Trolling could get you 25 years in an Arizona jail

April 5, 2012 — xanthippa

Many legislators fail to understand the impact of the laws that they pass – but this takes the cake.

A bill has passed in Arizona – and only awaits the governor’s signature to become a law – which would punish trolling on the internet by 25 years in jail:

‘ The legislature recently passed House Bill 2549,which uses broad language that could turn a troublingly large swath of online chatter into a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 25 years in jail. It reads:

“It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.” ‘

Really?

What were they thinking!!!

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V3: Swedish researchers uncover key to China’s Tor-blocking system

April 3, 2012 — xanthippa

Pretty soon, not just China but just about all national and supra-national governments will build firewalls in order to disarm its citizenry by denying them access to accurate information.  Whether this is done in the name of anti-piracy/IP protection or for security concerns, this frontal assault on the freedom of the internet is only going to become stronger.

That is why it is essential that we employ all tools available to us to protect ourselves and the free flow of information amongst peoples!

Of course, the more strategies we have, the longer we can hold them off – the more ways to circumvent we find – the better our future will be.

Which is why the following story is both interesting and important:

‘It has been long-known that the ‘Great Firewall Wall of China’ has attempted to block citizens from using the Tor network, by blocking access to some IP addresses or using HTTP header filters to weed out suspect traffic.

But Philipp Winter and Stefan Lindskog of Karlstad University in Sweden have discovered that Chinese authorities have recently increased the sophistication of their filtering tools, making it more difficult for citizens to browse the web freely, by blocking so-called Tor bridges.’

…

‘The researchers were able to show that by using so-called packet fragmentation tools, which split TCP streams in to small segments, it is possible to disguise Tor traffic, making it harder to detect.’

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Rat-bots: a more effective solution for a dispersed, un-censorable wi-fi net

March 22, 2012 — xanthippa

Yesterday, I linked to a TorrentFreak article which showed a video of an elegant aerial ballet performed by wi-fi-emiting file-sharing fly-bots.  Beautiful, as well as a functional method of un-censorable, un-regulatable, distributed wi-fi network.

Today, I came across a response to this for a much less elegant, but perhaps more practical solution:  instead of aerial bots, create rat-bots.

‘In the city, you are never more than three metres away from a rat. They’re spectacularly successful. We’ve built them a wonderful habitat replete with high-speed autoroutes — storm drains and sewers — and convenience stores to snack from in the shape of dumpsters and trash. And ground level is where most of us wifi users happen to be, most of the time.

Small ground-traversing robots would not be subject to the same weight penalties as airborn drones. The wifi range would be shorter, but their power consumption would be lower and they’d be far more concealable — it’s quite easy to imagine a ratbot that is, literally, no larger than a real rat.’

The author goes on to evaluate the operational advantages, from power consumption to range, and suggest practical evasion and re-fuelling techniques, including charging mats and, perhaps, including bio-fuel conversion and primitive hunting/foraging programming…

Fascinating!

And inspiring…

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TorrentFreak: World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action

March 21, 2012 — xanthippa

Oh, don’t you just love this stuff?

‘In short the system allows the public to share data with the help of flying drones. Much like the Pirate Box, but one that flies autonomously over the city.

“The public can upload files, photos and share data with one another as the drones float above the significant public spaces of the city. The swarm becomes a pirate broadcast network, a mobile infrastructure that passers-by can interact with,” the creators explain.’

Whatever you may think of the morality of The Pirate Bay and/or of extre-jurisdictional flying file-sharing machines, you have got to admit that this is not just way cool, it is a formidable weapon against the ‘regulation’ which is systematically eradicating freedom of the internet.

In addition to the beauty of its purpose, it is an artform in its own right!  (If yo go to the article and scroll down a little, there is a video of this technological balet:  the colours change as files are accessed, the formations break apart and re-form….a work of art in its own right!)

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OpenMedia: Warrantless online spying is back on!

March 8, 2012 — xanthippa

From an email from OpenMedia:

Instead of listening to you and the other 117,000 Canadians who demanded an end to the Online Spying bill, the government is going on the PR offensive with a one-two punch.

