We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
I seem to be stuck with the privacy and security topic but since it is what interests and worries me, here it is. According to an artricle in CNET New.com Is your email watching you? the spam choking your e-mail inbox may be loaded with software that lets marketers track your moves online, and you may not even be aware that you’ve been bugged.
Apparently, enhanced messages that share the look and feel of Web pages are being used to deliver the same bits of code through e-mail, in many cases without regard for safeguards that have been developed to protect consumer privacy on the Web. E-mail also seems to be the focus of the security and privacy issues on the Web at the moment. While web sites now cloak visitors’ identities and collect data anonymously, junk emailers and marketers have begun to use cookies and other techniques to link specific addresses to surfing behaviour. In some cases, spammers can link surfers with their e-mail addresses.
Lance Cottrell a privacy services expert warns:
“In many ways, email tracking is more powerful because they can correlate the email address with online history….there isn’t an opportunity to be fully informed when you receive a spam with remotely loaded graphics used to track your computer. It’s a bit of a loophole in the whole process.”
An article in Computerworld responds to the fears for privacy as a trade-off to security after September 11th. Jay Cline lists a number of scenarios that would signal that privacy and American’s civil liberties are in danger and actually being reduced.
If a nationwide loss of privacy has occurred, we should be seeing at least one of the following scenarios: a widespread expansion in the scope of the government’s collection of personal data, courts setting dangerous legal precedents or a surge in the number of people harmed by abuses of government-collected data. These are the speed bumps on the road from liberty to tyranny, and none has been crossed.
So far in the war on terrorism, there has been no widespread increase in the government’s collection of Americans’ personal data….and there is no pattern of government abuses of personal data stemming from Sept. 11. The congressional oversight committees have certainly been busier, but so far, we haven’t seen any members seeking hearings on privacy abuses.
The Patriot Act, passed in October last year giving the FBI new powers to monitor the e-mail of suspected terrorists, is mentioned in a relaxed manner:
The Patriot Act also enables government agencies to share more law-enforcement information. Many Americans think the federal government already has a huge big brother computer file on each person. But the reality is that big brother is a hodgepodge of little cousins — the same sort of motley collection of stovepiped and uncoordinated databases that most large corporations have..and…the FBI certainly hasn’t taken upon itself to conduct random keyword searches of all the e-mail coursing through the servers of U.S. ISPs.
There are two reasons for drawing attention to this article. First, I have blogged about privacy and security before where I applauded an article in the same magazine for pointing out the dangers of the drive for security at the cost of privacy. To balance that concern, the inefficiency inherent in governments and their bureaucracies often seems more tangible to me than extensive and elaborate conspiracies. Secondly, I would welcome any information about measures that do pose a definite threat to privacy as a result of September 11th and indeed any comments regarding privacy versus security issue. As they say, the truth is out there.
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
Yes, I realise we can deactivate/avoid/subvert anything the bastards come up with but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t bloody well have to in the first place?
American Express Co. agreed on Monday to turn over to U.S. tax authorities information on offshore accounts held by Americans suspected of evading taxes, the second major card company to do so after MasterCard International Inc. A settlement agreement between the government and American Express, filed in federal court in Miami, allows the tax agency to collect identifying information, such as passport and driver’s license numbers, of customers with accounts in Antigua, Barbuda, Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking for records showing charges greater than $2,500 for purchases of cars, boats, hotels or travel services in the U.S. In trying to detect unreported income and prosecute people who are failing to file tax returns, the IRS is pursuing a form of tax evasion that uses credit cards issued by offshore banks.
I find it hard to comment on such news as there is nothing I could add to fire up the appropriate sentiments concerning this topic among us, libertarian bloggers. The warning is contained within the words of Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rossotti:
“Simply put, the guarantee of secrecy associated with offshore banking is evaporating…”
although I am sure he was swelled with pride as he said them and not fear for liberty and property rights….
