Internet News

The governments invasive mass snooping laws will be used to bring online bullies and trolls to justice, the Home Secretary says.

Theresa May reportedly says that surveillance powers, unveiled under the Investigatory Powers Bill last month, will be used by police and spooks to track down and identify anonymous cyberbullies. The Times reports that 'officials'  will be able to unmask users going by various aliases.

Previously the government has maintained that the far reaching Snooper's Charter would be restricted to tracking serious crimes such as terrorism and child abuse.

Offsite Article: Theresa May wants to see your internet history, so we thought it was only fair to ask for hers

26th December 2015. See  article from independent.co.uk

The Independent requested the Home Secretary's work browsing history for the last week of October under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Home Office has refused to make Theresa May's internet browsing history public under freedom of information rules, arguing that a request to do so is vexatious .

... Read the full article from independent.co.uk

Teenagers under the age of 16 could be banned from Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and email if they don't have parental permission, under ludicrous last-minute changes to EU laws.

The European Union is on the verge of pushing through new censorship laws that would raise the age of consent for websites to use personal data from 13 to 16.

It would mean that millions of teenagers under 16 would be forced to seek permission from parents whenever signing up to a social media account, downloading an app or even using search engines. No doubt this will either lead to a ludicrously expensive rubber stamping exercise that won't get taken seriously or otherwise kids will be forced to lie about their age. Inevitable tantrums and family tensions will surely do more harm than good.

The law, due to be negotiated between member states on Tuesday, would cause a major headache for social media companies. Almost all major social media services, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Google, currently have a minimum age of 13, in compliance with European and American laws.

Once laws are agreed, they are due to be voted on by the European parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee on Thursday before being ratified by the parliament itself in the New Year. Countries would then have two years to implement the law. Failing to comply with the new legislation would mean fines of up to 4pc of a company's turnover - tens of millions of pounds for the biggest internet firms.

Update: Dropped

16th December 2015. See  article from dailymail.co.uk

The EU has dropped its ridiculous idea to require 15 year olds to get parental permission before being allowed to access social media.

The EU lawmakers were bombarded with criticism of the incompetent idea.

Anti-bullying charity The Diana Award last night criticised the move. In a letter to MEPs, the charity wrote:

Children aged 13 and above have long accessed online services; an artificial and sudden change to this threshold will likely result in many children between the ages of 13 and 15 lying about their ages in order to continue accessing online services -- rather than asking their parents to consent.

This development would make it far more difficult for online services to offer children age-appropriate guidance and tools to ensure a safe and privacy-protective experience online.

Update: Not quite dropped

23rd December 2015. See  article from phys.org

It seems that the ludicrous EU idea for 15 year olds to get parental permission to join Facebook etc was not quite dropped as previously reported.

In fact negotiations ultimately maintained the concept of  16 as a digital age of consent, but allows member states to opt-out from the requirement to raise the digital age of consent from 13 to 16. Of course this now has potential to cause confusion due to the way the internet functions across borders. Would a 15-year-old in one country find that his use of social media became illegal as he crossed the border into another?

Apple has called for changes to the UK government's investigatory powers bill, over fears it would weaken the security of personal data of millions of law-abiding citizens .

In a submission to the bill committee the company expressed major concerns and called for wholesale changes before the bill is passed. It siad:

We believe it would be wrong to weaken security for hundreds of millions of law-abiding customers so that it will also be weaker for the very few who pose a threat. In this rapidly evolving cyber-threat environment, companies should remain free to implement strong encryption to protect customers

Apple highlighted the main areas of the bill that it wants to see changed. It told the committee that passages in the bill could give the government the power to demand Apple alters the way its messaging service, iMessage, works. The company said this would weaken encryption and enable the security services to eavesdrop on iMessage for the first time. In its submission, Apple said:

The creation of backdoors and intercept capabilities would weaken the protections built into Apple products and endanger all our customers. A key left under the doormat would not just be there for the good guys. The bad guys would find it too.

Apple said it was worried about the scope of the bill as many of the provisions in the bill apply to companies regardless of where they are based, giving the bill international scope, despite being a purely domestic piece of legislation. It also runs the risk of placing companies in a damned if they do, damned if they don't position. The company said:

Those businesses affected will have to cope with a set of overlapping foreign and domestic laws. When these laws inevitably conflict, the businesses will be left having to arbitrate between them, knowing that in doing so they might risk sanctions. That is an unreasonable position to be placed in.

An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years after posting a photo-shopped image of the country's president Abdel Fattah El Sisi with an inane grin and  Mickey Mouse ears on Facebook.

Amr Nohan, a law graduate, was serving as a military conscript when he was tried by a military court for sharing satirical posts on social media sites.

He was sentenced to three years behind bars for posting pictures and other anti-establishment messages which were considered inappropriate for a member of the armed forces. These included including trivial insults such as: Down with Sisi , Morsi and Mubarak , which was branded an insult to national figures .

The victim's brother told IBTimes:

We are truly in a Mickey Mouse state. Satire is a way for any people that have a mind of their own to express themselves, be that in a democratic country or not.

An Ofcom report on Internet Safety Measures provides an update on the steps taken by the UK's four largest fixed-line internet service providers (ISPs) - BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media - to offer an unavoidable choice, both to new and to existing customers, whether or not to activate a family-friendly network-level filtering service. This followed an agreement between the Government and the ISPs, under which the ISPs committed to present the unavoidable choice to all new and existing internet customers by the end of December 2014.

The Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) asked Ofcom to report on internet filters and online safety, including the measures put in place by the ISPs. This fourth report focuses on recent research, the progress made by the ISPs, and other developments during the past year.

