Progressive Mayor Wins in NYC

Tom Hayden on Bill de Blasio's Win: A Harbinger of a New Populist Left in America?

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

November 6, 2013  |  

The overwhelming support of  New York City voters for  Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.

One is De Blasio's promise to redress the " tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011  Occupy Wall Street movement – not by New York  Democratsaligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color – aggressive tactics  favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.

Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor  Michael Bloombergand, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – both  Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office – until now.

De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As  Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:

I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once.

With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to  paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right.

De Blasio is positioned to similarly shift the nation's dialogue, policies and priorities in a progressive direction – assuming he delivers on his campaign pledges. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has passed a  loophole-ridden Dodd-Frank reform law, which failed even to regulate the trillions floating in the derivatives industry. Wall Street investors have been richly rewarded since then, while  middle-class incomes stagnate and the numbers of poor Americans reach the highest in 50 years. A report last week from the respected  American Community Survey noted:

No other major American city has such income inequality when it comes to rich and poor when it comes to New York.

Among De Blasio's first challenges will be prodding Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature in Albany to permit local tax increases to fund universal pre-kindergarten in New York City. Cuomo and most pundits say the De Blasio proposal is going nowhere, but seasoned reporters like Gonzales are not so sure. "It's hard but doable. I'm not sure that Albany will resist the home rule message from a new mayor with a large mandate."

De Blasio has direct power over New York City's $70bn budget and re-zoning policies, which, under Bloomberg, showered favors on a real estate industry bent on  competing with London and Hong Kong at the expense of residential neighborhoods. An early test for De Blasio will be the  Midtown East re-zoning project left unfinished by Bloomberg, which would erect Empire State Building skyscrapers from the East River to downtown. De Blasio wants to "fix" the proposal, while community groups are 100% opposed, saying they would be left in permanent shadows.

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

De Blasio also can tackle income inequality by signing the living wage ordinance on city contracts, or by preventing Wall Street developers getting special city abatements – measures that Bloomberg vetoed. De Blasio didn't flinch on the issue when confronted in closed meetings with developers during the campaign.

When De Blasio first  raised his opposition to the police stop-and-frisk policies, according to  Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the candidate began rising in the polls against other contenders in the Democratic primary. The stop-and-frisk policy, a variation of racial profiling against black and brown young people, is generally supported by white and worried New Yorkers and overwhelmingly opposed by communities of color.

De Blasio and his African-American wife have a teenager, named Dante, whose  Afro style even caught the attention of President Obama. As Dante leafleted with his father at subway turnstiles, emotional memories of the murdered Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were palpable, if rarely mentioned.

New York under Mayor Giuliani fanned then popular American policies of mass incarceration towards youngsters who resembled Dante de Blasio. From 2008 to 2012, the  NYPD stopped nearly 2.9 million New Yorkers, a majority of them young, about 85% black or brown. On average, 88% of those stopped were  completely innocent of any crime or misdemeanor.

When a federal appeals court  halted a judicial order ordering detailed changes in the NYPD last week, De Blasio expressed "extreme disappointment" and pledged to move forward on police reform from day one. How he will do so is procedurally muddled for the moment, but there is little doubt that another staple of the Bloomberg era is ready for the dustbin.

Will De Blasio adhere to his promises? He is, after all, a mainstream Democratic party operative and policy wonk who once managed Hillary Clinton's centrist campaign for the US Senate. Decades ago, he was deeply involved in the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement against Ronald Reagan's illegal contra war. De Blasio seemed nervous when this past association surfaced earlier in the campaign. But the Republicans could gain no traction on the issue.

It is reassuring that De Blasio has roots in past social movements instead of the usual pedigrees for a political career. If he has veered back to his lefty roots, it is enabled by a popular anger among voters. This anger was fanned by the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, reinforced by heavy-handed policing, in a city whose power brokers are addicted to opulence.

The media widely acknowledges that Occupy Wall Street " changed the conversation" in America. De Blasio won't represent the 99%, but a healthy majority will do. From Wednesday, Bill de Blasio will have the largest megaphone of any conversation-changer on the national scene.

 

Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He served 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees. He is the author of ten books, including "Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.

GOP Loves to Cut SNAP, but not Corp Welfare

Food Stamps Are Affordable; Corporate Welfare Is Not

Tuesday, 05 November 2013 15:07 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: SqueakyMarmot, teresia )

Republicans are outraged for all the wrong reasons.
This past Friday, $5 billion was automatically slashed from the federal food stamps program, affecting the lives of 47 million Americans.

The USDA estimates that because of these cuts, a family of four who receives food stamps benefits will lose about 20 meals per month.

But these enormous cuts to food stamps aren't enough for Republicans.
They still want to slash an additional $40 billion from the program in the name of reducing spending and federal debt.

Republicans love to argue that programs like SNAP - the federal food stamps program – and other social safety net programs put an unfair burden on American taxpayers, but if they just took a minute to crunch the numbers, they'd realize that's flat out wrong.

In 2012, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 per year paid just $36 towards the food stamps program.

That's just ten cents a day!
That's less than the cost of a gumball.
But Republicans think that's still too high a price to pay to help the neediest and most vulnerable Americans.
 And when it comes to funding the rest of America's social safety net programs, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 a year pays just over six dollars a year.
Simply put, the American taxpayer isn't paying much for social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicare.

But we are paying a lot for the billions of dollars the U.S. government gives to corporate America each year.

