As data becomes the inevitable by-product of many sites linked to the sharing economy, we need to be aware of how that data is being used and what potential implications that may have. It's important to be cognisant of all possible scenarios and not just go blindly sharing your data into the future because it might have unexpected consequences.
The data-related "celebrities" you’ve been hearing in the headlines recently have all converged on London for the Logan Symposium, a three day event which coincided with the OuiShare Summit this December. Anyone following the aftermath of the Snowden leaks has inevitably come across Jacob Appelbaum’s name, along with Laura Poitras and Julian Assange; but there is a much longer list when it comes to the ecosystem of whistleblowing, and we got to meet many of them at the conference.
Day 1
The Logan Symposium brings together leakers, hackers, whistleblowers, legal experts and journalists from around the world to discuss issues of freedom and democracy in the media, and those who couldn’t attend in person were broadcast over the internet using anything but Skype.
"Skype is a PRISM partner. When you send files, that stuff is grabbed." Jacob Appelbaum@ioerror#LoganCIJ14— CIJ (@cijournalism)December 6, 2014
And thus began our voyage into “secrecy, surveillance and censorship” as experts matched wits to build an alliance and fight this growing problem. Or has it always been there?
In this interview from 1966 we see Herman Kahn the futurologist speaking about how easy it would be to monitor a society by gathering data about phone calls. In their view, this could bring about a "utopian" society where everything could be controlled and monitored. It’s spooky when you realize they were decades ahead of the internet, yet what they are discussing is actually taking place now.
http://youtu.be/K5WSwrlZ9Qc?t=16s
Maybe Kahn knew something that nobody else did. Maybe he knew about the surveillance systems that were already being planned at the time of the interview, which the public were informed of much later by journalists like Duncan Campbell who presented us a broad overview of the history of surveillance from Echelon to Zircon to GCHQ.
Campbell, like many other journalists present at the conference, was accosted at the time of his revelations. It makes you wonder why we are being told so many things about government surveillance today? Perhaps governments just can't keep it under wraps any longer, or perhaps no one cares any more, as a recent Pew Research survey illustrates:
Is American monitoring of your Country's Citizens acceptable or unacceptable?
[caption id="attachment_1492" align="aligncenter" width="695"]
Pew Research, Global Opinions on U.S. surveillance[/caption]
In the US, a staggering 49% of people surveyed think it's acceptable for the government to spy on its own citizens. Okay, the US is one example, but what about the world's largest democracy, India? Turns out that that they are even more accepting of surveillance, placing them just below the US.
At the top of the list is Greece, which is vehemently against (97%) government surveillance. It's fitting then that a Greek researcher, sent to India to examine the situation, completely tore the roof off India's surveillance empire:
http://youtu.be/GNnesocbuIM?t=6m30s
It's interesting that the excuse for widespread surveillance still conforms to that original "utopian vision" of Herman Kahn back in 1966, to create a safe and peaceful society by watching everyone's every move. But is it working? Perhaps it could, but research form the New America foundation has shown that they don't know what to do with the data. If they do, they are not showing how they use it.
Day 2
The next day's track was on whistleblowing, with the opening speech by Eileen Chubb who, as a result of her own abuse at the hands of her co-workers, has become a campaigner for the protection of whistleblowers who work in care homes where abuse is rife.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating presentations in this track was about the ease with which medical records can be hacked, based on research done by Karin Spaink:
http://youtu.be/8-BY9ftDfDU?t=23s
You would think that medical records were very well protected, whereas the team of hackers that Sapink organised were able to download thousands of records with very little difficulty. Culminating in a personal appearance at the hospital to log in directly to the system while dressed as a doctor, thus subverting the necessity to hack into the system and merely posing as an employee and entering the hospital.
Day 3
The final day of the symposium consisted in a free screening of Citizen Four, the new documentary about Edward Snowden, who perhaps is the reason why this symposium was even happening at all. Which brings up the question about watching the the watchers. Isn't it strange that the employees of the NSA would be able to see everything that was happening without being spied on themselves? In this presentation from Transmediale 2014, Jacob Appelbaum reveals all the nano-hardware that the NSA is supposedly implanting in personal computers around the world in order to monitor "certain" users. But don't you think that employees of the NSA would be the first people they'd be spying on?
A researcher friend of mine asked me, "Do you think it's impossible that there's a department of the NSA whose job it is to think up all these scary devices? Perhaps it's not so far fetched after all. Some say that causing fear of spying among people can be more damaging (and effective) than actually deploying all this tiny devices. Such fear would create those "The mind-forg'd manacles" that William Blake describes in his poem London. A fear that creates a general stasis among the populace.
http://youtu.be/ewMLqMmuT68
The battle appears to be raging, and at this year's CCC it seemed as if it's reached a feverish pitch between the NSA and the hackers of the world. Is there a way to win this battle? The effects of surveillance can already be seen and people, especially journalists, are already self-censoring to avoid any scrutiny. And now journalists might self-censor for other fears.
Given the recent #CharlieHebdo events in Paris, one of the first responses of the French government was a move to increase surveillance, a move which has been condemned by many experts, including La Quadrature du Net. This is one of the reasons we got sold on spying in the first place, because it will make us "safer". But they've been saying that since the 1966 interview with Herman Kahn where they claimed constant surveillance will make the world into a utopia, yet the world is anything but.
So if policy reforms are continually reducing internet freedom and communications are being attacked on all sides, what is the solution to prevent censorship, maintain anonymity, and increase freedom on the web? Seymour Hersh, who during the opening keynote of the Logan Symposium said that he only takes notes with a pen and paper, believes that computers themselves create much of the risk and that by avoiding them you might keep your communications safer.
While we try and find a better solution than simply using paper, one thing you can do to protect yourself in the meantime is to get informed, and one way to do that is to attend or host a CryptoParty. Yet one of the best pieces of advice I've heard was from an Italian hacker friend who compared his position to being a doctor or a lawyer or a pharmacist. "Jeff," he said, "You might not understand the technology, but you need to find someone who does. Someone you can trust. You need to get in contact with your local hacker and seek their advice, just as you would ask an accountant for advice about your taxes."