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Showing posts with label Digital age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital age. Show all posts

Friday, March 14, 2014

US, UK, India among 'Free World' Governments Worst for online spies

WASHINGTON: US' National Security Agency, India's Centre for Development of Telematics, and the UK's GCHQ have been named among the worst online spies by a non-profit group for implementing censorship and surveillance.

Three of the government bodies designated by Reporters Without Borders as 'Enemies of the Internet' are located in democracies that have traditionally claimed to respect fundamental freedoms, a report by the Reporters Without Borders said.

PARIS - Shady agencies at the service of democratically elected governments are among the worst online spies in the world, media watchdog RSF said Wednesda

In the latest instalment of the "Enemies of the Internet" report, wholesale spying by "free world" services -- much of it exposed by US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden --- is offered no distinction from the unabashed surveillance carried out by the world's worst dictatorships. 

To RSF, agencies such as the US National Security Agency, Britain's GCHQ and the Centre for Development Telematics in India embrace the worst methods of snooping in the name of governments that purportedly hold freedom of speech as a national priority. 

They have "hacked into the very heart of the Internet" and turned a collective resource "into a weapon in the service of special interests" that flout the "freedom of information, freedom of expression and the right to privacy". 

"The NSA and GCHQ have spied on the communications of millions of citizens including many journalists," the report by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, Reporters Without Borders) said. 

The methods used, many of which NSA contractor Snowden revealed to the world last year before going into hiding in Russia, "are all the more intolerable" because they are then used by authoritarian countries such as Iran, China, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia, the report said. 

Also singled out by RSF are private companies that provide their most up-to-date powers of snooping at trade fairs that have become giant spying bazaars selling the best that technology can offer. 

It is at these shows hosted regularly around the world that profit-driven spy-ware firms link up with government agents or nervous multinationals that are in search of the newest ways to observe and control the Internet. 

RSF argued that the censorship carried out by the Enemies of the Internet "would not be possible without the tools developed by the private sector companies to be found at these trade fairs." 

With these tools, spies can track journalists anywhere in the world, RSF said. 

Governments keen to impose censorship also help one another. 

Iran has asked China to help it develop a local version of the electronic Great Wall that cuts off billions of Chinese from the Internet as seen by the rest of the world. China is active in Africa and central Asia too. 

To stop this proliferation of snooping, RSF said a whole new legal framework to govern surveillance was "essential" with states needing to embrace transparency regarding the methods being used. 

The fight for human rights, it warned, "had spread to the Internet".

Related posts:

1. 2013 the year of Internet innovation
2. You are being snooped on, Malaysia views US-NSA spying seriously!
3.US, Britain spying on virtual world, agents pose as gamers..
4. Educate public on changes in e-technology, CAP urg…
5..USA Spying, the Super-Snooper !
6. NSA secretly hacks, intercepts Google, Yahoo daily…
7. Abusing intelligence is stupid
8. Brazil attacks US over spying issue
9. US Spy Snowden Says U.S. Hacking China Since 2009
10. Upset over US cyber spying! 
11. No privacy on the Net !
12. US building new spy wing to focus on Asia 

Saturday, December 21, 2013

2013 the year of Internet innovation


As the year comes to a close, we need to reflect on what are the most important things that have affected our lives in 2013.

The Internet continues to transform our world. The most significant Internet event in 2013 was not the listing of Facebook, which priced the company at $104 billion (almost Bt3.4 trillion), but Edward Snowden's July revelations of Internet surveillance, which revealed that Big Brother, friend or foe, is really watching. Since my smartphone is smart enough to track me even in the toilet, there is really no privacy left in this world.

On the plus side, Singles Day - November 11 - garnered 35 billion yuan (Bt187 billion) in online sales on one day in China. Since China already accounts for one-third of the smartphones in the world, and they can make and sell smartphones at one-third the price of Apple or Samsung, it is not surprising that e-commerce in the Middle Kingdom is set to overtake even the US in volume next year.

Online business is here to stay.

What the combination of the Internet and smartphone means is that a person in the remotest part of Indonesia can sell his or her product to buyers worldwide, and collect over the smartphone, which was impossible to imagine even 20 years ago.

