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[FYI] FITUG urges political leaders to defend citizens' freedoms



http://www.fitug.de/news/pes/fitug-010918.en.html

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FITUG e.V.  

Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft  

FITUG urges political leaders to defend citizens' freedoms  

Tuesday's terrorist attacks were not only targeting human lives, but 
also the basic values of open societies. In these dark hours of grief 
and wrath, political leaders are called upon to protect both: 
Citizens' lives and citizens' freedom.  

Terrorists' attack on open societies cannot be completed but with 
help from ourselves, and from our political leaders. This must not 
happen.  

In the ongoing debate on how terrorism is best fought, one option 
proposed by certain circles comprieses strenghtening signal 
intelligence capabilities. According to these circles, the 
eavesdropping capabilities available to law enforcement and the 
intelligence community are insufficient for uncovering and monitoring 
communication of today's distributed and highly organized groups of 
terrorists and criminals.  

Availability of virtually unbreakable encryption products to the 
general public is perceived as a major obstacle in the current battle 
against terrorism.  

This perception is highly misleading. Any legislative activity based 
on it will inevitably fail to reach its goal. Instead, such activity 
would undermine basic values of free and open societies, such as 
citizens' right to privacy and private communication.  

Such legislative activity would ignore the ample evidence that the 
problem of today's intelligence is not a lack of signal intelligence, 
but a lack and neglection of human intelligence and intelligent 
interpretation of the material collected.  

Even the most sophisticated signal interception technology available 
will hardly be able to thwart stone age style secure channels used by 
terrorists, such as human couriers and confidential face-to-face 
meetings.  

Cryptography is a key enabling technology for a safe information 
society. Obstructing the use of practically unbreakable encryption as 
a means of securing electronic communications will make our modern, 
information-based economies and societies even more susceptible to 
cyber criminals' and terrorists' attacks.  

Stopping the spread of strong cryptography would amount to blasting 
holes into the civilized world's already-thin defense shield against 
digital harm.  

We therefore urge political leaders and policy-makers not to restrict 
citizens' and businesses' freedom to communicate privately, using the 
best technology available.  

Our societies and economies need this technology and its widespread 
use in order to defend against tomorrow's digital attacks.  

About FITUG  

FITUG creates connections to the virtual world of new media and data 
networks. From our statues: "The association's purpose is the 
fostering of the integration of new media with society, public 
education about technologies, risks, and dangers of these media, and 
the fostering of human rights and consumer interests with respect to 
computer networks." FITUG is a member of the Global Internet Liberty 
Campaign (GILC).  

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