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Capturing the database state: community photocall

Get snapping! It’s dead easy to make your images available on Flickr to be used by the Open Rights Group for Freedom Not Fear day. Simply:

• Tag it: “FNFBigPicture” (no quotes of course, and tag-case is unimportant)
• Choose the “Attribution Creative Commons” license

Et voila. You’ve hopefully helped strike a small but important blow for an open, accountable society. At the very least, you’ll have registered your concern.

Here are those that have been tagged so far: Freedom not Fear on Flickr

Where these days does one see public messages delivered in such a threatening, confrontational tone? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Planet Earth, post Dalek invasion? Perhaps, but this one is currently displayed by the TV Licensing organization (the enforcement arm of the BBC) on a giant advertising hoarding on the A23 near Streatham Common in South London (click on the image to see a larger version).

Nice isn’t it? Not the kind of intimidation you would normally expect to see in a modern, civilized democracy. And it’s astonishingly insensitive, even provocative, coming as it does during a time of heightened public sensitivity about state surveillance and the database culture. It’s a huge billboard and it literally looms over you as you walk past. It’s actually rather chilling.

It looks like Noel Edmonds was right. Auntie isn’t as benign and “avuncular” as it likes to make out. If the BBC really wishes to remain the cherished institution it so often claims to be, it had better start behaving like a civilized, responsible organization. These Gestapo tactics are ugly, ominous and unconscionable, and we are all heartily sick of them.

Edit: It seems that Tom Clougherty on adamsmith.org shares my feelings about this unpleasant and ominous poster.

Reading about the latest developments with regard to the ACTA conspiracy* finally persuaded me to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation, making a small donation in the process. It’s something I should have done years ago.

At the top of the membership confirmation page was the line:

“Hi Friend of Freedom”.

It’s a rhetorical, trite phrase, but it made me feel good. I shall endeavour to donate whenever funds permit.

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*conspiracy noun (conspiracies) 1 the act of plotting in secret. 2 a plot. 3 a group of conspirators.

Fantastic. UK taxpayers are paying to be spied upon. Technology will make slaves of us yet; this is not how it was intended to be.

UK.gov dishes out £19m for comms snoop data silos

Following the discovery that Comcast has been interferring with its customers’ ability to download torrents over its network, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has released the Switzerland packet testing tool to enable you to check to see if your ISP appears to be forging packets with the intent of interferring with your ability to share files.

I’ve been running Switzerland this afternoon (the client, not the country), and after exchanging many thousands of packets with other clients on the Switzerland network, the EFF server found no evidence of foul play (well, three malformed packets, but Switzerland reported that these were most likely re-written by my NAT router).

The major UK ISPs have only recently signed their memorandum of understanding with the BPI and the government, and it is not yet clear whether or not they will be attempting Comcast-style interferrence. BT has been contacting us like crazy recently trying to persuade us to move to a different broadband deal, something which will no doubt include a new contract and terms and conditions. It might be interesting to see how those T&Cs differ from our existing set, perhaps containing some kind of opt-out or loopholes to tacitly allow traffic monitoring and bandwidth restriction. Next time they phone, I’ll ask to see a copy before I’ll be prepared to discuss any change to our existing contract with their sales-people.

I will be running tests with Switzerland on a regular basis to keep a check on BT.

PS.

• In addition to core Python, you’ll need python-scapy and psycop, plus a running NTP daemon (all just a Synaptic away on Ubuntu) or Switzerland will moan.
• You’ll need to sudo mkdir /var/log/switzerland-pcaps
• You’ll need to ensure your firewall doesn’t interfere with the testing
• I had to re-start Switzerland several times before it was happy that my computer’s time settings were in accordance with those of my timeserver (but hey, this is version 0.0).

Additional links:

EFF “Switzerland” packet monitor tool looks for ISP meddling

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UPDATE: In the light of the following article the above is probably largely academic:- BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers. BT don’t need to re-write packets, they simply block the packets they don’t like. This probably explains why my torrent download speeds were around eight to nine times slower than those of HTTP the other night. Zen Internet seems to be getting a good press. I’ve seen user reports claiming that it has no Phorm nonsense, doesn’t discriminate against non-HTTP and non-email traffic, and has good tech support. Sounds like a real Internet Service Provider to me. They do have monthly bandwidth caps, but they’re completely open about them and as far as I’m concerned, caps are a practical matter, not an ethical one. As things stand now, I’m looking to move to Zen, unless I can find an even better deal.

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian on the three way deal between the government, the music industry and ISPs:

Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.

