we have lost our right to privacy, it's just as good as all of us walking around naked and speaking everything that comes to our minds. And we all know how well that works.
Semantic Web has good potential for doing good. As long as people have choice of leaving user and location data hidden.
Policy Aware Web promises to at least partially tackle the social and privacy related hurdles with the Semantic Web. On the other hand, defining the architecture for and implementing a rules engine layer on top of or underneath the current World Wide Web would be quite a daunting task and probably open massive opportunities for governmental and other players' online surveillance initiatives.
#Theme 3 Digital colonization
Technologies are fundamentally changing our world at a staggering speed. But just because something is technically possible doesn't mean that we should have to blindly accept it into our lives.
Just like colonized countries fought for their freedom back in 1800's and 1900's, we too must make the effort to break free from US-based services.
Countries in EU should invest in creating their own Gmail, Facebook etc. Russia for example has Vkontakte. Not hard.
At the same time it's important to recognize that several of the companies in the United States have revolutionized the way people use the Web, that the companies must sell personal data to cover operating costs and acquire revenue, and that the companies receive investments (directly or indirectly) from the NSA and CIA.
In competing with the industry in the United States to provide alternatives, the above situation must be addressed and real long-term investment is needed by governments outside the United States (and the European Parliament) if the aim of having our own Europe-based 'Silicon Valley' is to be realized.
Alternatives need to rise, and the software companies in the USA would need to feel that being in that country is a threat to their position. Perhaps they would also be willing to move and setup shop somewhere else. Again, to be in that position, the same governmental backing from EU members who care about security, privacy and human rights is required. Innovation and start-ups alone cannot achieve this.
Note that this is not the rest of worlds competition against USA, its more like basic human rights that they have also written in their country's constitutional documents. Starting from their very first amendment is stated freedom of expression that means nowadays communicating privately without someone looking trough all emails that someone sends or receives, this should apply on Digital world as well. This issue should have even more attention on the United States as it seems to be against their own constitution...
#Theme 4 Right of access, movement and expression
What we say and write in private should be of no interest to any governmental organization and we should fight for the freedom of access to platforms, movement and freedom of expression.
Having no digital privacy is no worse than having a permanent thought cloud on top of all our heads, broadcasting what we are all thinking. Because, let's face it, we ask Google first nowadays before we ask an expert.
Like everything else the internet can be used for the good or for the bad. It can help nurture education and democracy all over the planet, connect people from different backgrounds and initiate discussion and dialogue between them. Or it can be abused to undermine civil rights such as privacy or freedom of expression (maybe even: freedom of thought ?), to serve simply as a tool for an unjust minority to retain control. Let's make sure we as the people use it for right; that is, for society to advance and prosper instead of mankind being enslaved.
It's essential to have the freedom of expression for everyone. Every democracy is based on this idea. And nowadays a part of this freedom is to have access to social media platforms to publish his opinions.
The search for privacy is not a criminal act, it is a fundamental human right.
Governments collecting the emails of innocent people on a colossal scale is a violation of our human rights to privacy and freedom of expression. We should not allow our private messages to be intercepted and stored by those we elect to protect us. We must stand against email providers that work with the NSA and refuse to implement privacy options for users (technically: encryption, etc...).
We must protect the Internet from further segmentation. We are slowly seeing Internet separating to regions. All the regions able to access different content. Censorship is been implemented in countries like Australia, Russia, China, USA, Thailand etc. and even worse in Arabic countries. We are not far away from times that Internet as we know it exists.
It could be argued that protecting an individual person's access, movement and expression would require the ceasing of government monitoring of these activities. This would further fracture (in this case: governing and governed) so that enforcing this right for all instead requires us to decentralize it. In other words: we should seek to universalize the access, movement and expression rather than regarding it from either side of the one accessing, moving or expressing.
The nonsense of: “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear”
You may have read or heard the statement, “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” from some people, especially from people in authority. The problem is that it’s not true.
The statement is made with the implicit claim that the people who are watching you only have your best interests at heart; that they are fair, honest, and will never abuse their power. How can we know this? Even if it is true now, how can we be sure that the situation won’t change in the future? The answer is obvious: we can’t be sure of these things. The more secret they are, the less sure we can be. And the less we should trust them.
Governments change and so do their attitudes to freedom. The laws we allow now will last for a very long time – it is very difficult to undo a law, no matter how unfair. That is why we should make sure we limit the power governments, police, and security services have over our digital freedom. And we should do it now. What we lose today we may lose forever.
Why does this matter? The power to invade our digital freedom gives people the ability to discriminate against us without us ever knowing. They’ll never have to ask inappropriate, unfair, or illegal questions because they'll know the answers already.
In the supposedly free world we have our own fears. For example, imagine if you could never look for new jobs without your employer knowing. Imagine if you could never go to the doctor without an insurance company checking your results. Imagine if you could never have something that was yours alone.
What if you couldn't do a single thing without always worrying whether it would or could jeopardise your future in some unknown, unforeseeable way?
A world in which we are afraid of the people in power is a world we hoped we had left behind. In other countries people don’t have to imagine what they might have to fear. Their reality is that they can never vote against the government for fear of punishment and that they can never complain about the police for fear of a beating.
This is what supporters of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” forget. It’s not about whether they can trust us, it’s about whether we can trust them.
And it’s not just about now, it’s about the future too.
