Politics

Readers know I have been grappling for a while with the vexing question of the balance between the surveillance state and the threat of Jihadist terrorism. When the NSA leaks burst onto the scene, I was skeptical of many of the large claims made by civil libertarians and queasily sympathetic to a program that relied on meta-data alone, as long as it was transparent, had Congressional buy-in, did not accidentally expose innocent civilians to grotesque privacy loss, and was watched by a strong FISA court.

Since then, I’ve watched the debate closely and almost all the checks I supported have been proven illusory. The spying is vastly more extensive than anyone fully comprehended before; the FISA court has been revealed as toothless and crippled; and many civilians have had their privacy accidentally violated over 3000 times. The president, in defending the indefensible, has damaged himself and his core reputation for honesty and candor. These cumulative revelations have exposed this program as, at a minimum, dangerous to core liberties and vulnerable to rank abuse. I’ve found myself moving further and further to Glenn’s position.

What has kept me from embracing it entirely has been the absence of any real proof than any deliberate abuse has taken place and arguments that it has helped prevent terror attacks. This may be too forgiving a standard. If a system is ripe for abuse, history tells us the only question is not if such abuse will occur, but when. So it is a strange and awful irony that the Coalition government in Britain has today clinched the case for Glenn — via redwolf.newsvine.com

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps:

1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year
2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret
3. Create a class of 4.5 million privileged individuals, many of them corporate employees, with access to classified documents but allege it is illegal for public to see leaked classified documents
4. Spy on the public in violation of the Constitution
5. Classify environmental activists as terrorists while allowing Big Coal and Big Oil to pollute and destroy the planet
6. Share info gained from NSA spying on public with DEA, FBI, local law enforcement to protect pharmaceuticals & liquor industry from competition from pot, or to protect polluters from activists
7. Falsify to judges and defence attorneys how allegedly incriminating info was discovered
8. Lie and deny to Congress you are spying on the public
9. Criminalise the revelation of government crimes and spying as Espionage
10. Further criminalise whistleblowing as Terrorism, have compradors arrest innocent people, detain them, and confiscate personal effects with no cause or warrant (i.e. David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald)

Presto, what looks like a democracy is really an authoritarian state ruling on its own behalf and that of 2000 corporations, databasing the activities of 312 million innocent citizens and actively helping destroy the planet while forestalling climate activism — via redwolf.newsvine.com

At 6:30 am this morning my time — 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US — I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a security official at Heathrow airport. He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been detained at the London airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000.

David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.

At the time the security official called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official — who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 — said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.

I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The US National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules thousands of times in the past two years, according to an internal audit leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The internal documents, cited in the Washington Post, cast fresh doubts on pledges from US president Barack Obama to prevent abuses and protect Americans’ civil rights.

The documents were leaked by Snowden, a former NSA contractor who has exposed the massive scale of America’s surveillance of phone records and internet traffic in recent leaks to the media.

Snowden, who describes himself as a whistleblower for civil liberties, has obtained asylum in Russia, despite appeals from Washington for extradition on espionage charges — via redwolf.newsvine.com

It was only a matter of time after news came out that UK internet service providers (ISPs) would begin filtering internet services of adult content by default before the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) would again ask for Australia’s internet to be filtered.

The political lobby group [consisting of three obnoxious, bigoted and racist white men], which claims to represent the Christians in Australia [they don’t] and says it has approximately 10,000 supporters [names culled from the obituary columns don’t count], has often called for freedom of speech in regards to religious groups being able to speak out against homosexuality. However, it has long backed broad censoring of the internet since 2007, when the Rudd and Gillard governments had planned on introducing a mandatory ISP-level internet filter into Australia.

In 2008, then-ACL managing director Jim Wallace described the filter as vital to protect society’s most vulnerable.

Obviously, the internet industry is going to continue to fight this important initiative, but the interests of children must be placed first, he said.

Claims the government will impose China-style curbing of free speech are ridiculous, given Australia’s robust parliamentary democracy, something China does not have, Wallace said in another release.

The ACL didn’t want consumers to be able to make a choice on whether the filter should be on or off, as is the case with the UK scheme. In 2010, on the question of whether a software-based filter would be better, the organisation said that ISP-level filtering would be more effective for protecting the community as a whole — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Privacy Commission has joined calls for further investigation into proposed new spying powers.

Commissioner Marie Shroff says the Law Commission should be asked to examine legislation and oversight of intelligence agencies.

The Government is proposing the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill to make it legal for the agency to spy on New Zealanders on behalf of other law enforcement bodies.

It says it is necessary to clarify the law after the GCSB was found to be illegally intercepting communications.

But the bill has met opposition, including from the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission — via redwolf.newsvine.com

After admitting they have illegally spied on NZ citizens or residents 88 times (PDF) since 2003, the government, in a stunning example of arse covering, is about to grant the GCSB the right to intercept the communications of New Zealanders in its role as the national cyber security agency, rather than examine the role the GCSB should play and then look at the laws. There has been strong criticism from many avenues. The bill is being opposed by Labour and the Greens, but it looks like National now have the numbers to get this passed. Of course, the front page story is all about the royal baby, with this huge erosion of privacy relegated to a small article near the bottom of the front page. Three cheers, the monarchy is secure, never mind the rights of the people. More bread and circuses anyone? — via Slashdot

The prime minister is looking at porn. For research purposes, of course. He’s not sitting in cabinet meetings peeking under the table at a looped three-second clip of a woman’s bra falling off that Michael Gove e-mailed to him by mistake. He is looking for a way he can pretend to be fighting it. He wants to declare himself the first prime minister to win the war on online porn. And, according to a letter leaked to the BBC last week, he reckons he has found one: default-on.

Default-on is a system whereby internet service providers block access to pornographic images as standard, unless the customer opts out of the filters. In the eyes of certain newspapers, it is the silver bullet solution to the problem of kids watching pornography. But, for various reasons, most of the major ISPs are not up for asking their customers: Do you want porn with that? They have negotiated with the government and agreed on a system called Active Choice + in which customers opt in for filters, rather than out for falling bras. The system gives new users a choice at installing filters, and existing customers the option of switching to safer browser modes. The default setting remains filter-free.

The leaked letter, sent to leading ISPs from the Department for Education, makes it clear that Cameron’s war or porn is propaganda masquerading as policy. It suggests: Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions [as] ‘default-on’. It is a sleight-of-hand worthy of the Ministry of Truth, a move from the “Let’s not and say we did!” school of regulation.

It raises the question: where else does Cameron use this line? Do his aides write to Starbucks, Google and Amazon to ask that, without changing what they are doing (avoiding paying billions in tax), they find a way for him to refer to this as “paying billions in tax”? Do they ask tobacco firms if, without ditching branded packaging, they could find a way for Dave to pretend they have? Has he ever asked George Osborne if he can refer to him as not George Osborne? — via redwolf.newsvine.com