And whereas actual criminals are punished by judges who make rulings that are proportional to the offence, and which are calculated to minimise external harm, the new scheme allows ISPs and their pals in the record industry to randomly shake up your connection like a snow-globe, dropping some or all of your services – whether you’re using your VoIP phone to speak to your dying granny in Australia or downloading the latest hit single from the guy who did the “Crazy Frog Song”.

Then there’s the question of trust:

They claim that the surveillance data will only be used to police copyright and not to spy on every communication you make. But Transport for London claimed that Oyster cards would only be used to simplify paying for travel, and not to bulk-surveil Londoners, and yet here we are. As novelists say, “A gun on the mantle in act one is bound to go off by act three.”

And when it comes to “trust”, let’s not forget the following:

• Voice and data networks were built to help citizens communicate and share, not to provide our government with unprecedentedly powerful means of spying on our most private activities.
• Filesharing is an inherently legal activity; despite this, there is strong evidence that ISPs are interferring with the right of their customers to engage in this activity.
• The Terrorism Act was supposedly drawn up to combat terrorism, not to enable local councils to spy on parents attempting to obtain a place for their child at a particular school
• Roadside CCTV cameras were originally supposed to be used to penalize dangerous driving, not to create a nationwide, automated system for control, punishment and extortion.
• The data within the police DNA database was supposed to be used to fight crime, not sold to  commercial researchers to help the police cover their operational expenses.
• Electoral roll data is entrusted to our local authorities and is supposed to be used to facilitate the functioning of political democracy, not as yet another means for our local authorities to raise extra-taxation revenue.

But we needn’t worry, the ISPs have given us their word that they won’t spy on us or allow our data to be viewed by third parties. With such reassuring pledges, who needs legal or constitutional protection?

One of the great ironies here, is that the ease of data access, copying and manipulation that the recording industry is demanding be curtailed, is the same ease of access, copying and manipulation that has seduced our authorities into thinking that they can control and punish citizens remotely, and earn a quick buck by selling our most sensitive and constitutionally essential data to the highest bidder. Given that the government is siding with the record industry on this matter, it’s not irony, it’s arch hypocrisy. If hypocrisy were the only misdeed, we could just raise our eyes to the heavens and carry on with life, but this hypocrisy is eroding our civil liberties, and it doesn’t get much more serious than that.

This is heartening, two established security software firms are expressing reservations about the Phorm system which several major British ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse) have been trialling recently.

What’s more, from the quotes in the article, it sounds like the questions submitted by The Register to the ISPs involved are causing some pause for thought at those companies.

As with The Register’s previous posts on Phorm, the comments left on this latest article provide a pretty good indication of what many savvy IT types think of the proposed system.

Let’s see now, the RIAA is on to something here. Just think of how many other organizations could benefit from filters on consumers’ private property. A quick, off-the-top-of-my-head list as I drink my morning coffee includes:

• Software-license checking filters: various helpful companies have already provided us with these of course, but a more joined up approach wouldn’t hurt. It would ensure that all the requisite permits are up to date and valid before you attempt to use your computer or connect to the Internet. It would be most unfortunate if a SWAT team were to kick down your front door on account of something silly, like being a day late with the annual subscription payment for your thumbnail viewer, or something.
• Movie filters. When the Hollywood studios and copyright holders see RIAA getting filters installed on users’ machines, you know that they will be demanding the same. And their filters will probably be bigger and better.
• Email filters: not the ones the user creates, but ones put in place by law enforcement agencies, just to be able to “educate” you should those agencies determine that you are engaging in activities or conversations that are liable to lead to any kind of nefarious activity. It’s pretty clear that we already have these out on the network, but getting across that last mile and into the home should increase accuracy and conviction rates educational effectiveness.
• Patent filters: all software activity on users’ machines to be analyzed for potential patent violation. (The fun they’ll have with that one.) Oddly enough, Microsoft is reported to be less than keen on this particular measure.
• Voting filters: helpful state analysis of your online voting behaviour, just to help you correctly discharged your democratic duty, you understand.
• Online banking filters: the Inland Revenue would hate for you to inadvertently be using any services that might be, shall we say, unhelpful to its cause.
• Adblocking filters: just in case you were tempted to install every brimstone beast’s favourite application. Oh, and also to make sure you haven’t accidentally un-installed the mandatory eyeball monitoring app, you know, the one that uses your web-cam to ensure that you are not breaking the terms of the websites you visit by not actually looking at the ads.
• Multi-user monitoring filter: this uses your other web cam to check that no more than two users are viewing a website on any given machine simultaneously. If a user wishes for more than two users to browse the web from his or her machine, the filter will advise that a multi-user licence is required.

If you can think of any more potentially useful filters I’ve missed. Feel free to add them below.