A Skype call in Ethiopia will now get you 15 years in prison
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
Having lived in Ethiopia for almost 10 years, this is has been systematically going on for years. It ofcourse started as a way to keep revenue coming in from long distance phone calls, blocking services like net2phone. I've also been told that the whole country had a 2Mb satellite connection and everything was dialup. Traceroutes left Ethiopia and came back 750ms later in New York, but they now have fiber connections and seem to be connected through Djibouti.
Now they're blocking Tor and snooping on opposition parties (what's left) and bloggers. SMS traffic also can be shutdown whenever they want.
If we rewrite the law to say, “Thou shalt not use a communication mechanism we can’t monitor,” the behaviours of Ethiopia and US/Canada aren’t all that different.
Author of PGP: http://www.contra.org/pgp/PhilZimmerman.html
More on Zimmerman: http://www.spectacle.org/795/zimm.html
Popular T-shirt at the time: http://www.conchord.org/xeno/pgp.html
But in Ethiopia I think I recognize the familiar pattern of government wanting to prevent communication, especially large scale fast or instant communication, because that's what leads to popular revolutions.
Totalitarian governments do that often, this is why the USSR slowly leaked the news of Chernobyl over three days. And why North Korea would not show its national soccer team's World Cup games live. Too much opportunity for too many people to find each other in the streets at the same time.
We are not there yet. However, it's not like our current path leads any place else. And I wonder if well-of people like Singaporeans for example, simply don't engage in violent popular revolutions? This would mean, that as long as our quality of life stays mostly at industrialized world levels, we won't do anything that extreme.
The fact that we even have these expectations is what sets us apart from a lot of other nations. Sometimes we (especially those of us, who, unlike you, don't have a public writing persona that lends to the occasional "I wonder what the reaction to this will be" moment) forget to step back and appreciate them. Indeed, many of our discussions are framed around these very expectations.
But those policies were put in place when fear ruled the land- especially the republicans, who had expressly ignored the terrorism threat to the US in favor of defense spending aimed at missile defense.
But what we haven't seen, in the wake of these disturbances are the powers being used for anything other than what they were intended. Nobody is rounding up prostitutes, or drug dealers, or even pedophiles with the powers granted by the Patriot Act.
And we've seen a new administration take over and change its mind on the issue. That is: before having access to all of the information AND being the one responsible, I believe X. Now that I have the security access and is the one responsible, I believe Y.
You don't have to be a genius to see what is happening. And it has nothing to do with corruption, power-grabbing, etc. My guess is John McCain wouldn't have closed the base at Guantanamo either, despite his campaign stance.
It's easy to sit in the cheap seats and lob mortars of accusations at these people. It's harder to try to understand how they are trying to do the best job they can without letting go completely of their ideals.
It's a wobbly boat. I hope we get some ballast good and low before too long. But I think we're still doing reasonably well-- and much better, I'm happy to say, than I feared when the Patriot Act was passed.
While this prohibition has the immediate (apparent) consequence of 'saving' the state-controlled telephone industry and ostensibly the jobs of its workers, it has a long run consequence of raising telecom costs for the rest of the country which results in less money available for other investment, resulting in a net-loss for the economy. This will also result in an expansion of the "industry" of catching illegal Skypers and prosecuting and incarcerating same -- thus magnifying the net economic loss. Instead of diverting government and/or private resources into innovation, those resources will instead be consumed by reactionism.
The Ethiopian policy is entirely about protectionism and has nothing to do with communications security.
If by 'inefficient processes' you mean 'workers who are paid a living wage', then yes.
As a general rule I support free trade, but I think you're misrepresenting the concerns coming from the left about free trade.
Plus, their arguments which amount to "working in a sweatshop for our cheap shoes is doing them a favor, because otherwise they'd have no jobs at all" I always found as mere justification for the continuation of slavery and colonization in modern terms.
If you have evidence that the situation is otherwise, please share it.
Could government agents flout the Constitution and public sentiment? Sure. But they couldn't get away with it for long without public support.
"How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."--V for Vendetta
Or to quote the great political philosopher, Dennis: "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses."
Here is a blogger (a lecturer at Arba Minch University) who the Al-Jazeera aggregation links to; he has some interesting insights on what it means for the average Ethiopian:
https://endalk.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/the-new-ethiopian-te...
For those who are not familiar with the alphabet, it looks like this: http://www.amharicmachine.com/alphabet.gif
Certainly North America and Europe (I assume that's what you meant by "we") have corruption issues, especially with deferred bribes in the form of industry appointments, and contract money flowing to well-connected companies. But that's decidedly different than seeing large percentages of tax revenue ending up as personal property, or state industries like telecoms being awarded as personal fiefdoms to cronies, who then use revenues like a piggy bank.
"Political correctness" is not a dirty word in my vocabulary -- I usually see it as sensitivity or tact -- but censoring our appraisal of corrupt governments because there are elements of corruption in the west, out of fear we'll be accused of hypocrisy or colonialism, is not helpful.
like Canada.
regulatory capture + an effective duopoly means I get to pay for gold plated service and actually get telcom services that the rest of the world laughs at.
It may not be the case for the people of Ethiopia today, but mobile phones have proven to be a powerful disrupter in similar countries. Skype acts as a conceptual anchor for the reader in the article, but the law is not limited to Skype.
You can't downplay this legislation. It is an assault on the very foundation of freedom. Make no mistake about it.
Electricity, computers, and the internet are considered a necessity (or in Europe, even a right) by First World countries, but in Third World Countries like Ethiopia, whether you're going to have enough food to feed your family is still the biggest daily concern.
Though the government is surely monitoring internet communications, at least people aren't being disappeared. I'd like to see an amendment to the constitution that protects the citizens' right to privacy for all forms of electronic communications and personal digital storage. I think your online identity should fall under the same right of non-self-discrimination that spouses and accused persons have.
"Can't imagine why they are one of the poorest countries on earth."
Agreed !
I would add this relevant idea by Matt Ridley from The Rational optimist (http://amzn.to/KvuK4S) :-
As long as human exchange and specialization are allowed to thrive somewhere, then culture evolves whether leaders help it or hinder it, and the result is that prosperity spreads,technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fertility falls, happiness increases, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes and the environment improves.
Amazing to think somebody making an unsnooped call would get longer in prison than some murderers!
(unless VPN software is also covered by this legislation, which the article doesn't say).
State monopolies can be bad.
IMHO.
"The evidence comes from events that revealed the NSA’s true motives from 2005 through 2009."
It sure is a shame that the author forgot to link to such evidence and actually present it; someone should notify the webmaster.