Tech companies selling the technology to track us
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in surveillance, Iran, surveillance state, hacking, malware on
In April I wrote a news story based on a talk by data encryption company PGP Inc founder Phil Zimmermann at Infosecurity, which revealed his feelings about Britain heading towards becoming a surveillance state.
But compared to countries like Iran and China, I guess we’re lucky. Both have been known to monitor citizens for years. Shockingly though, tech countries in Europe don’t look like they have any qualms in providing this surveillance technology to countries that are willing to use it in this way.
The Wall Street Journal and the BBC both reported on how the Nokia Siemens Networks (which has just bought some wireless tech from poor old Nortel) provided sophisticated technology for Iran to examine the content of online communications.
It’s not just for blocking traffic - the technology is supposed to see what information is passed back and forth. A Nokia Siemens spokesman is quoted as saying: ” Western governments, including the UK, don’t allow you to build networks without this functionality.”
It’s kind of scary. But would you expect anything less? Tech companies sell to the public as well as private sector - and very often governments around the world want to keep track of their citizens.
However, at least there are still ways to be anonymous and organise demonstrations without being tracked - as the events in Iran and the use of Twitter shows.
Even Google has to bow down to government power. Google has very quickly complied to a direct command by China to remove pornography from all its sites, even though all it is doing is linking to the content rather than having anything involved in distributing it.
But China is a big market, and there’s a lot of profit to be made. This need to make money can also be seen with the fact that the Chinese government can get away with shipping surveillance software with all of its PCs.
It’s the price we have to pay for better technology. The networking tech that makes communication on devices like mobiles so easy and useful can also be used in ways which we don’t necessarily want. Companies are there to make money - they are not our moral guardians.
As a citizen I guess the only power we have is that of the vote - and is why the Iranians are so furious that the elections over there weren’t as fair as they should be. But in the UK we still have that vote - and hopefully we can use it properly.
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David Blunkett - civil liberties poster boy?
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in surveillance state, RIPA, Infosec, Infosecurity, David Blunkett on
First day at Infosecurity 2009, and a very interesting day.
Ex-home secretary David Blunkett made his keynote speech, and many journalists didn’t bother covering it because selected bits of it had already been released to the media previously relating his vision of the London 2012 Olympics being in danger of attack by terrorists and cybercriminals.
However I attended because I wanted to see if he had anything to say other than that, and listening to it and some of the questions after was very enlightening as Blunkett revealed that he saw biometric passports as an alternative to the much discussed ID card scheme.
Very interesting point of view as it went against the general Labour policy at the top. However he went even further.
Although he didn’t criticise Jacqui Smith’s plans to get companies to track user data, he did tell the audience that he was very worried about what this data was going to be used for, and that it was vital to ensure that a thorough investigation of police and local authority surveillance was vital to ensure that this data was kept safe and used properly.
I felt myself nodding along to much of what he was saying, as it was total common sense! It’s fair enough if the police and security agencies need to keep the data, but not enough has been mentioned about what this would entail and what it would be used for.
Amid all of the media hype and fury, this is totally key. We are generally going to have to accept that much of our data is going to be kept and tracked, but the real question is about its safety and its use.
Instead of focusing so much on the fact that the government is going to use our data, we have to focus more on that - the review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that should be coming soon will be very important when trying to calm public fears of the UK becoming a surveillance state.
A politician making sense? Madness. Maybe being a member of the Cabinet is what makes you so out of touch with what the discussion should actually be about.
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