The terror of anti-terrorism laws and why Facebook, Twitter and Google’s fail to protect privacy

Over the past couple of days I have seen quite a few articles in which people have been complaining about Facebook invading people’s privacy, being creepily Big-Brotherish and encouraging online stalkers. The tide also seems to have turned against Google, with the ever-unpopular Street View cameramen admitting that they had “inadvertently” downloaded private data from household Wi-Fi networks, including sensitive information such as passwords and e-mails.

It’s no secret that law enforcement officials and security forces the world over can or will soon be able to hack into anyone’s Facebook, Skype or e-mail accounts and collect data such as private conversations, photographs or status updates to gather information about suspected criminals.

The trouble I have with this is: how do officials decide who is a potential criminal or terrorist? Do they use racial and religious profiling? For over twenty years, key-word technology has been developed as part of state security. Mention the word “bomb” or similar such terroristy word over the internet, the phone or in a text or e-mail and a little red flag is raised somewhere on a server.

Of course, most of the time it’s a false alarm. Nevertheless they must be looked into, which takes up time and resources. And the technology has to get more and more sophisticated as the years go by, because more and more people are getting connected and internet traffic is growing exponentially year-on-year.

The anarchist in me would suggest that everyone should put the word “bomb” in every single e-mail you send out and say it on every single phone call you make, and if millions of us do it, it might make their servers explode and their operations director commit suicide.

However, the real threat to our privacy is not just Facebook, but the whole kit and caboodle. Facebook, Twitter and Google and the millions of app developers and advertisers watching your consumer habits. Turning your computer on or using your mobile phone means that you are leaving a trail of your behaviour on servers all over the world. Your IP address. Your friends. Your shopping habits. Your Google searches. Your location. You think that just because your “add your location” option on Facebook is disabled that no-one will know where you are?

Puh-lease, biatch.

Everyone’s cellphone is a tracking device. GSM technology allows network providers to track the location of a mobile phone using cell tower triangulation methods. Even if you have a Nokia 3310.

Most passports are now so-called biometric or electronic passports. These passports contain RFID chips which can be read from up to 30 feet away, enabling your personal information to be read and updated on a central database without your knowledge whenever you are travelling with your personal documents. And those are just the RFID chips we know about. There may very well be others that we are not aware of, hidden away in things we would never suspect.

Calls can be tapped and Facebook/Twitter communication can be logged. Even Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls such as Skype can be monitored, recorded and traced.

I would say that Twitter is becoming a larger threat to privacy than Facebook. With the new revamped version of Twitter, conversations between groups of people can be seen and analysed, and multimedia platforms are available on separately-developed but interlinked applications. The more worrying aspect of Twitter is that most people’s Twitter accounts are public, meaning anyone can see them, whereas the vast majority of Facebook accounts are protected by privacy settings.

Some people can Tweet up to 100 times in one day, leaving nothing about themselves to the imagination but the regularity of their bowels. That means that just about anyone can get a good feel of who you are, what you do and what your political stance is just by reading your Twitter feed.

Naturally, there will be a mindless sheep here somewhere saying, “but if you haaaaaven’t done aaaanything wrong, then you don’t have aaaaaanything to fear.”

Well, you smug little anal-retentive government-employed drone, you are more plastic than flesh and bone. Every normal person has something to hide, whether it is a big something or a small something. Everyone has committed some kind of a sin that they wouldn’t want the entire world knowing about. Everyone is guilty of something and hopes that they are clever enough to fool the world into thinking that they are moral, law-abiding citizens. There is no such thing.

The wonderful thing about life is that mistakes and bad judgement can be left in the past and there is always the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. But that was before governments got all 2.0. Now, nothing will be forgotten.

In the United Kingdom, the deceptively-named “Interception Modernisation Programme” (IMP) will require all mobile phone and internet service providers to collect and store the "traffic details" of all internet and mobile phone use in the country. In the face of several concerns about this legislation, there have been a sudden slew of terrorism scares, from a crazy old lady who stabbed her MP to printer ink cartridge bombs defused “seconds from detonation” at UK airports. Convenient, eh? I get the feeling that the laws will be pushed through in the wake of the Islamophobic hysteria, as it always is, and we are once again stuck with a law that has stripped us of our privacy and placed us inextricably in the Orwellian sphere.

