“I wrote this blogtext in October 2013 – it’s a longread yes – but it’s still worth reading! The subject of digital communication in the age of overuse of surveillance, fearless use of privacy information on anyone and hacking anything what is left to hide in many parts of society and what the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked material to journalists means for us.”
This is an excerpt from the book with the Swedish title – Vägen fram mot rikedom – the English title is – The Road To Prosperity . The book is about economic history told in a simple humorous style with a deep future vision! The reason I have chosen this text I will tell you further on.
Author: Ulrika Barkström
Link to buy this book in English: The Road To Prosperity
Link to buy this book in Swedish: Vägen fram mot rikedom
Chapter 4 – Law and security
“The first they could see was a cloud of sand, then a cluster of fast and feared Bedouin riders. Before there own defence took off, the plunderers cut the saddlebags and snatched the reins out of the already dead mans hands. The merchant could not escape, blood poured out of his body, as his wealth had slipped through his fingers and caught by the wind flew over the vast landscape of sand. The slave pressed his hands on the wound, but it was too late, the merchant’s life could not be saved. He then gathered the animals and the people still alive and continued determined the journey ones begun. He would not give up his dream.”
One way to limit time and work could be to steal from somebody else who already put a lot of time and effort to create something, maybe for years. That could be seen as smart for the one who took advantage of the situation and stupid for the one who let him or herself be robbed. That is how we have lived for centuries, been our own masters of protection or not. What does this mean in reality? The person who did not pay with time, effort and investment has in fact not contributed to the road to prosperity. What has happened is that the person who created something has to try to bring back what has been stolen if he or she can, and that will not add to more freed up resources, but the opposite. And the shortcut to get wealthy is so much easier that it will attract others to do the same, and the ones who get bereaved will barely float, loose their motivation and eventually have to move to a place where they will not loose possessions. If you lend money to the ones who seek fortune in regions with poor or no judicial protection and practice the risk of loosing money is seemingly high, and therefore the motivation to lend money will be affected. Too much insecurity and investment will seek other more secure places to go.
The more efficient judicial protection for property and possessions in practice, the better you use the resources and you get a faster track on the road to prosperity.
Since the beginning of the summer 2013 a fascinating news story has been rolling up in several newspapers and in several countries, The Guardian, Washington Post and Der Spiegel have pushed the story and other newspapers in even more countries including Sweden have reported the news.
Edward Snowden the former National Security Agency contractor has almost every day in some newspaper revealed classified information through journalists like Glenn Greenwald the astonishing broad and depth of the use of available digital communication to protect citizens from threats from abroad and inside the country.
From comments by ordinary people published in the news you can find reactions of worry, anger and loss of trust but also defense of why one thinks that maximum use of technology to discover sensitive information is important. The reflective opinions have punched each other and expressed traitors and heroes. In some countries politicians, organizations for privacy protection, human rights and technical security experts have reacted strongly and begin to act. Demonstrations have been held in Germany and USA to be followed on twitter #StopWatchingUs. Bilateral meetings between countries like USA and Russia, Brazil and USA have been postponed.
If I have understood things correctly the Edward Snowden disclosures amount to this:
The American National Security Agency NSA orders under strict confidentiality until the 6th of June 2013, the telecom companies to send all telephone metadata from all American citizens continually to receive, regain, prepare and analyse. Meta data is who you call, where from, duration of the call and so on, it is everything except the actual content of the call. NSA uses metadata among all to create sophisticated graphs of Americans social connections, where they are at a certain time, travel companions and other personal information they can achieve with these relatively simple data, to reveal and track foreign intelligence targets abroad and at home, to protect the country.
The possibility was made by secret interpretations of new laws following Osama bin Laden terror attack 11th of September 2001, that has been done without enough supervision by politicians due to confidentiality or lack of will on there behalf to get knowledge of how massive NSA receive, collect, store and analyze telephone metadata. The FISA court had the same dilemma with not enough oversight due to NSA´s unwillingness to disclose enough information that tied the legal supervision.
Telephone metadata until now was not interpreted as violating the constitution or the privacy of Americans. Social connections, locations, call duration and interval make it possible for NSA to analyze information that protects the country from terrorism. NSA have underlined that they are only interested in bulk collection of telephone metadata and not the actual content of the calls between citizens. The reason to underline that distinction could be that the conversation on line is protected by the constitution. All parts – interpretations of laws, the scope of the bulk collection of all American citizens, if telephone metadata is protected or not by law, if the actual conversation is protected or not by law are now challenged by politicians with new or amended regulations and have been challenged in court by privacy organisations like ACLU and others, that it absolutely violates the constitution and the right to privacy.
