Tunisia's Plans To Bring In Its Own National 'Aadhaar' Biometric ID System Halted -- For Now

from the peace-be-with-you dept

The last time that Techdirt wrote about Tunisia was back in 2011, when the Internet helped bring about a major regime change there. Although violent protests against the government have flared up recently, in general, the processes that are being applied to shift national policies in Tunisia are both peaceful and successful. Here, for example, is some good news from Access Now on the privacy front:

This week the people of Tunisia won a major victory for privacy: the dangerous biometric ID card proposal has officially been withdrawn from consideration in the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (ARP).

We worked hard with our partners at Al Bawsala to oppose passage of the bill, including encouraging members of the assembly to adopt a set of key amendments to ensure that if it did pass, the bill would protect citizens' data and their right to consult and rectify their own information. Over the past week, we spent hours talking to assembly members, highlighting the dangers of pushing the bill through without adding necessary and vital protections for Tunisians' privacy and data security.

It worked! The assembly members advanced the amendments that we proposed, and nearly all were adopted within the Consensus Commission. The Ministry of the Interior, which had pushed hard to pass the bill without these important safeguards, dropped the proposal entirely.

That's particularly welcome at a time when the problems of India's biometric ID card system "Aadhaar" are becoming all-too clear. However, as Access Now rightly notes:

Even though we're overjoyed, we must remain vigilant. We could see this proposal revived. If that happens, we will continue working to ensure that any new legislation protects human rights.

Let's hope Tunisia's democratic legislative processes continue to function as effectively as they have in this particular case, and that the country does not end up with another Aadhaar.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: biometrics, id, identity, privacy, tunisia

Former Tunisian Regime Goes Beyond Spying On Internet Traffic... To Rewriting Emails & More

from the they-wrote-what??? dept

Most people instinctively appreciate the dangers of government surveillance. But at least it's possible to be on your guard when you suspect such surveillance may be present by taking care what you write and send. You might even use some industrial-grade encryption for the important stuff.

The problem with that is it's simply not practical to expect all of your contacts – to say nothing of your grandparents – to do the same, which means that at least some of your emails are going to be exchanged in the clear. And as this fascinating Bloomberg report about the surveillance activities of the former Tunisian regime reveals, that creates another kind of vulnerability that concerns not only what you send, but also what you receive:

Asma Hedi Nairi, a former Amnesty International youth coordinator, says e-mails she and her friends exchanged were replaced by messages ranging from random symbols to ads for rental cars. Opponents of the regime toppled in January’s revolution received threatening messages such as “you can run but you can’t hide,” while people with no role in politics found their correspondence snagged if it inadvertently included words flagged as critical of the government. Ammar 404 even damaged reputations by inserting pornographic images in work e- mails and routing intimate photos onto Facebook, Nairi, 23, says.

It's a clever approach, whereby people start to attribute a deep, possibly troubling meaning to what is in fact nonsense, or begin to doubt the trustworthiness of their online contacts.

What makes this story particularly disturbing is that practically all the technology used to carry out this disinformation campaign in Tunisia was provided by Western companies, who seemed to view it as a test run:

Western suppliers used the country as a testing ground. Moez Chakchouk, the post-revolution head of the Tunisian Internet Agency, says he’s discovered that the monitoring industry gave discounts to the government-controlled agency, known by its French acronym ATI, to gain access.

That's yet another reason to resist Net surveillance for any reason (hello, copyright industries): once surveillance equipment manufacturers have their foot in the door it can only be a matter of time before they start extolling the virtues of Tunisia's more thoroughgoing approach to online spying.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: monitoring, propaganda, rewriting, security, surveillance, tunisia

How Facebook Dealt With The Tunisian Government Trying To Steal Every User's Passwords

from the security-in-action dept

If you haven't yet read it, you owe it to yourself to read Alexis Madrigal's fascinating piece at The Atlantic about how Facebook responded to what apparently was a government-run country-wide hack attack on Facebook (prior to the recent regime change) designed to capture every Tunisian user's Facebook password. As the article notes, for all the talk of how much Twitter was used to communicate during the Tunisian protests and eventual ouster of the old government, Facebook may have played an even bigger role.

However, Facebook's security staff had been hearing anecdotal stories from people in Tunisia claiming their accounts had been hacked, along with some indications that something odd was going on. Eventually, they realized that the Tunisian ISPs appeared to be running a giant man-in-the-middle keylogger system, that would record a user's password any time they logged into Facebook. So how do you respond to that if you're Facebook? A two-step approach: force all traffic from Tunisia to run through https: to encrypt the passwords and prevent this from happening and then set up a system for when people logged in, asking them to identify a friend, in order to prove it was really them. Of course, all of this makes me wonder why Facebook doesn't always use https, but that's another question for another day.