You won’t believe this: With one side of their mouth, they’ve leaked stories1 falsely suggesting that they are standing down. With the other, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has shot back with op-eds2, misleading mass emails3, and speeches in Parliament that aggressively defend the bill4.

There’s only a small window of opportunity for MPs to put a stop to warrantless online spying.

Will you call on your MP to use our new tool to stand with Canadians today?

Over 117,000 Canadians from across the political spectrum have signed the Stop Online Spying petition, and many of you took to Twitter to raise your voices. Because of your efforts, the opposition parties and several Conservative MPs5 have come out against the costly online spying plan.

Yet Vic Toews has still not apologized for misleading Canadians; he’s even continued to use our children as political cover for this poorly thought-out legislation.

Let’s push back. Now is the time to tell your MP to stand with us against warrantless online spying—every action makes all of our voices louder.

We know from experience that MPs get the message when contacted by local constituents. It makes sense: they’re acutely aware that elections are won riding by riding. This means that together, as a wide-reaching grassroots community, we have power.

This can only work if we raise our voices together. Please take a second to tell your MP to stand with us as a Pro-Privacy politician.

Our efforts together have so far forced the government to delay their online spying plan. Let’s take the next step.

For the Internet,

Shea and Lindsey, on behalf of your OpenMedia.ca team

P.S. Thanks to all of you who contributed when we asked for help in scaling up our campaign. The tools and actions we’re offering now are only possible because of your generous support. We’ll send all of you contributors a special report back soon to show what you made possible. If you haven’t chipped in yet, you can still do so here.

 

Footnotes

[1] See our press release, Government to Stall the Online Spying Bill
[2] Find one of Toews’ more recent op-eds, which he submitted to Postmedia News, here.
[3] See Mythbusting the mythbusting: Our response to Vic Toews’ email to Canadians
[4] Watch Vic Toews’ February 28th speech in the House of Commons here, and our video mash-up debunking his points here.
[5] Source: National Post. Conservative MPs who have expressed concerns with the online spying bill include New Brunswick MP John Williamson, Calgary MP Rob Anders, and Ontario MP David Tilson.

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This is exactly why governments must not have the power to censor the internet

March 2, 2012 — xanthippa

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.

According to TorrentFreak:

‘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.

Now if we can only explain it to our governments…

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Mozilla introduces ‘Collusion’

February 29, 2012 — xanthippa

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. ‘

I think I’llk go play with the demo now…

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CodeSlinger: The internet is about to get dramatically harder to regulate!

February 27, 2012 — xanthippa

In response to my post about the UN plans to ‘regulate’ the internet, CodeSlinger made a comment which I think deserves a full post of its own:

Good algorithms for dynamic routing through ad hoc wireless mesh networks are already available in the public domain. Most people already have more processing power and bandwidth than they actually use, and the amount of computing power you can buy for a buck just keeps on doubling every 18 months. All this surplus is can be made available to carry other people’s traffic.

The only thing holding back a truly unkillable internet is the fact that most people aren’t willing to spend much money on the uplink side. They will buy a wireless router with enough range to cover their home, but not enough to cover their block. But just let some of these draconian measures pass and see how fast that changes. People will quickly figure out how much better the internet works when everybody is their neighbours’ ISP.

Already, in densely populated areas, we are seeing increasing overlap between the coverage areas of people’s routers and their neighbours’ routers. As this trend accelerates, larger and larger urban areas will de facto become independent sub-networks that cannot be killed or surveiled from outside.

In rural areas, however, the problem is a lot worse because each router has to cover an area that may be miles in diameter in order to achieve overlap. Before you get anywhere near that range, though, you run into CRTC limitations on transmitted power.

And maintaining connectivity between distant population centers is an even bigger problem. However, a German group called the Chaos Computer Club is developing the Hackerspace Global Grid: a system of communications satellites (!) which will interface to inexpensive ground stations that anyone can buy or build.

Here is an article about the project: Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship.

The internet is about to get dramatically harder to regulate!

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Thunderf00t: YouTube starts banning ‘religiously offensive’ videos

February 25, 2012 — xanthippa

He’s right.

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UN wants to ‘regulate’ the internet

February 22, 2012 — xanthippa

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…

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