iSpy

E-spionage is recruiting strange allies, and claiming unexpected victims. Pascale Ghazaleh reports
"Terrorism," said George W Bush last week in an address to the naval forces on board the USS Enterprise, "is an ideology that respects no boundary of nationality or decency." Replace "terrorism" with "the Internet," and "ideology" with "means of communication," and you get an idea of why many governments have been treating the two as if they were one and the same. In case the prevailing mood wasn't clear, US Attorney-General John Ashcroft spelt it out the same day. "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty," he said, "my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists."
After the 11 September attacks, one of the first things the FBI did was to confiscate two computers suspects had allegedly used in a Florida public library.
"A subsequent computer search revealed a host of clues from the electronic footprints left behind by hijacking suspects that pointed to a worldwide web of conspirators that stretched to Germany, Saudi Arabia and ultimately, Afghanistan," Reuters reported on 7 November.
Criminals have always had to cover their tracks. Why should "electronic footprints" be any different? Well, one reason is that the attacks seem to have jogged the memory of law enforcement authorities across the world: the Internet is an easily accessible source of information, a flexible, resilient means of networking and a virtually invisible forum for organisation. This is nothing new as far as lawbreaking is concerned -- the Web made it much easier to commit credit card fraud, or circulate child pornography, for instance, and as early as 1998, the chief of the FBI's international terrorism section was warning the US Senate that "major terrorist groups used the Internet to spread propaganda and recruit new members," the Wall Street Journal reminded readers on 8 October.
In that sense, the events of 11 September merely nudged forward changes that were already taking place, related to the kinds of crimes in which the Internet could prove useful, the measures policymakers were willing to take to counter that, and the precise (or not so precise) definitions of illegal activity legislators had to elaborate. In the UK, the Guardian reported "sweeping proposals to give law enforcement agencies access to the communications records of every... telephone and Internet user." In the US, the Patriot Act, which sliced through Congress like a hot knife through butter and which George W Bush signed into law on 26 October, removed even the limited restrictions that had prevented domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies from spying on US citizens. The Internet's full range of possible uses -- long obvious to innocent users and criminals alike -- suddenly became glaringly evident to law enforcement officials.
And in America, as elsewhere, while the controversy surrounding freedom of electronic expression spilled over into other, older dilemmas (must an individual's civil liberties be curtailed if they are perceived to pose a threat to others? just what constitutes a "threat," anyway?), the Internet's nature as a new medium with specific characteristics skewed the stakes a little.
The Web covers large parts of the globe. "In 1981, fewer than 300 computers were linked to the Internet," according to a 1997 interim report titled "Communications privacy in the digital age" and prepared by the online Center for Democracy and Technology. "In 1986... there were probably 50,000. By June 1996, there were over 9.4 million host computers worldwide linked to the Internet; including users who connect to the Internet via modem, some 40 million people worldwide can and do access the enormously flexible Internet communications medium."
In the Third World, of course, the numbers are far more limited; but it won't be long before they start catching up. Here, the Ministry of Communications and Internet Technology, intent on "spread[ing] internet usage across the country and transform[ing] Egypt into an information society," will bring Egypt free internet access by 1 January 2002. According to a press release issued by the MCIT, Telecom Egypt, in partnership with licensed service providers, will be setting up 15,000 ports capable of serving two million users, who will pay only for the local dial-up phone tariff. Many users already enjoy virtually free access, with ISPs competing to provide lifetime subscriptions at symbolic rates.
As access spreads, however, so does the vexed problem of how to control an elusive, often unpredictable medium. "The Internet is not like the telephone system, or the mail, or mass media. [It] combines a much broader range of functions," observes the CDT's report. Among these functions, we may single out its capacity to facilitate the dissemination of information: "Barriers to participation are low: anyone with a computer and a modem can be a publisher." Such barriers, of course, include both financial obstacles (it costs next to nothing to set up a home page; putting out a newspaper demands vast capital), and prohibitions linked to censorship: in the absence of central control, it is possible -- at least temporarily -- to say anything.
"Unlike traditional media, the barriers to entry as a speaker on the Internet do not differ significantly from the barriers to entry as a listener. In the argot of the medium, the speaker can and does become the content provider, and vice-versa. The Internet is therefore a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." Thus did the US Supreme Court overturn the Communications Decency Act in a 1996 landmark ruling for freedom of expression. Commenting in Netizen ("the town hall of the digital nation") shortly after, Todd Lapin wrote: "Defying the government's argument that the Internet should be regulated like a broadcast medium, the court found that 'communications over the Internet do not "invade" an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden. Users seldom encounter content "by accident".'"