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
Anyone opened a bank account of late? Transferred an account? Dealt in cash? Sent money abroad? Have you been sent half-insane by the form-filling and ID checking it involved?
If so, then please point an accusatory finger at people like Jonathan M. Winer a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State International Law Enforcement who has written a rather plaintiff article in the Financial Times exhorting the entire world to join him in his campaign against what he calls ‘dirty money’.
The anti-money laundering regime, in which doubtless Mr. Winer was instrumental, sought to scupper international terrorists and drug-dealers by imposing a regulatory regime on all financial institutions requiring them to act as investigators and policemen on the state’s behalf. I have witnessed the absurd results of this first-hand as lowly pensioners from Essex are told to hand over their passport when signing a loan agreement just in case they are really Osama Bin Laden in deep cover.
Added to the humiliation of treating people like criminals, the cost-burden on financial institutions are awesome and let us not forget the many small countries which have been bullied into surrendering their banking secrecy and legal safeguards of anonymity which are the only comparative advantages they possess.
After all that, it is more than a little galling to hear Mr. Winer say:
“Long before September 11, many other victims of wrongdoing have found that global evil-doers are better at taking advantage of the financial infrastructure of globalisation than the world’s police and regulators are at catching them”
Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously like an admission of failure? I cannot say that I am surprised. I (along with many others) predicted long ago that these regulations would do nothing to stop or even slow down determined terrorists or drug-runners. People who are ruthless enough to fly aeroplanes into buildings are hardly going to be phased by having to practice some sleight-of-hand with a bank teller or two.
Mr. Winer goes on to remind us of just how evil money-laundering can be but, rather hilariously, cites economic woes in countries such as Argentina, Mexico and Albania as proof, while forgetting to mention that these countries were hardly paragons of financial virtue to begin with. But, this aside, there is some refreshing frankness in the article. Mr. Winer admits:
“In practice, even the most sophisticated and best-regulated financial centres have proved incapable of adequately overseeing the global enterprises they license”
You’d think that Mr. Winer might have considered this beforehand because it is screamingly obvious. Asking bankers to become policemen is not only a good way to ensure that policemen get lazy but it is also an attempt to get banks engaged in an activity that is diametrically in conflict with their primary function, like asking a cat to bark.
Mr. Winer goes on to suggest a better method for bringing these terrible terrorists and drug-runners to their knees:
“But imagine instead a white list, to make compliance a profit centre, rather than a burden on a bank. A white list – and a reward for being on it.”
This ‘white list’ is something which banks all over the world could apply to join once they have satisfied all the states criteria of compliance to the very highest degree. Then they could proudly advertise themselves as ‘the best of the best’ and all their competitiors would rush to join for the kudos it would give them. Mr.Winer expects this to be a ‘race to the top’.
This is an idea born of hope rather than judgement and is likely to be as successful as his last good idea i.e. a total dud. Complying with the standards required to get on this ‘white list’ would cripple any bank with unendurable profit-eating costs and any that were stupid enough to try would slide dolefully into liquidation while their competitors died laughing.
I am quite pleased that the likes of Mr. Winer are pinning their hopes on this because it is further confirmation that they have lost. That’s what the whole article smacks of really; an almost pathetic, desperate attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This may be futile but it is, from Mr. Winer’s point of view, understandable because the ‘anti-money laundering regime’ is not really about drugs or terrorists at all, it is a sordid attempt at self-preservation. The global movement of capital represents a grievous threat to national tax bases, particularly those that demand up to one-half of their citizens earnings. But that little game is up if the citizens in question can move their money beyond their local tax inspectors reach.
All this chaffe about drugs and terrorists is really a vehicle by which the public sector can try to defend itself against the vigour (or what they see as ‘virulence’) of the free market and, in doing so, they are quite happy, indeed almost compelled, into press-ganging every bank clerk and accountant into their fight. But no laws that Mr. Winer can pen will upend the immutable laws of physics and, sooner or later, the international money-laundering regime will be buried in the Graveyard of Grand Schemes.
