Apr 09
14
Who Is Watching?
Have you ever thought about who is watching what you do?
In the UK the freedom of journalists has recently been significantly curtailed (along with everyone else) – see this story in the Guardian – to the extent that the paper is now offering advice on how people in the UK who are citizen journos can remain unsurveilled.
Here is an example of their advice:
rungs,” says David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor. “Just
send a letter – you know, snail mail.” He adds: “When I've dealt with
secret sources they take very great care not to communicate on any
electronic medium.”
The next step, says Campbell, is to do what
drug dealers and terrorists do: use pay-as-you-go phones and
unregistered sim cards, bought with cash. Such closed rings are almost
unbreakable – once you've met to swap numbers.
But must
journalists and sources really use the same tactics as terrorists and
drug dealers? If that's the price of free, civil society, then yes,
Campbell says. “The abuse of free communications by a minority is part
of the price of liberty. [But] this government appears to think that it
is civil society [itself] and so needs no checks or balances on its
intrusions into private lives.”
I wonder how much surveillance there is in Australia on citizen journalists, bloggers even?
In Australia we are fairly blase about how much snooping goes on by the government and by others. Perhaps it is because we are naive or perhaps because we are extremely honest folks. We trust what is done, supposedly on our behalf, too much too in my opinion (as is the case of the evolution of the ACTA legislation, blogged about elsewhere by Tom and I). But we have to realize that the same technology that empowers us, also is able to be used to keep tabs on us – or can be in the event that we allow it to.
Recently we started collecting metrics on P2P activity in this country. Non-invasively, I might add. We are looking at the trends rather than trying to do what the Big Brother businesses working for the content industry are doing.
We have collected some extremely interesting data which we will be releasing soon. We think that it will aid businesses to understand what the value is of various kinds of content – to customers, workers, and society in general. Perhaps those that read it may even consider rethinking their advertising strategies to reach various demographics. Oh, and by the way, not surprisingly, we also see a quite different way of interpreting the data that we have to that which you read in the mainstream media… largely fed by the major content companies.
If you are interested in the state of play with regard to P2P trends in Australia, please contact me; you can find the email address on this blog.
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Here is an update on the above: A story from The Australian newspaper that is very relevant to the above. Read it and figure out for yourself whether the story from the Guardian and the story from The Australian appearing at the same time are a co-incidence or not:
THE federal Government plans to massively
boost technology defences in the private sector by sharing intelligence
and security agency secrets with business owners.
Three
key sectors — finance, utilities and telecommunications — will share
sensitive information under an exchange structure to be managed by
GovCERT, the government computer emergency readiness team.
For the first time, businesses will have access to expertise and
resources available in organisations such as the Defence Signals
Directorate and ASIO.
Closer dealings between private and public organisations are central
to e-security arrangements expected to be announced shortly.