EU Politician Wants Internet Surveillance Built Into Every Operating System
from the they-just-haven't-thought-this-through dept
"Think of the children" has become the rallying cry of politicians around the world trying to push for ever-increasing Internet surveillance powers. Since nobody wants to run the risk of being branded as soft on crimes like paedophilia, resistance to such measures is greatly reduced as a result.
This approach was used in the "Declaration of the European Parliament of 23 June 2010 on setting up a European early warning system (EWS) for paedophiles and sex offenders" which:
2. Asks the Council and the Commission to implement Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively;
The two European politicians behind the Declaration, which seeks to extend the already intrusive Data Retention Directive, were Tiziano Motti and Anna Zaborska. Motti now wants to go even further by monitoring and storing all Internet activity in the European Union.
The press release about the launch of this new initiative was entitled "Data Retention Directive: the fight against paedophiles and sexual predators on the net, respecting citizens' right to privacy"; it explained:
3. Calls on the Member States to coordinate a European early warning system involving their public authorities, based on the existing system for food safety, as a means of tackling paedophilia and sex offending;The press conference will focus on the most discussed part of the Data Retention Directive, which is under revision, and on the 'Motti Resolution' approved by Parliament in 2010, asking to extend this Directive to content providers (social networks etc) in order to identify more easily those who commit crimes, including paedophilia through sexual harassment on the Net (recognised as a crime by the legislative Resolution to be voted at the next plenary session in Strasbourg). This is a request which does not regard specifically the online content, which falls under the Regulation of wiretapping, but to the traffic data developed by the person uploading material of any kind on the net: comments, pictures, videos.
As this indicates, in order to forestall the usual accusations of technical cluelessness, Motti was joined by Fabio Ghioni, described by the press release as "World Expert on security and non-conventional technologies, author of the book 'Hacker Republic'". Ghioni's site carries more details about the ambitious plans, reproducing an article (in Italian) that comes from the web site of Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).
During this press conference, Mr Motti will present the solutions that can make possible the enforcing of the Resolution approved in June 2010, through a study provided by computer expert Fabio Ghioni, and he will answer to the objections, especially from northern Europe, to the Resolution asking for the broadening of the Directive.
Strangely, there Ghioni's project is presented not as a way to catch paedophiles, but as being about keeping personal data safe. The article talks about the fact that users willingly hand over all kinds of information to Facebook but have no control over what the company's employees might do with it. Because of this, Famiglia Cristiana says:
it is worthwhile to evaluate the system developed by Ghioni, which is called LogBox and provides data storage for two years with features that aim to ensure fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.
It's not exactly clear from the article how a black box that logs all your online activities and stores the data for two years will ensure those fundamental rights and freedoms, but the general drift seems to be that you will have a record of everything that you did, which you could use in court, for example, if you are wrongly accused of some misuse of the computer. What this overlooks, of course, is that it will also be a tempting target for governments who want to keep a tight rein on their citizens, or for companies that want to enforce copyright laws by monitoring alleged file sharing activities.
The LogBox system devised by Ghioni encrypts data, placing the decryption key in the hands of the authorities, a notary [lawyer] and the user of the system. Thus the digital certificate is guaranteed by the three entities, including the user, who is in control.
That sounds as if a digital hash of the connection data is encrypted with one or three separate keys - it's not entirely clear. In theory, having three different keys, all of which were required to decrypt, could be quite secure, but it's no proof against court orders demanding your decryption key. On the other hand, having only one shared key would be an invitation for the police to snoop through your online logs all the time. And yet the article insists:
Let's be clear that this has nothing to do with interceptions: here we are talking about digital data, not contents. Currently the two main issues that result in a "wild west Internet" are digital identity and authentication of both the users and the service providers. Let's take the example of social networks: currently anyone can create a fake personal profile. Let's take the example of online paedophiles: they can be traced only if they use their own account but if, as is easy to do, they connect from a different IP address in some other country, they will never be held responsible for the criminal actions they carry out.
From this it seems that one of the key features of the black box is to make pseudonymous or anonymous activity online impossible. Again, it's hard to see any benefits whatsoever for users – in what way is this "respecting citizens' right to privacy"? - but plenty for governments and the copyright industry.
Even more surprising is exactly how Ghioni wants the black box idea implemented:
The LogBox system would clarify these issues through a precise mechanism that involves the "collaboration" of the operating systems. Therefore the help of Windows, Apple, Linux will be needed. The operating systems will have to store the characteristics of all the activity logs (in practice, tables) generated by the computer that is running the operating system. That's no small thing, because the logs would be signed digitally in such a way as to relate to a specific computer and its user. And this will be independent of any attempt to anonymize illegal activities. Ghioni insists that the costs of this operation will be extremely low.
