At the end of the climate summit, Sultan Al-Jaber celebrates the agreement reached in extremis and praises the attendees of the meeting of the Arab Emirates: "Future generations may not know their names, but they will owe a debt of gratitude to each of you."
Who for sure knows the names of all the attendees are their police services, who must have recorded from the beginning of the summit where and with whom they met and what they wrote or communicated, not already on their social networks , but to their private communications.
Must all this have influenced in some way the outcome of the meeting? Must have played with advantage the positions that seek to extend the current energy model?
At the entrance to the country, a "smart door" for voluntary use subjected the traveler to a biometric control that allowed physical monitoring throughout their stay.
Not crossing it did not make you invisible: "Whether or not this program is adopted, a wide network of surveillance cameras spread throughout Dubai is able to identify all visitors based on the data taken at customs," he denounced the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) at the start of the appointment.
"From the moment COP28 participants land in Dubai, they will be exposed to intrusive government surveillance," he added in a statement. HRW's lead researcher on monitoring, Zach Campbell, told the Efe agency that "it seems unlikely that negotiations aimed at achieving the ambitious outcome that the world urgently needs to tackle climate change will succeed if the delegates cannot communicate without fear".
These Arab dictatorships…
On the other side of the Atlantic (to the east) there is a similar debate.
About twenty organizations and internet service companies have just asked the government of their country for an immediate reform of the so-called Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
It is a law that, in a few words, allows any communication with a foreign citizen to be intercepted without a court order. Yes, without a court order.
It began to develop after the attacks of 11-S and must be renewed before the end of the year. That is why it is time to debate or try to introduce mechanisms for greater control.
The defenders of the law promise that relaxing it would leave the country at the feet of all kinds of crime, and that is why they exhibit numerous successes achieved since it was implemented: they discovered the Chinese origin of a chemical component that is used to synthesize fentanyl, they discovered atrocities committed by the Russians in Ukraine, they identified multiple ransomware attacks against some of their critical infrastructure or cyber attacks against some of the big companies, among many others.
The platform that brings together the opposites warns that “as providers of digital products and services, both for-profit and not-for-profit, we depend on the trust of our customers to sustain digital communities. If the widely documented abuses are not addressed in legislation, people will continue to worry about the possibility of their most intimate information being collected by intelligence agencies without accountability, thereby eroding the economic and social power of the Internet ".
This country across the sea is not Nicaragua or Bolivia or the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Let's talk about this paradigm of freedoms that is or claims to be the United States.
Section 702 can be purchased on Amazon. Soft cover, 102 pages. 16.95 euros.
The contents can also be shot. Copy it, I mean.
