If state reads your e-mail, do it acceptably

Ronald J. Deibert is the director of The Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab’s mission is to undertake advanced research and engage in development that monitors, analyses, and impacts the exercise of political power in cyberspace.
Deibert is a co-founder and one of the principal investigators of the OpenNet Initiative, a project of the Citizen Lab in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, The SecDev Group, and the Oxford Internet Institute, which documents patterns of Internet censorship worldwide. He is also a founder and principal investigator of the Infowar Monitor Project — a project with the The SecDev Group — whose aim is to monitor cyberspace as a domain of geopolitical contestation.
LAKBIMAnEWS interviewed Dr. Deibert on the issue of Internet monitoring and censorship.

How would a person know that the content he disseminates through the Internet is being monitored by the state?

Generally speaking, documenting Internet surveillance is difficult and cannot be accomplished by technical means unless there is an error in the operation in some manner. I would point you to two recent reports of ours — The Tom Skype report and the Tracking Ghostnet report — both of which documented espionage and surveillance networks of different types. In both cases, errors on the part of the administrators managing the system allowed us to uncover the systems. However, if the surveillance is set up properly, technical measures on their own will reveal little or nothing.

How is monitoring done?

Most surveillance systems operate today in collusion with the companies that operate the equipment and technology. Private companies own and operate most of what we call cyberspace. Governments who are engaged in surveillance require their cooperation. Most often this cooperation is achieved through lawful access provisions or data retention acts of some sort. In many countries, private companies are pressed into the job of surveillance on behalf of states.

How can governments track Internet activity?

Governments can intercept data at any point of the Internet network — from the machine to the router to the Internet Service Provider to the Internet Exchange Point to the international gateway to the undersea cable to the satellite. Information travels through a complex physical infrastructure and surveillance is most often achieved through access points on that physical infrastructure.

What are the dangers to democracy of Internet censorship?

It is a violation of some basic rights — such as freedom of expression and access to information — which are essential to modern democracy. If you do not know what is being denied to you, you do not know that the information is there at all.

Don’t state have the right to shut down Internet sites or pounce on people disseminating information they feel is defamatory, untrue or ‘damaging’?

Governments can do whatever their citizens allow them to do, and ‘rights’ in this context are always defined in relational terms. Speaking personally, I am in favour of an open, unfettered Internet except in very rare circumstances. Any government intervention into the global communications space must be done in a transparent, accountable fashion with proper judicial and civic oversight. In many countries, that is not the case.

Can you intercept emails sent via Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and so on even though these accounts are password protected?

Yes. An exception would be those transactions which are encrypted — which make the job of interception more difficult.

Of what use are passwords, then?

Passwords protect people from entering your accounts. Not everyone is able to intercept communications traffic as described above, so it is still a very important security precaution that most people do not take seriously.

What is the protection citizens can use against Internet censorship or monitoring?

Awareness, accountability, and oversight in public policy; safe technological choices when surfing.

How does internet censorship reflect on a state?

It depends on how it is done. If it is done in an open, transparent, accountable and public fashion, then there is not much one can say about the process as it is then a reflection of the citizens’ desires. Most countries engage in Internet censorship in deceitful ways, however, and that is the nature of the problem.

So you think that if a state undertakes monitoring, it should first layout the ground rules?

It should be open, transparent and accountable — to the public. In other words, surveillance requires strict constitutionally defined limits, court orders and other mechanisms of judicial oversight, and parliamentary access to information on practices.