Cost is hardly the issue. Even if the EU were to insist that Microsoft and Apple implement this black box "feature" in their products, this is simply unworkable for GNU/Linux-based systems. By its very nature, open source lets you hack the code, and so removing any such digital black boxes – even assuming they were put there in the first place by the likes of Red Hat and Canonical – would be relatively easy. Hacked versions would circulate online almost immediately.
The only way to stop that happening would be to forbid people from installing "unauthorised" versions or from making "unauthorised" changes to the system code once installed – which would effectively make open source operating systems illegal in Europe. Given that the Linux kernel was created in Finland, that would be ironic to say the least.
There are other problems that will make this approach unworkable. Already people are accessing the Internet increasingly through mobile devices and e-readers; that presumably means that these too will require black boxes to track users' every online move. In the longer term, we are moving to an Internet of things, which means that many objects in our home will have an IP address and be hooked up to the Net: does that mean there will be a black box for our toasters, perhaps?
And then there is the fact that a 2 Terabyte portable external hard drive costs around $100, making the sharing of vast numbers of files trivial even without the Internet. Do we add black boxes to hard drives? What about USB drives?
What's worrying is that a politician can be naive enough to believe that solving this complex problem is really as easy as adding a few lines of code to an operating system – and that he hopes to convince the European Parliament to mandate such a thing. Far better to stop invoking the "think of the children" mantra as a way to short-circuit rational discussion and instead to encourage a rational, mature debate about how these serious problems can be solved with real-world solutions.
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Filed Under: data retension directive, fabio ghioni, moral panic, surveillance, tiziano motti
Reader Comments
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Quite possibly the most misleading (and common) refrain amongst those who actively trade files. The question isn't how much you can share from person to person, but rather the number of people you can interact with, and the speed at which you can do it.
The internet is a killer app in this regard because it allows perfect strangers to conspire to share content, legal or illegal. It allows you to conspire with tens of thousands of people to share content, and to do so RIGHT NOW. That is a hockey arena of people sharing with each other all at the same time.
With your external drive, you might be lucky to trade with that many people in your lifetime.
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Re: Totally!
Good thing nobody at swap meets ever does any file sharing...
Or a convention... or @ a bar mitzvahs...
...
...
Screw this. HEY AC! Why didn't you just pull out the ol' threadbare "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide" bullshit excuse? Can't you even stay on topic?
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Re: Re: Re: Totally!
So is a swap meet. Been going on for years, and not just with digital information.
I don't disagree with what you're saying. However, the internet is a tool. Should we put tracking devices and tiny cameras on hammers because you are able to kill someone with them?
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Swap meets also have an inherent risk to people selling this merchandise, because they cannot be anonymous. If the police show up and catch them (and they do often enough with counterfeit goods), they face significant punishment under criminal copyright laws.
Remove the anonymous part of the internet, and everything changes, including human behavior.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally!
Decrying anonymity anonymously just seems screwed up to me...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally!
Probably never had a girlfriend either, because if you had you would have burnt some CD's for her.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally!
You do realize that you yourself aren't logged in here? You're an Anonymous Coward! Saying that making anonymous comments is bad! Oh god, the hypocrisy!
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That's why it's so hard...
Stupid cops!
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So the non-anoynmous copy sessions with tapes and burned CDs the industry moaned about back actually did not happen? I'll be damned.
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Re: Re: Totally!
"A BAR MITZVAHS"
o_O
Aaaaanyway, since being able to instantly connect to tons of people in relative anonymity is what makes the internet so great, let's hope that silly LogBox thing doesn't gain any traction.
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Re:
Not misleading at all. You just have to do the math, really. Suppose that you have 5 - let's say - movies. Suppose you have 5 friends which also have 5 movies each, and none of them are the same. That's a total of 30 unique movies in this pool, and each friend could "pirate" 25 movies that they don't have.
Now it's just a matter of how many friends you have and how many movies they have.
Note that this was what happened in the ancient times of video tapes. Don't tell me that it wouldn't happen today, where it is SO easy to trade files of any kind.
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First off, if you each had five movies, the implication is that you each paid for 5 movies to start with. See, without the internet, you wouldn't have a copy already, except for what you got from your friends.