The reason why NSA draw a line between the legality to build databases and how they motivate what persons they want to scrutinize, my interpretation is that they wish to collect as much information as possible to be able to get whatever information they could need, while they submit to some rules how to choose who to examine. The technology is very permissive and frankly irresistible, but they are fully aware that they are walking a very fine line to not violate the individuals right to privacy ones the information is at place and the only obstacle that is left is there own judgement if there are enough legal reasons to breach there privacy. That depends on there internal rules, discipline and oversight. Disclosed secret documents show how difficult that balance of internal oversight totally depended on self correction and own follow up so that privacy overreach do not happen again, where the FISA court is depended on NSA sincerity.
In the rest of the world there are no legal boundaries and no technical barrier for the NSA to collect both the telephone metadata and the actual conversation, if they want to, to be able to identify possible terrorists.
And that might be how other countries do there spy business too, watch out for domestic legal boundaries, what to receive, collect, store and analyze and how to legally choose the ones that you need to scrutinize, and abroad the security agencies do whatever they feel like, they collect both telephone meta data and the content of the actual calls if that is important enough and the technical capabilities are there, nothing can stop them.
It is of no comfort at all, that the country where you are citizen have rules and regulations when the rest of the world can if they want, receive, collect, store and analyze everything. You can work hard in each country to protect privacy and rest assured that the rest of the world’s security agencies will do whatever they want if they have the technical capabilities.
People call all over the world and they travel abroad and that make it hard to not get mixed up with more accepted foreign intelligence surveillance abroad.
Until now I have only written about the first disclosure of secret information that Edward Snowden leaked to the newspapers the very first day in this rolling news story. It deals with telephone metadata in the USA, and yet the 29th of September that early information tells us almost enough to understand how these remarkable disclosures will develop. The following are quotes from the New York Times “N.S.A Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens” the 29th of September:
“The policy shift was intended to help the agency discover and track connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an NSA memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorised to conduct large scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.” And the article reveals: “The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such enrichment data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.”
This bulk collection of metadata for all citizens in a country like the United States is as judicially and ethically controversial for the people as irresistible for the NSA to collect to be able to protect USA. It would be fine if that was the end of the story, but it is not. How do you follow an unbroken chain of connections in this modern society? You really have to collect all the essential techniques of communication to put the chain together, and follow the leads all the way from country to country, and that makes the privacy protection even for the citizens weaker. It doesn’t stop with the scope of the communication techniques to stop a terror attack, when you have identified someone who needs to be investigated further you already have the details to analyze, the content of the call, because you can and the security agency save time.
New York Times – NSA examines social networks of US citizens.
Since the first revelation of secret orders to telephone companies to send over telephone metadata there have been more disclosures:
NSA´s Prism program receive internet data, from live chat and stored information through direct access of the biggest tech companies servers, with confidentiality but with the assistance of the companies, according to NSA documents. The companies deny that they give NSA direct access. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple. Through direct access, technically done with suitable legal deniability for both parties apparently, NSA have circumvented FAA (Fisa Amendments Act) and that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA’s inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. An extensive interpretation of “reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA”, helps to legally authorize a deeper analyze of any person who could also be an American citizen.
Quotes from a memorandum the 6th of November 2001, Department of the Army, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence in Washington, the subject was collecting information on US persons. Two months after Osama bin Ladens terror attacks 11th of September 2001:
“Our adversary is not a clearly defined nation state with fixed borders or a standing army. It is instead a shadowy underworld operating globally with supporters and allies in many countries including, unfortunately, our own.”
“Military Intelligence may receive information from anyone, anytime”
”Remember, merely receiving information does not constitute ”collection” under AR 381-10; collection entails receiving ”for use”. Army Intelligence may always receive information, if only to determine its intelligence value and whether it can be collected, retained or disseminated in accordance with governing policy.”
You may observe that weighing of words is of enormous value when secret agencies like the NSA describe what they do not do and what they allow them selves to do in practice, even after the disclosures of Edward Snowden.
