[P2P-F] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Internet under threat - can US Congress defend against Obama-Stasi state and Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft
Dianne Connelly
dianne at wisdomwell.info
Wed Jul 31 18:59:02 CEST 2013
i have cancelled these mailings---please send no more. thank you. dmc
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Dianne Connelly
dianne at wisdomwell.info
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On Jul 31, 2013, at 11:36 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 1:58 PM
> Subject: Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Internet under threat - can US
> Congress defend against Obama-Stasi state and Google, Facebook,
> Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft
> To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>, Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com
> >
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
> Date: Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:31 AM
> Subject: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Internet under threat - can US Congress
> defend against Obama-Stasi state and Google, Facebook, Yahoo,
> Amazon, Apple and Microsoft
> To: DEBATE <debate-list at fahamu.org>
>
>
> (Will there be new cloud alternatives to the big capitalist firms so
> that there's an easy answer to this? "when your chief information
> officer proposes to use the Amazon or Google cloud as a data-store
> for your company's confidential documents, tell him where to file
> the proposal. In the shredder." How come we've not seen any firm not
> from the US step into the huge breach so we can all stop being so FB/
> Google-reliant?)
>
> Edward Snowden is not the story
>
> The fate of the internet is
>
> The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact
> is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms'
> cloud services cannot be trusted.
>
> by John Naughton
>
> The Observer (July 28 2013)
>
> Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what
> he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This
> insight seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media,
> for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn
> Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing
> characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible
> ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in
> swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather
> than a whistleblower.
>
> In a way, it doesn't matter why the media lost the scent. What
> matters is that they did. So as a public service, let us
> summarise what Snowden has achieved thus far {1}.
>
> Without him, we would not know how the National Security Agency
> (NSA) had been able to access the emails, Facebook accounts and
> videos of citizens across the world; or how it had secretly acquired
> the phone records of millions of Americans; or how, through a secret
> court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its
> demands for access to their users' data {2}.
>
> Similarly, without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US
> government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised
> business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such
> as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security
> clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would
> there be - finally - a serious debate between Europe (excluding the
> UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US)
> and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom
> and security lies.
>
> These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-
> order consequences of Snowden's activities. As far as most of our
> mass media are concerned, though, they have gone largely unremarked.
> Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap -
> speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of
> mind, physical appearance, et cetera. The "human interest" angle has
> trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us
> about how our networked world actually works and the direction in
> which it is heading.
>
> As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking
> about as a result of what we have learned so far.
>
> The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network
> are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would
> eventually be Balkanised, that is, divided into a number of
> geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as
> China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they
> needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now,
> Balkanisation is a certainty.
>
> Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very
> contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps
> have been abusing their privileged position in the global
> infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to
> continue to control it has become untenable.
>
> Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out {3}, the Obama
> administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as
> patronising cant. "Today", he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet
> freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom
> agenda' after Abu Ghraib".
>
> That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also
> have implications for you and me.
>
> They tell us, for example, that no US-based internet company can be
> trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google,
> Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral
> components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but
> nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed
> to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by
> employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that
> if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to,
> say, Google or Microsoft, then think again.
>
> And if you think that that sounds like the paranoid fantasising of a
> newspaper columnist, then consider what Neelie Kroes, vice-president
> of the European Commission, had to say on the matter recently. "If
> businesses or governments think they might be spied on", she said,
>
> they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be
> cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone
> else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or
> know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door -
> it doesn't matter - any smart person doesn't want the information
> shared at all. Customers will act rationally and providers will miss
> out on a great opportunity. {4}
>
> Spot on. So when your chief information officer proposes to use the
> Amazon or Google cloud as a data-store for your company's
> confidential documents, tell him where to file the proposal. In the
> shredder.
>
> Links:
>
> {1} http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/global/the-service-of-snowden.html?_r=0
>
> {2} http://www.theguardian.com/technology/internet
>
> {3} http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ueberwachung/information-consumerism-the-price-of-hypocrisy-12292374.html
>
> {4} http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-654_en.htm
> _____
>
> John Naughton is professor of the public understanding of technology
> at the Open University.
>
> ***
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/us/politics/momentum-builds-against-nsa-surveillance.html
>
> New York Times July 28, 2013
> Momentum Builds Against N.S.A. Surveillance
>
> By JONATHAN WEISMAN
>
> WASHINGTON — The movement to crack down on government surveillance
> started with an odd couple from Michigan, Representatives Justin
> Amash, a young libertarian Republican known even to his friends as
> “chief wing nut,” and John Conyers Jr., an elder of the liberal left
> in his 25th House term.
>
> But what began on the political fringes only a week ago has built a
> momentum that even critics say may be unstoppable, drawing support
> from Republican and Democratic leaders, attracting moderates in both
> parties and pulling in some of the most respected voices on national
> security in the House.
>
> The rapidly shifting politics were reflected clearly in the House on
> Wednesday, when a plan to defund the National Security Agency’s
> telephone data collection program fell just seven votes short of
> passage. Now, after initially signaling that they were comfortable
> with the scope of the N.S.A.’s collection of Americans’ phone and
> Internet activities, but not their content, revealed last month by
> Edward J. Snowden, lawmakers are showing an increasing willingness
> to use legislation to curb those actions.
>
> Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and Zoe
> Lofgren, Democrat of California, have begun work on
> legislation in the House Judiciary Committee to significantly rein
> in N.S.A. telephone surveillance. Mr. Sensenbrenner said on Friday
> that he would have a bill ready when Congress returned from its
> August recess that would restrict phone surveillance to only those
> named as targets of a federal terrorism investigation, make
> significant changes to the secret court that oversees such programs
> and give businesses like Microsoft and Google permission to reveal
> their dealings before that court.