So for there to be copied, you either purchases or rented the movie, spent the time to rip it, spent the time to prepare the files, etc. You likely put hours into preparing your content.
Your net reward? 25 other movies. But after that, you are done. Your friends don't have more, you don't have more - until you spend money and time to replenish. I suspect most people would give up, and nobody wants a friend who takes but doesn't give back, do they?
5 people is nothing - the internet is on the millions scale, and without you needing to know who they are, arrange a time, plan a meet up, spend the time to copy the files five times, and so on.
Nobody has that many friends. It's the internet's advantage.
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Long before the Internet, people traded movies and songs. Ask your dad about it. Closing your eyes and pretending that it didn't happen won't change reality. It'll only prove, once more, that those that fail to remember the past, tend to repeat it all over again.
Good luck to you.
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There are also other ways to get access to the content.
a) Through a $1 dollar rental service.
b) Through a library.
c) Through online legal channels.
d) Recording cable/TV and Radio.
If we didn't had access you also wouldn't be able to say shit.
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I only ever used to trade with maybe a dozen people at best!
The next big thing (again) will be sharing with randoms over bluetooth - Version 4 of the protocol boasts WiFi comparable speeds and distances up to 60m. With phones now having up to 64Gb storage, it will be pretty easy to swap 20 or 30 movies with strangers virtually anywhere!
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????
I just copy everything I don't even bother with transcoding, that reduces the quality, I just copy the entire DVD it takes 5 min to do so, something I would have had to do anyways if there was no internet pal.
This is how you bypass any security feature with only a video player, if it can play it, it can rip it.
It takes also minutes to do so. All modern video players allow you to do that.
Even before things were in the millions in scale how do you think stupid the Russians in the ex-USSR got to know Michael Jackson and knew the lyrics to his songs in his first concert there after the meltdown?
Frak, it was even a capital crime, if the authorities caught you with western music or movies you die and people did it anyway, and somehow you are saying that you will succeed where dictatorships failed?
They killed people and failed to stop sharing, this is not a technological problem, it is a cultural one and if people don't want to respect you they never will and there is nothing you or anybody can do about it.
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"
..... meanwhile, at the Buggy Whip Empire Headquarters..
Good god man, can't you see! The car manufacturers are conspiring to build more cars, making them more affordable, turning the earth into a giant parking lot! If we could just make people have to push their cars, and use our legislative power to put square wheels on them, we could save our mighty buggy whip empire...
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I do not want to discuss file sharing in any way, shape or form. I just want to know how in all of what you just read, that's the only thing you focused on.
Do you not care that they want to now see what you're doing 24/7 on your computer? Are you okay with that? I mean, I for one like my privacy. Does this not bug you in the least?
We are slowly becoming a world full of people who seemingly want to trade up all their liberties because of a few scoundrels (terrorists, file sharers, drug pushers/users, etc.), and want to do so with nary a peep and with a smile on their faces. And it's quickly becoming, that because the majority have no problem with doing so (as I've heard on more than one occasion), any who question such things become branded as criminals themselves (or supporting criminal actions). As opposed to being just people who care about their rights and feel that a few bad apples does not justify having said rights impeded or trampled on. This greatly disturbs me. (And no, I'm not a file sharer. Before someone throws out the inevitable "stop wanting to justify your theft of other people's stuff". Because that always gets said.)
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In context of illegal acts (such as child molesters, or terrorists, as examples), their ability to meet in the real world is very limited. They have little desire and little ability to meet up in public places. They depend on the anonymous nature of the internet to hook up with other law breakers, often separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles, to do on the internet what they would never dare to do in public.
Do I agree with the idea put forward? Not specifically. But I think they are putting forward a valid government / public interest, which is to stop the internet from being way to get around existing laws. It is why the purely anonymous internet is doomed in the long run.
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I disagree with many points in your overall analysis, but I'll just pick this one, as it is a worn-out piece of rhetoric that pretty much ignores the reality of technology and human behavior.
Perhaps a purely anonymous internet is doomed, but we don't have, and have never had that anyway. What we do have is a communications medium that allows people to interact anonymously if that is an important activity to them.
And that is absolutely not going away, because it is impossible to stop it. Anonymous interaction was possible before the internet, and it will remain possible forever after.
What can be done is to make it more difficult. Doing so will just mean that people who aren't really interested in anonymity won't bother. People who are motivated to be anonymous will still find a way.
Assuming the real targets of this invasion of privacy are criminals, then these efforts will fail except for the most stupid of them. And at the cost of removing yet another piece of freedom and liberty for ordinary people.
