Author: Christopher Parsons

Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.

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Writing

A Glimpse Into How ‘Normals’ Read the Internet

I use the term ‘normals’ in an utterly positive sense: Vanity Fair’s recent piece, titled “World War 3.0,” scatters enough truth through the article that it possesses a veneer of credibility while obfuscating falsehoods and myths. The result is that unsavvy readers will be left with conceptions the everything is peachy with ICANN (false), that the ITU is coming to take over the ‘net (false), that the Internet is boundary-less (false), that there are honest-to-God “good guys” (the disorderly folks) and villains (orderly organizations like states), and that loosening arms exports related to encryption is significantly linked to the theft of IP (arguably very false).

Unfortunately, there is enough truth scattered throughout the article that someone who isn’t familiar with the terrains of Internet security, governance, and IP policies could be easily drawn into an appealing and accessible narrative. It is precisely narratives like this that those of us familiar with Internet policies have to fervently oppose and correct, with a recognition that not correcting the record can promote serious misinformation leading to disastrous (or, at best, misguided) policy responses by the “bad guys” of the Internet (i.e. state actors).

The article is worth a read, though it may bring your blood to a boil. Regardless of its factual accuracy, however, I suspect that the piece can be read as how non-experts perceive the past decade or so of Internet policies and practices. As such it’s incredibly valuable for those of us in the trenches to get a better perspective on how our conflicts are seen publicly, if only to make out actions and processes that much clearer for the general citizenry.

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Links Writing

Can Nulpunt “Abolish Government Secrecy?”

In a word: No.

Nulpunt is an online database that lets individuals subscribe to topics and, when a freedom of information request on the topic becomes available, ‘pushes’ the content to the user. This mediates the present format for such requests, where individuals tend to be hunting for specific information and the population generally has no effective means to see or understand the information divulged to fellow citizens.

The aspiration of the service is that government secrecy can be undermined by making information more prominently available. I’m not confident that this can possibly be the case because the service fails to address the primary means by which states keep citizens in the dark: it does not prevent state agents from refusing requests nor from redacting significant elements from released documents.

While it may be effective in nations such as the Netherlands, which have recently adopted new transparency laws, I can’t imagine Canada or the US moving to entirely new document release processes without a significant stick. Nulpunt is not, and cannot, function as that stick so long as governments refuse to recognize their situatedness as servants, rather than masters, of the population at large.

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Quotations

2012.6.14

Design is not a zero-sum economic game but an ambivalent cultural process that serves a multiplicity of values and social groups without necessarily sacrificing efficiency.

Andrew Feenburg. (2010). “Democratic Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Freedom” in Between Reason and Experience.
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Writing

Did Apple Design in the Wrong Direction?

It’s a big deal whenever Apple refreshes the design of their products. It isn’t just that the media goes nuts, but that other parties (read: the media) tend to swoon about Apple’s decision and the company’s competitors get ready to ape Apple’s new paradigms.

Unfortunately, the switch to the newly designed Airport Express seems like a terrific step in the wrong direction from a design perspective, while simultaneously being in the right direction from a product alignment perspective. Let me explain.

While some sites have stated that the older Express routers were ‘wall warts’, anyone who’s travelled with one of these routers can speak to their functionality. They were easy to pack, easier to set up, and incredibly reliable. The ‘warts’ were also useful when setting up wifi printing or Airplay functionality at home. In both of these latter cases, it was easy to move the router to where you wanted either the printer or speakers and didn’t necessitate cluttering up the space with unneeded cables.

The new form factor is better visually linked to Apple’s existing routers and Apple TV products. On these grounds, Apple is (arguably) bringing a superior branded identity to the Airport Express line, ensuring that anyone who sees the router will immediately think ‘Apple’. This has significant marketing and branding resonance but, unfortunately, it comes at the expense of device efficiency.

Good design is tightly linked with beauty, usability, and efficiency. In the case of the newest iteration of the Airport Express, Apple has prioritized the corporate image over product efficiency; the Express is a less efficient product on grounds that it assumes more physical space that has previously been needed. The incapacity to link these priorities is suggestive that the newest Apple router is a failed product from a design position, regardless of the popularity or sales of the new iteration.

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Videos

On Pay Equity

I’m certain that, in some countries, efforts to achieve pay equity in this manner would result in Parliament legislating the ‘striker’ to work. Such legislation would be ‘necessary’ on grounds that efforts to achieve pay equity threatened the national economy and, thus, had to be moved to binding mediation without the employer being forced to deal with the existing market situation.

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Aside

Free Speech Zone

The contemporary “free speech” zone

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Videos

Lawful access legislation and its associated powers

Lawful access legislation and its associated powers are not new. In the wrong hands, however, these powers ‘legitimize’ the gross abuse of citizens. I highly recommend you watch this investigative news piece on Sweden’s Teliasonera and how lawful access is used by dictators reliant on Teliasonera’s equipment.

If you can’t watch it all then at least watch the interview with the company’s representative, starting at around minute 52. It’s a chilling interview that exposes how ‘good’ Western companies enables human rights abuses around the world in the name of profit and ‘enabling’ communication.

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Aside

How Google collected data from wi-fi networks with Streetview vehicles

This is a terrific graphic that breaks down how Google collected data from wi-fi networks with Streetview vehicles

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Links Writing

VPNs becoming more common amongst youth

The risks that onerous copyright laws pose for law enforcement are rarely considered, despite such laws (potentially) threatening national security operations. In Sweden, following efforts to dissuade file sharing, the population is increasingly moving to encrypted VPN connections to continue their sharing. From an article over at Torrentfreak,

according to new research from the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, an increasing proportion of the country’s population are taking measures to negate the effects of spying on their online activities.

The study reveals that 700,000 Swedes now make themselves anonymous online with paid VPN services such as The Pirate Bay’s iPredator.

What does this have to do with law enforcement? As the Swedish population moves to encrypted communications it limits authorities’ insights into the data traffic moving through Swedish networks. Consequently, the copyright lobby is (unintentionally) increasing the challenges of applying digital ‘wiretaps’ on Swedish citizens. While not something that the copyright lobbies are necessarily concerned with, these developments can be problematic for national security agencies.

I’m not advocating that communications should necessarily be easier for such agencies to investigate – far from it – but do I think that before aligning legislative efforts with copyright groups it is critical for legislators to think of the broader implications associated with ‘strong’ copyright laws. While such laws might dissuade some file sharing, are the benefits derived from limiting file sharing sufficient to justify disadvantaging national security and intelligence operation?

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Links Writing

The Importance of ZTE Security Deficits

A great of speculation exists around mobile companies of all stripes: are they secure? Do they secretly insert backdoors for government? What kinds of assurances do customers and citizens have around the devices?

Recently these concerns exploded (again) following a Reuters article that notes serious problems in ZTE mobile phones. There are a series of reasons that security agencies can, and do, raise concerns about foreign built equipment (some related more to economics than good security practice). While it’s possible that ZTE’s vulnerabilities were part of a Chinese national-security initiative, it’s entirely likely (and more probable) that ZTE’s backdoor access into their mobiles is a genuine, gigantic, mistake. Let’s not forget that even ‘our’ companies are known for gross security incompetence.

In the ZTE case it doesn’t matter if the backdoor was deliberate or not. It doesn’t matter if the company patches the devices, either, because a large number of customers will never apply updates to their phones. This means that, for all intents and purposes, these devices will have well publicized security holes for the duration of their existence. It’s that kind of ongoing vulnerability – one that persists regardless of vendor ‘patches’ – that is increasingly dangerous in the mobile world, and a threat that is arguably more significant (at the moment) than whether we can trust company X or Y.