China Shows How Surveillance Leads to Intimidation and Software Censorship

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/china-shows-how-backdoors-lead-software-censorship

by DiabloD3 • 11 years ago

126 57 11 years ago

Sven72• 11 years ago

The EFF can be a lot more constructive if it didn't spend its time, separating the reasons for censorship from the consequences of censorship, and acting as if the relationship between the two is non-existent.

All the EFF ends up doing is sounding like a propaganda wing of the state department.

There is a reason Obama has to meet with the Tech Industry to talk about the spread of ISIS and other forms of lunacy on the networks. There is a real need for control rods. And our tools are useless. That's the reality.

tim333• 11 years ago

I fear their point that if the Chinese are banning people from using WhatsApp that we should watch out for Cameron trying to do the same may be fair enough.

rwmj• 11 years ago

Considering what a car-crash WhatsApp security has been in the past, I'm pretty sure May wants you to use it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#Security

ycmbntrthrwaway• 11 years ago

People should learn to think for themselves to avoid ISIS propaganda and things like that, instead of being controlled and "protected from bad information" by government. Treating citizens like little children and building parental control is not a solution.

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

this would be the outcome of meaningful education. before acting on some impulse, people should learn to stop and think for a second

rms_returns• 11 years ago

All the EFF ends up doing is sounding like a propaganda wing of the state department.

However they end up sounding, the reality won't change that covert surveillance is not good for a country and its citizens.

There is a reason Obama has to meet with the Tech Industry to talk about the spread of ISIS and other forms of lunacy

I'm tired of repeating this, but show me one incident, just one where government surveillance has helped stop a terrorist attack and I'll be all in for your surveillance. The reality is that the terrorists of Paris attacks used plain-text SMS to communicate, which shows how ineffective our intelligence systems are.

All that is going to happen with covert surveillance is just more harassment of innocent citizens. What's the guarantee that the agent doing the surveillance is honest and sincere and won't take undue advantage of the data gathered from surveillance?

gonehome2• 11 years ago

I think Mass Surveillance is a bad idea, extremely high risk and the potential for abuse is high. I also think that it consolidates too much power in one place which is dangerous for the future and the secrecy is a big problem.

That said there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks and pretending there isn't is weird to me.

show me one incident, just one where government surveillance has helped stop a terrorist attack and I'll be all in for your surveillance

Whether or not these exist they're likely to be classified, it's possible attacks have been stopped - the classification of information makes it hard to know.

Though mass collection can help, if you have intel of suspicious people you could look through the entire history of their communication - see what they've been saying and to whom. When you newly learn that a person is a part of ISIS (for example) you can look through their entire communication stream retroactively. Since the attackers are not always that sophisticated (they used SMS in Paris like you said) you can potentially learn a lot of information by doing this (their network, maybe plans).

They're posting videos of themselves on youtube showing off weapons and locations - I suspect there's a lot of information available in their communication that's useful for stopping attacks. It's a tool you would obviously want if you had to do the job.

That said I think the secrecy is dangerous because it prevents the public from being able to determine what level we'd accept (and legal recourse against abuse). It also is more likely to encourage abuse and since James Clapper lied to congress about it we can't trust the organizations that have tasked themselves to do it.

Sven72• 11 years ago

> the reality won't change that covert surveillance is not good for a country and its citizens.

I don't agree. Surveillance\Censorship is necessary and it has to get better over time. In the era of social networks and virality, bad stuff spreads at a speed and scale no one has seen before. If the Twitter CEO is saying "We suck at dealing with abuse" it isn't a stretch to believe the Intelligence agencies and defense establishment sucks at preventing worse stuff like the Boston Bombings or ISIS recruitment.

pjc502• 11 years ago

The reason we fight this is that giving the government "control rods" against the latest threat du jour will immediately result in them being used against domestic political opponents like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, environmentalists etc.

Hoover's FBI sending death threats to MLK is not so long ago.

dannyobrien2• 11 years ago

I understand your point -- though if you read the article, the conclusion is as much about the similarities between China's domestic surveillance policy and the new backdoor proposals of the US and UK, a point that really does not fit into the State department's model of the world.

My point is that it doesn't matter what the reasons are for censorship or surveillance, if you actually want to implement your repressive solution successfully, you will end up walking down an increasingly authoritarian path. Every country has some clear reason for introducing their own "control rods", whether it's Islamic separatists in Xinjiang or immigrants or the communist menace or economic instability. The reasons are always different, but the consequences are often the same.

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

Surveillance is not a solution. I would say surveillance isn't needed if the root cause of that problem is actually solved. Take for example, country A goes to war with country B or destabilizes it. Now people in country B will want to take revenge. Individuals will want to take matters into their own hands for the injustice done to them(making them so called terrorists -there is also religious terrorism which I believe is all for silly reasons). And because people in country B are also humans, many many fellow humans in country A will also sympathize with their sufferings and would want to correct their own country. Some of them may turn to become "terrorists". Now the root cause for creating terrorism was country A itself.

There is also the problem with media. Giving religious terrorists the attention they crave is the last thing we should do. That only gives them a sense of satisfaction.

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

Government should be an organization serves people rather than trying to control people and limit what people can say or do. If government try to do such things, sooner rather than later, government will create dissent with the people. Without a free society, we won't be able to be awesome. Government's job should be to ensure that everyone gets their basic human needs/rights such as good education, healthcare, maintain fair law and order etc. These acts will create good citizens who will to do greater good for all of humanity. Currently the situation is alarming in many countries including china, usa, north korea etc. I think Croatia is a good model as they have a great society as a result of good education system.

pixl972• 11 years ago

Government should be an organization serves people rather than trying to control people and limit what people can say or do.