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So why worry? And where do the levys on blank media come from?
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Your choice of words: "conspire to share content" is very interesting.
Is sharing culture a "conspiracy" or is it simple human nature? I view it as human nature myself.
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That is why Friend2Friend or F2F do exist.
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Ever heard of six degrees of separation?
The fact is that person-person sharing is just as potent as the internet - the only difference is that you can't see that it is happening. That you clearly don't understand this point makes you about as stupid as the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
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I'm okay with that, I hate it anyway.
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TD readers are conspiring to make you angry causing an artery to snap in your brain ultimately leading you to your death and making this world a better place.
We are also conspiring to defraud the entertainment industry because we are evil and eat little children in our breakfast.
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So soon?
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From this point on, I want distribution and possession (but not production) of child pornography to become LEGAL so that the assaults on our rights, privacy and freedom stop! Politicians who support this will receive my vote.
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The "Internet of things" will be ratting you out.
You missed a major use of tracking in "a tempting target for governments ... or for companies that want to enforce copyright laws" -- ADVERTISING, especially Google. You left it out because you obviously think advertising is /good/. Perhaps you think you'll like being tracked by GPS and called on your cell phone to hear an advertisement for every restaurant you get near -- but you won't. Perhaps you think you'll /like/ your toaster reporting what kind of bread you use in it (bar code scanned), your settings, how often you use it, and when -- but you won't: just that seemingly trivial data can enable annoying targeting besides a good guess at your lifestyle. Advertisers look forward to monitoring your every move even more than gov't, and will become like electronically-enabled mosquitoes, large numbers of them pestering you endlessly.
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Re: The "Internet of things" will be ratting you out.
I will grant you that rampant advertising does have privacy implications, but we aren't quite to the point where my toaster is telling Google that I like sourdough and roll down my stairs singing Journey in the morning (not really...).
There will always be a way to stay anonymous. As a software developer I promise you that. I don't care if I have to quit my cushy gig and go back to writing code 8 hours a day, like-minded geeks will band together and as always fix the problem.
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There are no words to describe what I think of this.
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When non surveillance O.S. are outlawed........
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add more complexity is the way to fix it! /s
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LogBoxes
What do they really want to use the LogBox for?
And don't tell me it's to track child pornograhers...
That's a ruse to cover the real purpose.
What is the real purpose of this? I can think of all sorts of draconian reasons.
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this is just going to be used as a further means for the entertainment industries to track, identify, prosecute and get extortionate fines and/or imprisonment dished out for so-called file sharers/copyright infringers. no way is it about protecting children or anyone else from sexual predators! yet another bought and paid for politician, who hasn't got a frigging clue!
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I'm sure no law maker would object to this kind of monitoring of their lives. *giggle*
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FTFY
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Re: FTFY
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Unworkable Anyway...
Bypassing this system would be trivial.
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Re: Unworkable Anyway...
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What a relief
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Re: What a relief
the real worry is if there were any open source os this will be unworkable.......
-monkyyy a linux user
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Dipshits abound in politics
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Weak link: houses?
It may be possible to retrofit old houses and this should be done as much as is practical, there is nothing we shouldn't do to protect children from these predators.
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Imma gonna shrug this off
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It's been said, but this comment is the best proof that (yet again) someone's trying to legislate without understanding what they're trying to do.
You can't get the help of "Linux". The only thing you can do to guarantee that the feature is in all versions is to include it in the kernel, but you can't force the individual distros to compile with it activated. Even if they did, how could you force people to install that version? Even if they could, it would be a matter of hours before someone released easy instructions on how to recompile the kernel in such a way that the feature is deactivated (but possibly pretends to be activated for remote tests). Then what about travellers? You can't force tourists from outside the EU to use a specific OS on their laptops, and even if you could there'd be nothing to stop them selling the OS to an EU citizen once here.
Once that's done, and everything from business to individual liberty is destroyed, all the paedos would just switch to FreeBSD - or better yet, just use a live CD of an old Ubuntu distro for their browsing.
Yet another waste of time and money that has thousands of better ways to be spend. But of course, it's "for the children", so nobody in power will lose anything over such waste.
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EU Politician Wants Internet Surveillance Built Into Every Operating System
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This will be reverse engineered and exploited in a matter of days (if not hours) and will be another big waste of effort and money.
the linux/unix community would strip this crap out of the code in a very short time. Then there are the millions of people who have 100's of different operating systems archived. Easy work around, just use an older OS
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