Spanish-language cartoon Tiranía (Tyranny). Superstition sits on the throne, advised by a priest and a devil by Claudio Linati, 1826. Wikicommons. Public domain.

Xnet (https://xnet-x.net/en/), an activist group working for civil rights in the Internet, is the founder member in Spain of the #SaveYourInternet coalition, which has among its participants groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), European Digital Rights (EDRi) and others. We have come together to organise a campaign to inform the public about the hidden dangers of the new European Copyright Directive.

With the approval in the European Parliament of the final text of the Copyright Directive, which will be definitely put to the vote in a very few months’, the European Union has lost a historic opportunity to produce copyright legislation adapted for the Internet in the twenty-first century. What the European Parliament will finally vote on is a technophobic text, tailor-made for the interests of the copyright monopolies which, moreover, doesn’t guarantee the right of authors to have a reasonable standard of living as a result of their work.

If the law is eventually passed, it will be used for wholesale curtailment of freedoms and more censorship, in keeping with the bizarre idea that anything that doesn’t produce hard cash for the major players – which doesn’t mean authors! – has to be prohibited and eliminated.The amount of money the real authors receive in the end is zero or almost zero.

This is a tragedy for workers in the domain of culture who (with a few, brave, and praiseworthy exceptions) have once again been frivolously incapable of informing themselves about the real state of affairs. They have passively swallowed the version fed to them by their masters and, avidly playing the victim, have become the chief mouthpiece of freedom-killing propaganda without the slightest understanding that this is not going to enhance their rights but will do away with the rights of everyone.

Alarm bells started ringing almost two years ago when we discovered that, rather than being a proposal for an obsolete copyright law, the directive is being used as a Trojan horse to introduce surveillance, automatic data processing, government by opaque algorithms, and censorship without court orders, etc.

This threat to such basic rights as freedom of expression and access to culture and information lurks in ruses which are mainly hidden in two articles of the Directive:

Article 11: no link without a licence

Article 11, otherwise known as the “Linktax” article, has created a new economic “right” for magnates of the written press. This ‘right’, moreover, implies indefinitely restricting the possibility of citing the press online.

If this seems absurd, arbitrary and counterproductive, we invite you to read the proposal itself. This is an ambiguous text, described by the jurist Andrej Savin as “One of the worst texts I have ever seen in my 23-year-long career as a law scholar.” Given its muzzy formulation, the safest response for any platform will be not to link to any media publication without explicit permission.“One of the worst texts I have ever seen in my 23-year-long career as a law scholar.”

This perverse measure will be the equivalent, on a European scale, to the “Google tax”, which is already in force in Spain and Germany. Even its promoters were soon to regret it, when Google shut down Google News in Spain after it was approved. The Google tax is paradoxical and those responsible for initiating it know very well it won’t work in Europe. For example, Xnet revealed that the big German publishing company Alex Springer was paying itself – having linked up to pay itself – in an outlandish pretence that “everything’s fine”.

Where are they trying to go with this? What sense is there in this move by the press barons to push laws which prevent you from linking up to their content, disseminating it, and commenting on them? Is this just a mix of ignorance and greed, or something like shooting yourself in the foot?

There is certainly something of this involved, but we believe that this is a mix of ignorance and greed which, in the end, means cutting off your nose to spite your face (when you’re trying to damage someone else’s face). With laws like this, the press barons can engage in legal harassment to the point of closing down social aggregators and communities like Meneame or Reddit, eliminating any new competitor, consolidating their monopoly, and thus becoming the lone voice on the Internet, the only ones who speak. In short, they are aspiring to become a new kind of television.

Article 13: no uploading content without a licence

Platforms – from medium-sized providers of services storing subject material through to the giants of the Internet – will be considered responsible for any copyright infringement committed by their users, and they are bulldozed into taking preventive measures. In other words, this isn’t a matter of eliminating content but directly preventing people from uploading it.

Of course, nobody is forcing them to do anything. They are simply being made responsible for material uploaded by their users. It’s like a car salesman being held responsible for crimes committed by people who buy his cars. This can only end up with algorithmic upload filters being applied to absolutely everything or, in other words, prior, automatic, and massive Internet censorship.This can only end up with algorithmic upload filters being applied to absolutely everything or, in other words, prior, automatic, and massive Internet censorship.

Recently, YouTube prevented the pianist James Rhodes from uploading one of his own videos in which he is playing Bach. This kind of “error”, which always favours privatisation of the public domain, is the everyday reality for all authors who use YouTube.

And this isn’t just about the “errors” that lead to the privatisation of the public domain. It is about the difficulty or impossibility of uploading on the Internet any kind of derivative work: parodies, memes, remixes, fandom, satires, and so on or, in other words, the very essence of culture, political freedom and freedom of expression.

Repeating the medieval experience of the invention of the printing press

This whole setup, which looks like a science-fiction dystopia, an impossible attempt to lock the doors when the horse has bolted, or an exaggeratedly grim prophecy being spread by concerned activists, is already being implemented today on big platforms.

At present, there are two options:

The Spotify model

 In this case, the platform would acquire all national and international licences and then make all contents available unidirectionally in such a way that users can’t upload content. Even so, in the case of Spotify, one of the few giants with the resources to do this today, paying the copyright monopolies has raised its overheads so much that, despite its commercial success, its medium-term sustainability isn’t guaranteed. If this is the situation of Spotify, it’s not difficult to imagine what will happen to medium-sized Internet companies.

This model has another defect which is obvious to most artists. The amount of money the real authors receive in the end is zero or almost zero.

The Facebook/Google model

These new Internet monopolies refuse to share the cake with the old copyright monopolies and therefore opt for large-scale, automatic filtering of all content. They will find it easier to adapt to Article 13 since now they will only need to apply the filtering mechanisms before uploading takes place.

This technology, besides being opaque and exclusive, is very expensive. Since it will be obligatory, it will also mean that these giants are very unlikely to have competitors that have any chance of prospering.

Google has spent approximately 100 million dollars to create the technology that has so far enabled it to respond to copyright claims coming in from only 1% of its users.

The effect which these arbitrary regulations will have on free Internet conversation, on diffusion of culture and information, and access to them will be devastating.

Whose rights are at stake?

Authors’ rights (Droits des auteurs→ copyright) are important. But what are these rights? And which authors have them?

Any democratic proposal seeking widespread consensus and aspiring to guarantee the decent employment of authors without jeopardising the basic rights of citizens would need, finally, to take a bold stand against the copyright monopolies and management entities which are suspected of abuse when not directly investigated, tried, and condemned, as we succeeding in doing with SGAE (the Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers).

It should also take as given the fact that the concept of the author or medium has changed in the last twenty years. Since the earliest days of Web 2.0, the content generated by users has evolved from being an interesting social experiment to the digital reality in which we are immersed day in day out.

In a society like that of Spain, for example, content generated by entities which were once “big” media now account for less than 5% of Internet traffic. The EU must respect citizens as content generators and not regard them simply as people who steal content generated by the elite.The EU must respect citizens as content generators and not regard them simply as people who steal content generated by the elite.

No single company, medium, or author has written Wikipedia, or turned the Web into the repository of gazillions of videos, or generated hundreds of millions of tweets per day. We – the people – did this. The Internet doesn’t belong to them.

The threats skulking behind the Copyright Directive are part of an attempt to stuff the genie back into the bottle and embark on an inquisition that would allow the oligarchs to take control of the Internet. Our politicians and big company bosses are envious of the Chinese model.

Open architecture

The initial idea of the fathers and mothers of the World Wide Web and the Internet, as we know it, this idea of an open architecture for sharing links without restriction, was crucial to its success. And it would be radically undermined if the directive is approved.

Now the EU wants to create an Internet with a licence. And since we are a civilised society, they can’t call it censorship so they say “copyright”.

In the final vote, all the power and wealth will be on one side. We, the people, who are on the other side ­– in favour of freedom of expression, an open Internet, and copyright laws adapted to the twenty-first century, which will enable authors to make a decent living and not have to scrabble for crumbs dropped from the table of the Internet moguls ­ – will be vilified, slandered as thieves, hackers and pirates, and absurd allegations will be made against us.

This situation has happened before. And what it most clearly evokes is the relationship between the invention of the printing press and the censorship of the Holy Inquisition.

Inscribed in pen and ink. “Spanish Inquisition” by Thomas Rowlandson (1756 – 1827). Wikicommons/ Google Cultural Institute. Some rights reserved.

What is the responsibility of artists and (left) political parties?

The vote has not yet been cast. We have a few months to get everyone to understand the magnitude of the danger. We can win this battle. We have already won in extremis in other situations like the fight for net neutrality and ACTA, and we can do it again.

What would help:

• –  Artists who will step forward and say, “NOT in my name”.

• –  A clear, effective, and non-opportunist stance from the left in favour of an open Internet and freedom of expression.

The left instead tends all too often to cultivate a technophobic position which contributes towards censoring narratives. The case of Spain is paradigmatic. The PP (right-wing party) and PSOE (“socialist” party) voted and will vote in block for whatever the Copyright Monopolies and the SGAE tells them to vote for, which is to say what most favours control and censorship.

But the example of the left-wing electoral alliance Unidos Podemos is also instructive. They joined the SaveYourInternet campaign at the last moment in order to coopt these citizen-activists. The next day, one Anova and two Izquierda Unida members of parliament abstained from voting and nobody in either party as much as batted an eyelid. It would seem that none of our politicians take these basic rights very seriously.

We citizens who are active in battling for civil rights on the Internet will meet our obligation and fight the good fight. We’ll stop this attack on the Internet and democracy sooner or later, with or without the help of the “artists” or the “parliamentary left”, but not without bitterly calling attention to the dangerous future that is looming for freedom of expression and information, and our other freedoms in the new context of the digital age in which, again and again, the tool is being destroyed and the messenger killed in order to preserve a status quo that must not continue.

Heretics brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition, Seville by F.Moyse, 1870. Wikicommons. Public domain.

Photo by Madame Etepetete

The post The EU call it copyright, but it is massive Internet censorship and must be stopped appeared first on P2P Foundation.

# COPYRIGHT AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION

– Directive of the European Union on Copyright in the Digital Single Market

– “Canon Digital” Private Copy Levy in the Spanish State

– Copyright exceptions and limitations in Spain

# FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF LEAKERS / ALERTERS / WHISTLEBLOWERS

– Anticorruption whistleblowing platforms

– Whislteblowers protection legilslation: Catalonia / Spain / Europe

# NET NEUTRALITY

– Application of the new rules of net neutrality in the Spanish State

# PRIVACY VERSUS MASS SURVEILLANCE ON THE INTERNET

– Nullity of the Spanish Data Conservation law

– Transparency in secret international intelligence exchange

– Alarm on the new platform Aura presented by Telefónica

– Protection of Strong Encryption

# BASIC HOW-TO GUIDE FOR PRESERVING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS ON THE INTERNET

– Guide with tips and tools addressed to activists, journalists and citizens whose fundamental freedoms and rights on the Internet

# PUBLIC MONEY? PUBLIC CODE!

– Publicly financed software developed for the public sector must be publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence.

