GNU Telephony, a participating group within the “GNU Project,” issued an open letter to President Obama, criticizing Internet eavesdropping by government agencies. The letter expounds on “Why civil liberties matter” and quoted a famous Sioux Indian warrior:
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did." — Red Cloud, leader of “Red Cloud’s War”
The honorability of governmental "promises" has hardly changed. Now, the Obama administration wants to take away our rights to privacy by the use of public cameras, full-body scanners and covert wire-tapping of Internet communications. Indeed, it is now a well-known fact that the NSA, FBI, Homeland Security and hackers can listen in on our Internet transactions. Even worse, sarcastic thanks goes to Microsoft for allowing the Chinese "back door" access to the Windows operating system.
The GNU Project is the antithesis of what Microsoft and our government are imposing. They have taken a hard stand on preserving our civil liberties in terms of safe, secure computer software and privacy.
In an open letter, author David Alexander Sugar, Chief Facilitator at GNU Telephony, espouses free (as in freedom "communications software") operating systems and condemns the imminent threat to abolish our civil liberties as regards computers and the Internet:
“When we speak of introducing backdoors into communication systems, such back-doors rarely remain secret and often present themselves to abuse not only by national governments, but also by private corporations and even individuals. Such mandates do not make a society more secure, but in fact less.”
Sugar goes on to say,
“Other important actions include efforts by the United States Department of Justice to explicitly use state secrets to dismiss lawsuits of those seeking redress from the unlawful practice of rendition and torture at the hands of private contractors, and to establish state secrets as an institutional protection for those carrying out unlawful actions on behalf of the United States government in general, including telecom companies that had facilitated widespread illegal domestic intercept in the past.”
Author Sugar comments on the principle of innocent until proven guilty:
“Other actions by this administration make it explicit it wishes to reverse the institutional practice of presumption of innocence and replace it with presumption of guilt. One clear example of this is the assertion of the right of the United States government to automatically blacklist websites merely ‘accused’ of copyright infringement in some manner, with neither court oversight nor due process. Related to this is the effort to create a new copyright treaty entirely in secret (ACTA) that seeks the ability to punish individuals directly for alleged crimes with no due process recourse.”
The Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, supports the above argument. Furthermore, the concepts of liberty and privacy are largely guaranteed by provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment. Warrantless Internet eavesdropping—as it relates to liberty and privacy—falls well within this category.
Referencing the recent cyber attack on Iran (a good thing) as an example, anyone using Windows faces a host of vulnerabilities (see accompanying video). Regarding the collusion between Microsoft, the FBI, NSA and others, Sugar comments,
“Perhaps most terrifying is adding backdoors to operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, already known to be insecure and defective by design, which simply further increases their vulnerability and the dangers inherent in their continued use.”
Sugar concludes his letter with a strong statement,
“What is most troubling of all about the expansion of illegal domestic surveillance is how this will reshape the institutional nature of society. To fully appreciate the effect of such surveillance on human societies, imagine being among several hundred million people who wake up each day having to prove they are not "terrorists", however that may be whimsically defined at the moment, compounded by the impossible task of doing so without being accorded the right to face their accusers in summary 'proceedings' or even to be informed of the alleged 'evidence' produced by whatever arbitrary, secretive methods such agents of repression use, and where their prosecution is carried out under the shroud of ‘state secrets’ that all such police states use to abuse their own citizens. Such is a society whose foundation is built on the premise of everyone being guilty until proven innocent and where due process does not exist; a society where the ends justifies the means. It is the imposition of such a illegitimate society that we choose to openly oppose, and to do so in this manner.”
Retrieve complete letter here.
Is this administration moving towards a communistic form of government? Case in point, the Chinese operate the Internet as a government-owned utility, with complete control over its use, including filtering and monitoring. They virtually filter every piece of communications and use it as a means of ferreting out political dissidents. In a free society, the ideal scenario is open connectivity with personally controlled security, not the “backdoor” access pushed by the administration. This essentially opens the door to intrusion by anyone and everyone. As is the case in China, filtering (euphemism for eavesdropping) renders all citizens vulnerable to not only snooping, but aslo severe cyber attacks.
If you have ever dealt with a virus-infected computer, and if our government succeeds in their quest to eavesdrop, then expect more invasion of privacy and computer trouble on an order of magnitude.
Unquestionably, David Sugar’s letter presents a very profound, technically accurate argument. It also emphasizes the main goal of the GNU Project, which is to preserve computer safety, privacy and stability through robust, freedom software. The group announced their plan on September 27, 1983 and launched the initiative on January 1984 with the mission of:
“. . . bringing back the cooperative spirit that prevailed in the computing community in earlier days—to make cooperation possible once again by removing the obstacles to cooperation imposed by the owners of proprietary software.”
The GNU organization are champions of not only freedoms in software platforms, but in our basic constitutional rights. They are dedicated to providing software tools that facilitate privacy and security at the personal level. The group accepts donations via the Free Software Foundation.
Much thanks to the GNU group for supporting our rights and offering software alternatives.
Finally, be sure an vote for like-minded representatives in the mid-term elections!
Semper Fi,
Comments
Good article. Just give us back our freedoms! When is it going to stop? Or, will it ever stop? Because we own a car, the state has our info, we carry an ID, insurance cos. keep track of us, mechanics, and the list goes on. Because we shop, supermarkets and other stores has our number. The credit bureau keeps tabs on (negative) reports, the government has access to our bank accounts. Now, they want to snoop the Internet.
We are not the enemy. We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Give us back our privacy.
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