Cyber-snooping & anti-transparency laws: is ‘parallel internet’ the answer?

At a time when Julian Assange (as this goes to press) is still enjoying protective asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, it’s no coincidence that Australia and the UK are acting in tandem to bring in new legislation to cyber-snoop on their respective populations. This will involve all media – phones, mobile phones, SMS, Skype calls, email, online chat, etc. In doing this, both countries will fall into line with what the USA is enacting via its cyber-snooping legislation. All relevant documents are given below via links or for download.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday a Darker Net journalist attended a meeting on cyber security and the new legislation being introduced in the UK at the Frontline Club (see video above or click here if it does not work in your browser). Two of the speakers defended the new legislation – they were clearly not admitting the reality of the opposition. The speaker who was most pro-cyber snooping was Prof. Anthony Glees (on far left). He argued that the public had no right to privacy. While he was speaking the Darker Net journalist decided to conduct an experiment and use his tablet PC and specialist search tools to see what could be found about Glees in the deeper web and within five minutes had found everything you needed to know about him. Here were the links via Duckduckgo. Here is his Powerbase file. His email address is Anthony.Glees@brunel.ac.uk

So, if and when the new legislation becomes law, to avoid invasion of privacy, netizens will need to be even more creative in utilising the tools and systems that put them out of reach. Essentially, it’s about liberating the Internet, our knowledge systems, and the removal of all that divide us and in its stead see a parallel Internet developed that will be beyond the surveillance of governments.

Whatever legislation is introduced, it will be countered – but not through political means. The future invites a thousand wikileaks organisations and the governments of this world will need to realise that the information barriers they erect will be destroyed, for people want truth. Note: some anti-surveillance resources can be found in the right-hand column on this website, under the heading ‘Internet Security’.

Interestingly, the ‘Mail on Sunday’, of all papers, published an excellent expose by David Davies MP (he’s the man with grey hair near the right in the video) of a Black Ops centre, involving British troops and CIA in Iraq, but which, the paper agrees, would not be revealed once the new Justice and Security Bill is made law. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the chief British Army lawyer in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, commented: ‘These are alleged war crimes, but what Britain did may never be disclosed. Indeed, the Bill may be specifically designed to prevent such allegations ever coming to light’. In conversation with the Darker Net journalist Davies mentioned that Australian troops had also been involved in this particular operation.

Here are links to articles on the draft cyber-snooping measures, as well as downloads of the UK legislation and briefing:

Australia cyber snooping: ‘Who watches the watchers?’, an excellent article by Australian senator, Scott Ludlam; Crikey article on passing personal data to third party companies; and what the legal system is planning.

UK cyber snopping: Snooping details/costs and details of phone and email monitoring and UK cyber strategy and background.

Documents to download: Justice & Security Bill and Communications Capabilities Development Programme Briefing.

Posted from the darker net via Android.