Many people have been pointing out that the ‘nude body scanners’use higher levels of radiation than regular X-rays anf thus might be a health risk. There have even been ‘scandalous’ reports of ‘cancer clusters’ among TSA employees: while I remain skeptical about the long-term effects of these machines, any reports of cancer already being ’caused’ by them are a load of dingo’s kidneys…cancer takes much longer to show up than this.
My primary concern about these machines has always been the collection of biometric data… But, we are being told, this invasion of our privacy is justified by the increased security these machines provide us.
Of course, we all know that people who are willing to give up liberty for security will not get either one. But, for the sake of the argument, let’s permit the premise and see just how effective these machines are at detecting metal objects or other weapons.
According to the following video, it is not very difficult to ‘beat’ them…
Because when they do not censor those who are uncomfortable to them, they just might censor you ‘by accident’!
Being labelled a pedophile is a serious thing. For a site to be shut down for hours – and all visitors who go there to be informed that the site had been shut down because it s involved in child pornography – that is the kind of accusation that could kill some smaller sites!
Yet, that is exactly what happened to 8,000 sites in Denmark.
‘In Denmark yesterday the Internet didn’t exactly collapse, but for thousands of businesses it was hardly service as usual.
For several hours, customers of ISP Siminn (although it could have easily been the whole country) were denied access to thousands of websites including Google and Facebook. When attempting to view any of the blocked pages visitors were given a worrying message relating to the most emotive blocking reason of all – the protection of children.
“The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police [NITEC], who assist in investigations into crime on the internet, has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography,” the message began.
“Upon the request of The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police, Siminn Denmark A/S has blocked the access to the internet page.”
NITEC is responsible for maintaining a list of sites which they want to be made unavailable to Danish citizens. Each day the country’s Internet service providers retrieve the list and then apply DNS blockades across their infrastructure. Yesterday, however, someone made a huge mistake.’
Yes.
A bureaucrat ‘made a mistake’.
And publicly accused innocent people of criminal participation in pedophilia.
Do you really think there will be any serious repercussions for anyone for having smeared people’s reputation and interfered with their ability do do business? If you do, then I have this here bridge you might be interested in purchasing…
Sure, the Googles and FaceBooks will shake it off and do just fine – but what about the rest?
Obviously, governments and their apparatchiks cannot be trusted with this level of power over real human lives!
Whether from malice or incompetence, we have sufficient evidence to convince even the most ardent ‘law&order’ enthusiasts that it is inappropriate to permit governments to have any oversight or regulatory authority over the internet.
I have not tried it yet, but it has certainly peaked my interest. According to Mozilla:
‘Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers. ‘
As if SOPA, ACTA Bill C-30 were not enough, there is a new threat to the information superhighway – from the United Nations, none the less. From The Wall Street Journal:
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.
If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.
Really?
Does this not illustrate that it is:
time to leave the UN – iff we cannot de-legitimize and dismantle the organization as a whole
time to really push to establish an internet substitute which is diffused, so that there are no pipelines which could be controlled by any regulatory body (the current technology that could be used for this is still under development – and much too slow)
Yeah, I have called for both these things in the past, but perhaps the time is running out faster than we expected…
Over the weekend, this video, purported to be from ‘Anonymous’, was released. It demands that the Canadian Minister, Vic Toews, remove bill C-30 (which would permit civil servants unlimited snooping powers on the citizens via the internet without judicial oversight) and that he step down immediately.
The following video also purports to be from ‘Anonymous’. As I have no connection to that group, I have no idea if it is authentic. However, I do think it is worth posting because it raises several issues worth further discussion:
This video raises the connection between the desire by various governments to regulate arms and to regulate the internet.
This is a deeper connection that one may think, at first glance. But, deep down, both are attempts to take away the citizen’s ability to protect themselves – including, if necessary, to resist their government. Both are ways in which governments make their citizens less secure, more isolated, and more afraid of their government.
Even if you are not as libertarian in your views as I am (I think that monopoly control over infrastructure – even, or perhaps especially, information infrastructure – is perilous to civil liberties), it is easy to see how governments are threatened by citizenry that is difficult to control and willing and able to oppose them.
Firearms are a means of physical self-defense and an equalizer between the strong and the weak. Even a small woman can protect herself from a rapist with the use of a gun: her physical safety is no longer dependant solely on the timely response of the state to come to her aid. This threatens the government monopoly on the enforcement of laws: as every monopoly’s natural reaction would be, the government’s reaction is to restrict this competition.
Let’s be clear about this: government ‘regulation’ of firearms is not about increasing public safety by having many well trained, well armed citizens available in public spaces who would be able to stop law-breakers and thus increase public safety. To the contrary: it is always specifically designed to restrict gun ownership, use, and the very presence of privately owned guns in public spaces. This intolerance on the part of government of guns in private hands – even though this increases public safety – is indicative of the government’s disrespect for its citizenry, with the goal to increase government coercive powers at the root of all ‘arms regulations’.
Information is a weapon and a powerful one.