>
> “There is a growing sense that things have really gone a-kilter
> here,” Ms. Lofgren said.
>
> The sudden reconsideration of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism policy
> has taken much of Washington by surprise. As the revelations by Mr.
> Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, were gaining attention in the
> news media, the White House and leaders in both parties stood united
> behind the programs he had unmasked. They were focused mostly on
> bringing the leaker to justice.
>
> Backers of sweeping surveillance powers now say they recognize that
> changes are likely, and they are taking steps to make sure they
> maintain control over the extent of any revisions. Leaders of the
> Senate Intelligence Committee met on Wednesday as the House
> deliberated to try to find accommodations to growing public
> misgivings about the programs, said the committee’s chairwoman,
> Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California.
>
> Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat and longtime critic of the
> N.S.A. surveillance programs, said he had taken part in serious
> meetings to discuss changes.
>
> Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the
> panel, said, “We’re talking through it right now.” He added, “There
> are a lot of ideas on the table, and it’s pretty obvious that we’ve
> got some uneasy folks.”
>
> Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and the chairman
> of the House Intelligence Committee, has assured House colleagues
> that an intelligence policy bill he plans to draft in mid-September
> will include new privacy safeguards.
>
> Aides familiar with his efforts said the House Intelligence
> Committee was focusing on more transparency for the secret Foreign
> Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees data gathering,
> including possibly declassifying that court’s orders, and changes to
> the way the surveillance data is stored. The legislation may order
> such data to be held by the telecommunications companies that
> produce them or by an independent entity, not the government.
>
> Lawmakers say their votes to restrain the N.S.A. reflect a gut-level
> concern among voters about personal privacy.
>
> “I represent a very reasonable district in suburban Philadelphia,
> and my constituents are expressing a growing concern on the sweeping
> amounts of data that the government is compiling,” said
> Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican who
> represents one of the few true swing districts left in the House and
> who voted on Wednesday to limit N.S.A. surveillance.
>
> Votes from the likes of Mr. Fitzpatrick were not initially
> anticipated when Republican leaders chided reporters for their
> interest in legislation that they said would go nowhere. As the
> House slowly worked its way on Wednesday toward an evening vote to
> curb government surveillance, even proponents of the legislation
> jokingly predicted that only the “wing nuts” — the libertarians of
> the right, the most ardent liberals on the left — would support the
> measure.
>
> Then Mr. Sensenbrenner, a Republican veteran and one of the primary
> authors of the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act, stepped to a microphone on
> the House floor. Never, he said, did he intend to allow the
> wholesale vacuuming up of domestic phone records, nor did his
> legislation envision that data dragnets would go beyond specific
> targets of terrorism investigations.
>
> “The time has come to stop it, and the way we stop it is to approve
> this amendment,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said.
>
> He had not intended to speak, and when he did, he did not say much,
> just seven brief sentences.
>
> “I was able to say what needed to be said in a minute,” he said
> Friday.
>
> Lawmakers from both parties said the brief speech was a pivotal
> moment. When the tally was final, the effort to end the N.S.A.’s
> programs had fallen short, 205 to 217. Supporters included
> Republican leaders like Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of
> Washington and Democratic leaders like Representative James E.
> Clyburn of South Carolina. Republican moderates like Mr. Fitzpatrick
> and Blue Dog Democrats like Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon
> joined with respected voices on national security matters like Mr.
> Sensenbrenner and Ms. Lofgren.
>
> Besides Ms. McMorris Rodgers, Representative Lynn Jenkins of Kansas,
> another member of the Republican leadership, voted yes. On
> the Democratic side, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus,
> Representative Xavier Becerra of California, and his vice chairman,
> Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, broke with the top two
> Democrats, Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California and Steny H.
> Hoyer of Maryland, who pressed hard for no votes.
>
> On Friday, Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader and a veteran of
> the Intelligence Committee, and Mr. Hoyer dashed off a letter to the
> president warning that even those Democrats who had stayed with him
> on the issue on Wednesday would be seeking changes.
>
> That letter included the signature of Mr. Conyers, who is rallying
> an increasingly unified Democratic caucus to his side, as well as 61
> House Democrats who voted no on Wednesday but are now publicly
> signaling their discontent.
>
> “Although some of us voted for and others against the amendment, we
> all agree that there are lingering questions and concerns about the
> current” data collection program, the letter stated.
>
> Representative Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, a Republican who voted for
> the curbs and predicted that changes to the N.S.A. surveillance
> programs were now unstoppable, said: “This was in many respects a
> vote intended to send a message. The vote was just too strong.”
>
> Ms. Lofgren said the White House and Democratic and Republican
> leaders had not come to grips with what she called “a grave sense of
> betrayal” that greeted Mr. Snowden’s revelations. Since the Bush
> administration, lawmakers had been repeatedly assured that such
> indiscriminate collection of data did not exist, and that when
> targeting was unspecific, it was aimed at people abroad.
>
> The movement against the N.S.A. began with the fringes of each
> party. Mr. Amash of Michigan began pressing for an amendment on the
> annual military spending bill aimed at the N.S.A. Leaders of the
> Intelligence Committee argued strenuously that such an amendment was
> not relevant to military spending and should be ruled out of order.
>
> But Mr. Amash, an acolyte of Ron Paul, a libertarian former
> congressman, persisted and rallied support.
>
> Mr. Sensenbrenner and Ms. Lofgren said they were willing to work
> with the House and Senate intelligence panels to overhaul the
> surveillance programs, but indicated that they did not believe those
> panels were ready to go far enough.
>
> “I would just hope the Intelligence Committees will not stick their
> heads in the sand on this,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said.
>
>
>
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