Contents:

# COPYRIGHT AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION

Directive of the European Union on Copyright in the Digital Single Market


The European Union is presently carrying out reforms to authors’ rights with the aim of situating the big Internet companies as police and judges of the Web, thus turning it into a massive censoring machine.

In particular Article 13 and items 37-39 under the heading “Whereas” require of websites, online platforms and services the development of programming to allow massive systematic monitoring of content uploaded by users and eliminating any material which might include content “identified” by copyright holders.

This automatic filtering, which is not done on the basis of what is legal or illegal, but what is indicated by copyright holders would, at the stroke of a pen, eliminate all the existing exceptions to copyright: the right to cite, to parody, educational purposes, public interest, et cetera, and other forms of totally legal freedom of expression, which an automatic system of censorship would be unable to evaluate as legal and free forms of use of content subject to authors’ rights.

The resistance of cultural industries to adapt to the new digital ecosystem, results in their being pressured by disproportionate ad hoc laws like this attempt at automatic filtering which would crush innovative, creative and inventive potential in the economic cycle of the networked society.

In a setting where the line separating creators of culture from consumers is increasingly blurry, the future of cultural development depends on making the most of new forms of creating and sharing culture, information and knowledge in order to construct a “non-monopolised” economy.

In order to show the dangers of this censorship machine which would mean the end of most GIFs, memes, video reviews, parodies, covers, tutorials, gameplays and many other everyday contents one finds on the Internet, Xnet has produced this viral video which should be used by everyone, everywhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAcTeYtUzQY

Information and educational materials are prepared and shared, together with tools for citizen action to defend our rights and freedoms from this dangerous proposal:

https://xnet-x.net/stop-censorchip-machine-ley-copyright/
https://xnet-x.net/derechos-fundamentales-amenazados-filtrado-contenidos-copyright/
https://xnet-x.net/impide-filtrado-contenidos-por-copyright-en-europa/
https://xnet-x.net/5-razones-filtrado-de-contenido-economicamente-malo/
https://xnet-x.net/operacion-circular-avalar-canon-aede-tasa-google/
https://xnet-x.net/copyright-ue-carta-libertades-civiles-justicia-asuntos-de-interior-libe/
https://xnet-x.net/monitoreo-filtrado-contenido-inceptable-articulo13-copyright-ue/
https://xnet-x.net/gobierno-pp-censura-automatizada-copyright/
https://xnet-x.net/espana-lidera-consejo-ue-amenaza-libertades-internet-censorshipmachine/

Press:
http://www.publico.es/actualidad/ue-busca-blindar-negocio-copyright.html
http://www.infolibre.es/noticias/mundo/2017/03/07/una_nueva_campana_carga_contra_reforma_ley_copyright_ue_62158_1022.html
http://www.europapress.es/portaltic/internet/noticia-nueva-campana-carga-contra-reforma-ley-copyright-ue-lema-memes-no-hay-democracia-20170307092947.html
http://www.eleconomista.es/tecnologia/noticias/8203145/03/17/Una-nueva-campana-carga-contra-la-reforma-de-la-ley-de-copyright-de-la-UE-bajo-el-lema-Sin-memes-no-hay-democracia.html
http://www.expansion.com/agencia/europa_press/2017/03/07/20170307092944.html
http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/internet/2017/03/07/legales-memes/00031488878915777944341.htm
http://www.elboletin.com/tecnologia/146520/campana-evitar-copyright-ue-maquina-censura.html
http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/03/24/inenglish/1490362000_295766.html
http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2017/03/08/actualidad/1488995404_382434.html
http://www.publico.es/sociedad/tasa-google-industria-editorial-paga-validar-canon-aede.html
https://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/los-editores-se-pagan-la-tasa-google-a-si-mismos-para-legitimar-el-canon-aedehttp://www.elboletin.com/noticia/150976/tecnologia/denuncian-que-los-editores-se-pagan-a-si-mismos-la-tasa-google-para-validar-el-canon-aede.html
http://www.media-tics.com/noticia/7569/medios-de-comunicacion/axel-springer-aplica-la-tasa-google-a-su-propio-agregador.html
http://www.publico.es/politica/copyright-rajoy-presiona-ue-crear-maquina-censura-internet-acabar-memes.html
https://www.infolibre.es/noticias/politica/2017/10/26/presiones_espana_francia_portugal_censura_automatizada_copyright_71139_1012.html
http://www.elboletin.com/noticia/155110/tecnologia/desvelan-las-presiones-del-gobierno-en-favor-de-una-mayor-censura-en-la-reforma-europea-del-copyright.htmlhttp://arainfo.org/el-partido-popular-presiona-en-la-ue-en-favor-de-la-censura-automatizada-de-contenido-en-internet/

“Canon Digital” Private Copy Levy in the Spanish State

The Spanish government approves again an absurd and anachronistic private copy levy; a measure for collection purposes that applies to private copying, an exception to copyright, a right that had already been virtually nonexistent since the last reform of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law.

The new private copy levy contradicts again the TJUE ruling – the Padawan case http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/03/03/navegante/1299148747.html – The ruling said that business use must be exempt. The “new” private copy levy contradicts this ruling by making the classic pirouette of changing the burden of proof. It is up to you the customer to prove the use you make and not for the one who collect the levy to show the reason why it charges it… no matter the use, it charges everyone by default.

https://xnet-x.net/aprobado-nuevo-canon-digital-2017/

Copyright exceptions to and limitations in Spain

Present-day context in Spain of implemented and yet to be implemented exceptions to and limitations of authors’ rights. Comparison with the situation in other countries of the European Union.
– With regard to copyright reform in the European Union it is necessary to strive to ensure that all the legal uses of content coming under authors’ rights do not disappear into the sphere of automatic algorithms.
– In the national context it is necessary to bear in mind the exceptions present in other countries that are absent in Spain, and to exert political pressure for their implementation.
https://xnet-x.net/excepciones-limitaciones-derechos-de-autor/

# FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF LEAKERS / ALERTERS / WHISTLEBLOWERS

Anticorruption whistleblowing platforms

Xnet launches in the Barcelona City Hall the first public Anti-Corruption Complaint Box using anonymity protection technology like Tor and GlobaLeaks (“Bústia Ètica” in Catalan). Xnet has always espoused the idea that democracy can only exist if institutions work together in equal conditions with aware, well-organised citizens. The Box aims to provide a way to make this kind of teamwork possible. Corruption can’t be eliminated by institutions scrutinising themselves. Civil society must play a central, continuous role.

With this pioneering project, the Barcelona City Hall is the first municipal government to invite citizens to use tools which enable them to send information in a way that is secure, that guarantees privacy and gives citizens the option to be totally anonymous.

https://xnet-x.net/en/whistleblowing-platform-barcelona-city-council/

Link to Barcelona City Hall’s Anti-Corruption Complaint Box:
https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/bustiaetica/es (Spanish)

Press:
https://boingboing.net/2017/01/19/barcelona-government-officiall.html
https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/xnet/whistleblowing-platform-against-corruption-for-city-council-of-barcelona
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/01/24/la-mairie-de-barcelone-tend-les-bras-aux-lanceurs-d-alerte_5068211_3234.html
http://agencias.abc.es/agencias/noticia.asp?noticia=2420477
https://www.naciodigital.cat/noticia/123739/ciutadans/ja/poden/alertar/corrupcio/amb/bustia/etica/barcelona
http://www.elperiodico.com/es/extra/20170311/buzon-denuncia-casos-corrupcion-5884429

After the first launch in Barcelona, this anonymous whistleblower platform set by Xnet has been also replicated in the Antifraud Office of Catalunya and it is soon to be replicated in the government of Valencia as well.

Whislteblowers protection legilslation

In Catalonia

Xnet warns of the dangerous cosmetic operation lurking behind the “Proposició de llei de protecció dels denunciants i altres mesures de lluita contra la corrupció” (Draft Law on Whistleblower Protection and Other Measures for Combating Corruption) presented by the parliamentary group Ciutadans. The draft law is written in very general, poorly developed terms, and it lacks real, specific measures. Only seven pages long, it is clearly a law drafted in a hurry in order to occupy the political space of civic demands in this area. It does not include any of the basic demands of civil society or international organisations concerned about the issues.

https://xnet-x.net/ca/ridicula-proposicio-llei-proteccio-denunciants-corrupcio-catalunya/

Owing to its imprecise nature, the draft law presented in Catalonia does not cover the very serious threats to civil rights which exist in the equivalent law for Spain. Hence, after conversations with the political parties we have consulted—CUP, ERC, CSQP—we believe that, for the moment, the best alternative is to let the proceedings for the law go ahead but to denounce the gravity of its cosmetic nature and the fact that it denies legitimate status of the demands of civil society.

Xnet is working in coordination with members of the Catalan parliament to produce thoroughgoing amendments to this empty document and to transform it into an exemplary, pioneering piece of legislation in Europe.