Mr. Winer’s article is not so much a helpful analysis or even a plea for help so much as notice of his intention to go down fighting.
Please applaud Dan Gillmor for spelling out that security and privacy are not incompatible in his article Don’t Deny Privacy for Security’s Sake in Computerworld. He mourns the fact that despite their supposed libertarian principles, Silicon Valley companies and their competitors around the world are racing to help the snoops. An example of technology that promotes both security and privacy is encryption and if we want a safe economy in the Digital Age, strong cryptography – with its positive and negative uses – isn’t an option but a requirement. His challenge is to the IT industry:
IT should be considering what happens when businesses are forced to put holes into everyday systems so that law enforcement can easily find wrongdoers or potential criminals. If government has a back door to every communication or collects vast amounts of data in central locations, the potential for a privacy debacle is enormous.
Please read and rejoice that someone has stood up to the post-September 11th tendency to compromise liberty in the supposed interest of security. 
I do not often post about specific bits of government legislation as it makes for awfully dry subject matter but I am unable to resist publishing this example of incandescent lunacy.
A year ago or so I wrote an extensive piece for the Libertarian Alliance about the nature, scope and effects of the UK Money Laundering laws (soon to be codified in the Proceeds of Crime Act).
One of the offences specified is that of ‘Tipping-Off’. If a banker/lawyer/ financial adviser suspects a client of money laundering then he is obliged to report the matter to a responsible officer within the firm who must then decide whether or not to make a report to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. All this must be done in secret because the client must not be told that he is under suspicion (in case he flees the jurisdiction). To spill the beans is to commit the offence of ‘Tipping-Off’ (maximum sentence 2 years in prison).
Well, as if destroying the principle of client confidentiality and trust is not bad enough we all now have to contend with Section 29 of the Data Protection Act 1998 which requires all companies to disclose all internal memoranda to their clients upon demand, even those voicing suspicions of money laundering and, hence, tipping them off!!
One law now forces lawyers/bankers/accountants to break another law!! How long can it be before one is liable for prosecution just for turning up at work in the morning?
Do we have a Government or do we just have a Random Regulation Generating Machine up there?
UPI reported recently in an article titled Big brother is big business that the UK is the most remotely surveilled state in the world.
Advocates point to its efficacy at the same time as national crime rates are soaring. A study by the Scottish Center for Criminology suggested that “spy” cameras had little or no effect on crime. It concluded that “reductions were noted in certain categories, but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall.”
Yet more and more CCTV cameras appear on our streets every day as companies vie for state contracts to bring Orwell’s vision of a Britain under all pervasive observation to reality. Authorities invariably claim that they are to discourage violent crimes and burglary, yet increasingly they are used to prosecute people for transgressing traffic and litter regulations. Nightmarish.
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
Christmas 1914. On the Western front, British and German soldiers face each other off across the barbed wire and the frozen, blood-caked mud and stiff, decomposing bodies of dead comrades. This was warfare as Europe had not witnessed it before: grim, static, total, hellish.
For reasons nobody has ever adequately explained, on this Christmas Day, 1914, a truce was felt necessary and soldiers from each side rose from their positions and enemy met enemy between the trenches in No-Man’s Land and played a game of football.
For a few euphoric hours, soldiers became laughing, playing, carousing men and war was forgotten. But peace had not broken out and fences had not been mended. The game over, the officers led their troops back to their respective lines and the carnage went on and on and on.
There was a faint echo of this legend last night at the ‘Big Brother Awards’ hosted by Privacy International and to which I had been invited by fellow blogger Tom Burroughes. I did not know quite what to expect, but I am customarily on hand to lend such support as I can muster in the battle against Big Brother.
