Category: Privacy of communications

The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 due for overhaul thinks Microsoft

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8 April 2010

20:38

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Legislation, Privacy of communications, U.S.

Interesting development concerning the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, again following on from one of Jack’s twitters 🙂

Big companies such as Microsoft and AT&T and advocacy groups from different parts of the political spectrum have joined forces in the newly formed Digital Due Process coalition intent on strengthening online privacy and to lobby the government on this. Other members include the left-leaning Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union as well as the libertarian Progress and Freedom Foundation and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Google opens up search in China

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23 March 2010

09:45

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Censorship, China, Countries, Privacy of communications

Well, sort of.

Their Chinese search site, google.cn now redirects to google.com.hk in Hong Kong. Google states that this is a direct response to the hacking attack reported on in January. They also state that that was the final straw that led them to the decision to stop censoring their search services in China.

By redirecting searches to their Hong Kong site, they hope to bypass Chinese legal requirements of self censorship. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government responds to this. Google has set up a status page which reports on the availability on their services for users in China. You can find it here.

EU Data Retention Directive still not implemented in Sweden

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6 February 2010

15:45

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European Union, Legislation, Privacy of communications, Sweden

In 2006 there was a directive approved in Brussels on the retention of telecommunications data, i.e. telecom operators’ customers phone and email information. This I understand to be, not contents, but of activity. This directive was born in the wake of Madrid and London terrorists’ activities. Sweden has been slow in implementing this, in fact they’ve done nothing. To understand why read more at The Local Sweden News in English.

As a side-note: The fact that telecom operators have the ability to do this type of logging activity built into their systems is no coincidence. Many of the international laws on wiretapping date back to a series of seminars hosted by the FBI in the United States
in 1993 at its research facility in Quantico, Virginia, called the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) together with representatives from Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and the EU. The product of these meetings was the adoption of an international standard called the International Requirements for Interception. In 1995 the Council of the European Union approved a secret resolution adopting the ILETS. Following its adoption and without revealing the role of the FBI in developing the standard, countries have adopted laws to this effect. Following adoption of the standard the European Union and the United States offered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for other countries to sign to commit to the standards. All participating countries were encouraged to adopt the standards so it was natural that international standards organisations, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI), would adopt the standards. Read more in Virtual Shadows.

So who’s paying for Sweden’s FRA-lagen, avlyssning?

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20 June 2008

11:18

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Legislation, Privacy of communications, Sweden

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The answer to who will end up paying for this law is simple, the Swedish consumer. The FRA is going to visit the government to ask them to make the ISPs take the charge, and then the cost is passed onto the broadband subscriber.

So this means that every online Swede will be paying to be monitored by Swedish Intelligence. Well you know, if you happen to be one of these Swedish resident you know that this will be for your own good and the country’s good, it doesn’t matter whether you are a terrorist or not!

Sweden approves wiretapping laws, more

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20 June 2008

10:33

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Legislation, Privacy of communications, Sweden

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You know there has been an awful lot of press going on here in Sweden following parliament’s approval of the controversial law on wire-tapping. Effectively the FRA-law makes Sweden the most surveyed country in western Europe. This wiretapping law enables the intelligence authorities here to ‘listen’ on all traffic -Hotmail, msn, sms, etc., across Sweden’s borders. The law becomes effective in 15 months, or this is when intelligence can start listening.

That this law has been passed is quite remarkable. It was following some pretty heated discussions in parliament and the final vote was 47 against with 53 for. The argument for tapping of international lines is ‘terrorism’. The problem is that government officials in general -it doesn’t matter which country this is- are easily influenced by the ‘fear’ of terrorism as heightened by media leading to some hysteria. They just don’t get it, you know that terrorists will just encrypt their communications, so the government will be wasting a whole load of tax payers money (and there is a lot in Sweden) on this pointless project.

Of course one can always monitor ‘traffic patterns’ which can be as revealing as the communications’ contents themselves in certain situations, but really when doing a mass analysis of data, one needs start with communications’ contents to create the needed rules, and to narrow down the scope to a realistic size that can be monitored effectively.

So they will be listening and reading ‘innocent’ traffic and be able to do traffic analysis on the encrypted traffic. I wonder how this is going to help the fight against terrorism? Then of course we can speculate on what comes next? After all the passing of one such law just opens the flood gates for a whole load more laws that invade our privacy. What about the blood bank they have on all newborns since 1976? This is offidically used for ‘research’ but on 1 occasion since used to convict a killer by his DNA, and then the law was modified to enable it to be used to identify victims of the Tsunami disaster. What will be next?

I would expect Swedish authorities to be a hot contender for the ‘Big Brother Awards’ for 2008 and 2009. Maybe they will win, such an honour to bestow on a country with such a long reputation for human rights.