Press:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170530/423045261444/erc-csqp-y-cup-denuncian-que-cs-se-apropie-de-la-lucha-contra-la-corrupcion.html
http://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/ampliacioerc-csqp-cup-i-xnet-titllen-doperacio-cosmetica-la-proposicio-de-llei-de-cs-per-protegir-denunciants-de-corrupcio/
http://www.ara.cat/politica/JxSi-CSQP-CUP-Xnet-Cs_0_1805219568.html
http://www.aldia.cat/espanya/noticia-activistes-dinternet-veuen-cosmetica-proposta-cs-denunciants-corrupcio-20170530121649.html
http://elmon.cat/noticia/203035/erc-csqp-cup-i-xnet-titllen-doperacio-cosmetica-la-proposicio-de-llei-de-cs-per-protegir-denunciants-de-corrupcio

In Spain

Concealed behind the attractive name “Proposición de Ley Integral de Lucha contra la Corrupción y Protección de los Denunciantes” (Comprehensive Law on the Struggle against Corruption and Protection of Whistleblowers) is a draft Whistleblowers Protection law which not only fails to protect whistleblowers but also works to the grave detriment of civil rights
Xnet embarked on a campaign to warn of the dangers of the draft law and this has now been picked up by other individuals and groups which had originally given it their blind support. See:

https://xnet-x.net/proposicion-ley-proteccion-denunciante-vuelve-la-stasi/

– It only envisages protection for civil servants (career workers in the public sector) while failing to protect people who denounce abuses against the public interest in the private sector or any other sphere that affects public interest, thus producing the absurd situation in which people involved in many of the currently relevant cases would be excluded from protection.
– It creates an independent Public Integrity Authority which: has the power to “engage in activities of investigation and inspection, for the purposes of which it will be able to accede to any information held by public or private natural or juridical persons”. WITHOUT A WARRANT.
– It is not subject to any disciplinary system or oversight and, lacking due supervision, it would have absolute power.
– It is financed by the “fines it dictates and the penalties it has the power to impose”.
– It does not contemplate the most important protection for a whistleblower, which is preserving anonymity. Any legislation passed without this option is at variance with United Nations reports and recommendations, current instructions from the prosecutor’s inquiry in Spain, and advanced legislation in this area presently being introduced around the world. Moreover, it is an excuse for opening files on whistleblowers, thus increasing their exposure and vulnerability.
– It requires a sufficient appearance of veracity which places the burden of responsibility on the whistleblower with an intimidating effect.
– It does not stipulate sufficient protection for whistleblowers who are faced with threats, legal prosecution and physical or professional reprisals.
– It uses the loaded term “denunciante” which has the negative historical connotations of “informer”, while also placing this legislation at a remove from that elsewhere in Europe where, for the past three centuries, a different term with positive connotations has been used, as is the case with “whistleblower” (which we translate as alertador in Spanish—literally, “person who sounds the alert”).

Xnet has been working on proposals for specific amendments to this dangerous draft law and has met with members of parliament from En comú, ERC, Marea, Compromís, EHBildu, and Podem in order to proceed with these amendments.
https://xnet-x.net/enmiendas-ley-contra-corrupcion-proteccion-denunciantes/

Press:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20170329/421289361196/activistas-de-internet-piden-al-congreso-ayuda-para-frenar-la-ley-contra-la-corrupcion-de-ciudadanos-por-liberticida.html
http://www.publico.es/politica/peligros-ocultos-ley-fachada-ciudadanos.html
http://ctxt.es/es/20170322/Politica/11819/Ley-corrupci%C3%B3n-proteccion-denunciantes-Ciudadanos-Xnet.htm
http://www.vozpopuli.com/la_tribuna_de_juan_pina/Stasi-Ciudadanos_7_1011568835.html
http://www.expansion.com/agencia/europa_press/2017/03/29/20170329143438.html
http://www.europapress.es/nacional/noticia-activistas-internet-piden-ayuda-congreso-frenar-ley-anticorrupcion-ciudadanos-liberticida-20170329143438.html

In Europe

Xnet took part in Brussels at the Roundtable on Whistleblower Protection in Europe, where it warned of the serious situation in Spain and the dangers of the draft law now in parliament, and presented its recommendations on the European scale. These have been included in the Public Consultation on Whistleblower Protection of the European Commission.


https://xnet-x.net/mesa-redonda-proteccion-alertadores-union-europea/
https://xnet-x.net/resolucion-parlamento-europeo-proteccion-alertadores/

Press:
https://elsaltodiario.com/libertad-informacion/ue-debate-proteccion-legal-filtradores
http://www.elboletin.com/noticia/155053/nacional/diferencias-en-la-lucha-contra-la-corrupcion:-bruselas-propone-admitir-las-denuncias-anonimas.html

# NET NEUTRALITY

Application of the new rules of net neutrality in the Spanish State

On 30 April 2016 the European Union’s new Regulation on net neutrality came into force. In Spain, the State Secretariat for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda of the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda (MinETAD in the Spanish acronym) is responsible for carrying out supervision measures to ensure that Internet providers comply with this regulation, and to take corrective measures in the event of non-compliance.

However, a year and a half after the Regulation came into force, we have received no news (and not for lack of trying) of any measure taken by the State Secretariat for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda with regard to net neutrality. In the entire MinETAD hardly anyone knows that the Regulation exists, let alone understands that there is an obligation to enforce it.

Since there is as yet no sign of proactive fulfilment by MinETAD of its obligations regarding net neutrality, Xnet publicly denounces this negligence and is studying the possibilities of addressing a complaint to higher European Union bodies. We did not struggle for and win the Save the Internet battle for net neutrality in Europe in order to be ignored here in Spain.

https://xnet-x.net/en/inaction-minetad-defend-net-neutrality/
https://xnet-x.net/en/zero-rating-offers-contrary-to-net-neutrality-in-spain/

Press:
http://www.elmundo.es/tecnologia/2017/07/04/595b7293468aeb6b368b467b.html
https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2017-07-03/vodafone-tarifas-datos-neutralidad-red_1408900/

# PRIVACY VERSUS MASS SURVEILLANCE ON THE INTERNET

Nullity of the Spanish Data Conservation law

Xnet requests to the Spanish Agency for Data Protection analysis and action on the invalidity of the Spanish Data Retention Law 25/2007.

On December 21, 2016, the TJUE ruled in its Tele2 case (accumulated cases “C-203/15 and C-698/15) that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits all Member States the adoption and application of laws that enable “the preventive, general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and the location of all registered users and subscribers of all electronic communications.”

Months after the ruling of the TJUE, the requirements of general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location of the Spanish Data Retention Law 25/2007 are still valid.

Xnet has presented these facts before the legal office of the Spanish Data Protection Agency, asking them to analyze and adopt the necessary measures at thier hands so that the legislative framework of the Span nullifies or corrects the Law of Conservation of Details of the Spanish State 25/2007, adapting it to the cited sentences and to respect the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union as ruled by the TJUE.

https://xnet-x.net/nulidad-ley-conservacion-datos/

Press:
http://arainfo.org/xnet-solicita-la-modificacion-de-la-ley-de-conservacion-de-datos-del-estado-espanol/
https://www.lamarea.com/2017/01/13/democracia-y-neutralidad-en-internet-derechos-pendientes/

Xnet also denounced that far from recapitulating with respect to the disproportionate data retention data Law 25/2007, the Spanish Government goes further and now pressures the European institutions to increase the data retention within the ePrivacy Regulations, ignoring, once again, the sentences of the CJEU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

https://xnet-x.net/gobierno-espana-retencion-datos-eprivacy/

Transparency in secret international intelligence exchange

Xnet launches with Privacy International, and 30 other organizations, an international campaign for greater transparency in secret international intelligence exchange activities. We have written to the national intelligence oversight bodies in more than 40 countries demanding information about the intelligence exchange activities of their governments.

In Spain, we have sent the letter to the Interior Commission of the Congress of Deputies, the Commission of Interior of the Senate and the Ombudsman.

Countries can use secret intelligence exchange agreements to circumvent international and national rules on massive surveillance. These agreements can also lead to the exchange of information that facilitates violations of human rights, particularly in countries with poor human rights records or with a weak rule of law.

https://xnet-x.net/carta-abierta-supervision-intercambio-inteligencia/

Alarm on the new platform Aura presented by Telefónica

Xnet sounded the alarm on the new platform Aura presented by Telefónica. With Aura, Telefónica will begin to process our data which it has in vast quantities as a telecommunications services provider, and to create profiles in order to take advantage of users to do business.

Telefónica itself says that all these data are ours because we can access them and consult them and this is positive. However, and in accordance with the data protection law, we should also be able to require that these data are not processed without our consent.

As a company, Telefónica retains data of a person’s bills, messages and phone calls (how many and to which numbers), payments, and so on. It also has data concerning the antenna to which one is connected when browsing with a mobile phone (ergo geolocation), how many and which devices are connected to one’s router, which websites and services one visits and for how long.

https://xnet-x.net/aura-telefonica-procesa-negocia-tus-datos/
https://edri.org/is-telefonica-offering-real-transparency-and-control/

Press:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20170227/42356858301/colectivo-xnet-critica-que-con-aura-telefonica-negocia-con-datos-de-clientes.html
http://www.finanzas.com/noticias/empresas/20170227/colectivo-xnet-critica-aura-3575038.html
http://arainfo.org/nace-aura-la-empresa-del-grupo-telefonica-que-procesa-y-negocia-con-tus-datos/

Protection of Strong Encryption

Xnet, together with other European organizations in campaign for the defense of privacy and digital rights within the ePrivacy Regulation, welcomes the result of the vote of the LIBE committee (leader of the dossier) resulting in improvements that demand privacy by default, and protect strong encryption (forbidding backdoors or for governments to demand their weakening).

https://xnet-x.net/eprivacy-libe-voto/
https://xnet-x.net/reglamento-eprivacy-lookwhosstalking/

# BASIC HOW-TO GUIDE FOR PRESERVING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS ON THE INTERNET

During the catalan crisis, Xnet has prepared this technical guide with tips and tools addressed to activists, journalists and citizens whose fundamental freedoms and rights on the Internet are being restricted by state powers or authoritarian governments.

Everything explained in this guide is to protect the inviolability of our communications, our right to privacy and freedom of political opinion, expression and access to information, all of them fundamental rights that have been legally recognized for centuries.

It is important that legal doctrines that blame the tools for the crimes are not established. The tools are neutral. Making use of a particular tool can never be a crime in itself. It is only the use that is made of them that can be considered criminal.

In the post-Snowden revelation era, many institutions, including the UN and the EU, remember that the only way that people have to protect themselves from mass surveillance is through the use of autonomous tools to protect our communications.

https://xnet-x.net/en/how-to-guide-for-preserving-fundamental-rights-internet/

Press:
https://boingboing.net/2017/10/02/pwnage-to-catalonia.html
https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/xnet/repression-and-digital-resistance-in-catalanreferendum
https://www.naciodigital.cat/noticia/139119/publiquen/guia/eines/digitals/protegir/privacitat/mobils/ordinadors
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/una-guia-breu-per-a-preservar-els-nostres-drets-a-internet/

# PUBLIC MONEY? PUBLIC CODE!

Xnet, together with the Free Software Foundation Europe and other 31 organizations, published on September 31, 2017 an open letter asking our lawmakers to enact legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence.