Receive does not mean collect. As you could read in the quotes from the early and important memorandum from 6th of November 2001 all information including information from American citizens may be received by Military Intelligence. That means that NSA receive every bodies information, foreign and domestic, and then determine its intelligence value and whether it can be collected, retained or disseminated in accordance with governing policy. The faucet is always open, always, as easy as possible, where information flows in from Prism or being sent over by telecom companies, forced by secret court orders, to be received by NSA.
When journalists have questions whether all American citizens communications information is being used by NSA the spokesperson answer is: “Everything NSA does has a foreign intelligence purpose. Our activities are concentrated on counterterrorism, counter proliferation and cyber security.”
And what does that mean? It means that NSA´s foreign intelligence gathering not only touches on other governments, secret intelligence agencies, organisations, companies, individuals but they have to gather intelligence at home if there own government, intelligence agencies, organisations, companies not the least individuals are being spied upon by others whom ever they are whatever not suitable they can be dragged into, be just a tiny innocent unaware piece in a bigger event the spooks do not wish to happen. There is possibly the practiced authorisation by the agency’s own interpretation and a highly sensitive one, not only receive all communications information but also collect and for use. There will always be “reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA”, the minimum requirement. Or reasonably believed to be engaged or about to be engaged with a foreign power, organisation or person, possibly without the knowledge of the US citizen at all.
The Guardian – NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
There have been a lot of words on NSA, National Security Agency in the United States, but they are not the only master on the top of security intelligence in this drama, what the digital technical development has meant for the private person. There are a lot of spy allies and partners around the world. The security intelligence GCHQ in Great Britain is very ambitious. Digital information is carried through fibre-optic cables everywhere where it is possible to get a rapid flow of information. Continents are connected through fibre-optic cables and are perfect nods to gain access to the networks. GCHQ collects and stores vast quantities of data tapped from these fibre-optic cables, 3 days for content and 30 days for metadata to be sifted and analyzed. The operation is codenamed Tempora. Documents reveals that Britain’s extent of vast data collection and how it is used and shared to other agencies like the NSA make GCHQ in Britain to an intelligence superpower, even worse than the USA. By 2010, two years after Tempora was first trialled Britain was able to boast it had the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zeeland. By May last year GCHQ had 300 analysts and NSA 250 to sift through the flood of data. The Guardian has information that 850 000 NSA employees and private contractors with top secret clearances had access to GCHQ databases. Documents reveals that 2012 GCHQ was handling 600 mill ”telephone events” each day, tapped 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of the cables at a time. The enormous data tapping is made possible by overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they are obliged to cooperate on this operation, they have no choice. The Guardian source reveal that GCHQ collects a “vast haystack of data” and what they were looking for where the “needles”. An expression often used by NSA´s director general Keith Alexander, to collect all information all the time to be able to find the necessary “needles in the haystack”. This is where analysis, search criteria, words, interests and social connections are used. The criteria are security, terror, organised crime, economic wellbeing. Most data information is never scrutinized in detail but the extent of the collection to get this gigantic haystack to get the needles, becomes even more important. As in US the politicians in Great Britain, even the ones engaged in intelligence supervision have been unaware of the scale and scope of GCHQ´s work. The debate among public have not yet started compared to the USA, but it is as necessary as for every country that no longer can hide behind secret information or not enough knowledge to avoid the discussion. This concerns everybody in the world that wants once free societies to become free again.
In Britain an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad, but the nature of the fibre-optic cables means that a proportion of internal UK traffic is relayed abroad among all to the US where the big tech companies are and then returns through the cables.
The above description of the intelligence work in Britain was to show that the thinking is the same, technical capabilities the same, the same questions and it does not stop there. If Britain is a country that cooperates with the USA this way, there are more countries in the Five Eyes in other parts of the world that probably work the same way. You avoid double work and exchange services where it is possible. What is not legal to do domestically your intelligence partner can contribute and send so it gets recevied. NSA´s Prism program for instance is used by several allies, since many of the big tech companies are founded in the US. And it does not stop even there, more countries partner with Five Eyes, among them Sweden that uses the same circumvention of judicial paragraphs. The word “tests” makes it possible to allow collecting, analyzing and sharing of more material than usual. Tests are always allowed since it is development that is important. And tests must be done properly, all the way, which makes it perfectly comparable to actual use, only with a little different label. Sweden is close to fibre-optic cables of great interest to others, and Sweden is according to these summer revelations the most important partner outside the Five Eyes, close to Baltic States and not the least Russia. Great Britain taps Europe and others, Sweden tap Russia and others. Or even more correct perhaps the web is tied together otherwise there are no web, telephone and internet traffic steams all over the World Wide Web. We are all tied together and whoever wants to tap information of the web and use the information may do so. But encryptions you may wonder, that stops the collection of my private data, secure my private information rights. Encryption is supposed to protect the professional protector’s information data and it does not end there.
