Monday, February 21, 2011

Washington defends the Internet free but under surveillance ...

Since coming to power of President Obama, the U.S. has erected the "Internet Freedom" in their official goal of foreign policy. This voluntarism was solemnly reaffirmed in January 2010 in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who proclaimed the advent of a new human right, the "right connections".

Incidentally, Clinton recalled that his country has a special responsibility because it is the "homeland" of the Internet. For Washington, the defense of the Internet is all the more natural it is to promote the export of U.S. companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook, whose leaders are close political and financial elites the country.

Secretary of State also announced the building of a legacy program from the previous administration: financial assistance to businesses and NGOs producing anti-censorship software to help opponents of living under authoritarian regimes around the blockages, encrypt their messages and hide their tracks.

Recipients of federal funds were distributed their software free, translate into different languages and offer training programs. A year later, in the wake of popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Clinton made an initial assessment of its action, citing the creation of a specialized service to the State Department and the release of 30 million ( 22 million euros) for a sixty organizations developing anti-censorship systems.

One NGO that received federal funds in recent years is the project TOR (The Onion Router). Operated by American and European hackers, digital has created an international network server to encrypt all types of messages and connect without a trace. One U.S. officials TOR, Jacob Appelbaum, traveled to the Middle East, Tunisia in Kurdistan, to publicize its system to local activists.

But Mr. Appelbaum is also an active member of Wikileaks. It's part of his job because, initially, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, was designed to help people living in dictatorship countries to denounce immoral or illegal acts committed by their employer or by a responsible official.

In fact, Wikileaks relies in part on digital servers to guarantee the anonymity of its sources. As soon as Mr. Assange began publishing confidential documents belonging to the United States, the status of Mr. Appelbaum changes in the eyes of U.S. authorities: he ceases to be a hero of freedom to become an alleged accomplice in the criminal investigation launched against Wikileaks for theft of documents.

"American hegemony" During the summer of 2010, Mr. Appelbaum is publicly defending WikiLeaks face of virulent attacks from U.S. politicians. Shortly after returning from a trip to the Netherlands, he was interrogated for several hours by U.S. border police, seizing his phones and laptops.

Same thing in January, when he returned from a stay in Iceland, but this time the police empty-handed, because now he travels light, without electronic device. Asked by Tech News Buzz, Mr. Appelbaum warns young foreigners who tell their life recklessly on social networks: "If you're on Facebook, Tech News Buzz welcome American hegemony!" He recalled that the business model of these companies is based on the storage and analysis of personal data of their users, and then he tells a story: one day he went into the premises of Facebook in California for a job interview (which does not).

There, he chatted with a man accidentally called work for a federal agency that was in the process of installing an inspection system from Facebook's servers. For its part, the U.S. court is also interested in social networks. In January, Twitter has announced that a federal prosecutor demanded copies of the accounts of MM.

Assange and Appelbaum and other activists Wikileaks, which Birgitta Jonsdottir, MP Icelandic. In addition, the prosecutor had banned Twitter to prevent those affected. The company has managed to overturn this measure and was alerting its users, but their legal options seem limited. Article published in the edition of 22.02.11

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