While the solution wasn't perfect, it appears to mostly do the job, even if it came a bit later in the process. But just from an outsider's perspective, it is a fascinating story of how various internet tools are playing into world politics, and how that leads to some totally unexpected situations.

Filed Under: hacking, passwords, tunisia
Companies: facebook

Tunisian State Secretary Says Censorship Is Fine Because The West Does It Too

from the being-a-rolemodel dept

This weekend we came across a post by Karin Kosina which highlighted the problem in saying that sometimes it's okay to 'filter' (censor) certain websites.

"Tunisian state secretary Sami Zaoui just announced (mirror) that they will keep blocking websites that are "against decency, contain violent elements or incite to hate". When criticised that this is inacceptable in a democracy, he responded (mirror): "Wrong! Even the countries that are most evolved when it comes to freedom block terrorist sites"."

In the case of Tunisia, which just had a revolution or perhaps is still in the process of a revolution, it becomes immediately clear what the problem with such filtering is. Basically, the government is keeping a tool in place which has been used to silence critics in the past. Also, the conditions for which websites are censored are quite vague. Inciting hate and containing violent elements seem quite clear, but as we've seen in Turkey, such conditions can easily be stretched and that's without even taking the 'decency' condition into consideration.

Both the US and the EU are obviously failing to be a rolemodel when they should be. Many politicians in the EU have embraced the idea of an internet filter to block child pornography. As for the US, they could be seen seizing domain names of 'rogue websites'. On the one hand, politicians of the west love talking about the principles of freedom, but on the other hand they hate to actually live up to their own standards when something like WikiLeaks or a music blog comes along. The problems of this for the US and the EU have been discussed here in detail before.

What such censorship also does, is create a dangerous precedent, because it allows for repressive governments to create excuses for censorship. This is to be expected, and we've predicted similar things in the past. If Western countries are really serious about stopping internet censorship (and they're probably not that serious), they need to actually learn to live up to that ideal. Otherwise, we're going to see more and more state-supported censorship defended by the fact that Western nations are just as bad.

Filed Under: censorship, tunisia

Arrested Pirate Party Member In Tunisia Freed, And Appointed State Secretary

from the of-youth-and-sports? dept

As the situation in Tunisia got worse and worse over the last few weeks, there was an increasing amount of political arrests. We had seen a few reports stating that three "Pirate Party members"/online activists had been arrested, but the details were lacking, and it wasn't entirely clear what the arrests were for, or if it really had anything to do with their online activities. However, it is interesting to see that with the new, transitional government trying to get up to speed, it's released all of the political prisoners, and even named one of the jailed Pirate Party members, Slim Amamou, as State Secretary of Youth and Sport. That's sort of an odd title (and there apparently is some confusion as to whether he's a "minister" or "state secretary," but it sounds like everything's in flux). As is pointed out on his Twitter profile, he's against censorship and intellectual property rights -- though it doesn't sound like he'll have much of a chance to impact policy in either area in this current role for the time being. Still, it'll be interesting to see if anything actually comes of this.

Filed Under: government, pirate party, slim amamou, tunisia

Pointless Question Of The Week: Was Tunisia A 'Twitter' Or 'Wikileaks' Revolution?

from the dumb-question dept

Like many people, last week, I was paying attention to the events going on in Tunisia, mostly via following some Twitter feeds. However, we received a number of submissions and requests suggesting we write about the so-called "Twitter revolution" or "Wikileaks revolution." However, I think it's both silly and demeaning to try to diminish what's actually happening in Tunisia by trying to name what happened after one of the various elements that may have played a role in what's happening. We've seen this before. Over in Iran, of course, there was lots of talk about how Twitter "played a role" in the uprising, and it was then dismissed by people because things didn't really change (and it's arguable how much of a role it really played). Of course, as Clay Shirky has pointed out, new means of communication have certainly been useful in organizing political protests.

I didn't write anything about this last week, because it seemed that what was going on was too chaotic to actually know -- and the fact that people were jumping up and giving credit to Twitter or Wikileaks seemed more like an attempt to claim credit, when it was clearly way too early and way too nuanced to say. Thus, I tend to agree with folks like Jillian York, who says that it's simply way too early to understand the impact of Twitter or Wikileaks (if anything) on this event.

Furthermore, I'd argue that focusing on the role of either is silly and pointless. In the end, any sort of political uprising starts with the people involved. That they may use new tools of communication -- either with each other or the outside world -- is always interesting, and important to understand, but should never be considered the root underlying cause of the larger event. Ethan Zuckerman claims that Twitter can take "some credit" for the events "but not all of it," to which I would ask: in what political uprising can you ever claim that any one particular tool or technology deserves all of the credit. The world doesn't work that way. This isn't to diminish how either Twitter or Wikileaks might have world changing impacts (or have already), but trying to pigeonhole a much larger event into a bucket with a label would be a mistake.

Filed Under: tunisia
Companies: twitter, wikileaks