Tech

Earlier this week the Prime Minister was making a lot of noise in the press and elsewhere about filtering the internet (under the dubious cover of protecting children. Ed.).

His pronouncements have been met with almost universal condemnation from anyone with a bit of technical knowledge, as well as those concerned with online freedom, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who have dubbed it the ‘Great Firewall of Cameron‘.

A couple of days ago, the Pirate Party UK sent the open letter below to the PM, which speaks for itself.

The Rt Hon David Cameron, MP, Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

Tuesday the 23rd July 2013

Dear Mr Cameron,

As a movement that includes many technically literate individuals, parents and young people, we are writing to you to express our concerns about your recent announcements about internet filtering. It is the wrong way to tackle the impact that you believe the internet is having on, as you put it, “the innocence of our children”.

It is striking that your approach makes dealing with a social problem into a primarily technical exercise to be solved by Internet Service Providers. Many experts have already made clear that the issues you have raised are not just complex, but impossible to deal with effectively with technology alone.

The suggestion that fool-proof filters can be provided to deal with something as difficult to define as obscenity online is foolhardy at best, misleading and damaging at worst. Your proposals will ensure that we don’t properly deal with the problems you claim to want to address.

It should have been made clear to you from your advisers that filters will be ineffective and that they cause a number of serious issues in accomplishing what you aim to achieve. Filters will either fail to block the content you would prefer they blocked, leaving parents with a false sense of security, or they will block far more than intended, and will be turned off by many parents so that they can continue to access legitimate content in an unhindered manner.

These points appear to have been accepted in the Government’s response to the consultation on parental internet controls, published in December of 2012. The approaches outlined in that document; that the government would work with industry, charities and experts in relevant fields through UKCCIS to promote parental engagement and ensure that that parents have options, are the right ones. They are based on your own evidence and seem to be supported by industry. It is also noteworthy that most parents who responded rejected a default-on approach to filtering.

The result of that consultation was one that emphasised informed choice; that the Government would not prescribe detailed solutions to ISPs or parents. Instead it would expect industry to adapt the principles of this approach to their services, systems and devices and would empower parents rather than giving them a false sense of security. We do not understand why you have abandoned this direction.

We urge you to reconsider and refocus your efforts into areas where they can really have an impact. It is vital that you accept the recommendations from your own consultation to ensure parents are well equipped to deal with the issues that you have outlined, using evidence not insinuation to support your assumptions. We would also argue that rather than the potentially harmful and narrow route you seem to be taking, even if it grabs the headlines, you need to ensure that your approach is a holistic one.

It may be more complex, but ensuring that sex education and the teaching of technology in schools is fit for purpose is vital, and needs real support. Ensuring that parents are equipped to properly guide and supervise their children online may be less eye-catching in the media than imposing filters, but it will work.
We would also ask that you provide more support to organisations like the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to track down offenders and bolster support for local government departments that provide support for victims of abuse.

The Internet has been a driver of massive societal change over the last two decades; as a result we have a society that has far more access to information and media than ever before. That situation is not going to change. Ensuring that we give our young people the skills to deal with this new reality, and supporting parents to ensure they are able to properly guide their children in an informed manner is vital.

It is becoming clear to many people that your Coalition, both Conservative and Liberal Democrat members of your government, are failing when it comes to the digital age. You have failed to deliver the frameworks required in education to ensure that we are bringing up a new generation of innovators in technical fields. You have failed to properly invest in the few initiatives that do show promise in developing the UK’s digital scene, leaving those that do succeed doing so despite, not because of, your best efforts.

We would ask that you not compound those failures by suggesting technical solutions to societal problems that they cannot solve, but instead listen to those with whom you have consulted. It is right that you should work ensure that there are options available to parents, but to deal with legitimate problems that arise from our society being more connected than ever before, you must adopt an approach that will actually do some good in the long term.

Yours sincerely,

(signed)

Loz Kaye
Leader
Pirate Party UK

Originally posted on Bristol Wireless.

In an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows:

• Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well as web chat messages;
• Microsoft provides the NSA with easy access to its SkyDrive storage service, which currently has 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft makes it possible for the NSA to monitor audio and video calls on the Skype service which it acquired in 2011.

“This makes it clear that trusting Microsoft with your critical company data is downright negligent,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “In both the public and the private sector, those responsible for security and data protection urgently need to take action to protect their organisations, customers and clients.”

While it is difficult or impossible to entirely escape surveillance, there are ways to minimise the risk that sensitive data, such as confidential product data or patient records, is intercepted by a third party. Free Software solutions for groupware, office products and operating systems are fully auditable and often data security a priority. End-to-end encryption with free software such as
GnuPG and off-the-record messaging (OTR) protects data in transit. Products providing secure audio, video and chat communications, such as Jitsi, go a long way towards replacing Skype.

“We advise companies and all other organisations that wish to protect their data to use free software solutions, to store data in-house wherever possible and to cooperate only with providers whom they trust to protect their customers’ data,” says Gerloff. “Such providers will often use strong encryption, and minimise the amount of data they store. Using smaller providers instead of global IT companies makes it somewhat less likely that customers’ data will be caught in the NSA’s dragnet.”