The Guardian – GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications
Encrypted data is always targeted for collection and analyzes by the NSA, and that is most likely true for all other intelligence agencies with the capabilities. Until now the ones who really want to hide on the web use encryption – that will always make incentives to decrypt what is encrypted.
The Guardian – Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security
An open letter about encryption from security researchers and experts at Bristol University in Great Britain about the sensational revelation in the documents from Edward Snowden, that shows that NSA and GCHQ worked to weaken international cryptographic standards and placed” backdoors” into security products and how it is cause of much more substantial worry.
”One of the prime missions of the security services is to protect citizens and corporations from Cyber Attack. By weakening cryptographic standards, in as yet undisclosed ways, and by inserting weaknesses into products which we all rely on to secure critical infrastructure, we believe that the agencies have been acting against the interests of the public that they are meant to serve. We find it shocking that agencies of both the US and UK governments now stand accused of undermining the systems which protect us. By weakening all our security so that they can listen in to the communications of our enemies, they also weaken our security against our potential enemies.”
They are not alone to react with horror on this revelation. But their letter is a very good example exactly how alarmed security experts are over this revelation and why. Read!
Bristol Cryptographers – Open letter from UK security researchers
Encryption was supposed to protect individual privacy and security as well as organisations, corporations, governments, professional protectors like NSA, GCHQ and all the other secret agencies, military secrets and functions and as it is written in the open letter to be the foundation to protect everybody from cyber attacks or cyber war. And this is where we most definitely will suggest protect all financial transactions and economic security that utterly depend on encryption and cryptographic standards. Not to mention organised crime that will always use whatever is possible and have the most competent people as good as any NSA or GCHQ employee. And information will always be one of the most valuable things to own for an individual, organisation or company and today there is nothing to stop them from getting it ones they have the technical knowledge. They do it because they can and it is difficult to see for the ones who get their private or professional digital information stolen. Your private or professional data information is there – only less securely encrypted – thanks to the security agencies and therefore easier to reach.
The Guardian Dan Gillmor – How should you protect yourself from cyber surveillance?
At a live cyber security conference at Washington Post Thursday 3 of October, Michael Hayden former NSA/CIA director general expressed that their problem is not that it is too easy to decrypt the encrypted information but it is that there are too much encrypted data on the web. They want to be able to decrypt easier and everything. At the same conference a VISA security director express that there are only two versions of people on the web, either you have been hacked and you know it or you have been hacked and you do not know it. Her problem is that their customers and the company do not think that they get enough help from government agencies to be protected from cyber attacks. Which by the way NSA as one solution want to solve by taking over the protection of as many organisations and corporations as possible. The VISA security director was not as keen on that solution. I guess that you who read this may wonder why she said that, but also why Michael Hayden expressed himself the way he did. The paradox is everywhere in this intricate news story, here is another one.
Tor is a network service which allows people to surf on the web anonymously. It was developed 11 years ago and financed by US military. Today it is an open-source software controlled by no individual or organisation. Tor is described by journalists as one of the most difficult anonymous protection to crack for the NSA. Documents revealed by Edward Snowden are older, from 2007, so they do not expose how far NSA has cracked Tor today. Tor is secure enough according to these older documents that NSA can not see who visits a certain website, but according to the same documents NSA implants malicious code on visitors to be of a certain website that are of particular interest and thereby burrowing deep into the target computer, making it difficult to detect or remove. The malware can spy on the user and report back to the NSA with information. NSA find the people they want, only through another method and it is less fast than bulk collection and analyzes of not encrypted or cracked encrypted data. Tor is being used by people who really need to be anonymous, who would otherwise get into big trouble, in countries where human rights are not as accepted and therefore the technique get support from foreign office in the US. This paradox that security agencies in one country try to decrypt, crack and weaken cryptographic standards do whatever they can to protect a nation and at the same time the foreign office support to strengthen the very same techniques to help democratize more and more countries, that paradox may be evident in every country who wants to call themselves democratic. Here you have a severe paradox clash who gets to decide and why, the individual choice for privacy and security, the choice to protect a nation by all means and what the digital technique really allows us to do, that nobody can stop. Tor users and other anonymous protection services users do not always have good purposes but evil ones, and really evil ones. And same with those who want to crack this kind of services they do not always have nice purposes but really evil ones.