Statistics released by the British government suggest that under the Regulatory Powers Act of 2000 (RIPA) – meant to combat terrorism - one in every 78 people is placed under state-sanctioned surveillance each year, with well over half a million official requests to access private information by councils, police and other officials in 2008, for infringements of the law such as benefit fraud, illegal fly-tipping and bringing a dog into the country illegally.

And the worst part? People who were found to have done nothing wrong, not even to have breached a council by-law, are not entitled to be informed that they were the subject of a surveillance operation.

Between CCTV, credit and debit cards, cookies on our computer, wiretaps on the phones and RFID chips in our documents, the net is closing in on Joe Soap, not Osama bin Laden. And governments all over the world are using terrorism as an excuse to ensure that no deed, good or bad, goes unpunished. And of course there is reality television to keep us all glued to the box while our civil rights dissolve like ice in the Sahara desert.

The next time Facebook asks you “what’s on your mind?” I’d suggest you think twice before you tell it the truth.

Facebook and Twitter: are you optimizing your social media strategy? [SPOOF]

There are times when I feel I must educate the masses about the proper and correct use of Facebook and Twitter as a medium for making friends and impressing people. Some of you are just not doing it right at all.
So for the socially inept, here are some pointers:

1. Use the right language
Some of you are putting full stops and vowels into your communication. This is unacceptable and so last century. Wen itz tym t0 tlk 2 ppl, u r sup0sd 2 b v edgy n kewl lyk dis. iT aLS0 hElpS iF U tYpE LiKe thIS. No-1 knws y.

2. Don’t hold back so much
Your friends on Facebook and Twitter WANT to know the size, colour and consistency of the vegetables you threw up in the car after a hard night’s clubbing over the weekend, what your boyfriend of two seconds whispered in your ear on the backseat last night and what emo feelings you are going through because your daddy pays more attention to his lady friends than to you.

3. My friend is your friend
This is a free world. You are more than welcome to hijack my Facebook status and verbally attack any of my other friends who comment on it, including people who are old enough to be your mother.

4. Stalking – the new way of saying I love you
Guys love it when young girls ignore all the security and privacy advantages of Facebook and have their Wall and Photos available for the world to see. It makes it that much easier to stalk you and groom you until you are ready to perform certain acts that could make you famous in the video entertainment industry. Go for it – experts say making porn can build self-confidence among the young ladies of today.

5. Tag, you’re it!
Please, by all means, upload a random picture of a fat woman with camel toe to pollute my news feed. And just in case I am unlucky enough to miss it, tag me in the picture, so that when my other stalkers friends look for pictures of me, they think I look like Gabourey Sidibe in a thong.

6. The Farmville Mafia
Everyone loves Farmville. Everyone loves Mafia Wars. Hopefully, if we invite every friend we have onto these apps repeatedly, there will be no need to live in the real world any more. We can farm by day and kill one another by night. Yeah.

7. Invitations
The University of London Fresher’s Events, The Bomb Squad, Stop Randomly Poisoning Dogs in Seychelles and I HATE TYPICAL INDIAN HARROW/KENTON/KINGSBURY BOYS & GIRLS!! These groups are awesome. My life is now so much more fulfilled and meaningful. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

8. Justin Bieber
I love it when #hornyforjustin is trending and I get to find out how many of the people I follow on Twitter are closet paedophiles.

9. Trending topics
Trending topics are such an insightful tool into the current affairs of the day. “I wear flip flops, even in the rain #BecauseImAGangsta”. Yes. Because all gangstas wear flip flops. In the rain. That’s what makes them gangstas. And after all, discussing why you are a gangsta is so much more important than politics or poor people getting killed in Kashmiristan. Or summin’ or nuffin’.

I hope that this list has given you a clear insight into the many, many benefits of social media. If you can think of any more of the benefits, please feel free to add them in the comments.

Breaking the blockade of Gaza. One dead body at a time.

This morning I woke up to news that made my stomach churn with anger and utter disbelief. The Freedom Flotilla, a convoy of nine boats carrying aid to Palestinians living under siege in the Gaza Strip, was attacked in the early hours of Monday morning in international waters by Israeli security forces. Video cameras streaming live showed the moments the Israelis being lowered down on ropes from a helicopter gunship, while heavily-armoured warships flanked the aid boat on either side.

The men that came on board from the helicopters were armed to the teeth with automatic rifles, bulletproof vests and night vision goggles. It must have been the most alarming sight to see them descending from the ropes, fingers on hair triggers.