However, as I entered the debating chamber in the London School of Economics, my internal geiger-counter screamed off the scale. It was being bombarded with reds. My hackles never let me down and, boy, were they up. The place was wall-to-wall dreadlocks, canvas knapsacks and sandals complimented by a troop of students in ‘Boycott Esso Oil’ T-shirts and George Bush rubber face-masks.
I was being choked by Chomsky, I could feel the Fisk and smell the Sontag. If I stayed one minute longer I would be pickled in Pilger. I broke out in a feverish sweat and panic set in but, before I could leave a Tom-and-Jerry style hole in the LSE wall, I spotted Tom and, then, to my further bug-eyed surprise, fellow arch-capitalist Tim Evans. And not only was he attending but he was actually reading the nominations!! Just what on earth was going on here?
Further staggering revelations followed when I found out that yet another Libertarian, Malcolm Hutty was there and, in fact, it was his company, Internet Vision, which was co-sponsoring the event together with, wait for it, GreenNet.org!! This was Matter vs. Anti-Matter. Why hadn’t the Universe evaporated in a great, cosmic bang?
Before I could splutter further, the ceremony began and we all settled, a little uneasily, into our seats. We could sense their force and they could sense ours. Somehow, though, the Universe remained stable and the evening was conducted amidst an atmosphere that was appreciative and cordial though far from joyous.
My worst fears were allayed when it became clear that the agenda was being steadfastly adhered to. Privacy was the issue and the sole issue and just about every ‘golden boot’ for its grievous infringement went to HM Government and its agencies. Even I could not suppress a loud whoop when a special ‘boot’ went to the Department of Education and Skills for its ghoulish plans to draw up a clandestine national database for every schoolchild in the country.
Undoubtedly the strangest moment in the evening came when the committee announced that it had been unanimous in wishing to bestow its ‘Freedom Fighter’ award on The Daily Telegraph for its ‘Free Country’ campaign. It was like watching Mullah Omar step up to accept a gong from the B’nai Brith. A crackle of electricity went round the room but, despite some isolated heckles, the recipients were warmly applauded.
When the ceremony was over they all drifted away a little dazed and light-headed. They felt like an audience who had just seen a dazzling magic show and they know that the magic isn’t real but just how did he make that tiger disappear? The Bush-baiters, now unmasked, trooped out again a little sheepishly. It was not the anti-globo ruckus that they (or I) had been expecting.
You know for sure you are living in interesting times when the kind of people whose most prized possession is a bust of Lenin gather together with the followers of Adam Smith and all agree that privacy is important and the state is the biggest threat to it. Interesting and also significant because if my otherwise trenchant ideological foes think that privacy is important then it is to be hoped that they have asked themselves why privacy is important. And if they have, could they possibly come to any conclusion other than the ownership of self and the sovereignty of the individual? It takes questions like that to configure the circuit-boards of the mind into just the right order necessary to illuminate a line of flashing bulbs that light the way to freedom.
If that happens than last night’s ceremony was a mini-milestone in the evolution of political ideas.
On the other hand, it may just have been a Christmas truce between the trenches in No-Man’s Land.
I’m going to read more deeply, but the allegations in the Evidence Eliminator link posted below leave me thinking extreme paranoia on the part of Evidence Eliminator:
In considering the exceptionally defamatory content, (the article delivers a propaganda payload of 16 lies) and the conduct of WIRED.COM we have to ask readers to consider the question of whether or not WIRED.COM, LYCOS and/or their trademark holders Carnegie Mellon University (who allegedly have CIA connections) were involved in sending the emails as part of a deliberate covert action to defame and discredit Robin Hood Software Ltd. and Evidence Eliminator™.
Firstly let me state that I know CMU SCS (School of Computer Science) as well as anyone. I was a CMU undergraduate and graduate student, a founding employee of Compuguard, CMU’s first hight tech spin off company, worked for years in the Robotics Institute and then in the Music Lab for several more years. Just to establish my credentials, here is my web page at my old home.