The Washington Post – Everything you need to know about NSA and Tor
You really wish that problem solving could end there, but it does not. What more can others do to you, that you do not know about yet? Why is it so easy to hack your home? Here are two links that describe how pictures and sound is being picked up from your own home and not only there, if somebody really wants to.
CNN opinion – Why it’s so easy to hack your home by Bruce Schneier
DN – Smarta TV apparater hackarens nya mål
Telephone and internet systems are all full of security gaps that make it possible for anybody with the right technical competence to pick sound and pictures. An off switched mobile phone for instance is no guaranty to not be wiretapped by somebody else. That security agencies all around the world could get into your every day life, that I believe many already knew before these revelations, even if the scale and scope were unimaginable. The problem is that if one has the knowledge, more will follow, even outside of the professional protectors. People change occupation and bring there knowledge and the competence spread even faster just because the distribution net is there, the web, and it only takes one to feed the rest on the web.
Now we know how easy targets we all are and what we say, write and do, privately or professionally.
Now we know that there are many different motives to use that easy target.
And we know that it does not stop there. The net is the biggest distribution channel we all have, and we all can use it to distribute. As long as we get to decide what we want to distribute to others we are okay with it, but when we do not get to decide what to distribute what happens then? Now we close the circle and observe except that privacy has been erased by some technically knowledgeable individual with certain questionable interest or maybe justifiable security agency that we may not notice, just anyone can at anytime decide to distribute what you say, write or do privately or professionally on the web. There is no publication barrier, because you may not even know that it happens. If you cannot with certainty prohibit this easy target of yours, that you now know that many professional people work hard to weaken your privacy, then you cannot stop that you may get published anywhere, anytime. And that concern every person on this earth. And if you are lucky to notice that something is wrong, that you are distributed without your concession it can be very difficult to stop the leakage because you can not with certainty decide what another individual do or do not do on the web. If they want to do this to you they will find ways to do it. You may believe that they have quit, but they only moved to another address and hide what needs to be hidden to make it work. What once was a picture in the city of somebody “interesting” or somebody “looking a little different” and that could be anyone of us and then published on Facebook or Instagram is now in worst case scenario only the beginning to have private sound and moving pictures somewhere on the web you may never know of. People have a tendency to attach to one another and if they have found you as an object it may in worst case scenario not be you who decide that the interest shall end. What people do on the web to each other both good and evil seem to have no boundaries at all. I have during a long time felt that my imagination is not enough and I have to assume that even your imagination will not be sufficient and god bless the one who can solve all these paradoxes.
What I describe in this text can have enormous consequences in short time for individuals and in long time for societies. The physical appearance that we are all connected and the webs technical “limitations” that it is for the technical knowledgeable person wide open and that you cannot go backwards and take away such otherwise positive force of development, is the core to why these revelations happen now.
A summary what may be at stake:
- National Security: The professional protectors who should protect individuals and nations must make the impossible choice between having as much easily decrypted information as possible, as quickly analyzed as possible to fend off threats or stop weaken individuals, organisations, companies and their own government agencies through less protection against cyber attacks that is of their primary duties. They say themselves that they get robbed on secret information like development, hunt for leakages among employees, which make one wonder if they really are aware of just how much they themselves get hacked. The following link makes it even more clear just how insecure they feel and that the hardware security is maybe an even bigger challenge than software security.