The activists on the deck of the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel in the convoy, were obviously frightened but determined they would not go down without a fight. There was an ensuing melee. I did see an activist give an Israeli a good couple of thwacks with a folding chair, just like they do in the fake wrestling programs you see on TV. But I never saw a wrestler get shot dead for hitting someone with a chair.

As yet, the Israeli government has still not confirmed the exact number of dead, but sources have put it at 19 thus far, with up to 60 people wounded. The remaining activists were escorted to the port city of Ashdod in Southern Israel, where the wounded were taken to hospital and the others were held in a makeshift detention camp where they would be processed and probably deported later. The 10,000 tonnes of aid in the boats would be unloaded, checked, searched and slowly “dripped” into Gaza at the mercy of the Israeli government. Dangerous and subversive contraband, such as cement, would not be allowed into the Strip due to a ban already in place.

The Free Gaza Movement organised this flotilla with the aim of breaking the siege that has been strangling the people of Gaza for three years. The group was comprised of approximately 700 pro-Palestinian activists from over 50 countries, including a Nobel Laureate and several European legislators (including a Turkish MP who was found to be one of the victims killed in the military operation).

However, the Israeli Army (I refuse to call it the Israeli Defense Force) would have you believe that the people who organised the flotilla are part of a “radical Muslim organisation” with ties to Al-Qaeda and Hamas (yeah, like my grandmother. If you had to believe the Israelis, only that Muslim gal who was a stripper before she became Miss America doesn’t have ties to Al-Qaeda, and that’s probably only because she doesn’t wear enough clothing for her to conceal a bazooka underneath).

Andy David from the Israeli foreign ministry would like to convince you that these people “were not there to deliver peacefully (sic) humanitarian aid. They were waiting with knives, with metal bars. They were there to attack.” The Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Daniel Ayalon, referred to the Freedom Flotilla as an “armada of hate and violence”. And to think that they pay their PR people top dollar.

Other spokespersons from the Israeli Army tried to defend their trigger-happy behaviour by saying that the activists were waiting for them and they were “lynched”. Because that’s what peace activists do. And the Israelis were so defenceless and afraid for their lives. They are also obviously too underfunded and backwards to have heard of tear gas, rubber bullets or crowd control training.

I hate that anyone had to die or even get hurt for this, but if anything, it will make Joe Bloggs more immune to the brown stuff that is constantly being spewed out of the Israeli PR machine. It also shows the power of social media. Twitter and Facebook have been overloaded by today’s events, and I’d like to think that ordinary folk have made a difference in bringing the issue home to all of us. Today, we shared, discussed, argued, re-tweeted and got information directly from the ground.

That’s the kind of democracy and freedom of speech that counts, but it’s also the kind that the leaders of the “free world” don’t really like because it can’t be edited to suit them. Today, the Israelis found themselves on the back foot while trying to bluff their way out, and everyone in the world has called their bluff.

Addicted to the Matrix

“Hi, my name is Hajira and I’m addicted to the Internet.”

“Hi Hajira!”

Phew, you say to yourself, that cow is finally getting the help she needs. You might be right about the cow part, but the only problem is that the support group is an online one…

It’s a common problem faced by many of us – we spend so much time on the internet that our relationships, activities and work in the real world come off second best at times.

Remember the real world? The place where you could reach out and grab somebody’s hand, feel the blood pulse beneath the skin? The place where you could be reasonably certain that your friend is actually a young lady and not a middle-aged man who breathes heavily and keeps the Kleenex handy whenever you post a new profile picture of yourself?

I think the only thing that keeps us coming back to the real world is food. When we can eat food on the internet, we won’t ever bother to press the disconnect button.

That sign on the door that says “On lunch - back in 15 minutes!” will be staying up much, much longer than that. Even the prospect of real, sweaty, fumbling sex can be passed up these days in favour of, ahem, “researching” one’s more taboo proclivities in a much more glamorous format.

Recently, a Korean couple who starved their baby to death while they looked after a virtual baby at the internet cafe showed the world how far this thing can go. Just give them a bowl of shark fin soup in their virtual world and they wouldn’t have even resurfaced to find out that they had killed their own kid.

