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US and UK Spy Agencies Are "Enemies of the Internet"

A report by Reporters Without Borders puts them in the same bracket as China, Russia, and Iran.

“The NSA in the United States, GCHQ in the United Kingdom and the Centre for Development of Telematics in India are no better than their Chinese, Russian, Iranian or Bahraini counterparts.”

That weighty statement is from Reporters Without Borders' latest report, released today. It details the threat that journalists around the world face from censorship and surveillance, and after the thunderous revelations from Edward Snowden last summer, the US and UK shouldaccording to RSFjoin the ranks of “Enemies of the Internet.”

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Comparing the UK, US, and India to Russia and China is perhaps taking things a little far, but the report explains that their actions are particularly damaging because they have a knock-on effect on other countries' policies. "The mass surveillance methods employed in these three countries, many of them exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, are all the more intolerable because they will be used and indeed are already being used by authoritarian countries such as Iran, China, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to justify their own violations of freedom of information," it says.

"How will so-called democratic countries be able to press for the protection of journalists if they adopt the very practices they are criticizing authoritarian regimes for?"

RSF emphasises that all of the snoopingnot just in the West but as far a field as Ethiopia, Sudan and Turkmenistancouldn't take place without the help of private companies. This is likely a nod not only to the massive surveillance industry that happily sells software, training, and infrastructure to both democracies and dictatorships, but also to the companies involved in the NSA's spying programmes, such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple.

Regarding the US, the report describes the Obama administration's treatment of journalists' sources as a “witch-hunt,” citing the cases against James Risen, Barrett Brown and journalists themselves such as Jacob Appelbaum, who claimed he had his apartment targeted. Neatly summing up the extent of NSA surveillance, the report says that the agency is able to “monitor the Internet at the infrastructure level.”

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When it comes to the UK's GCHQ and its unbridled efforts to "master the internet," the report leads with a quote from Snowden: “They are worse that [sic] the US.” Thanks to its geographical advantage, the UK intelligence agency can sit right on top of the 49 Internet carrying cables that run under the country's beaches. This operation is justified by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000and its continued effort to undermine the most common forms of internet encryption jeopardise the entire system for everyone. Journalists have been openly equated with terrorists, and the Guardian's hard-drives physically destroyed, described in the report as “a surreal scene.”

So what can be done about this? RSF include in their report a list of recommendations for governments and international bodies in the hope that this will lead to reform, and since a large part of the problem is undoubtedly legalwith secret FISA courts and interpretations of the Patriot Act being used to legitimise the practices of NSA and GCHQthese are important steps. RSF urge the United Nations to create a group attached to the UN Human Rights Council to work on digital freedoms, the EU to combat surveillance mechanisms, and governments to promote greater transparency with regards to the surveillance requests that they give to businesses.

These are hugely important changes, but journalists can't just wait for them to happen.

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For now, tangible change can come about from technology. As Snowden has repeatedly said, “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.” Indeed, if everyone used end-to-end encryption, dragnet surveillance would be completely ineffective. The challenge at the moment is to make it popular and accessible.

This is being attempted by some in the more left-of-centre tech industry. MEGA's email service wants to provide “encryption for everyone”, and the new service from encrypted chat specialists Silent Circle and Edward Snowden's former email provider Lavabit is apparently going to protect nearly everything to do with your email, including the metadata. Whether these will truly be “NSA-proof” is yet to be seen, however.

While those kind of solutions are being developed, and to gain a better foothold against surveillance in general, journalistsfinding themselves in a sticky situation due to no fault of their ownshould endeavour to pick up a new set of skills to avoid mass surveillance. The absolute bare minimum required to bypass the NSA's and GCHQ's blanket approach is to use a more secure email provider; correctly set yourself up with PGP encryption, and conduct research over the anonymity network Tor.

If you're a journalist working on anything more sensitive than London Fashion Week or League 2 football, you might want to consider using the Linux-based 'Tails' operating system too. Of course, there are many more additional layers, tricks and behavioural changes that can be used if need be, but these are a few relatively simple ways journalists can stand up for their privacy in an age of mass government surveillance.

The message from Reporters Without Borders is clear: “The Internet is a collective resource. Don't let 'Enemies of the Internet' turn it into a weapon in the service of special interests.” And those enemies now include the US and UK.