Digital services offered and used by our public administrations are the critical infrastructure of 21st century democratic nations. In order to establish trustworthy systems, public bodies must ensure they have full control over the software and the computer systems at the core of our state digital infrastructure. We need software that guarantees freedom of choice, access, and competition. We need software that helps public administrations regain full control of their critical digital infrastructure, allowing them to become and remain independent from a handful of companies.

https://xnet-x.net/dinero-publico-codigo-publico/

Press:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20170913/431262292479/31-colectivos-reclaman-una-legislacion-que-obligue-a-las-instituciones-publicas-a-utilizar-software-de-codigo-abierto.html
http://www.cuatro.com/noticias/tecnologia/colectivos-reclaman-legislacion-instituciones-publicas_0_2434950641.html
http://www.eleconomista.es/tecnologia/noticias/8605372/09/17/31-colectivos-reclaman-una-legislacion-que-obligue-a-las-instituciones-publicas-a-utilizar-software-de-codigo-abierto.html

The post Summary of Xnet’s work defending Digital Rights in 2017 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The battle presently being fought in the streets and polling stations in towns and cities throughout Catalonia before, during and after October 1, in which a diverse civil society has come together in huge numbers, putting their bodies and knowledge in the service of the shared goal of defending what is considered to be real democracy, has also had a crucial battleground in the case of the Internet.

September 7, 2017

On September 7, 2017, the Constitutional Court suspends the law of the referendum in Catalonia. Thenceforth, the Spanish government embarked on legal, police, and administrative persecution of any “device or instrument that is to be used for preparing or holding the referendum”, including ballot boxes and papers which were now criminal objects. Websites, apps and tools related with the referendum were closed on the Internet.

Independently of whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision of the Spanish courts to ban the referendum, the closing of many regular Internet spaces can be viewed, in a great number of cases, as a grave violation of freedom of expression —and especially freedom of political opinion— which is protected in international treaties and by Article 11 of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights on “Freedom of expression and information”. While some websites, apps and domains belong to the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia and were tools directly linked with organizing the referendum, many others were of private individuals or associations, and basically reflect political opinions. It is clear that one thing —arguable or not— is banning a referendum and quite another is blocking, while they were at it, the right to express one’s political opinion that the referendum should be held.

In the last few days, Catalonia has been the testing ground of what we have always denounced or, in other words, the fact that the space of the Internet has yet again been subjected to a state of exception which “democratic” governments wouldn’t dare to apply to physical space because this violation of rights would immediately be visible. Proof of this is that many of the shut-down websites belong to associations with physical premises but no authority has risked ordering that these centers should be closed.

Internet access is essential for the exercise of our freedoms and should be considered in itself a fundamental right [#KeepItOn].

If we let the space of the Internet become the first casualty in the curtailment of basic rights, we can be sure that the next step will be to limit those rights in other spaces as well.

September 13, 2017

On September 13 a court order shut down the web page referendum.cat. Thus began a game of cat-and-mouse between the Spanish government (with its state repression) and the Catalan government.

Some citizens published the referendum web code in Github. After this, clones of the website began to appear, created by volunteer citizens in domains with names like piolin.cat (where piolin refers to Tweetie Pie, painted on the boat accommodating Spanish police), referendum.ninja o marianorajoy.cat, while alternative sites were also made available by the Generalitat itself. The police operation continues with domains being shut down and access blocked to all these sites as well as many other web pages with opinions about the referendum, including those of associations, sports clubs and private sites. All of this was occurring against a background of politicians being arrested and presidents of civil society associations being charged with sedition.

In ten days more than 140 websites were blocked. The project OONI by Tor includes a non-exhaustive list of affected domains and information on the type of block.

As part of this state operation, the Guardia Civil raided the headquarters of Top Level Domain .cat, confiscating IT equipment and data, and detaining one of its IT staff. This disproportionate measure, which is unprecedented in the European Union, implies the possibility of opening the way for something we have been struggling against for years, namely domain managers being held responsible for content.

The UN Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Internet Society, the Electronic Founder Foundation, and many other organizations like our own have condemned this blocking of websites and the inordinate digital repression carried out by the Spanish government just days before the referendum was held, which meant that there was no chance to establish their validity, suitability and legality because they left no time to do so.

In this situation of persecution and very serious violation of rights, many people, moved by their convictions and without proper legal advice, have exposed themselves to risks which could have been avoided in some cases, and have left their identities at the mercy of a repressive apparatus that needs scapegoats to justify its actions. The open use of names among the alleged authors of the first mirror sites has meant that the authorities are now boasting that they have rounded up the young perpetrators (hasta 14). Some of them face very serious charges like “heading a seditious organization” which, as everyone knows, makes no sense at all in a free, open space like the Internet. These are definitely measures that aim to inflict disproportionate punishment so as to bully and intimidate citizens in an attempt to discourage their intense online activity.

One of the most common errors made by citizens has been their frequent use of servers with few and poor legal guarantees for the client. A case in point is the insistent use of .cat domains. These come under the control of .es, and therefore the Spanish state, which shows no concern for civil rights, in contrast with other generic domains (.net, .org, .com…) with are overseen by ICANN and other organizations that do respect basic rights.

We believe that it is important to stress that we shouldn’t need martyrs to prove that our struggles are just. We must make every possible effort to ensure that the people who are struggling for their rights don’t suffer reprisals. In this regard, Xnet has tried to give an overall explanation of how to avoid this and other useful information in a Guide that seeks to protect people who work with the Internet from unjust repression. This initiative is part of a set of actions designed by the lawyers and organizations of #SomDefensores to defend basic rights.

Net Democracy: Distributed Government

We have seen a Generalitat that is competent and farsighted in its online activity but, in particular, we also note that the acceleration of events in Catalonia has catalyzed the population into a massive use of digital tools in defense of their basic rights. Unlike similar situations, such as that in Turkey for example, the Catalan institutions have agreed in recent days to cede and share, in a widely distributed manner, responsibility for safeguarding freedoms, thus regularizing what we see as the embryo of what could be a truly transversal democracy worthy of the digital age, as some of us have already proposed in our discussion of the methodology of the device Red Ciudadana Partido X.

The president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont—thanks also to help from experts who have actively and continually been engaged in working for the defense of rights (even people like Julian Assange and Peter Sunde publicly offered their counseling)—have recommended the use of proxies in social networks in order to gain access to blocked websites. He subsequently announced that IPFS had also been used as a distributed tool for housing the website giving citizens information about where they should go to vote.

September 23, 2017

On September 23, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia ordered the “blocking of websites and domains [giving this information] which are publicized in any account or official social network of any kind” (). This was not just a matter of a specific list of sites but a general order giving a free hand to forces of security in ordering Internet providers to shut down websites.

With these new powers, the Guardia Civil blocked the domain gateway.ipfs.io and thereby cut off connection, not only to the referendum website, but also to all content from the Spanish state hosted in IPFS through this gateway. The shutdown extended to websites of nongovernmental organizations and movements like empaperem.cat, assemblea.cat and webdelsi.cat which are in favor of the referendum. This carrying out of the court order also extended to GooglePlay, which was forced to withdraw the app allowing people to find information about where to vote.

Nevertheless, at all times the whole population of Catalonia has been able to keep informed about polling stations thanks to continuous replication and massive use of VPN and anonymous browsing in order to access sites that were blocked from Spain. This capacity for action distributed between the government and organized citizens has been the trend throughout the electoral process, with large-scale use of chats, networks and other tools that have allowed swift circulation of information circulated on the micro-scale and among strangers who are working together to deal with hoaxes, leaks and infiltrations.

This networked action by means of which people have, for example, organized themselves, polling station by polling station, has also been manifest in physical spaces, for example with regard to protecting the ballot boxes from police seizure. For a month, the state security forces and their secret services have been searching all over Catalonia for the ballot boxes and voting papers. Although they have raided printers, media offices and headquarters of political parties and other organizations —sometimes without a court order— the ballot boxes were never found, yet they magically appeared in the polling stations. The ballot boxes and papers were there—they were everywhere—guarded by small groups, autonomous nodes, and spread all around Catalonia.

October 1, referendum day

Finally, even as the referendum was taking place on October 1, the Spanish government tried to block, by every means it could, the possibility of accessing the “universal census” app of the entire electoral register.

The domain registremeses.com where the app was hosted was immediately blocked. The Generalitat quickly supplied the more than 1,000 polling stations throughout Catalonia with alternative IPs for access. We believe that, in this case, it probably would have been better to work with Hidden Service in order to avoid police harassment and DDoS attacks by groups opposing the referendum.
Internet connection was also interrupted and it is not yet known who is responsible. Could it have been Internet suppliers obeying state orders (although they deny it)?

However, the polling stations still managed to function, almost all of them routing the smartphones of the volunteers in order to access the Internet. In the street, people were chorusing “airplane mode” so as to save network bandwidth for people working inside the polling stations. The operation lasted from 5 a.m.—which is when citizens began filling the streets to protect the polling stations—until midnight when the vote count ended. All this was achieved in the midst of violent charges by National Police with a toll of more than 800 wounded. Despite everything, more than 2,200,000 people came out to vote.

Order is the people, equal to equal: disorder is this state and its violence

The citizens and government of Catalonia have learned and are witnesses to the fact that in the front line of defense of our democracy, digital resistance depends on our use of technological tools which allow us to protect our rights autonomously and in a well distributed manner.

We hope that the Catalan government will never forget this and that its administration will always resist the temptation of the usual kind of discourse that criminalizes tools protecting privacy, encryption and decentralization of the Internet.

Moreover, when repression was massively unleashed in streets and villages of Catalonia, the social networks and their intelligent use by citizens were once again used to put an end to the blocking and manipulation of information by the mainstream media in Spain, and to let the international media outlets know what was really happening. Perhaps in 2017, many people were already used to this, but it is also highly possible that there have never been so many published videos and photographs documenting police violence as there have been this time (https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/914450692416397312). Without the widespread use of social networks to testify and inform, the people of Catalonia would have been totally isolated and crushed with absolute impunity.

From this point of view, what has been happening in the last few days is historic. This acceleration towards a greater degree of democracy and more power in civil society is happening spontaneously but the ignorance of most people about some aspects of the digital milieu is exposing them to risks and, in this regard, this is what we must make and what we are putting evey effort into to achieve.

October 1, 2017 as a beginning

On October 1, 2017 the politicians were nowhere to be seen. Only Unidos Podemos could be heard now-and-then, trying to capitalize on our wounded for its own ends. Apart this, there were only grassroots people organizing and acting, including some members of parliament and councilors who are people like anyone else. Over 24 hours, civil society came together to work for a day in which people could vote and vote on a huge scale and, furthermore, it didn’t fall into the temptation of responding to the state’s provocation in the form of violence, even though hundreds of injured people needed medical attention. There was happiness, anger and fraternity among the most different people. It was incredibly moving. There were no slogans, no shouting, so that people could vote without being coerced in this display of a valiant, stirring capacity for organization and desire for democracy.

On October 1, 2017 we proved that order is the people and disorder is this state.