So is anonymous speech.
The internet enables both.
As a matter of principle, anonymous speech is necessary for the preservation of the very freedom of speech. For example, The Federalist Papers could never have been published had their authors not had absolute anonymity at the time of publication! The bigger the government is, the more dangerous it is to speak up against it openly. Without anonymous speech, governments do indeed become more totalitarian and more tyrannical in nature: this cycle has been repeated so often, it is blatant.
Yet, the ever-growing governments in the formerly-free world now wish to have complete and unfettered access to the information which would identify each and every internet user: to be able to attach a name to every sentence uttered on the internet, from seeking sensitive advice at an online support group to dissenting political speech!
Of course, the governments are also increasing citizen surveillance on so many fronts… There will soon be no arena where we do have ‘presumption to privacy’, not even in our homes and certainly not anywhere else. So, the whole ‘getting a warrant’ might be a mute issue…
Technology is beautiful – but it is a tool, to be used for good or evil. It is necessary that we understand these tools because our society will need to evolve along with them. What am I talking about?
As new technologies arise, we will need to develop laws to govern their use. However, these laws (all laws, really) ought to be focused on protecting the civil libeties of individual citizens – not legitimizing the ways that governments and big business can circumvent them!
‘Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal published evidence that Google has been circumventing the privacy settings of Safari and iPhone users, tracking them on non-Google sites despite Apple’s default settings, which were intended to prevent such tracking.
This tracking, discovered by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, was a technical side-effect—probably an unintended side-effect—of a system that Google built to pass social personalization information (like, “your friend Suzy +1’ed this ad about candy”) from the google.com domain to the doubleclick.net domain. Further technical explanation can be found below.’
It looks like this was a bit of a case where one division within Google was working on privacy issues – like the ‘no cookies’ option, while another was trying to inject the ‘social networking’ experience into Google (a bad idea, in my never-humble-opinion: if I want to know what my friends are up to, I’ll ask them – I certainly don’t need Google to pop up a bubble to tell me what they thought of something) and ‘worked around’ the privacy policy with some creative coding. This, of course, completely undermined all the privacy measures and blew up Google’s privacy policy.
Perhaps Google is getting too big to stay healthy…
‘Mojang has one weekend to make your game — live! The indie studio Mojang will be livestreaming all the glory and drama of making a brand new game in 60 hours. Based on a poll of more than 100,000 users, Mojang is tackling a real-time strategy shoot ’em up with a steampunk ancient Egypt theme!
Pay-what-you-want for the game any time during the jam.‘
If you are not familiar with Humble Bundle, it is the best way to fight online piracy: make it easy to legally buy games online, pay what you think is fair.
Of course, everybody is familiar with Mojang – the creators of MineCraft…
This is big. Powerful lobbyists, working with their allies in government, have put forward what amounts to an unavoidable choke point for your Internet use: two bills aimed at Internet users, and a government decision about the future of Internet access.
If we don’t stop this set-up, you’ll have to deal with bigger bills, widespread warrantless surveillance, and restricted choice.
By signing an OpenMedia.ca petition, you helped push back against new Internet restrictions and Big Telecom price-gouging. But these new challenges require more resources than ever to fight. Will you donate today so we can defend your rights? Your donation will empower the fight for an open and affordable Internet.
These three imminent threats will create an Internet choke point for Canadians, and they’re unfolding right now:
Online Spying: The government has tabled their invasive spying plan (Bill C-30) to mandate that every Internet provider must hand “authorities” access to the private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant1. Despite appearances the contrary, they are still pushing this through parliament.
The Internet Lockdown: Through Bill C-11, Big Media lobbyists are seeking the power2 to compel telecom providers (who will now have surveillance capabilities) to cut Internet access for no good reason, remove or hide vast swaths of the Internet, and lock users out of their own services.
The Cell Phone Squeeze: Big Telecom giants are lobbying the government to turn over control of mobile communications—which experts say are the future of Internet access—to just three giant companies3. This will lead to rising prices, even worse customer service, and more easily controlled surveillance.
Steve and Lindsey, on behalf of your OpenMedia.ca Team
P.S. We created a media sensation this week and your petition signature helped start it all! Your team here at OpenMedia.ca has been run off our feet with media requests! Please chip in so we can keep up the pressure. We’ll report back on our progress to everyone that contributes.
Footnotes
[1] The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario has written that the online spying bills could “undercut the future of freedom, innovation and privacy”
[2] Big Media is pushing for C-11 to include the power for courts to issue injunctions ordering ISPs to block access to websites. Many proposed amendments also include rules that mean accused (i.e. not necessarily convicted) “repeat infringers” could have their Internet connections terminated. The “enabler provision” may also be expanded in such a way that could be used to target legitimate websites that host user generated content. Those websites—including YouTube—could be penalized for hosting content that Big Media controls.
[3] Montreal Gazette: Spectrum auction called a threat to new entrants
[4] Conservative supporters, including some conservative MPs, have denounced the online spying bills.
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Xanthippa's Chamberpot 