A rare opportunity to learn the truth about the state of Internet! My long-time friend from London works for ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). They are fighting a vicious battle to keep the internet open and every end of the year he sends out a report. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote a few days ago:

The event, “Parliament meets Internet Surveillance, the Digital Economy & the Open Internet” touched on a number of hot topics which we all ask ourselves about. How much surveillance is there on the Internet? How open is it? Are my emails private? What has changed since the Snowden revelations? The video of the event is out there but what struck me most was that:

a. in the UK every bit of Internet communication is monitored/filtered,

b. emails, if not encoded, are monitored too,

c. our Web site usage is monitored not only by the Government but also through the use of cookies and other tracking of all of our actions from Web site to Web site,

d. using encryption might be futile as most encryption algorithms make use of a device’s (computer, mobile phone, iPad) internal compromised hardware generating random numbers and

e. if you go to some Web sites that spread hate or download illegal content – once, you’ll be unnoticed, – regularly your transactions will be recorded and tracked, and if you finally upload some material on that Web site you will receive a visit from Men in Black.

In other words, privacy on the Internet is dead!