Xnet

*Front picture by @Makrakas in Gràcia, Barcelona.
More info provided by the network:

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) press release:
https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/apc-calls-end-restrictions-freedom-expression-catalonia

Netcommons.eu press release:
https://netcommons.eu/?q=content/internet-censorship-and-blockade-catalonia-self-sovereign-internet-infrastructures

ISOC (Frederic Donc from Brussels) declaration:
https://www.internetsociety.org/news/statements/2017/internet-society-statement-internet-blocking-measures-catalonia-spain/

Wikipedia article that describes the operation from the Spanish government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anubis

Official web site of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia:
http://www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Poder-Judicial/Tribunales-Superiores-de-Justicia/TSJ-Cataluna/

The legal basis in Catalonia comes from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Catalonia and several laws approved such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_the_Referendum_on_Self-determination_of_Catalonia and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_juridical_transition_and_foundation_of_the_Republic.

The informative web site www.referendum.cat (Sept 13) was blocked by police with a judicial order to suspend the DNS domain:
https://blog.cdmon.com/ca/comunicat-oficial-referendum-cat/

Replicas of this web site were hosted in Cloudflare, but then ISPs were ordered filters or redirections.

The site was published in a code repository and replicated in the P2P file system IPFS. A IPFS gateway was blocked in some ISPs, but content was accessible from IPFS clients.

Some people cloned the sites and were detained and interrogated, in some cases forced to give passwords (even for personal email and social media). For instance the magistrate (public prosecutor or judge) also ordered to block “websites or domains that appear in any official account or social network of the members of the Government through which directly and indirectly, even referring to other accounts, was informed, through links, of how to access domains whose contents they keep in relation to which they are now blocked.”

About the DNS (.cat TLD intervention and domain blockade) mentioned in the netcommons article, an external discussion:
http://www.internetgovernance.org/2017/09/20/puntcat-under-fire-internet-vs-political-identities/

Among many others (more than 140) sites, such as assemblea.cat, blocked (different ways depending the ISP) and moved to assemblea.eu.

The day of the election many schools and poll stations found their Internet connection down. Police closed several poll stations, in several cases with violence, and a small portion of votes were seized by the police.

Citizens deployed their own mobile and wifi point-to-point links, even batteries for power to allow access to the census application to provide guarantees to the process, such as avoid double voting. VPNs, indirection mechanisms such as Onion routing and alternative ISPs were used to circumvent the traffic filters.

The census service itself, was stopped the day before with a judicial order, among nearly 30 databases, controlled from the data center of the Catalan government. Replicas were created. These servers were actively blocked and attacked during the day, and some of the interruptions and delays of the voting process were the result of that, and required moving the servers to new IP addressed. People in poll stations were using a web application to use that service for voter validation, and social media was used to share news about changes and events. Many people resorted to Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal groups, Twitter, etc.

Many, diverse, and powerful DDOS attacks have happened to many web sites related to the process in the last weeks.

This is still ongoing. Today there is a general strike in Catalonia.

– Xnet has published a very good “Basic guide to preseve fundamental rights on the Internet”:
https://xnet-x.net/en/how-to-guide-for-preserving-fundamental-rights-internet/#how-to-guide

– Softcatala has also published a guide “autodefensa digital”:
https://autodefensa.softcatala.cat/

The post Digital repression and resistance during the #CatalanReferendum appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Visit SaveTheMeme.net for more!

• Art 13 of the new EU copyright reform threatens our right and freedoms.
• Act now to STOP the #CensorshipMachine at: https://savethememe.net
• Mashup video by: Xnet
• With the support of: EDRi, EFF, La Quadrature du Net, Bits of Freedom and Open Media.
• Music by Revolution Void.
• Xnet https://xnet-x.net/en/

The post Stop #CensorshipMachine: EU copyright threatens our freedoms appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Xnet, an activist project which has been working on and for networked democracy and digital rights since 2008, launches in the Barcelona City Hall the first public Anti-Corruption Complaint Box using anonymity protection technology like TOR and GlobaLeaks (“Bústia Ètica” in Catalan).

With this pioneering project, the Barcelona City Hall is the first municipal government to invite citizens to use tools which enable them to send information in a way that is secure, that guarantees privacy and gives citizens the option to be totally anonymous.

Xnet, as part of the Citizens’ Advisory Council of the Barcelona City Office for Transparency and Best Practices, launches this Anti-Corruption Complaint Box highlighting the following features:

• What this digital device is, and how to use the new facility managed by the Barcelona City Hall, inspired by similar mechanisms already operating in civil society (for example, the XnetLeaks mailbox), and implemented with advice from members of Xnet who have also set up a working relationship with the GlobaLeaks platform.
• The debate on what anonymity entails is one of the most up-to-date and relevant themes of the digital age, especially in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations and, accordingly, we explain why Xnet has insisted on the need to guarantee true anonymity in a project like the Barcelona City Anti-Corruption Complaint Box which combats corruption and other damaging practices that threaten good governance in the city of Barcelona.

• Xnet provides for journalists and citizens a FAQ service regarding the Box, explaining how it works, describing tools (for example TOR) which guarantee anonymity, and all the details relative to the first project of this type whose use is recommended by public institutions, and explains how this can be done.

Xnet has always espoused the idea that democracy can only exist if institutions work together in equal conditions with aware, well-organised citizens. The Box aims to provide a way to make this kind of teamwork possible. Corruption can’t be eliminated by institutions scrutinising themselves. Civil society must play a central, continuous role.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Index
What is the Barcelona City Anti-Corruption Complaint Box?
What are the reasons for the anonymity option? 1–2–3–4–5
How does the Box work?
What is Tor?
Who uses Tor? 1–2

What is the Good Governance Box?

The Anti-Corruption Complaint Box is a means of which citizens can denounce corruption and other practices that are damaging for good governance in the city of Barcelona.

This is a digital device managed by the Barcelona City Hall, inspired by similar civil society mechanisms (like the XnetLeaks mailbox) and put into effect with advice from members of Xnet working from the Citizens’ Advisory Council of the Barcelona City Hall Office for Transparency and Best Practice.

By means of the Box, citizens can send —and in a way that secure and permits total anonymity— complaints, suspicions and evidence of cases which they believe the City Hall should investigate.

Once the complaints have been received, the City Hall must respond to every single one and inquire into those that are deemed plausible, or send them on to the appropriate institution. The person submitting the complaint reserves the right whether or not to reveal his or her identity, and will receive evidence of the follow-up carried out in response to the complaint, which means he or she may check the process.

What are the reasons for the anonymity option?

Xnet, whose members are the initiators and advisors in launching this project, has insisted on the need for citizens who make a complaint to have the option of doing so anonymously. This is why:

The debate on what anonymity entails is one of the most up-to-date and relevant themes of the digital age and especially in the wake of Snowden’s revelations.

1 – First of all, it should be made clear that the anonymity of sources in an investigation is nothing new. Evidently, if the information sent by a citizen ends up in a lawsuit, then it can no longer be anonymous.

The public administration will then make the official complaint and anonymous communications will have served simply to discover proof which would never have been found without this mechanism.

This is no different from the way in which the press has always worked: information comes from sources that remain anonymous because they are vulnerable.

It is the responsibility of the person who receives the information, the person who has the relevant means—the journalist or, in this case, the administration—to work and carry out the investigation in order to construct a solid case or discard the information.

This structure enables us to correct one of today’s greatest inequalities: the position of the citizen before the administration and big companies. Administrations and corporations have the power to monitor and pursue us, while we, the ordinary citizens, cannot do the same. This creates the asymmetry which is the source of all abuses.

Only by providing 100% protection for the privacy of ordinary people will we be able to defend ourselves and protect the commons from powerful organisations which can hide information that concerns us, and also take retaliatory measures.

But let’s be clear about this. In no way are we proposing that the institutions should foster anonymous complaints or denunciations among equal ordinary citizens since this destroys solidarity and encourages people to inform against each other in the service of institutional power, thus worsening asymmetry. We believe that there is no such thing as a nanny state but only a civil society which has its own channels for becoming mature.

2 – Corruption and bad governance can only be remedied by means of scrutiny of citizens and never only “from within”.

Moreover, this is definitely not a time when the institutions can engage in “consciousness raising” or teach civil society anything about the struggle against corruption. On the contrary, it is civil society which is now helping to get the institutions back on the right track.

This is yet another reason why the Box should permit anonymous communications. Although we have also activated self-control mechanisms for the Box (where access to information is managed by more than one specialist employee so that the controller is also controlled) proper use of the Box also depends on users having control over what they have sent, and the use made of this information, without any danger of being coerced.

Hence, users that remain anonymous, will have at their disposition a code by means of which they can, if they wish, demonstrate that they have made the complaint.

3 – On no account do we recommend that the institutions should replace the civil society channels by which citizens can make their complaints, for example the XnetLeaks mailbox.

We are therefore withdrawing from the Citizens’ Advisory Council of the Barcelona City Hall Office for Transparency and Best Practice after having very successfully contributed our knowledge in order to create the Box. The exchange of knowledge has been extremely fruitful and is a good example of what we believe collaboration between institutions and civil society should be: a process of learning together.

But the time has now come for us to go back to being external elements so that we can do our job as watchdogs.

It is important that most of the work should be done from the institutions because this is where the resources are. Citizen mechanisms should only supplant institutions when the latter fail to do their job.

Therefore, the recommended methodology advises the whistleblower on how to send the information to the Barcelona City Anti-Corruption Complaint Box, the branch of the administration that has the means to take action. However, once the time indicated by the administration for doing so has elapsed, the citizen who considers that the action taken has not been effective can make a complaint in this respect by means of citizen self-organisation mechanisms such as the XnetLeaks mailbox.

If the information ends up revealing a case of corruption, then the administration’s management of the matter will be exposed.

4 – As we have noted, the difference between anonymity and confidentiality is that anonymity allows the source to control the use that is made of its idendity and information..

Trusting in confidentiality “guaranteed” by the institutions—simply taking them at their word—amounts to no more than an act of faith.

Experiences of anti-corruption whistleblowing around the world in recent years clearly show that the “guaranteed” confidentiality offered by the institutions is a non-starter when compared with the anonymity offered by instruments like TOR, which offer greater control to the person who decides to make a denunciation.

The mechanisms that we propose and use with the anonymous boxes for leaked information allow a source to become visible, independently of the institutions, should the information be used to the detriment of this person or society. This is a way of preventing the concentration of all the power (information) in the hands of a few people—bosses, administrative officers—who can become all-powerful and a threat to everyone.

5 – Some sceptics say that there is a risk that people will start making complaints without due thought. The fact of remaining anonymous would seem to give users more freedom to say things without proof that they are true, or with destructive intentions. There is indeed a danger that improper use will be made of the Box, for example for reasons of personal revenge, and there is always the possibility that an avalanche of information will overload and collapse the Box, which is precisely the option that the right-wing party, Partido Popular (PP), and others who oppose its creation have been considering.