Yet today, governments across the world are still grappling with the Web's dual function -- it can reveal information, yet conceal its transmission and content (law enforcers read: "allow criminals to share information, while concealing their identity from security authorities"); and governments are now scuttling to dam up the information flowing across borders with a potentially world-shattering exuberance.
There are several ways in which the Internet can be controlled. One is for a central authority -- in all likelihood the government -- to allow data in and out through a single gateway, as is the case in China or Singapore. In this way, the government can effectively block information it considers dangerous to Internet users. One regime seeking to offer its would-be netizens such careful patriarchal protection is Saudi Arabia, where over 10 software companies, most of them American, are currently competing "for a contract to help... block access to Web sites the Saudi government deems inappropriate," according to a 19 November New York Times report.
Yet blocking is "notoriously ineffective," as salon.com technology editor Andrew Leonard notes. Computer engineer Wael Khalil, who has been working on the Web since 1995, points out: "If someone wants to say something, they're going to say it. Censorship can always be subverted: mirrors are produced overnight."
Previous examples show this clearly: in July 1999, to cite just one example, India's largest Internet service provider, the state- owned telecom monopoly Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, blocked access to the respected Pakistani English-language newspaper, Dawn. While salon.com's Leonard found it disturbing that "all publicly accessible international gateways to the Internet in India are controlled by one company," which "could easily censor India's access to the rest of the Net," he noted at the time that one Indian online service had already "posted detailed instructions advising readers how to get around the restrictions." In China, too, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are set to launch a trial service allowing people to access sites the government has blocked.
If stopping data before it reaches the demand side is relatively hopeless, then, one alternative is to turn off the supply tap, by closing down a site or pulling content selectively. The US government itself closed down no sites after 11 September, the British government only two (qoqaz.net, a pro-jihad site prosecutors said was affiliated with Azzam Publications, as the Wall Street Journal/MSNBC reported on 8 October, and the Sakina Securities Web site, which offered "young Muslims the chance to learn all about explosives and the 'art of bone breaking'," according to Reuters).
Internet service providers and site owners, however, have been more than willing to sing along with the loud chorus of conformity since 11 September. As Jonathan Wallace, author of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, and a plaintiff in the American Civil Liberties Union case against then US Attorney-General Janet Reno, told Al-Ahram Weekly: "The First Amendment to the US Constitution strictly governs what the US government may 'censor'... [but] there is often a gap between constitutional law and daily practice which is filled by self-censorship and private censorship." In an exhaustive list detailing the "chilling effects" of anti-terrorism legislation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a San Francisco-based organisation designed to educate about technology-related civil liberties) includes, among the sites shut down voluntarily, 55 "jihad-related" sites removed from Yahoo!. Several Internet companies, according to the Wall Street Journal, have stopped hosting sites "that are believed to support terrorism or that applaud" the 11 September hijackings. The CEO of Lycos Europe NV, which has a 20-person team "monitoring its Web sites for illegal activity" and "removing terrorist-related content," puts it bluntly: "If there is criminal activity, we cooperate with the authorities."
Other site owners who have exercised their right to self- censorship include the Federation of American Scientists (which removed 200 pages of information, "including floor plans of National Security Agency and [CIA] facilities and images of foreign nuclear weapons plants"), but also such extraordinary candidates as Barbra Streisand (who removed anti- Bush articles from her site in "an effort to encourage national unity instead of partisan divisions"); the owner of The Flagburning Page (who cited death threats "and assaulting emails" as the reason for removal); and, astonishingly, Planned Parenthood, whose RoevBush.com site is "temporarily disabled."
While the US government may not have shut down sites, various departments have spared it the bother. These, according to the EFF list, include the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the International Nuclear Safety Center, and the Federal Aviation Administration, among many others.
Abroad, a heavier hand is sometimes necessary. Where subverting rogue states was once the prime goal, the US is suddenly backpedaling and quashing dissent -- and the Internet, not surprisingly, plays a part in the transformation of foreign policy concerns. SafeWeb, a California-based Internet privacy firm, recently closed an anonymous Web surfing service "partly funded by the CIA and intended to give Web users in countries such as China and Iran a way to circumvent censors." (The CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, had invested $1 million in SafeWeb, including $250,000 to license technology, according to SafeWeb spokeswoman Sandra Song.)
The CIA's decision-makers must indeed be sticking pins in an effigy of whoever came up with the idea that the Internet would be a great way of fostering freedom of expression -- or was that channeling dissent? -- in countries "such as China and Iran," where the US would like to see... well, let's call it "change." Now, those repressive governments may prove quite useful after all. Come to think of it, perhaps they could turn the repression up a little...
