War for Territory
While the title sounds like a computer game, a song by Sepultura or military plans, this is rather about ‘internet territory’, ‘cyber territory’. While every person can have some territory on the internet for themselves, be it a fancy personal website / blog (such as this one), twitter,facebook, etc. page, so do companies, organizations as well as governments. It is the latter who is more and more waging war on cyber territory. As usual with governments, the inherited bureaucracy and red tape all over prevents them usually from picking up new developments, especially in the technology area. So also with the internet. While government bodies, politicians and others affiliated with governments do have their web sites, info letters etc., they have failed so far to make a mark on the internet.
Keep in mind, this is my opinion, point of view, etc. Feel free to agree || disagree, it currently is still your right.
My primary point of discontent is the recent influx of internet censorships across several countries. Of course governments argue it exists to fight cybercrime, such as child pornography, which was the sole topic of discussion to pass legislation for the censorship infrastructure in Germany for example (See also the reasons for the introduction of the RIPA in United Kingdom). Surely they also argue it won’t be expanded, but who will know if that promise is kept or not? A few listed sites on leaked ban-lists of Scandinavian countries showed that also non-criminal pages, but rather pages with their own opinion opposite to state controlled opinions were on the ban-list. A sure way to start discontent, riots and maybe even wars is to suppress opinions. There are numerous examples in history for this, just look around.
“The internet is not supposed to be a law-free, unlegislated zone” is a quote used by many German politicians (direct translation) to push their legislation for the censoring. Probably politicians of other governments said / say the same or similar. However they fail to realize the internet neither was nor is an unlegislated area, as governments’ laws also apply to the internet network in their respective country. This won’t stop them however using FUD, what essentially their whole campaign was, to legislate these restrictions. Of course there are ways to bypass the blocking / censoring. As it’s a DNS based block, you just need to switch your DNS you use. However Zensursula (Ursula von der Leyen, the initiator of this highly controversial censoring infrastructure) stated in an interview in “Die Zeit” (German Newspaper, article in German to be found here) that bypassing the blocks renders oneself liable to prosecution, because that person is actively on the search for child pornography. Basically everyone who uses openDNS and similar is therefore a criminal, wtf?
Click here for a list of alternative DNS.
And sure enough, not long after the law was passed in Germany, already politicians as well as corporations seeked extensions to cover further areas with the internet ban hammer. Politicians suggested to extend the ban onto “killer games” sites. “Killer games” in their eyes are just regular famous and wide spread “First person shooter”, as well as “Third person shooter” games. There are a few which are very famous worldwide, enjoy a huge following, as well as a complete industry behind it, games such as Doom, Quake, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, Hitman, and many others. Many politicians base their arguments on the gaming environments of people responsible for school-shootings. They argue that these games had a high influence on these killers, leading to those shootings. That’s why the industry should be banned and the firewall of Germany extended to cover these sites. While a couple studies show that having a high exposure to violence in media can have influences, other factors are often left out (social factor, family,etc., already existing ‘disorders’). If violent games alone were a reason for people to flip out and go on a rampage, there’d be shootings daily. Couple study links: One, Two, Three. More can be found using google. Another researcher argues there are no links between shootings and violent games, read here.
Another group approaching the government to extend the Germany’s firewall is, who else could it be, the music/copyright corporation lobby. They’re petitioning to extend the ban hammer to torrent pages and similar. Not surprising.
Surely also the Central Council of Jews in Germany, as well as the Central Council of Sinti and Roma petition to extend the ban list to sites containing hate-speeches etc. (Link on heise in German, Another Heise article, also in German) While this point may make sense, it already is covered by federal law. If those pages are hosted in Germany, they’re taken down. If those pages are hosted outside Germany, they are under no influence by the German government, obviously. So to prevent accessing freedom of speech outside their law zone, a firewall is built around their borders, ironically fighting fascism through fascism. And yes, it’s freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes speeches you don’t agree with, live with it. No doubt similar happenings occur in other countries too. Keep in mind though that Israel itself did not introduce a government sanctioned internet censorship infrastructure, simply because the opposition to that was overwhelming.
So why did I call it “War for territory”? Simple, it’s the government’s war in cyber territory to suppress voices and opinions, and streamline them. While of course they won’t say that publicly, if you look behind the scenes, that is what’s going on. Why otherwise would the Great Firewall of Germany be necessary, if all that is needed in fights against proper crime is already covered by laws? Ironic also is that not too long ago in June, the EU issued a statement that they condemn the Great Firewall of China, as it breaches freedom of opinion (See here in German). Sounds double faced to me.
On the opposite, a group known as Falun Gong is trying to seek US funded support to tear down the Great Firewall of China (Reuters article). Their motives are different of course, free speech for their friends and other members of that group in China. Would be interesting to see if a) that will work out in itself, b) if USA will support it, and c) if they then also agree to tear down other firewalls, such as those all over Europe recently. Also interesting to watch the consequences if USA actively supported that. This would be a different level of ‘War for Territory’ though, US & cronies’ influence in China’s area, and not home government vs. own people.
This is just one part of the complete war for cyber territory. Of course there is the usual, trying to hack into companies or governments etc. But that is not part of this article, which is mostly about governments trying to reduce their own citizens’ online rights. The list of countries using a form of internet censorship is large, have a look at this list on wikipedia for example.
Another part is the governmental data retention, where ISPs and telcos are bound by law to save all electronic communication, usually on a limited timescale, such as 6 months. The data is saved without any suspicions or proof of any crime needed, basically rendering everyone of always being suspicious, turning from the old “Innocent until proven guilty” to modern authoritarian “Guilty until proven innocent”.
If you think that books such as “1984″ and “Fahrenheit 451″ are purely fiction and won’t happen, then you clearly missed a lot.
If no awareness is raised, you are not far away from the Thought Police to be introduced. So keep your heads up and your mind open!
I guess it depends only on political way of response.Each governments want to control us in a way or another.You know we can fight ourselves with cybercrime or child pornography, for example with our own programs.For instance Bitdefender has an option “the parental control” mode that allow you to limit access to certain websites or applications as well as keywords.you can even block access to the entire internet surfing or certain yahoo messenger contacts.So here is an option to prevent accessing freedom of internet for the kids for example.As you said keep your mind open!