On the basis of our own experience we should say that it is true that some people tend to use this mechanism to settle personal accounts, or so that other people can sort out their legal problems, which may be legitimate, but these are strictly private matters and pursued for personal benefit.

There is no question that the risk exists (and we, with XnetLeaks, and journalists see it day after day), yet we believe that it is a risk worth running since the compensation is that use of the Box manages to break the chain of fear and omertà, the code of silence favouring the formation of networks which misappropriate resources, or make it impossible for everyone to prosper in the same conditions and without favouritism.

For all these reasons, and the need to be rigorous about protecting sources, we have also created stringent mechanisms to ensure that people who use the Box frivolously or with illegitimate or harmful intentions will be swiftly prevented from causing further damage.

Similarly, and in contrast with what is presently occurring, emphasis is given to the possibility of defence for those people mentioned in complaints so that they may defend themselves against slander, defamation and actions that might aim to obstruct their work. This is presently not the case.

The recently exposed bad practices from the previous responsible of the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office, who frequently used complaints in order to attack political opponents, rivals or personal enemies and thereby, thwarting any chances of finding legal solutions to problems, has taught us that such practices should be denounced from the moment they first appear.

Any use of the Box for media purposes will be denounced and terminated.

FUNCTIONING

How does the Box work?

The Box works by means of the GlobaLeaks platform which allows the user to accede to it through the Tor network, a system that anonymises communications so effectively that not even the City Hall itself can learn the identity of the person sending information.

What is Tor?

Source: https://www.torproject.org/

The Tor network is a tool that improves privacy and security for Internet users. Browsing with Tor, users make a connection through a series of virtual tunnels instead of making a direct connection, which makes it difficult to trace the source of information and therefore protects the identity of the person sending it.

The email interface used is GlobaLeaks, a free software project produced by the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights. Besides being used in Spain for citizen initiatives like the Xnet Box, it has become a valuable resource all around the world for dozens of activist and institutional initiatives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobaLeaks#Implementations

GlobaLeaks has worked directly in the installation of the Box making a very valuable contribution and helping the Municipal Institute for Technology (IMI) team in the transition to new paradigms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWII85UlzKw

Who uses Tor? (1)

The propaganda of an obsolete regime spreads the idea that Tor is a “hotbed for criminals”. This is the typical kind of attempt to criminalise the “Internet” whenever the chance arises. According to this propaganda, anything new is bad because it endangers the status quo. The reality is that these innovations offer more justice and more democracy.

Users should be aware, for example, that sending an unencrypted email is like sending a postcard without putting it in an envelope. Anyone along the way between sender and destination can read it. In a few years from now, encryption will be as normal as sealing envelopes and not leaving them open because the regime says so.

Below are links to some texts by specialists or relevant institutions such as the United Nations or the European Parliament which endorse our position:

• The UN declares that data encoding is a human right: “… encryption and anonymity provide individuals and groups with a zone of privacy online to hold opinions and exercise freedom of expression without arbitrary and unlawful interference or attacks”
  https://www.privacyinternational.org/node/600
• European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) on Mass Surveillance says that strong crypto systems are one of the few things that the public can rely on as a defence against mass surveillance.
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/webdav/site/cms/shared/0_home/STOA%20Study%20Mass%20Surveillance%20Part%201.pdf
• Decalogue for the Protection of Whistleblowers
  https://xnet-x.net/en/decalogue-protection-whistleblowers/
• Activists from all over the world join the global campaign for encryption
  https://www.securetheinternet.org/
• Transparency and privacy
  https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/simona-levi/transparency-for-state-privacy-for-rest-of-us
• “Whistleblowing is not just leaking – It’s an act of political resistance”. (Snowden)
  https://theintercept.com/2016/05/03/edward-snowden-whistleblowing-is-not-just-leaking-its-an-act-of-political-resistance/
• The anonymous fallacy, or why it is not valid to say, “I won’t accept your argument because you don’t use your real name”
  http://www.iusmentis.com/technology/remailers/fallacy.html
• A message from George Orwell about the Internet today
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4EEa0HAqzQ
• Anonymity as a political value
  https://motherboard.vice.com/read/anonymous-has-changed-the-way-we-think-about-anonymity

Who uses Tor? (2)

Source: https://www.torproject.org/

People who use Tor do so in order to defend their privacy, and to protect their personal data and communications.

It is especially in those parts of the world where the Internet is widely controlled, censored and monitored that journalists and citizens use Tor in order to investigate state propaganda or to express opinions opposing it.

In any part of the world, whistle-blowers who work for government transparency and accountability of multinationals can use Tor to denounce misdeeds without fear of reprisal or persecution.

Tor’s aim is to provide protection for ordinary people.
At present, ill-intentioned criminals who know how to enter other people’s computers are the only ones who enjoy protection.

These criminals have good reason to learn how to achieve a high level of anonymity and many are able to pay well in order to achieve this. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identity theft) makes it even easier for them. Ordinary people, however, have neither time nor money to find a way of achieving online privacy. Tor seeks to be the solution to this problem.

[Remember: Tor is a tool. Keeping your anonymity safe and making good use of the tool which keeps you out of danger depends only on you. Tor can’t check to ensure that you don’t make errors. So be careful.]

Support GlobaLeaks ? / Support the TOR project ?

Photo by svennevenn

The post Xnet installs a Whistleblowing Platform against corruption for the City Hall of Barcelona – powered by GlobaLeaks and TOR friendly appeared first on P2P Foundation.

——
A statement made before the Catalan Parliamentary Committee for the Study of Anti-Corruption Measures and for Democratic Regeneration.

Without claiming to represent anyone but myself, I wish to focus my statement on what, under the present circumstances, I represent here today, namely civil society, as a member of civil society.

The expertise I can contribute to the struggle against corruption and for democratic regeneration has not been acquired through my academic or professional training –which is in the arts – but my experience as a person who, together with other people sharing similar concerns and affected by the results of corruption and bad government, has decided to act now that it is clear that our institutions are neglecting their functions.

As I hope to show, I believe that one of the keys to ending the problems this committee is confronting is precisely a joint effort between organised citizens working outside the representative institutions on specific problems and needs, and organised citizens working within these institutions, which is to say, you. All too often I have seen how democracy regresses and is weakened when this circuit of action is broken.

What I can contribute today is what I have learned working with the citizen platforms I have co-founded, Xnet and 15MpaRato [a wordplay meaning “indignados versus Rato” – that is, former head of the IMF, former Spanish Minister of the Economy and head of Bankia – and also “indignados for the long march”].

I have mainly been working on Spanish cases of state-level corruption. However, having shared our results with other groups and people, for example those constituting the Citizens’ Anti-Corruption Working Group in Catalonia, I can now say that the patterns of criminal behaviour we have identified, and the solutions we can glean from this are very similar everywhere and, accordingly, useful for this Committee.

I started the 15MpaRato movement in 2012. Long before any party or institution took action, this platform began the campaign which ended up in the Bankia case; which catalysed citizen contributions; took the Bankia case to the National High Court as a private prosecution; made available to the public the “Blesa Emails” and information concerning the “Black Cards” [a tax-free, corporate credit card for Caja Madrid-Bankia cronies]; and provided and publicised the evidence by means of which preferred stockholders in general, and Bankia shareholders as well, can now get their money back, as the Supreme Court has finally decreed, inter alia.

Now, if you will permit me, I should like to ask a question, although I know that, strictly speaking, you are the ones who ask the questions. I shall therefore leave it in the air as a sincere rhetorical question: are you aware that all the achievements I have listed are the work of coordinated ordinary citizens?

“Strictly speaking, you are the ones who ask the questions, [but] are you aware that all the achievements I have listed are the work of coordinated ordinary citizens?”

I ask the question because, in the event of your not knowing how such a relevant process began, the function of civil society must be stressed, and will be a key point in what I have to say next.

Another experience which I can contribute to the Committee is the result of the first. In order to obtain proof of what we needed to reveal, while also ensuring that the people who provide this evidence were not subject to reprisals, in Xnet, another group with which I work, we learned about, and created the technical and legal conditions for managing a safe mailbox through which we could receive anonymous information about cases of corruption.

In this regard, I have been astounded to see the great number of relevant cases that have reached us by this means. I refer to cases that had already been reported through the official channels but without results or, worse still, leading to the persecution of the person reporting the corruption, or the use of this information for political ends, or for warning individuals and officeholders about whom complaints had been made so that they could escape prosecution. I believe that it is not necessary to give examples of what I am talking about since recent episodes involving the previous management of the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office have occurred during this legislature.

With this mailbox, and aware of the vulnerability of people who have reported wrongdoing, we ourselves have had to create the rules of conduct for exchanges of information and training among equals in order to help others to be more successful when presenting their accusations.

Finally, another perspective from which I can make my contribution here concerns methodology in the strategic use of ICT for improving democracy. Since 2006 when, as a theatre director, I was the victim of a false accusation of copyright infringement, I have been working to defend a free and open Internet, as a tool and as a philosophy.

Having described the standpoints from which I can make a contribution, I shall now share with you some proposals, in every case backed up by previous experience.

* * * *

While creating the 15MpaRato platform – which, as I said, is the operation and accusation which led to the Bankia, Black Cards and Blesa Emails cases, et cetera – we learned a great deal, and one thing that was totally unexpected: it is easier to hold alleged offenders responsible for corruption – and, in fact, we have nearly eighty on our list – than it is to convey that this was NOT achieved by their peers but by ordinary people, by real everyday people. Neither the press, nor the political parties, nor (with a few exceptions) judges and prosecutors, nor (with a few exceptions) governments, are willing to publicly concede that almost anyone can do this.

This is a serious matter, not only concerning the respect that is due and historical truth, but also its eminently practical implications. To date, right now as I am talking, almost 70% of the cases of corruption which have been brought to court have not been denounced by institutions or parties but by ordinary citizens.

I have asserted that the government, political parties and the mainstream media – and here I am not referring to journalists but to the media in general – have made great efforts to claim undue credit for these achievements, or to conceal from public opinion the active and even necessary function of civil society.

A discouraging picture is offered of a world in which civil society is passive and irrelevant, a world in which everything begins and ends with the monopoly of this trinity: the government and institutions, the parties, and the mass media. This does not happen as a result of a well-planned political conspiracy – if only it did! – but is just marketing, the monopoly’s product placement.

The fact that citizen agency – which, for example, is such an essential factor in getting other people to denounce corruption – is denied must be taken very seriously.