- Econonomic Security: A prerequisite that the individual, associations and societies economic development works is that the ones who develop products, services and processes do not get plundered in secret on the communication networks. See the chapter in the beginning of this blog from the e-book – Vägen fram mot rikedom – (Title: The road to prosperity. Right now only available in Swedish) A wide open communication net for the ones with the technical knowledge, makes it very difficult to prove a robbery and the lack of police and judicial tools make the digital communication take us back in history when everybody had to protect themselves. On the digital mega networks a scandalous hacking culture is rampant with the potential to puncture the economic development in the future. Most people are not aware that they have been hacked and robbed and that will in worst case scenario be the same in the future too. This is completely devastating. The web can not be complete anarchy, the same rules that is important in reality outside the web will be needed for the very same reason if we want the economic development to work in the future on the web too. The worst threat is people’s naivety, because you can not see this physically and therefore you will not hear of. It becomes to abstract and not likely to happen and then you do not ask for the technical and judicial development with the same persuasion as if you had seen this in front of your own eyes. That would have possibly enraged people. The professional protectors storing of mass surveillance information make economic espionage on other countries even easier and governments will always have motives, not the least during tuff economic times, to “collect” whatever will boost the development. The paradox is a fact, the espionage is supposed to make the country prosper, nobody can stop them, everybody spies on everybody and then we have to do it too, in the end the governments support a plundering economy where tapping the streams of an almost open source is a faster track than create and invent. Continued hidden anarchy on the web weakens the real force for prosperity for all human being, ingenuity, creativity, and inventions and harms the actual engine of the economy. Young students perhaps choose another path than science and development if they are sure to loose their discovery. What kind of effect cryptographic insecure financial payments, bank accounts will have you should not have to mention. And how strong motives investors on the share and financial markets have to search for information all kinds of ways and what that could lead to you should not have to mention either. The companies, they will always use all and bend all legal possibilities to seek to get ahead of competitors. If you both harm the engine, the driving force and the oil, the flow of finance then you have a pretty tough road to prosperity for all.
- Private Security and Integrity: Do I even have to explain why people need a guaranteed private life in the future? Physical incursion in a house is a crime and regular incursions are called invasion a total overtaking of a human beings life where your own home is invaded of people who wish you only harm. It should not be possible that anybody accept that it happens to anyone, and people who are the victims of this crime must get all the help they need. Where are they supposed to turn for help? Who should help them? What judicial support do they have? These crimes are very difficult to prove if the invaders really want to hide their actions. Or are you only going to watch somebody naked and being photographed, abused, audio and video rolling whenever they feel like it? The right to not get published when you do not want to has to be there. The person who is violated, abused and harassed in all kinds of unseen ways must have better judicial protection than the offender. Free publish rights for the one who commit crimes and publish a person without their consent cannot survive. If we have turn the tide in the wrong direction when plunderers could decide if they should succeed in stealing every time, how much and how often without legal boundaries then I do not know how to begin to describe a stolen private life, a stolen privacy. A stolen private life is – a stolen life – life is gone – it does not exist anymore.
- Democracy: The president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff in her speech at the general assembly at the United Nation in New York 24th of September 2013: “Recent revelations concerning the activities of a global network of electronic espionage have caused indignation and repudiation in public opinion around the world.” “In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion and therefore no effective democracy.” “My government will do everything in its reach to defend the human rights of all Brazilians and to protect the fruits borne from the ingenuity of our workers and companies.” President Dilma Rousseff, her government, oil company Petrobras, and Brazilians have been mass surveilled where telephone calls, e-mail among other have been compromised according to revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. When words spoken, words written and what you do no longer are protected by privacy rights, from the individual and upwards in the hierarchy, when faster computers in an instant search and analyze, then you have a completely manipulated society. How much each of us will be aware of it, I do not know. The same way a person with knowledge is empowered, other persons knowledge about you give them power to affect you. Democracy means that you should be able to steer your political leaders. You must have power over your government not the other way around. News media that should give citizens information and scrutinize government have no source protection at all, right now. Journalists will have more difficulty to act with integrity, but they have also easier access to sensitive private information with selling potential. Our imagination will not be sufficient to what both sides are capable of doing to each other. At the same time real news are a significant part of a democracy and should keep up with truth, as much as politicians should be telling the truth about a nations secret agency’s and what they are responsible of that risks turning entire societies upside down.
The Washington Post – Brazils president condemns NSA spying
The Guardian – NSA surveillance: the US is behaving like China says Ai Weiwei
If you have not yet informed yourself what you risk loosing if you do not seek more information, now is the time. The people who have brought these questions to life need your help, you have to be their opposite force. They are bound by secrecy not only now but in the future. They even have to defend what they work with, it is there job, that make them persistent in debates over mass surveillence and privacy, but they beg you on there knees that you should act and defend your right to privacy. Digital communication is not just a Messiah but it can be the opposite if we do not decide about the future.
And Edward Snowden you are a true saint for ever!
En tiger som inte tiger - A tiger talks 