So now there are only three categories of people who still exist in the real world. They are as follows:

1. “Celebrities” – these people have to go into the real world to have pictures taken of them passed out in the gutter with their underwear around their ankles. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be famous for anything. They do occasionally pass their time in cyberspace by having Twitterfeuds with other "celebrities".

2. Politicians – often found running amok (impregnating random women, embezzling taxpayers’ money, running over joggers, etc.) in the real world because everyone else is in cyberspace stalking other people they don’t like and playing Farmville.

3. Poor people – these people don’t have computers so we think their opinion doesn’t really matter until we realise it’s election time again. Can often be found burning tyres in service delivery protests, but still can't be expected to think outside the box when putting a tick in the old ballot box.

On the other hand, living completely in the virtual world might mean that we get to eat whatever we want and still stay virtually thin. If they develop a decent mutton biryani then I’m buying myself a plot of land in Farmville. Hyuk.

Social media gives mainstream media the finger

At the start of a new year and decade, it is a time to pause and reflect upon both past, present and future, a way, if you will, to mark a large “You Are Here” in red on the timeline. It is a time to note emerging trends and make predictions about the year ahead.

One thing that cannot have failed to have grabbed everybody’s attention by now is the rise of social media. You would have to be living under a bridge, or approaching your second heart bypass, to be unaware of things like Twitter, YouTube, blogging and Facebook and the impact that these media are having on modern society.

The younger generation of the world is one that demands many things. This crowd is not known for their patience or understanding. They want to have contact with their peers at the touch of a button and they expect news and information to be constantly at their fingertips.

They are also not very good at keeping things to themselves. While I would call this “oversharing”, teenagers and twentysomethings are telling the world about their angst, their heartaches, their funny stories and the things that make them angry.

Their thirst for information is insatiable. Sure, they might not be reading as much as their parents or grandparents, but they are adept at gleaning the bare facts from 140 characters or less. Their parents had to go to the library and search through dusty old tomes for the information they sought, learning to summarise and make their own notes from printed textbooks. But now all that is required is to pick up a mobile phone or turn on a laptop, point it in the general direction of Google or Wikipedia and the gist of the information is absorbed.

It is perhaps not surprising then, that the mainstream media, generally led by wrinkly men with a grey hair or twelve, are struggling to keep up with the spread of news and views on the internet. These would be “unauthorised” news and views. They haven’t been vetted. These stories never sat on a news editor’s desk and the angle of the story wasn’t carefully calculated.

You could argue that it has turned the entire internet into a large corporate office, rife with rumour and gossip, snatches of misinformation whispered between cubicles. But on the other hand it could be said that it keeps the fat cats on their toes and checks their ability to get away with murder without creating a tsunami of whispers and suspicions.

The rise of the use of Facebook and Twitter as means of communicating news has led to many young people questioning the role of the mainstream media and the relevance thereof.

A typical case in point was the recent gathering of about 1400 Gaza Freedom Marchers from 48 countries. They gathered in Cairo, Egypt, intending on travelling through the Rafah border crossing into Gaza and holding a demonstration to draw attention to the plight of the people living in Gaza under blockade, a year after the Israeli attack on the area.

The Egyptian government refused to open the Rafah crossing for them and Egyptian police attacked a group of European female demonstrators, punching, kicking and tearing off headscarves. One French protester reportedly died of her injuries.



Through all this, however, these images were nowhere to be seen in the international media such as the BBC or Sky News, and nowhere in the local media outlets. This is a clear indication that the news corporations are too concerned with toeing the political line. Bad press for the Israelis is something they usually avoid at all costs – even when the cost is a human life.

Climate change is also a big bone of contention which threatens to turn on world leaders and bite them in the rear ends. With the leaking of documents at the Copenhagen climate change summit, the world saw a cancerous clot of greedy bureaucrats stuffing up the last real chance we had to undo decades of pollution and reckless consumerism.

Perhaps an inevitable conclusion is that the social media-using millions will begin to grow restless in the coming years when it begins to sink in – years of inaction and cover-ups by politicians, as thick as thieves with the newsmen. Unfortunately, this may mean years of unrest and demonstrations, perhaps also civil disobedience from protesters and heavy-handed punishment from governments clutching desperately onto power.

I sincerely hope that when the discontent reaches fever pitch it will usher in some kind of new era where ethics and accountability prevails, but the undying cynic in me is prone to point out that the “free” world is more likely to end up resembling the end of George Orwell’s prophetic but terribly depressing novel, 1984.