What if 55% of the people want to control and limit what the other 45% do and say? It's never as easy as 'government should just do this' because a government needs to have power to fulfill its mandate. Any concentration of power can, and will be abused and there will be cycles of this occurring as the society around it grows more and less apathetic to abuse of power.

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

I didn't say government as in the democratic implementation we have now. Democratic or not, I meant that the function of the government should just be ensuring justice, promoting civility, ensuring health care, providing quality education for everyone. If the 55% in control doesn't want the other 45% to have those, then thats a problem with the society -that shows severe segregation.

We are not modernizing and improving laws to reflect changing times. Can give plenty of examples for that. Instead we are clinging to what forefathers thought was best at the time. We are in the best time to implement true democracy. Are the red and blue candidates your only choice? Is it so hard to implement a better way to field candidates based on merits/goods that you do for society rather than dirty politics? Too much change too soon will often not be well received. So things needs to be improved one by one. But I don't see that happening. All I see is government desperate to violate on the rights of people.

Hell, if you could build grandiose scale systems to snoop on people, it not that hard to build something that betters the living condition of people. Currently the government doesn't care. Too much energy(time, money, lives) are spent on waging meaningless wars. Now if that much energy were to be focused on advancement of society..

quadrangle• 11 years ago

Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. There's NOTHING about the concept of democracy that requires majority-rule to be the way to run it. Majority rule is the stupidest and most dangerous way to do any democratic decision-making.

Better options include consensus, multi-stakeholder representation (like needing overall approval from many different groups within society for a decision), and score voting (See http://electology.org/ for more on practical voting systems).

pjc502• 11 years ago

Croatia had a civil war in very recent memory. That makes it hard to say long-term things about it.

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

It may have had that, but does it look like any other country that have had a civil war in recent history?. I came across it while I was looking up recently independent countries with good human development index.

Balgair2• 11 years ago

All of Chinese history, right up to their creation myths, is about controlling people and nature (mostly the rivers)[0]. What China is doing today is in line with their history step for step. It makes sense in a way. Those river valleys are incredible for making babies and with urbanization and the power afforded to a single person with technology, controlling 1.7 billion people is the only way to have a society. Not that I believe any of that crap though. Still, look at their history of dynasties and warlords and you'll see that the CCP is doing the same dance steps as always. Chinese government has never been about the rights of people, rather it has always been about keeping the warlords at bay and trying to keep those river valley people from killing each other in the famines that always come.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Chinese_history

akshatpradhan2• 11 years ago

Off topic: You know what Wiki is missing? More images. When I click on one of the ancient Chinese cultures you point out, I'd like to see photographs of excavations instead of just a blur of words and numbers.

pixelcort• 11 years ago

I wonder if steganography tools will become more widely used to avoid suspicion from using normal VPNs and cryptography.

lucastx• 11 years ago

The Obsproxy and Pluggable Transports are kinda this, aren't?

https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en

obfsproxy is a tool that attempts to circumvent censorship, by transforming the Tor traffic between the client and the bridge. This way, censors, who usually monitor traffic between the client and the bridge, will see innocent-looking transformed traffic instead of the actual Tor traffic.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en

erikb3• 11 years ago

China also shows how keeping a closed door to outsiders influence yields having your own healthy market. I think there are few places left, where local IT companies haven't been destroyed by google, facebook and netflix. China has big businesses in all these markets. Stop always only highlighting the bad things.

themodelplumber2• 11 years ago

My local IT companies seem to do fine...can you explain?

TeMPOraL• 11 years ago

Among your local IT companies is there a search engine more popular than Google? A social network more popular than Facebook? A shopping site more popular than Amazon and eBay?

For better or worse, the economic and political restrictions China enacted allowed for local companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (makers of WeChat) to utterly dominate the Chinese market. Those same companies are now pretty much the only competitors that can match the American giants I mentioned before. In this area, this was a big win for China - both for companies and customers (money made stays in the country).

erikb3• 11 years ago

You ever heard of a website called Facebook? How many countries you know who have a social network beside facebook with similar success to Weibo or Wechat? I know zero.

samstave2• 11 years ago

Check out this nightmare of a system China is implementing to use gamification to control populations:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI

rubberstamp11• 11 years ago

Yes, I read about that some time ago. Unfortunately, unless the people stop using that system or actively games it, its a disaster. I bet things will get better in china in 30 years. If the current Chinese form of government was better serving people, there would be no dissent and hence no need to create a surveillance state. Its neither communism or democracy.

rashkov3• 11 years ago

Oh, my god. I've read about this before but that link really drove the point home. What a dystopia we're headed for if this works out well for China, and there is every reason to believe that it could. Thanks for sharing that

JoeAltmaier2• 11 years ago

Oh its ok for corporations in the USA to do this to control purchasing and marketing. But do it for some actual societal good and suddenly its (more) evil?

I'm of two minds on this one. Gamification works in lots of arenas (from pizza coupons to annual reviews). Why not social/public morals?

natch• 11 years ago

Great article. If anyone from EFF is reading, the article has a typo in the 5th paragraph, Xighurs should be Uighurs.

dannyobrien2• 11 years ago

Fixed. Thanks!

vicpara• 11 years ago

I'm happy to see what happens in China because hopes are that this is a worst case bound for what is going to happen in UK when secure connections will become outlawed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_ban_proposal_in_the...

China Shows How Surveillance Leads to Intimidation and Software Censorship

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