What I am saying may seem to be a cliché, or a generic kind of moaning. But I ask you to understand it in all its realism. I can assure you, this is a surgically precise description of what really happens.

As ordinary citizens, working on specific cases, we are discovering how much effort it takes to achieve a report; to get evidence accepted in court; to ensure that the prosecution, if it represents the establishment, is not just a defence of the accused; to see that evidence from citizen sources is taken into consideration by the press and, in particular, that it is not appropriated by any party. The change in the struggle against corruption which has recently occurred – which is to say since the 15M movement – is the result of the fact that there are more and more citizens who are not going to let this go on, citizens who are organising. It is clear to me, then, that this is not institutional change. In fact, very little has changed in the institutions.

“This is social change. This is not institutional change. In fact, very little has changed in the institutions. This is social change”

If we want to fight corruption, this must not only be recognised but also encouraged, with new rules and procedures regarding veracity, and free resources (such as reinforcing legal aid) that will encourage responses to and replications of this model.

Finding myself in the midst of all this, I am keeping this inertia in perspective. For some centuries now, only two political spheres have been taken into account: the public and the private. Government policies and party demands have oscillated between “more public” and “more private”, which is still frequently the case.

But we are now in the digital age and its chief characteristic is disintermediation, which is to say that the monopolisation of intermediaries in their access to culture, knowledge, information, production, economics and politics too, has been undermined by a radical advance in democratisation.

As has also happened with other intermediaries of the pre-digital age, the function of political parties has changed. I think this function should not be about extracting the resources of others but one of facilitating. Recognition of civil society does not mean sucking it dry of its value, or forcing it into the associative formats typical of the private sector but, rather, accepting its otherness and the fact that it, too, has something to offer on the gaming tables of governance.

Hence, the first thing I desire and request, in order to put an end to corruption and achieve real democracy, is that civil society should be recognised in equal place as a third political actor: “public” in the form of government, institutions and also parties; “private” in the form of businesses; and civil society in the form of channels with resources which make possible simultaneously, collectively and individually: (i) scrutiny or preventive monitoring of the institutions; (ii) emendation, never starting from zero and in real time, in the process of drafting and amending which takes place here in the Parliament; and (iii) transfer of powers and responsibilities without loss of identity.

For me, this is what the participation of civil society means in the twenty-first century.

I have spent years championing citizen participation but have never been referring to the kind of participation which is currently in vogue. This is something that is, let us say, rather “occupational” or paternalistic, and I believe it amounts to a wilful, sometimes oversimplifying and self-serving interpretation of the 15M movement.

I uphold participation as co-responsibility in work, not as the proffering of ill-informed opinions which are inconsequential for both the person opining and the person on the receiving end. (The latter, often called freedom of expression, at times means not being able to tell the difference between chalk and cheese – or so it seems to me.)

To get back to the nitty-gritty, it means participation as efficiency and excellence. In hacker philosophy it is termed Doismo. This is what we apply, and with very good results, in online communities of action, and it is similarly used in the sphere of scientific development. We can also find examples in legislative experience, for example Marco Civil do Internet and also, at times, in the European Union.

To sum up, it seems to me that the format of the democracy of the future should be as we have practised it by deploying the scientific-experimental device of the Partit X (X Party).

* * * *

To return to twenty-first-century intermediaries, in all the cases of corruption on which I have worked, the same pattern of criminal conduct is repeated. The origin of the corruption must always be sought in the same place: the political parties.

The pattern of criminal conduct is a conspiracy hatched in the very core of the parties. Use is made of a “party” structure that already exists for its – many – honest members, who are then set up as a cover, and selected trusty men (or women) are sent out into the mafia-clientele network to occupy positions of authority in the public sector, as department heads, in advisory positions or in ministries, and in the private sphere. The government then ends up being the executive arm of a criminal conspiracy, legislating in its favour it or just avoiding jeopardising it.

In no way do I wish to show any lack of respect in describing this situation to you. In my years as an activist I have been in contact with many of you as members of parliament, and with others who have gone before you and, in most cases, I have found hard-working, honest and committed people. However, I think we must avoid the trap of exculpatory clichés. This is not a matter of a few rotten apples, corruptors or mere picaresque roguery.

I believe my experience demonstrates that this is a problem of the very structure of political parties as we have inherited them.

The solution presently being held out is that parties should be more open. There is talk of primaries and one of the more recent panaceas, open lists, and so on. I believe that the problem with parties is not that they are not open. In fact, political parties possibly have the most open structure in existence. There are very few organisations one can join with so few requisites.

It is precisely this kind of openness that encourages the creation of clientele structures. We have seen that these networks of favours and fidelities are the spawning ground of corruption, with or without open lists and primaries. In a nutshell, I believe that political parties, as we now know them, are mechanisms with a clear dissonance between their structure – an open community, the more members the better, which any people who think (or say they think) likewise can join, in which ideological fidelity and media ratings are valued above the ability to solve problems – and the role they have been allocated in society, namely to govern, with a very high degree of jurisdiction over the most sensitive questions in the life of the whole community.

In methodological terms, it is obvious that this cannot work.

Once again, I believe and have positive proof that if civil society channels are allowed to mature, we can lighten the burdens of party functioning, which means that the parties can then work better. In this regard, I think thoroughgoing changes need to be made in the law, for example in party and electoral legislation, but it is not my intention to venture into areas of authority that are beyond our scope today.

I am in favour of the professionalisation of politics but in the sense of accepting this as a task of management contractually bound with the voters, based on vocation and skills and with the same rights and duties as other workers have.

A government that represents us and not one that replaces us.

I cannot elaborate further now but you will find this material brought together and systematised in the Just Democracy blueprint.

* * * *

To return to the question of denunciation of corruption by civil society, I shall move on to one last point.

In a milieu in which, as we have seen, a considerable proportion of anticorruption cases consists of accusations made by ordinary citizens, there is no legislation in this domain, either in Catalonia or in Spain. What the so-called whistle-blowers, informants or accusers often receive in return are charges of defamation, slander and libel, harassment, persecution, unemployment and, all in all, a huge burden of expenses and aggression which deters most people from making an accusation.

Although the national criminal code and other laws urge citizens to denounce corruption, making an accusation is not feasible, as is the case in any situation of unequal power relations.

“I use the English word “whistle-blower” because, until two years ago, there was no equivalent term in the European Romance languages”

This situation is so extreme that I use the English word “whistle-blower” because, until two years ago, there was no equivalent term in the European Romance languages. We had to introduce our own words [in Catalan, alertadors and denunciants]. The Anglo-Saxon world has had laws protecting whistle-blowers since 1778 and the list of references is very long. We need to have specific laws here too.

Working in an ideologically transversal way, individual members and organisations of civil society have now produced a legislative Decalogue in defence of whistle-blowers and people wishing to make an accusation.

We are pleased to see that this Decalogue, which is appended here with other documentation, is being taken into consideration by several parties of a range of political hues. I believe that in the coming two years we shall achieve both a European directive and legislation at Spanish State level. Since a considerable part of the work has been carried out by our organisations in Catalonia, I should be well satisfied if Catalonia were in the avant-garde of drafting this type of law.

Finally, to conclude this matter of accusations of corruption made by citizens, I need to deal briefly with anonymity and tools for guaranteeing it, a highly relevant question after Edward Snowden’s revelations. We in Xnet are recognised experts in the field but, unfortunately, I cannot talk about it in any depth now as I am running out of time. Instead I shall append two documents which defend anonymity and encryption, one published by the United Nations and the other by the European Parliament.

Anonymisation or, in other words, the use of (often demonised) tools like Tor makes it possible to correct the asymmetries of power I have mentioned. We must protect the anonymity of private individuals because they are vulnerable.

The difference between anonymity and confidentiality is that anonymity enables the source to control the use that is made of the information.

Trusting in the “guaranteed” confidentiality of the institutions is nothing more than an act of faith. Allowing all the power (information) to be concentrated in the hands of just a few people (executive staff and managers) who become all-powerful and a threat to everyone is not, and never has been desirable. Experiences like the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office scandal, on the one hand, and successful actions following anonymous anticorruption leaks around the world in recent years, on the other, make this clear.

In brief, these innovations contribute towards greater justice and democracy. We must integrate them in a positive way but without being disingenuous – wherever there are humans there can be abuse – instead of prohibiting them because we do not understand their complexity.

We should all be aware, for example, that sending unencrypted emails is like sending a postcard without sealing it in an envelope. Anyone along the route taken by this message can read it. We hope that, in a few years, encrypting emails will be as routine as sealing envelopes.

To conclude

I shall just reiterate a few key points and offer some suggestions.

The institutions cannot be their own watchdogs.

Governance can be delegated under strict contractual conditions but the watchdog work of citizens cannot be delegated because, as soon as this happens, the appointee becomes an institution and, accordingly, a cog in the machine that is supposed to be monitored.

The solution, then, is not to be found with a specific individual or thing but with what the digital technologies have now made possible: any person. Please note the nuance here. I have said “any person” not “everyone”.

I therefore propose the following measures:

– Preventive transparency (before things are done) in institutions or businesses that affect more than 10% of the population. The transparency of these entities is essential so that any person can have the information necessary to form an opinion and to detect flaws in the system.

– Channels for citizen co-responsibility (with rights and duties), which is to say channels for monitoring, remedy and transfers of power and, by this, I do not mean starting from zero.

– Remedying asymmetry with more privacy and anonymity for people confronting the great public-private powers.

– A law to protect whistle-blowers which, rather than offering state assistance and protection recognises, in this context, the work of citizens.

– Reforming the structure of party and electoral laws – tending to combine party lists with candidates chosen by constituency and jurisdictions.

Thank you very much.

(With thanks to Lluïsa G.)
 

References

Decalogue for the Protection of Whistle-Blowers

The UN identifies data encryption as a human right: “[…] encryption and anonymity provide individuals and groups with a zone of privacy online to hold opinions and exercise freedom of expression without arbitrary and unlawful interference or attacks.”

European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) on Mass Surveillance
 

About the author

Simona Levi, theatre director and activist. She is co-founder of the Spanish group Xnet and of 15MpaRato, a citizens’ device to bring to court those responsible for the economic crisis in Spain.
 

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The post A statement made before the Catalan Parliamentary Committee for the Study of Anti-Corruption Measures and for Democratic Regeneration. appeared first on P2P Foundation.

European copyright law dates from 2001 (before the smartphones, the social media explosion, youtube…) so yes, it urgently needs to be updated.

