Digital rights and your personal freedom

“We live in a democracy. Or so they told us.”

If you take a look at democracies around the world today, you’ll find governments that behave in a completely undemocratic way. One just has to look at the lengths the US has gone to, in undermining the Bill of Rights in the pursuit of terrorism ( well that’s the drivel the American people have been fed ). The freedom and liberties that are our due, per the constitutions that our countries are based on, are just tokens. The internet then, with its global-spanning tenet of freedom and open community, is an unbridled proverbial thorn in a lot of governments’ sides. It was easy 10 years ago to monitor telephone calls and snail mail. But electronic communications have changed this –  voice is now data, and data can be moulded into whatever you want. It’s no longer enough for the government to have systems that can intercept telephone calls through telcos; they now need to have access to data travelling through ISPs as well.

Everything you do on the internet can be intercepted, classified and interrogated. ISP’s are at the leading edge of the fight to resist government intervention however, there’s little they can do when laws are passed that legalise the the interception of personal data.

And if you look at a lot of the laws being passed around the world in democratic countries ( in the name of copyright control for example ), you’ll see that your freedom and your data are no longer your own. Big business ( read Hollywood studios and music producers ) have sold everyone a fat lie. The US government buckles under the pressure of sustained lobbying. They push for local sanctions against copyright infringers and then extend this through global treaties like ACTA and other laws. Internet censorship is not limited to the typical countries you would think of like China and Iran ( eg. China’s Great Firewall ). The US is doing similar things to what restrictive governments are doing, while at the same time condemning those governments. The UK government has a bill on the table ( Communications Data Bill ) that will allow them to read any email you send through your ISP. Australia have implemented a blacklist of sites that ISPs have to filter ( well they tried and failed ). Many other western democracies are enabling similar projects under the guise of protecting their citizens.

But that’s all it is: a guise. Our constitutions guarantee our freedoms and our governments take them away. So it’s important to understand the facilities you have at hand to protect your freedom and privacy while working online.

  • Always use https ( instead of http ) for websites if possible when surfing – this will encrypt data between your workstation/device and the target website. Your bank will use this automatically for online banking.
  • Make use of a privacy tool like Tor/Privoxy – this will obfuscate your web surfing data including dns queries
  • Do not expose personal details about yourself online, especially on social networking sites
  • Bittorrent is increasingly being monitored by copyright control companies; use alternate methods for downloads like https-based news systems
  • Use an encrypted  SMTP service ( also known as TLS ) for sending email

You can also monitor sites like the Open Rights Group that provides information on the attempts of governments around the world to censor and control internet usage. Moral of the story: stay safe and be careful what information you put on the internet.

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