Perhaps the most interesting stats in the report are the takeup of the ISP's web blocking systems. A decision on whether on not to turn on the blocking was made mandatory for all users in 2015.

	BT	Sky	TalkTalk	Virgin
% Existing customers opting for blocking	5	62	5	11
% New customers opting for blocking	8	6	33	24
% All customers opting for blocking	6	30-40	14	12

The 62% of existing customers for Sky who have apparently accepted website blocking seems a little strange given that all ISPs have prompted all users to make a choice.

The subtle difference is that Sky went a little further and turned the blocking on for all subscribers who did not respond, whereas the others set their systems to require a selection whenever there was an attempt to use the system, but did not turn it on fro none responders. The inference is that the discrepancy is explained by a large amount of Sky subscribers that never use their broadband have been included in the 62% figure. Presumably the broadband is offered in packages with Sky TV when perhaps a significant number of customers don't use the service for browsing the internet.

Assuming that is the case then perhaps the 6% for new customers is a better estimate of Sky users who have turned on blocking. As a rough estimate, incorrectly assuming all ISPs are similar sized, the average uptake of network level website blocking is 10%.

China's chief internet censor has ludicrously claimed that the country's oppressive censorship of th einternet is merely 'management' of the internet.

The comments by Lu Wei, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, came ahead of next week's state-sponsored World Internet Conference in the town of Wuzhen.  Lu claimed that China does not censor but manages Internet content, the Hong Kong Free Press reports:

Lu said: It is a misuse of words if you say 'content censorship. But no censorship does not mean there is no management. The Chinese government learnt how to manage the internet from Western developed countries, we have not learnt enough yet.

During the briefing, Lu defended the blocking of some websites and censoring of online posts, according to Reuters . He said that if the Chinese government were being too restrictive with the Internet, China's online market would not be experiencing such rapid growth.

Google's chairman Eric Schmidt has said that technology companies should work on tools to disrupt terrorism - such as creating a hate speech spell-checker . Writing in the New York Times, Schmidt said using technology to automatically filter-out extremist material would de-escalate tensions on social media and remove videos before they spread .

In the wake of the Paris attacks, companies and governments have clashed over how to handle the terrorism threat. Many tech firms, buoyed by the fallout from the Edward Snowden leaks, have stood firm on encryption - with the likes of Apple and others making it near-impossible to access a locked smartphone without the password, a move that has frustrated some politicians.

So Schmidt's editorial appears to be an attempt to ease these tensions and show a willingness from technology companies to help. Schmidt wrote:

As with all great advances in technology, expanded Web access has also brought with it some serious challenges, like threats to free speech, qualms about surveillance and fears of online terrorist activity.

For all the good people can do with new tools and new inventions, there are always some who will seek to do harm. Ever since there's been fire, there's been arson.

We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media - sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment. We should target social accounts for terrorist groups like the Islamic State, and remove videos before they spread, or help those countering terrorist messages to find their voice.

Without this type of leadership from government, from citizens, from tech companies, the Internet could become a vehicle for further disaggregation of poorly built societies, and the empowerment of the wrong people, and the wrong voices.

And of course there will plenty of interest from many others seeking to censor, for many other reasons less laudable than trying to prevent terrorism.

The French government is looking towards some of the powers enabled by the current state of emergency and is proposing several ideas to increase state surveillance, including blocks on encrypted Internet connections and a ban on public Wi-Fi networks.

According to the newspaper, Le Monde, the extension of the state of emergency could also stretch to requiring all rental cars to carry GPS, expansion of public video surveillance, two-year telecommunications data retention, and approval for police to use IMSI-catchers (like the Stingray devices used in America to intercept mobile communications).

French news site Numerama.com adds that the matters under debate also include forced provision of messaging encryption keys. The proposals could be up for enacting in law as soon as January, Numerama says.

The proposals stretch beyond shutting off the Wi-Fi at Parisian cafes to banning shared connections with criminal sanctions as enforcement. It would seem that the French authorities want to be better able to correlate individuals with their internet communications by making sure that knowledge of an IP address ties down the communication to known and identified individual.

The proposals also indicate a desire to snoop on VoIP conversations, again with encryption keys to be given to the police.

Australian Senators Bullock, Lindgren and Madigan have obtained agreement to a motion calling for the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee to report on Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet. The report is due in December 2016.

The motion submitted and passed reads:

(1) That the Senate notes that:

• (a) in today's culture, children's use of smart phones, tablets and computers has increased markedly;
• (b) online pornography is easily accessed, and a growing number of children are viewing it at an early age;
• (c) recent studies have shown that exposure to pornography has measurable negative effects on brain development and behavioural outcomes;
• (d) online pornography is increasingly violent in its content, particularly against women, and exposure correlates with children's acceptance of violent attitudes and beliefs;
• (e) violence against women is often linked back to early and repeated exposure to pornography;
• (f) violence towards, and abuse of, children is often linked to early and repeated exposure to pornography;
• (g) children increasingly access the Internet outside their home environment; and
• (h) previous inquiries in Australia have not adequately addressed the question of children's (those under 18 years-of-age) exposure to online pornography and the harm caused because of that access.

(2) That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by the first sitting day in December 2016:

Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet, with particular reference to:

• (a) trends of online consumption of pornography by children and their impact on the development of healthy and respectful relationships;
• (b) current methods taken towards harm minimisation in other jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of those methods;
• (c) the identification of any measures with the potential for implementation in Australia; and
• (d) any other related matters.