[bestbits] Re: [IRPCoalition] How to end human rights violating communcations surveillance (was Re: Position by IT for Change...)

[parminder]

I agree with Norbert that the cost of doing surveillance has to be 
increased through appropriate technological means, to bring it closer to 
costs that existing before ICTs made it a kid's game as Snowden would 
say, to see anyone's communication with a few strokes of the key pad....

This is a course that should be systematically pursued...

However, I am in agreement with Ian that treaties are useful and needed, 
and that countries to give in to get something else in return, and all 
of it could result in greater global public good.

To respond to Norbert's specific doubt, about what has US to benefit 
from conceding on its global surveillance activities, I think they have 
a great lot to achieve. Like in no other business before, US has a 
preponderant dominance in global Internet business. It has a lot to gain 
if international agreements help develop some level of global norms, 
frameworks and rules of at least /some level/ /of/ cross-national 
harmony if not homogeneity on how the global Internet basically works, 
and what can be expected by and granted to all global  players. No other 
country has more to gain through such 'global agreements' as the US's 
economic interests have.

Earlier, the US thought that they will bring about such 'uniformity' 
through steam-rolling what it framed as a global Internet freedom 
agenda, which was always clearly a trade and political agenda, and was 
always dubious... The limitations of that strategy is increasingly 
clear. They would soon realise that they have to get into global 
agreements if they have to keep ruling the global Internet. That is what 
the US has to gain.

In a write up last year or so, I made a distinction between regime 
development phase and regime enforcement phase. Regime development phase 
is when the basic rules of the game are being developed. This is the 
phase currently with global Internet governance, In this phase, US wants 
others, especially developing countries to be kept away, and seeks to 
avoid discussions about global agreements. (MUltistakeholderism is  a 
very useful device for this purpose.) In areas like trade and 
intellectual property, as Norbert rightly points out, the regime is 
already formed. US and its allies have defined the rules of the game. 
They now want these rules to be globally enforced, of course to US's 
advantage. That is the game. This is what I call as the second stage, 
the regime enforcement stage.

In global Internet governance, at some time, after the regime is well 
developed as per the dominant countries' interest, we will see the 
regime enforcement stage. UIS and others will suddenly say, well we must 
get serious now, twe really need some global rules and the such....

The question is, should civil society play the game of the dominant 
forces, or, as they say in economics, try counter-cyclical measures...


parminder


On Sunday 01 September 2013 07:31 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
>
>> not sure I am as pessimistic about this as both of you. There are
>> plenty of examples in history where international agreements have
>> regulated matters where countries have agreed, for the greater good,
>> to regulate or stop previous actions. The Geneva Convention is one
>> example, outlawing of poison gases after WW1 (worked for a while) is
>> another.
>>
>> I am sure also that regularly in trade treaties countries give up
>> certain actions in return for other advantages.
>>
>> In the case of the Internet, it may well be that an open available
>> trusted global network - which can only be achieved if espionage is
>> contained - is the greater good that leads to a decent regulatory
>> regime.
> I see two major problems with this optimistic scenario:
>
> On one hand the world trade system is already largely designed around
> the vision of the US and like-minded countries on how the world trade
> system should work, and the US is already a very central node in this
> world trade system. The US already has pretty much all of the advantages
> that a country could possibly have. I don't see what “other advantages”
> the US could possibly be offered in exchange for the US agreeing to
> give up the NSA's foreign surveillance activities which are obviously
> very important from the perspective of the US government.
>
> On the other hand, a lot of whatever trust that people used to have for
> the US as a “democratic country” that claims to be strongly committed to
> human rights has been permanently destroyed. This loss of credibility
> affects not only US government representatives and by extension
> government representatives from other Western countries. After all the
> crap with for example Microsoft claiming “Your Privacy Is Our Priority”
> while at the same time secretly cooperating with the NSA's efforts to
> undermine our privacy, every reasonable and well-informed person will
> similarly distrust technology vendors.
>
> Add to this that the US concerns about terrorist threats etc are not
> just a matter of mere paranoia. It would not be reasonable for the US to
> agree a simple and straightforward principle like never again wanting
> to know the contents of conversations of people outside the US. The US
> will have to insist that in situations of legitimate suspicion of plans
> for terrorist activities, surveillance activities will have to be
> conducted. Regardless of how the rules for handling that kind of
> exceptional situations would be designed precisely, if those rules meet
> both the requirements of international human rights law and the
> requirement of providing effective means of surveillance for suspected
> terrorists, those rules are not going to be totally simple and
> straightforward. Consequently, although certainly necessary, such rules
> are not going to help much in regard to rebuilding the trust that has
> been destroyed.
>
> I conclude that without trustworthy efforts to create effective
> technical protections of communications privacy, a “trusted global
> network” cannot be achieved in the post-Snowden world.
>
> Nota bene, I'm not advocating for trying to make surveillance totally
> impossible.
>
> What we IMO need in the post-Snowden world is
>
> 1) trustworthy end-to-end encryption of all non-public Internet
> communication content,
>
> 2) trustworthy protection of the software on the computers and other
> communication devices against remote compromise,
>
> 3) redesigned communication protocols which ensure that at no point in
> the communication channel between the endpoints, information about both
> communication endpoints is visible in unencrypted form, and
>
> 4) trustworthy anti-surveillance monitoring which would likely detect
> the problem in the case of a system compromise that results in
> significant quantities of communication channel endpoint information
> leaking out.
>
> When all of that has been achieved, surveillance of the communications
> content and communications metadata of specific persons will still be
> possible, but it'll be expensive enough that cost economics will force
> it to be limited to specific persons where there is significant reason
> to consider them a major threat.
>
> It is the human rights violating automated mass surveillance which must
> be brought to an end.
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
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