Pica Pica

I recently pointed out that we have a civic duty to learn about encryption, anonymization and other such techniques that we should use, by default, to hide our information, however innocent, from unethical government intrusion. I would like to give some further reasons.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, more commonly known as ASIO, has the right to detain a person, even when they are not suspected of a terrorist offence, for at least seven days if it is believed that they can “substantially assist in the collection of intelligence”. The Attorney General (an entirely political appointee, be it noted, nothing to do with the judiciary – in the Prime Minister’s pocket, in essence) must consent to the application for a warrant. The application is made to certain magistrates and judges who have volunteered for this job, but these seemingly judicial persons do not act in their judicial capacity, just as designated persons. The application is made without the prospective detainee being present, and the detainee is not informed of the reasons for the application. If the detainee wishes to challenge the sufficiency of the grounds, their legal adviser is not allowed to see any of the supporting documentation; the detainee, in any case, does not in fact necessarily have a right to legal advice, or even to contact anybody at all.

On top of this vile law, it has been made an offence to disclose that someone is subject to such a warrant; journalists are not allowed to report the existence of a warrant, even when trying to expose abuse or misuse of the system. ASIO and the AFP have made themselves into laughing-stocks over, for instance, the Haneef case, so we can be quite certain that sooner or later these powers will be abused again.

In the face of such severe threats to our safety, it would be helpful if we all know how to publish anything that we know about such things, whether we are reporters, friends of the detained or just concerned about human rights. We should know how to publish any information anonymously, to do our best to ensure that ASIO and the AFP are held to account. It is, however, ethical but illegal.

 See the Australian Human Rights Commission for more details.

But do remember, it is legal to know about these techniques, it is unethical for ASIO and the AFP to have such powers, but if you actually publish information such as the existence of the kind of warrant mentioned above, you are breaking the law. I cannot urge you to do it.

 ”Australia is becoming the Iran of the South Pacific”

Crikey tells us that Reporters Without Borders has written to the PM urging him to abandon the invidious filtering scheme:

Quoting from Crikey:

The letter, signed by RWB Secretary-General Jean-Francois Julliard, spelled out the organisation’s disquiet with the broad criteria and uncertain goals of the censorship plan. In particular, they felt the lack of judicial oversight was a key problem:

Firstly, the decision to block access to an ‘inappropriate’ website would be taken not by a judge but by a government agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Such a procedure, without a court decision, does not satisfy the requirements of the rule of law. The ACMA classifies content secretly, compiling a website blacklist by means of unilateral and arbitrary administrative decision-making. Other procedures are being considered but none of them would involve a judge.

Read more through the link above. Remember, this is not about the few unpleasant things they are talking about banning now – it is about the way they want to take power to secretly ban anything they feel like. Fascism is an easy insult, but it it not an exaggeration here.

You might also enjoy and learn from this spoof site.

So the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy has announced that he will introduce legislation before next year’s elections forcing ISPs to block a secret blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.

The debate, thank goodness, has got vigorous. The issue, of course, is not the tiny number of sites – probably revolting and abhorrent in many cases – that are the ostensible target of this move. OK, there is indeed a question as to whether any information should ever be blocked – perhaps it should not. If we grant, for argument’s sake, that it should there is indeed a question as to whether we grant the little catholic boy Stephen Conroy the right to control the choice of what that blocked information is – in fact I don’t. And there are questions about whether it will bring any significant gains in terms of its ostensible target – probably it will be almost useless. And again, indeed, there is a question as to whether it will also block perfectly acceptable sites – the evidence suggests that it will.

But these are trivial questions. They suggest that the proposals are useless and stupid, and that makes us smell a rat.

The truly worrying thing is the proposal that the government will arrange, in secret, for otherwise public information to be banned, for reasons that it will keep secret. We will not be told what we are not allowed to see. An unelected committee will not tell us what is banned or why. We will be led to believe that, for instance, the blocks are being applied to child pornography. But further down the line, perhaps not under this government or even the next, you can just bet that some special circumstances will require a “small, temporary, provisional” extension of the blocked material. “National security” will demand, for instance, that sites explaining government involvement in environmentally unsound projects are blocked; or that sites that challenge the reasons for going to war will be seen as traitorous – WMDs, anyone? Perhaps sites with pictures of the PM cavorting naked with his/her illicit lover will be blocked; and we will not be allowed to know where it will end.

We therefore have a civic duty to learn about and use the technical tricks needed to circumvent these things. We should learn to encrypt the most innocuous e-mails, learn to anonymise ourselves when we wish our aunt a happy birthday. Otherwise we are conniving in the government cover-ups of the future. Does anybody believe they won’t want to?

I just took part in the “Soapbox” public speaking competition, a little part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House.

Well I didn’t get past the first round, but it was huge fun. The “facilitators” in the red, green and yellow hats (if you were there, you’d know what I mean) did a terrific job of making it go well.

Anyway, in order not to waste my speech, here is the text:

Democracy demands terrorist software

We know that the government’s proposed Internet filters are half-baked and unpopular – but worse than that, they are really the very opposite of what we should be doing.

We know that power looks after power– the law is framed that way. And we know that money looks after money – by and large, the rich stay rich. Those in power can lose huge amounts of other peoples’ money and still grow their own millions. Just think of Telstra or Goldman Sachs.

Those in power now want to get their hands on our information so that they can control us. Elsewhere at this festival David Mutton is putting forward the appalling idea that – I quote – “intrusive, coercive surveillance” is somehow a good thing, and that – again I quote – “issues of privacy, informed consent and free will are irrelevant“. Now that’s what I call a really dangerous idea!