Outside America's borders, furthermore, surveillance is unfettered by much legislation. As Jonathan Wallace (of ACLU v Reno) told the Weekly, "there are no First Amendment implications if a foreign government acts against its own citizens based on US information." Such cooperation, if it does take place, is likely to draw on networks like Echelon, the US-led surveillance system supported in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Used for global industrial espionage among other things, according to a CNET report released last July, "Echelon has been capable of intercepting telecommunications messages to and from a particular person, via satellite, since 1978."
While other media -- television and radio, as well as the print press -- have been subject to overt or covert censorship as well, the Internet is particularly vulnerable, both because many users erroneously assume it will not be monitored, and because attempts to control it are necessarily flawed due to the technology they use. Search engines target specific words, as Ayman El-Sayyad, managing editor of Kutub: Wughat Nazar and an authority on e- publishing, points out; they will find all sites that include those words, no matter what the context -- with the absurd result that, if the government wishes to block access to pornographic sites, for instance, users will also be unable to access anatomically explicit health information. Then it will be necessary to decide whether access to medical information should be restricted in the first place -- not so much a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater as one of drowning the baby to get it clean.
Then again, users may know they are being tracked, but may not care, at least not enough to pay for the privilege of anonymous browsing. SafeWeb, which is converting to the provision of security services, alluded to declining profitability as the reason, while Network Associates recently announced it was selling its Pretty Good Privacy encryption products, citing a lack of market demand. That may not be the whole story, however, since even companies that offer privacy for a price are now marketing their services to the US government. "Intelligence agencies have been using us for years, especially since September 11," Lance Cottrell, president of Anonymizer.com, told Reuters early last month. "They use us to keep an eye on bad guy sites."
In other words, even the software sold on the promise that it will protect users' privacy can be turned to very different ends. Network Associates, which makes security products including McAfee anti-virus software and Pretty Good Privacy encryption software, has been embroiled in rumours of a "special arrangement" with the US government. According to an article by the Associated Press, "at least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect." Network Associates denied the allegations, according to a 27 November wired.com report.
This cooperation can take other forms outside cyberspace, in the real world. Just as the Patriot Act gives the US government the right to obtain more information about users from ISPs, in Egypt, according to LinkdotNet's president, Khaled Bishara, ISPs must inform the security forces of a Web user's location, for instance, if required to do so. "Informing is part of licensing agreements everywhere," Bishara told the Weekly. "Everyone has to cooperate with the government, to make sure our services don't harm our community. We may disagree, but we don't question it."
Reuters European Internet correspondent Bernhard Warner sums up the process thus: "Detective work is increasingly moving from seedy back alleyways to Internet chat rooms and back onto the streets, essentially following in the footsteps of criminals who use the Internet to plan all manners of crimes."
In Egypt, that is a greater likelihood than either blocking or self-censorship. When the vice squad came to get Shohdy Naguib, Al-Ahram Weekly's webmaster, at dawn on 22 November, they took away his computer too. This was significant because the reason for Naguib's arrest was a poem by his late father that had been posted on the Internet. The main problem, therefore, seemed to be not so much that the poem was "offensive to public morals" (the reason the morality police, and not another branch of state security, arrested Naguib), but that publishing it on the Internet was tantamount to "disseminating information harmful to Egypt's reputation." The distinction here may be subtle, but it is likely to give the prosecutor a headache. If Naguib had been handing out pamphlets on the street, it would have been fairly effortless to pick him up and put him away. As things stand, according to Hafez Abu Se'da, Naguib's lawyer, there is no way of proving he was the person who posted the poem -- or even that the site in question, wadada.net, which is registered outside Egypt, belongs to him.
Naguib's case seemed to point to the role the Internet might come to play in Egypt one day soon as a channel for dissent -- and repression. In all likelihood, a disgruntled user came across the poem by chance and informed security forces; since Naguib Surour, who as the author is directly responsible for the poem's offensive content, could not be called in for questioning (he died in 1978), his son was summoned instead. Still, in this respect "Egypt is much more free and open than other Arab countries," according to LinkdotNet's Khaled Bishara. "Elsewhere, there is much more monitoring."
That is likely to increase, however, even more than it has in the three months since the attack on the US. Furthermore, Naguib's case, and others like it, will certainly curtail Web-based criticism of the government's policies. And while "no amount of control can stop people from saying what they want to -- they will just become more 'anonymous' when doing so," as computer engineer Wael Khalil remarks -- "the threat of prosecution will certainly dissuade many would-be Web activists."
Salon.com's Andrew Leonard argues that cyberspace seems irrelevant in light of developments on the ground; he told the Weekly that "when the United States is instituting secret military tribunals, warrantless searches, and racial profiling, the question of what is or isn't possible on the Internet becomes somewhat trivial to me." Yet in countries where the Internet is possibly the only medium allowing for free expression, association (in chat rooms) and debate, the question of what can and cannot be said -- and what will be done with the information -- is all too germane.
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