Lycos, like most of the new high tech companies in Pittsburgh is a spinoff from CMU. It was one of the very first web indexers, if not the first. It was done by students.
Lycos went commercial and moved off the campus. Since the work was done with university resources, the university took some stock. CMU is quite a good place for entrepreneurs. Perhaps because for many years the President was a business school type (yes, CMU also has a top business school), the university policies both encourage entrepreneurs and make loads of dosh for the Alma Mater.
We (and I still strongly identify myself with CMU SCS) were always very good at getting DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funding because we were successfully churning out some of the most advanced work in the world, year after year. CMU (and myself) were on the internet before it was the Internet. I would go so far as to say CMU SCS (along with MIT and Stanford) created the whole ethos of the internet, an ethos which has survived a growth from 20 machines in 1973 to hundreds of millions today.
CMU has been a central clearing house for computer security for ages; formally so with the founding of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) within the freestanding Software Engineering Institute in the 80’s, around the time of the Morris Internet Worm. CERT tracks software vulnerability reports and patterns of computer breakins. Any SysAdmin who isn’t aware of them doesn’t know his job.
Now as to the allegation. Does CMU SCS have “ties” to NSA? Probably, but only in the sense it has “ties” to any of it’s Industrial Affiliates, or anyone else from whom the researchers can extract money. CMU is a private university and a very businesslike place as far as money is concerned. As far as lifestyle and research, SCS runs almost like a libertarian anarchy but based on our “reasonable person” principle. The place would drive an experienced cat-herder mad.
Next, Lycos has been a freestanding company for some years. That means it has outgrown the university roots. Although I have not been in Pittsburgh in nearly 10 years, I would bet they are in the industrial park on the Monongahela River where the mile long Johns & Laughlin Steel Mill stood when I was a kid. CMU and the City of Pittsburgh and I think the University of Pittsburgh jointly developed it into a high tech industrial park. It’s a couple miles from the campus at any rate.
Now down to the meat of it. If CMU SCS grads ran tests against Evidence Eliminator and found it wanting, I know which party I would believe. In any case, I’ll be contacting the department to get “our” side of the story.
If you are really worried about keeping your machine clean, you had better just discard your Microsoft products altogether, and you had better be prepared to switch to Linux and (at this point in history) to learn a great deal about security and forensics.
If you’re too lazy or too busy to do it yourself, I’m available on the subject for £70/hr and up.
Yours truly and fellow blogger David Carr attended an awards ceremony hosted by Privacy International for its annual Big Brother Awards at the London School of Economics. When we got there my heart sank. Ok, one or two mates from the Libertarian Alliance were in the room, but my worst fears were aroused when I saw a bunch of twerps sporting George W. Bush face masks. Oh God, I thought, we’ve got the usual mix of muddle-headed Blame-America-First lefties, peaceniks and other delusional types.
But, I have to report that the evening turned out better than I, or I am sure Mr Carr, could have expected. As well as handing out these “awards” to such bodies as the Department of Education (UK) for various infringements of privacy, Privacy International also handed out genuinely positive awards to those who have protected or advanced the course of liberty over the past 12 months, including the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.
It was a genuinely wonderful moment as various lefties hissed and cringed as Telegraph reporter Stephen Robinson went up on stage to pick up the award for the paper’s A Free Country campaign. The Telegraph has opposed state ID cards, supported decriminalisation of some drugs, opposed threats to trial by jury, and also opposed the ongoing encroachments on British liberty from Brussels.
I think something very important happened last night. What we saw were a bunch of peaceniks forced to acknowledge, through gritted teeth, that there is such a thing as a non-left libertarian movement that is passionate about freedom, determined to protect it, but also savours capitalism. I think this is a meme that is going to continue infecting the body politic.
Tom.Burroughes@reuters.com
 When the state watches you, dare to stare back
I have no idea if this is a pukka story but it certainly looks interesting. Anyone out there have a take on this?
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