Yet, the proposal put forward by the European Commission is not even close to be focused on update the law to the Internet, the new ways of communicating and sharing information and the economical and innovative potential of the digital age. Instead, it creates unprecedented new powers for publishing giants, as well as requirements for websites to monitor and filter content upload by the users, attacking our right to access and distribute information and content on the Internet.
 

# The snipped Levy or LinkTax

Article 11 of the proposal creates a new 20 years copyright for publishers. The so-called #LinkTax would create unprecedented new monopolies for publishing giants to charge fees for snippets of text that automatically accompany hyperlinks. ¿Sounds familiar? Yes, it is like a pan-European Canon AEDE.

In Spain, we know well which can be the disastrous consequences for freedom of expression and information, innovation and the Internet ecosystem of this kind of measures. Apart from the closing of Google News and many other smaller sites, according to this report[2] issued for the Spanish Publishing Association (AEEPP) itself, the so-called canon AEDE:

“Has turned out to be detrimental for all the agents involved: the press publishers, the consumers, the online news readers, the advertisers and also the news aggregators.”

This measure harms medium and small websites and aggregators the most since they do not have the resources to afford the licensing fees or negotiate contracts with the publishers. These sites might be forced to carve out the sources they link to, to reduce costs, damaging press diversity and small publishers left out. Only major websites will be able to pay these fees and only major news sites will get linked to.

The Link Tax will also stifle innovation and ensure the dominance of entrenched players, to the detriment of smaller publishers, smaller news sites and freedom of information and expression.
 

# Content filtering or CensorshipMachine

Article 13 includes requirements for monitoring Internet users, demanding that tech companies produce filtering robots to detect the copyright status of user-generated content.

This filtering would not be done on the basis on what is legal, but on whether uploads contain content that has been “identified” by rights holders. This would overturn existing rights for quotation, parody, education and other public-interest copyright exceptions. It is censorship in the hands of copyright trolls.

Spanish citizens recently flooded social networks with indignation and the message #SinMemesNoHayDemocacia (no memes, no democracy) in response to an infamous proposal by the conservative party which threatened to remove memes under claims of honor. Well, with this automatic filtering, any meme which contains an image “identified” by a copyright holder would be blocked automatically.

It is also an economic disaster. Any website that allows user uploaded content would be forced to invest in or license expensive robot filtering software. Giants like Facebook or Google have the sources to face this task, but every other smaller website, forum, etc.c could be hold liable and would be facing legal uncertainty, or might decide to just close.
 

Watch out to defend the Internet, free culture and the rights of the users
 
Brace yourselves, days of fights and citizen lobby for our digital rights, the free circulation of knowledge and culture and freedom of expression are coming. The European Parliament, our elected representatives, has the power to overturn these atrocities and achieve a positive copyright reform, starting by the mandatory upward homogenization of all the exception in the EU.

¡Seguimos!
 

References::
[1] Full European legislation on the Copyright Directive in the Digital Single Market
[2] Impacto del Nuevo Artículo 32.2 de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual

The post EU Copyright Reform: taxes, restrictions and censorship or how to cripple the Internet appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Our elected representatives accepted that when a corporate abuse is denounced, commercial interest need to be protected before citizens and journalists who report it.

This move is a proof that leaks and reports from civil society are putting an end to abusive behavior by politico financial elites which up until now never felt threatened.

 
The fight to defend our right to know is not finished yet. With this text we want to share with the civil society what are the next steps to follow:

1 – In the 24 months following its approval in the European Parliament, the Trade Secrets Directive must be transposed(adapted) to the national member states legislation to entry into force in every one of them.

In this transposition we have maneuvering room to put pressure on the governments of each country to correct the imbalances of the Directive in favor of the right of citizens to know information of general interest, and to offer enough safeguards for whistleblowers and journalists.

Trade Secret Directive should serve its purpose as a tool to promote EU competitiveness. This will not be the case if it impedes freedom of expression, information and press or transparency, leading to more financial, health and environment scandals and damaging worker’s rights.

This international coalition urges our governments to uphold the following points at the transposition to the national level which can be consistent with the directive:

• Protection for journalists
• Protection for whistleblowers
• Protection for information disclosed for the general interest
• Protection for Public Authorities
• Limit to the liability for damages of employees towards their employers and reduce the limitation period to 3 years instead of 6
• Protecting clinical trials data transparency
• Damages appropriate to the actual prejudice suffered
• Consistency with the Aarhus Convention on access to environmental information

We are working on a “transposition guide” to help our legislators take the right decisions to protect citizens rights over corporate interests.

 
2 – In Europe and several countries from the EU there is an ongoing debate on the need to create a specific legislation to protect whistleblowers. We must urge them to pursue this goal and keep an eye on how they are developed.
Here you can find a Decalogue developed by Xnet and the Citizen Group against Corruption in Spain for the protection of whistleblowers:
https://xnet-x.net/en/decalogue-protection-whistleblowers/

 
3 – To these laws it must be added the defense of the legal use of the information revealed, to counteract the harmful effects of the precautionary measures contained in the Trade Secrets Directive.
In addition to defending the whistleblower, we must make sure that relevant information can be used in court to (re)establish our rights and end the abuses.
 

There are two important dates in the calendar that we must not forget:

• Tomorrow, May 17th the Directive awaits its final confirmation by the Council of the European Union. Even though the Council could block the directive to amend its flaws and threats, we doubt it will do it will have the political boldness to do it.
  We will campaign around it on social networks tomorrow from 10 a.m.
• Let us remember that a journalist, Edouard Perrin, and he’s source, Antoine Deltour, are being judged in this right moment for unveiling a tax evasion case arranged by those who right now are members of some European governments. We must give them all our support and solidarity.

The post Transparency should be the norm, trade secrets the exception, never the other way around appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communication (BEREC) and the 28 telecom regulators are currently negotiating guidelines that will clarify the recently adopted net neutrality law in the EU.

“A wrong interpretation of the law not upholding net neutrality unambiguosuly would undermine freedom of expression and the innovative and democratic potential of the Internet in Europe.”

Simona Levi, Xnet

The letter signatories urge BEREC to adopt guidelines give real meaning to this goal, including:

• Careful consideration of so-called “Specialized Services”;
• The reaffirmation that zero rating practices, which are anticompetitive, harm innovation and restrict users freedom of choice; and
• Strictly non-discriminatory traffic management and a clear statement opposing intrusive traffic management that would restrict internet users’ privacy.

Letter – Global open civil society letter to the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communication (BEREC) in support of strong net neutrality guidelines:
https://xnet-x.net/img/net-neutrality-letter-BEREC-2016-05-02.pdf

In this regard, Xnet and EDRi on behalf of the SaveTheInternet coalition will meet this Friday with the Spanish Telecom Regulator, the CNMC, to expose our position on how the European TSM Regulation must be interpreted to effectively protect net neutrality, answer their doubts and hear their opinion on the issue. More info soon

More info:

Save The Internet campaign
https://savetheinternet.eu

RespectMyNet, online platform to report net neutrality violations
https://respectmynet.eu

European Parliament fails to provide a strong regulation to unambiguously protect net neutrality
https://xnet-x.net/en/european-parliament-fails-regulation-net-neutrality/

Save Net Neutrality in Europe: next steps
https://2015.fcforum.net/en/net-neutrality/#europe-next-steps

Written response to BEREC stakeholder dialogue with representatives of end-users/consumers and civil society
https://edri.org/files/BEREC_Hearing2015_EDRiposition.pdf

Spanish government attacks Internet in Europe
https://xnet-x.net/en/spanish-government-attacks-net-neutrality/

The post Letter from Xnet & other 72 NGOs to BEREC and regulators on net neutrality appeared first on P2P Foundation.

On behalf of more than 46 civil society organisations in Europe representing journalists, judges, whistle-blowers, scientists, unions, associations… I am writing to you to ask you to consider rejecting the current draft text of the Trade Secrets Protection Directive when you will vote it in Strasbourg next Thursday 14 April.

Industrial espionage and trade secrets theft is a real problem, but we consider that this text abuses its purpose by applying to the whole of society legal remedies that should only apply to economic entities (competitors). Moreover, the text foresees a definition of trade secrets which is so broad that it could include almost any internal information. Therefore, it offers private companies a right to sue anyone who would acquire, use or publish any information or document they consider a trade secret even if this person has no economic intention or motives.

The consequence would be that judges would have to balance crucial political rights and considerations, such as employees’ mobility and innovation, press freedoms and the right and need to access and publish certain proprietary information in the public interest (whistle-blowers but also scientists willing to test the safety of products on the market)… with the economic interests of trade secret owners. This is not needed to fight industrial espionage.

This vote is all the more important that this text will become part of the TTIP if signed.

Please find enclosed a detailed factsheet on the directive which details our concerns and explains our position.

We remain at your entire disposal should you need any additional information.

Kind regards,

Xnet

On behalf of the signatories,

Association Européenne pour la Défense des droits de l’Homme
ALA, Asociación Libre de Abogadas y Abogados
Anticor, France
ATTAC España
ATTAC France
Centre national de coopération au développement, CNCD-11.11.11
Correctiv.org, GermanyBUKO Pharma-Kampagne
CCFD-Terre Solidaire
CGT Cadres, Ingénieurs, Techniciens (UGICT-CGT)
Collectif Europe et Médicament
Collectif de journalistes “Informer n’est pas un délit”
Comité de soutien à Antoine Deltour
Commons Network
Corporate Europe Observatory
Courage Foundation
Ecologistas en Acción
EcoNexus
European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental
Responsibility (ENSSER)
Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (FSU)
Fondation Sciences Citoyennes
Force Ouvrière-Cadres
Genewatch
GMWatch
Health and Trade Network
Inf’OGM
Institut Veblen
International Society of Drug Bulletins
Les économistes atterrés
Ligue des Droits de l’Homme
Observatoire Citoyen pour la Transparence Financière Internationale (OCTFI)
OGM Dangers
Peuples SolidairesNordic Cochrane Centre
Pesticides Action Network Europe (PAN-Europe)
Plateforme Paradis Fiscaux et Judiciaires
Public Concern At Work
Solidaires
SumOfUs
Syndicat des Avocats de France (SAF)
Syndicat National des Chercheurs Scientifiques (SNCS – FSU)
Syndicat National des Journalistes (SNJ)
Syndicat National des Journalistes CGT (SNJ-CGT)
Syndicat de la Magistrature
Tax Justice Network
Transparency International France
WeMove.eu
Whistleblower-Netzwerk e.V., Germany
Xnet

Analysis of the Directive attached:

PDF: https://xnet-x.net/img/Trade-Secrets-Protection-Directive-Factsheet.pdf

HTML:
 

The post Letter to MEPs asking for the rejetcion of Trade Secrets EU Directive appeared first on P2P Foundation.