16 August 2011
US internet policy hypocrisy
In a landmark speech that defined Internet freedom as a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy, [US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton] repeatedly named countries, including China, which had thwarted progress. ''Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government and our civil society," Clinton said. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation.'' She warned "countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century."
Washington Post, 20 January 2011
That sounds great. But let's examine it for a moment:
"Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation.''
Is Clinton condemning the US? Cyberwarfare is a reality and the US is, as in every other military technology, at the forefront of it. In 2008 Congress ordered DARPA to spend $30 billion or so on cyberwarfare technology. The US has been conducting cyber attacks for years, for instance this one in 2008 on a webforum in Saudi Arabia (which inadvertently disrupted more than 300 other servers in Saudi Arabia, Germany and Texas). The Department of Defense knows the danger the internet poses to their military power. An American think-tank influential on the Bush Administration wrote:
Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the "infosphere" will find it difficult to exert global political leadership.
Or this from a document commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003:
DoD's "Defense in Depth" strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will "fight the net" as it would a weapons system.
Still, it's understandable that Clinton would say something like that - even US head of cybersecurity Howard Schmidt said in March 2010:
There is no cyberwar... I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept. There are no winners in that environment.
"White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’", Wired magazine
So the White House is saying one thing, while the DoD continues their massive effort to conduct covert cyber-attacks and improve their attack capabilities. The same is true of internet censorship:
"Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government and our civil society."
"Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century."
Indeed, the US is spending $19m to help people circumvent government internet filtering. But it hardly compares to the $30b the DoD is spending to do the exact opposite - developing tools to take control of the internet and block unwanted traffic.
It also doesn't compare to the censorship and surveillance tools sold by US companies (Cisco, Oracle, Motorola and others) to repressive states like China and Iran. A leaked internal Cisco presentation from 2002 talks about how its products can be used to address China's goals of "maintaining stability" and "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles". The US is making no effort to prevent the sale of surveillance and filtering tools to authoritarian regimes.
At the same time, commercial interests have successfully convinced the US to filter the internet against file-sharing and video websites, despite this being in violation of the US constitution. Due to pressure from "American companies" - namely, the entertainment oligopoly - it is using free trade agreements to successfully pressure governments worldwide (eg. UK, NZ, France, South Korea) to push through copyright laws in violation of their own constitutions (as well as the US constitution). These laws are having a chilling effect on free speech through subversion of copyright law.
Other quotes from Clinton in the same Washington Post article:
"Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere... American companies need to take a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand."
"We must be wary of the steel vise in which many governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit"
It's a good call. But it's doublethink.
Not only is the US leading the way in developing tools to disrupt the internet, shutting down international websites, censoring peer-to-peer communication technologies to appease select industries, and pushing undemocratic laws onto other counties.
Along with other western governments they are increasingly shutting down cellphone and internet communication in an effort to prevent protests.
Left unchecked, all governments have a tendency towards censorship, with no real benefit to national security or public order. Whether government duplicity on cyberwarfare and censorship is strategic and intentional, or a result of confusion and division (of course it's some of both): if the land of the free wants to stay that way, the brave need to step up and ensure it.
Other sources
- "Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet", Infowars.net
12 August 2011
Fined for using the internet? Possible as of yesterday in NZ
I'm considering leaving Posterous for something better: Wikia! I'm still working it out, until I do I'll cross-post the links to here.
Full post from yesterday
(This is the sequel to last week's post, "From next week, P2P in New Zealand is illegal".)
30 May 2011
Why Bitcoin is a scam
If you're interested in geeky computer stuff, you may have heard of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. There's been a new wave of interest in the last few weeks, and prices have risen to over $8/BTC from its beginning in Feb 2009 - giving the market a valuation of over US$55m. So I thought I'd investigate, as it implements many interesting ideas.
Bitcoin tries to replace central banks with cryptography. The idea is to have money that, unlike other currencies, can't be controlled by a central government. The currency is seeded by using processor power to perform intensive cryptographic calculations, the digital equivalent of running in circles. This is now barely worthwhile as more people have bought into it (this is by design).
My verdict: Bitcoin is "a speculative investment vehicle backed by no physical assets masquerading as a currency substitute"1, and a poor payment system. Here's why:
Bitcoin as a currency
Bitcoins claim to be "safe from instability caused by fractional reserve banking and central banks". This is ridiculous. Adam Cohen's answer at Quorum demonstrates that Bitcoins are far more unstable: No central bank and no backing by physical assets means no stability - and stability is the most important thing about a currency. So far, its extreme liquidity has meant it is extremely volatile - just like a speculative bubble.
It's also likely to run afoul of the law - in most countries it's technically legal, but all governments want control of the money supply. It will never become popular since you can't pay your taxes in Bitcoins. It is also a favoured payment system for digital fraudsters. Bitcoin is commonly used for:
- Fraud and scams
- Money-laundering (anonymizing criminally-obtained money)
- Black-market trading (eg. drugs)
- Income tax avoidance
- Structuring (see below)
More importantly, not only is it far from "safe from instability", it can be controlled by governments.
Bitcoin as a payment system
As a payment system, it's not what it's cracked up to be:
- It doesn't offer anonymity, despite some claims to the contrary - it's merely pseudonymous as all transactions are public to the world. There are techniques to increase your anonymity but they are difficult. As Bitcoin becomes more popular, it will become easier to be anonymous, but still Bitcoins are far more traceable than cash, even after taking precautions. Anonymity techniques involving bitcoins worth large amounts of money (over FJ$1,100 to US$58,000, depending on your jurisdiction) are likely to violate anti-structuring laws.
- It's vulnerable to takeover by processor farms and botnets.
- It's vulnerable to being outlawed by governments, for the same reasons as for the currency. If it becomes sufficiently popular for criminal activity, or popular enough in general, governments and banks will respond (to the illegal usage and the destabilizing effect).
Conclusion
While an interesting idea, Bitcoin is flawed.
As an investment or store of value, it's speculation propagated by gullible survivalists and technoutopian anarchists. It may not be a purposeful scam, but it has the same function - a few people (especially the developer and some botnet herders) have made a lot of money from latecomers. It's a bad investment, no matter how much you want to support the general concept.
Bitcoin isn't worthless as a payment system. It's an interesting experiment for people wanting to work around the government and willing to take the risks inherent in that. Like cash, it has legitimate uses, but unlike cash, it's not anonymous, and it's nonetheless likely to run into trouble from governments.
Other sources - for
- Wikipedia
- Bitcoin FAQ
- Why Bitcoin is smart, and not a scam
- Is Bitcoin the Wikileaks of Monetary Policy?
Other sources - against
This article has been cross-posted at Quora (1, 2) and improved thanks to discussions there and here (below).
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