[iDC] Massive Surveillance on Skype's China platform

[Brad Borevitz]

it's hard to believe that system was left open for this sort of data  
gathering. but that said -- and i don't think this is JUST paranoia --  
i think we have to assume that this and worse is what all of our  
communications are subject to.

i have been lately trying to think about the effects of a culture of  
unregulated surveillance on thought and discourse: how are  
conversations -- how is even thought distorted by an awareness of a  
kind of constant evil witness? is it possible to ignore that? to just  
go on as before?

probably the best exploration of this theme that i know of is orwell's  
1984. i just reread it and found it amazingly prescient. inspired by  
it, i created "the journal of american thought crime" <http://www.thoughtcrime.doesntexist.org/ 
 >, a literary journal in the form of an encrypted mailing list. (and  
i'm told it can't be accessed in China.)

maybe it IS paranoia ... but there is a motivation for creating an  
atmosphere that is pervaded by paranoia, just as there is a motivation  
for the manufacture of fear. there is a utility in crisis that the  
powerful take full advantage of (as m. klien writes). it seems worth  
exploring both sides of this equation we know what they get, but what  
happens to us?

Brad Borevitz
brad at onetwothree.net

My PGP key is available from the keyserver: hkp://subkeys.pgp.net.
My key ID: 0xABFE6939. My key fingerprint: A65A 359C 7896 74D3 1820   
373F 6AD3 21BE ABFE 6939

On Oct 1, 2008, at 5:29 PM, Ronald Deibert wrote:

> Dear Friends and Colleagues
>
> I am writing to announce the release of the first Information  
> Warfare Monitor/ONI Asia major investigative report, Breaching  
> Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s  
> TOM-Skype platform, written by Nart Villeneuve, Psiphon Fellow, the  
> Citizen Lab, at the Munk Centre for International Studies, the  
> University of Toronto.
>
> The full report can be downloaded here:
> http://www.infowar-monitor.net/breachingtrust/
>