Those in power, in this case represented by the Minister for Broadband, Stephen Conroy*, want to stop us from having free access to information. But at the same time, security organisations now want to intercept and store every electronic message that we send. They want to track the author of every bit of information that is out there.

Those in power want to do this because they think they can. The Gestapo and the KGB also wanted to record the thoughts of ordinary people. And for very much the same reason.

Are we serious about democracy? Then we need genuinely free exchange of information. That means we need privacy and security software that
·        protects the identity of people who publish,
·        that gives us free access to information, and
·        stops spies from snooping on our conversations.

We must do research into privacy software, not into filters! 

*I wanted to quip “… or should that be Minister for Narrowband, or even Minister for Narrowminds”, but I didn’t have spare seconds in the two minutes.

According to an article syndicated, amongst other places, in the Sydney Morning Herald , Everton has hired Maori dancers to perform a dance based on the “haka” (as used by the New Zealand rugby team) as Everton and Arsenal run onto the park at Liverpool on Saturday.

The club has now, it seems, received “written threats from a leading Maori lawyer”, claiming that “the dance trespasses on Maori rights and disrespects their cultural heritage”. The club management, it appears, intends to go ahead, as indeed they should.

There are legal issues here, and there are also issues about modern culture. As to the legal issues, I am of course not an expert, but if the original “haka” is indeed traditional, then by definition it was not composed by those represented by the lawyer. Their claim is presumably based on genetic and cultural descent from those who first developed the dance. As an Englishman, do I have a right to prevent Maoris from performing (possibly bad) versions of Shakespeare? I think not, even though I do believe there is a Shakespeare way, way back in my ancestry. The dance has been used as part of the pre-match entertainment by Maoris for many years now. The idea that someone in New Zealand has some kind of intellectual right by means of which they can prevent someone doing a modified version of that dance in Liverpool, England, seems to be stretching the law a bit far. The club has indeed hired people of Maori appearance to do this dance, so in any case shouldn’t they be the target of the lawyer’s action? Those Maoris are the ones who are selling the dance to the club, after all. Here it is:

The whole question of the extent to which we have “rights” over the culture that was developed by earlier generations is one that interests me. (The meaning of “aboriginal painting” is an example of these muddy waters to which I hope to return one day.)

And then there is the question of culture. According to the article:

Intellectual property lawyer Maui Solomon told the Herald on Sunday he thought the haka, which starts “Everton! Everton! He, ha, he, ha!”, was “totally disrespectful”

As the Germans might say – “Na und?” And so? I have, of course, no knowledge of the hearts of the Everton management, and cannot comment on whether or not they respect Maori culture. In an ideal world we would all respect each other’s differences, although I certainly hope that would still allow us to make fun of them. Let us, for the moment, assume (perhaps unfairly) that they really are being disrespectful. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where the appearance of respect is enforced by the law. Too many people have fought too long and too hard to win us the moderate freedom that we now have to speak our minds to have that thrown away for the sake of every group that feels threatened by the way it is represented elsewhere. We can make comical drawings and jokes about Muhammad, we can say that the Queen of England is a frosty old bat, we can satirise Christian priests, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, our Prime Ministers and other political leaders, not to forget the Dalai Lama or, indeed, “Western Buddhists” like myself. And we can giggle at Maoris sticking their tongues out, stamping the floor and going “Ha Ha”. I am not sure whether blasphemy is still on the statute book, but it has become, thankfully, a pretty irrelevant law. I would, let me repeat, hope that we have respect for each other in our hearts, and that we would therefore refrain from doing things like the above under certain circumstances, especially those where they are particularly likely to cause hurt or offence. But it would be a grim, grey, oppressive and oppressed world in which the law was used to impose the personal taste of the few on the general taste of the many.

… a bunch of people who think that Australia’s national anthem is “Advance Fairskinned Australia”.

Or so it is said.

The media here are making much of the young, net-savvy Iranians using social networking sites to get the news out. Most people believe the Iranian presidential election to have been rigged, most outside journalists have had to leave Iran, but the Iranians are said to be twitter-ing and facebook-ing away about what is going on. And don’t we just love it, because it is the Iranian regime that is threatened by the net?

So good. Freedom of information really does work in favour of democracy! Our governments should be financing research to keep information free, and to protect those who publish it – software to keep government snoopers out of our e-conversations, and to provide security and privacy. The Great Firewall of China, the Australian plans for ISP-level filtering, plans to keep logs of all e-mail exchanges – these are toys that would have made Big Brother green with envy.

Underlines my point!

First off, a declaration that this thought started with an article by Gary Feuerberg in the Epoch Times; the article also refers to a site concerned with undermining democracy.

Feuerberg’s article summarizes a report entitled “Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians,” released on Capitol Hill, June 4 – the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – sponsored by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. Its 80 pages find that four authoritarian states—China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela—are setting forth a new authoritarian model for countries to follow, and that they have the resources and sophistication to be highly influential in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Continue reading Global Free Information?

Let us not forget. 20 years ago tomorrow. Here is one article in the Wall Street Journal.

The Australian Government considers that knowledge about good methods of voluntary euthanasia should be forbidden, and would like to ban this website about the use of nembutal. Take note before it’s too late!

I guess I’m not entirely sure what I feel about euthanasia, but I’m quite sure that I don’t concede my right to know about these things to the government, or to a list that it draws up in secret.