Surveillance on the Internet

Bruna Batista and Luís Israel

On the 19th of this month, four years have passed since the Ecuadorian embassy in London granted political asylum to Julian Assange, Australian cyberactivist and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. The hunt for Assange began in 2010 with the leak of confidential documents from the US government through the wiki. Julian contributed to the debate of freedom on the network on several fronts, of which one in particular is very important (and controversial) today: surveillance on the Internet. After the 2013 Snowden revelations on the surveillance program of the National Security Agency, these contemporary privacy issues are no longer seen as conspiratorial, but rather as an inescapable reality.

What is surveillance?

The concept of surveillance, when it comes to the internet, refers to entities and organizations, government related or not, which maintain constant monitoring and control over user data in online sites and services, many times in unauthorized fashion. Such initiatives attribute crime fighting and user security as reasons for their existence, especially when it comes to government related entities.
Surveillance, in the case of security and intelligence services, results in the “militarization of the cyberspace”, as Julian Assange puts it in his book, Cypherpunks: “when you communicate over the internet, when you communicate using mobile phones, which are now meshed to the internet, your communications are being intercepted by military intelligence organizations. It’s like having a tank in your bedroom. […] To that degree, the internet, which was supposed to be a civilian space, has become a militarized space”.
In the private end, search engines and social networks sell user data to companies which utilize them, for example, in market researches and, consequently, also in marketing strategies. The issue is that, in most cases, users don’t know that their data is being exposed and having its security fragilized by being sold to other companies or provided to security entities connected to the public Power. The information and personal data are transformed into currency.
It’s important to note that public and private entities, just like in any market, approach matters differently The Apple vs FBI case is a recent example of that, in which the american investigative agency demanded, legally and willing to collect data from a defendant’s phone, that the technology market giant developed a hack in order to facilitate access to information on all iPhones. The company refused to develop such mechanism, arguing in favor of user privacy. That is also in lieu of Apple’s business model, for which data access is not as important as it is for a social network, for instance.

How users are affected by surveillance

Constant access to Internet users’ personal data without their previous knowlledge violates several individual rights. The argument of rights’ evaluation, which places public safety above individual rights, is suceptible to a slippery slope, in which the very concept of “safety” can have amiguous meaning. Counterterrorism laws,  according to this pretext, are used to limit freedom of expression. The French case is an example of this limitation, since, after Paris’ november 2015 attacks, authorities reinforced counterterrorism laws, and in weeks evidence came up that these prerrogatives were used to demobilize political acts.
It is very usual that users try to rationalize vigilance by means of justifications similar to “if you have nothing to hide, then there is nothing to fear”. However, personal sensitive data (information that can cause embarrassment or stigmatize its owner) can render different impacts, depending on the circunstances of its exposion: the place or the receiver of the information, for example, Knowing ethnicities, sexual orientations, or even the face of a certain person is something that can serve to different purposes in different situations. Allowing unrestricted access  to personal data, even to an organization, means to make them fragile and potentially expose them to the entire world.

Cryptography

There is, however, a form of protection against unwanted eyes online: cryptography. This concept refers to the pratic and the study of safe communication techniques, in which speakers and interlocutors codify their message by means of a code that only the two of them can decipher. Apps that are cryptographed do not make it impossible that data be discovered, but they make it harder and, consequently, turn the discovery process expensive enough so that it is not economically viable to decipher them in an unauthorized way. In April, WhatsApp adopted a cryptography system for its users. Before that, several other applications, like Bitcoin, Signal and the network Tor had already implemented advanced cryptography systems, both technologically and politically, in favor of anonymity.
The cases already mentioned here, since Assange’s leaks up until Apple vc. FBI, raised a global issue with regard to the rightful use of cryptography. However, one must consider the right to privacy, because prohibitting cryptography would be like prohibitting the confidentiality of letters in the mail. Additionally, criminalizing any cryptographic system is virtually impossible in today’s world, where people use similar technologies in mechanisms essential to the internet, such as passwords (social networks and international banks). A potential criminalization of certain types of cryptography would only shed light, once again, into the political nature of this conflict. From the right to privacy, one can assume also a right to cryptography, which certainly is key to a safer and more plural network in the future.

About the authors

Bruna Pereira Batista is a social media at Limonada Audiovisual, an audiovisual content producer from Belo Horizonte, and is graduating in Law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and she is also member of the Study Group on Internet, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GNet). Currently part of CTIT Consulting, consulting for companies at INOVA,  an incubator at UFMG. She is interested in the areas of Innovation and Technology, Communication and Free Media and Right to privacy.

Luís Israel is a researcher at the Institute for Research on Internet and Society and is currently graduating in Law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Member of the Study Group on Internet, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GNet) and the Study Group in Neuroethics, both from the UFMG. He is interested in and writes about Philosophy of Law and Internet Law.