News of Google’s threat to abandon ‘google.cn’ because of strict government censorship and interference, and privacy violations, brought Chinese government censorship to the forefront of political issues for a few weeks.
Because of a record of stringent human rights abuses and authoritarian control, China is often targeted as a textbook example of government manipulation of the media used to cover up or censor information that might threaten the stability of the state and society.
Americans and peoples across the world, along with their governments to a lesser degree, became highly vocal about internet freedom, privacy, and general government interference with media: related editorials, blogs, and tweets poured onto front pages and ‘the most popular’ sections of news and other forums.
The stench of mild hypocrisy or ignorance wafts from this outcry; in the name of the same goals of national security and stability, the rest of the world is also expanding its control over everything relating to the internet.
A CNN editorial turned this discussion around. Are America’s internet laws giving China the power to hack our email?
Google put in place “backdoor-access” to email accounts in order to comply with U.S. intercept orders and search warrants on user data. The editorial uses the idea that this feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access as the basis for its argument.
Western governments are giving themselves Internet surveillance powers, requiring internet “communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell”. The article mentions Sweden, Canada and the UK as examples.
Many are also passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain information on their customers.
This happened with the phone system in the US when the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act from 1994 required phone companies to help the FBI eavesdrop.
Not only did they eavesdrop, but the whole system was supposedly abused by the federal government when the FBI illegally wiretapped and eavesdropped on Americans 3500 times between 2002 and 2006.
The editorial cites an instance in Greece where more than one hundred cell phones of Greek government officials were wiretapped for a year, including those of the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and justice. Nobody knows who manipulated the system, but we do know that it was Ericsson that created the wiretapping capability for governments that requested it or mandated it.
The experience of Google in China highlights a trend about internet products that Google designs: American companies building China's electronic police state.
The United States Congress debated bill S-773 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced on April 1st. It gives the president the power to “"declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation and shutdown of internet traffic”, among other federal steps to intervene in the flow of internet traffic.
The bill was introduced by Democrat Senator Rockefeller, cosponsored by two Democrats from Indiana and Florida, and moderate Republican Olympia Snow from Maine and still in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
The bill will make the Department of Commerce collect information related on public and private infrastructures deemed critical by the President – information accessible to the department “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."
Technology and political blogs and videos have exploded in response to this bill, concerned with virtual martial law and suspension of the First Ammendement. However, somehow, this discussion about security is missing from political conversation. The mere existence of a few lines in this bill, especially those supported by more socially liberal representatives, highlights the shift in political thought about government control of the virtual world – its role in managing the framework of our cosmopolitan civilization, even if benevolently.
Internet control in Western nations is increasing as governments try to catch and stop terrorists, child pornographers and other criminals. As a people that ideologically values freedoms over control and security, we should be wary of delegating control of our expression and privacy to naturally self-enhancing bureaucracy. It is “bad civic hygiene” to build technologies or relinquish freedoms that could someday be used to facilitate a police state, even if it may our own.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html
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