Amazing also are the apps downloaded in their millions to maximise personal efficiency. Ease of personal communication, meanwhile, has been taken to a new level with apps like WeChat. Such free Internet services are rising so fast that even revenue from SMS text messages is slowing down.

On the other side, after Snowden, what must consider the proper role of the government in the Internet and how it should behave to encourage Web innovation and growth?

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz was one of the first to tackle the subject, in "The Role of Government in a Digital Age" (2000), with Peter and Jonathan Orzag. Their report recommended 12 principles. The first three cover the state's proper role in the affairs of the Internet:

1. Provide public data and information.

2. Improve efficient government services.

3. Support basic research.

The next six principles are areas where the government should exercise caution. These include:

4. Adding specialised value to public data and information.

5. Providing private goods only under limited circumstances.

6. Providing services online where private services are more efficient.

7. Ensuring that mechanisms exist to protect privacy, security, and consumer protection online.

8. Promoting network externalities only with great deliberation and care.

9. Maintaining proprietary information or exercising rights under patents or copyright.

The report also signalled "red light" areas of state intervention in the Internet:

10. Governments should exercise substantial caution in entering markets in which private sector firms are active

11. Governments (including government corporations) should generally not aim to maximise net revenues or take action that would reduce competition.

12. Government should only be allowed to provide goods or services for which appropriate privacy and conflict-of-interest protections have been erected.

The Stiglitz-Orzag report was written for the US market, but the general principles are useful guides for all states. The trouble is that Snowden showed that the US government might have failed to follow some of these guidelines. We do know that governments are becoming increasingly intrusive on the Internet, and that such intrusion inhibits competition and innovation.

Because the Internet is evolving very fast, the role of government in Web affairs also needs to evolve. Businesses are becoming even more service and information-oriented, with increasing numbers going digital and in the "Cloud". This means that governments are struggling with three major issues: protecting private privacy, ensuring a level playing field in competition, and taxing online activities.

Governments must also sort out jurisdictional duties and powers, because the Cloud is global, and taxation and regulation is not only national, but departmental. It is as if each small part of the bureaucracy is trying to regulate the whole Cloud. We can all touch and feel its power, but there is no overall central authority that can control the Cloud.

An island nation in the Pacific might pass a law on the Cloud, but could it enforce it?

Individual privacy is being threatened by the practice of hacking, and the biggest hackers are not bedroom-bound nerds, but governments everywhere.

The second problem of a level playing field is a serious one. If Google has maps and can monitor everything I do through my smartphone, does that information belong to Google or to me? If it belongs to the large platforms, does that not confer a huge informational advantage on them? How can governments ensure that there is a level playing field between these massive online platforms and the small businesses that have no such information or may have to pay the platform for it?

The third area is taxation. Online commerce has escaped the tax radar because it is new. In contrast, bricks-and-mortar shops have rents, create jobs and pay value-added taxes. If everything moves online, the government loses the ability to tax, and bricks-and-mortar retail shops will complain they are losing out to larger and larger platforms. Bookshops around the world are closing in droves now that everyone can order through Amazon.

There are no easy answers to these tough questions. The interdependent and interconnected nature of the Internet means that regulatory or government action in one part may affect the system as a whole. In other words, government action or non-action creates a shadow system - the business moves offline, offshore or into cyberspace.

What we need is better transparency, better education, wider access and also some key principles of fair competition that should be enforced for online business to innovate.

Finally, a year-end reminder: use your smartphone in the toilet, and someone (not Snowden) can hear you flush. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all.

Contributed by Andrew Sheng, President of the Fung Global Institute.

Related posts:
1. You are being snooped on, Malaysia views US-NSA spying seriously!
2.US, Britain spying on virtual world, agents pose as gamers..
3. Educate public on changes in e-technology, CAP urg...
4..USA Spying, the Super-Snooper !
5. NSA secretly hacks, intercepts Google, Yahoo daily...
6. Abusing intelligence is stupid
7. Brazil attacks US over spying issue
8. US Spy Snowden Says U.S. Hacking China Since 2009
9. Upset over US cyber spying! 
10. No privacy on the Net !
11. US building new spy wing to focus on Asia