The New Freedom

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2009 has just started and various international authorities are already launching new programs to deny digital freedom. And this is only the beginning.

India
The new The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 [PDF], passed on Dec 23, 2008, introduces a variety of astounding legal restrictions to Indian internet users. The text of the amendment is unreadable legalese which is causing a lot of confusion as to how this bill will be enforced, but the Naavi organization in India has produced a side-by-side comparisons of the original bill and the changes introduced by the amendment to make it easy to see what changes have been made.

Police are now allowed to intercept and monitor all communications, and that isn’t even the most frightening part of the act:

67A: Punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc. in electronic form

Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the electronic form any material which contains sexually explicit act or conduct shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees and in the event of second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years and also with fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees.

This is an egregious human rights violation. Sexuality is an important part of human life and it should not be criminalized! Pornography is the guiding principle on which the internet is based and we cannot stand by while our Indian brothers have their porn taken away from them.

The solution: internet porn riot. I demand that we begin flooding the PM’s inboxes with the most wang-engorging porn from our collections in protest. After a hearty fap, they will see the error of their ways.

ZeroPaid links to reports and responses from various Indian bloggers:

“Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not.”

Incredible. I have no idea what enforcement is like in India, but it can never, ever be good to grant police that much abusive power.

There are calls to create a Netizen’s Rights Comission in India, which is a great idea and I wish them all the best of luck.

UK
In the UK, the Times reports that police in the UK have been given the OK to infect citizens with trojan horses to do “remote searches” and record keystrokes, all without a warrant.

The article is quite good and I don’t think I have anything to contribute that the article doesn’t say already other than some advice to British computer users: switch to a secure operating system and get a firewall. Encrypt everything. Your government is a threat to you and you must take your liberty into your own hands. Get better at hacking; you’re going to need it.

New Zealand
TorrentFreak (who despite their name have actually become quite a good source of legitimate digital rights news) report that a new law would mean that file-sharers are “Guilty Upon Accusation” and will be banished from the internet. There is no appeal process. The bill has not passed yet but will in less than 50 days unless something dramatic changes in parliament.

The most interesting part of the story is the rising public opposition. The Creative Freedom Foundation has been created by a group of artists and progressive public policy advocates “on behalf of artists whose creative freedom is affected by major Governmental decisions made in their name, and in the name of protecting creativity.”

The are running a petition so people can say why they are so opposed to this. Again, the best of look to them.

In the US, things have quited down a bit as the RIAA have stopped using MediaSentry to sue students and are instead focusing their resources on corrupting our government directly. We can expect to see some kind of variation on this 3-strikes type law here in the United States some time in the next year or so.

These digital restrictions are happening all over the world now and we need to have some type of international organization to oppose this corruption and fight for our rights. The EFF is great, but they’re only in the US. Meanwhile, the biggest threats like WIPO and the EU have an astounding amount of power and international influence, and we have no counterpart to that. What we need is some kind of digital Amnesty International.

This is going to be a very tough year, folks. And we’re going to need your help! Write an angry email to somebody. Let’s get this ball rolling now.

Rich

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