The average American family pays a staggering $6,000 a year in subsidies to Republican-friendly big business.

And that's just the average family. A family making more than $50,000 a year - say $70,000 a year - pays even more to pad the wallets of corporate America.
So where does some of that $6,000 that you and I are paying every year actually go?
For starters, $870 of it goes to direct subsidies and grants for corporations.
This includes money for subsidies to Big Oil companies that are polluting our skies and fueling climate change and global warming. Compare that to the $36 you and I pay for food stamps a year.

An additional $870 goes to corporate tax subsidies.
The Tax Foundation has found that the "special tax provisions" of corporations cost taxpayers over $100 billion per year, or roughly $870 per family.
But in reality, that number is much higher.
Citizens for Tax Justice found that the U.S. Treasury lost $181 billion in corporate tax subsidies, which means the average American family could be out as much as $1,600 per year.
 
Finally, of the $6,000 in corporate subsidies that the average American family pays each year, $1,231 of it goes to making up for revenue losses from corporate tax havens.
This money goes to recouping losses from giant transnational corporations like Apple and GE that hide their money overseas to boost profits and avoid paying taxes to help the American economy.

The bottom-line here is that American families are paying $6,000 or more per year to subsidize giant transnational corporations that are already making billions and billions of dollars in profit each year. In the past decade alone, corporations have doubled their profits.

Republicans on Capitol Hill keep suggesting that we can't afford to help the poor in this country, and they're wrong.

What we really can't afford is doling out $100 billion each year to corporations that don't need it.   That's where the real outrage and the real news coverage should be.

It's time to bring an end to corporate welfare, and to use those dollars to help those Americans who need it the most.

   
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication. 

Progressives & Tea Party Begin to Rein in NSA

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Oct 29, 2013 Issues: Defense and National Security

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                       

October 29, 2013                                                                               

 

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and a bipartisan coalition of congressmen this morning introduced comprehensive legislation to rein in the federal government’s unconstitutional surveillance of Americans.

The USA FREEDOM Act, H.R. 3361, reforms parts of the USA PATRIOT Act that have been used to surveil Americans’ telephone records and Internet activity, according to recent leaks.  Amash joined Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and more than 70 cosponsors in the House. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the companion bill in the Senate.

“The days of unfettered spying on the American people are numbered. This is the bill the public has been waiting for. We now have legislation that ceases the government’s unconstitutional surveillance. I am confident that Americans and their representatives will rally behind it,” said Amash.  Amash continued, “I am thrilled to join senior colleagues on the Judiciary Committee such as Subcommittee Chairman Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Conyers in introducing the bill.  Leading members on the committee of jurisdiction and a diverse group of more than 70 congressmen have signed on as original cosponsors. We have strong momentum.”

The comprehensive bill reforms several provisions in the Patriot Act that reportedly have been used to commit privacy abuses. First, the bill ends the government’s blanket collection of Americans’ records. Second, it increases the transparency of government surveillance. It ends the era of secret law by requiring FISA court opinions to be made available to all congressmen and summaries of the opinions to be made publicly available. Gag orders on telecommunications companies are modified so that the companies can make more information about government surveillance available to customers. Third, the bill increases privacy protections. It installs a Special Advocate to argue on behalf of Americans’ privacy before the FISA court, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board receives subpoena power to perform its duties.

Introduction of the Freedom Act marks a major acceleration in the movement to reform government surveillance. The Amash-Conyers amendment, which was substantively incorporated into the Freedom Act, failed narrowly on a 205-217 vote in July. Eight of the Freedom Act’s original cosponsors voted against Amash-Conyers. Sensenbrenner and Leahy are the primary authors of the Patriot Act, which the Freedom Act reforms.

 

CONTACT

Will Adams

(202) 225-3849

will.adams@mail.house.gov

First Public Protest to NSA Surveillance State

Thousands gather in Washington for anti-NSA 

'Stop Watching Us' Rally

Statement from whistleblower Edward Snowden read to crowd featuring groups from left and right of political spectrum  -  GUARDIAN - London

• Link to video: Protesters rally in Washington against NSA surveillance
  Thousands gathered by the Capitol reflection pool in Washington on Saturday to march, chant, and listen to speakers and performers as part of Stop Watching Us, a gathering to protest "mass surveillance" under NSA programs first disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
  Billed by organizers as "the largest rally yet to protest mass surveillance", Stop Watching Us was sponsored by an unusually broad coalition of left- and right-wing groups, including everything from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Green Party, Color of Change and Daily Kos to the Libertarian Party, FreedomWorks and Young Americans for Liberty.
  
  The events began outside Union Station, a few blocks away from the Capitol. Props abounded, with a model drone hoisted by one member of the crowd and a large parachute carried by others. One member of the left-wing protest group Code Pink wore a large Barack Obama mascot head and carried around a cardboard camera. Organizers supplied placards reading "Stop Watching _____", allowing protesters to fill in their own name – or other slogans and occasional profanities. Homemade signs were more colorful, reading "Don't Tap Me, Bro" "Yes, We Scan" and "No Snitching Allowed".
  
  "They think an open government means our information is open for the taking," David Segal of Demand Progress, an internet activist group, said to kick off events. As the march proceeded from Union Station to the Capitol reflecting pool, the crowd sang various chants, from "Hey hey, ho ho, mass surveillance has got to go" to "They say wire tap? We say fight back!"
  David Reed, of Maryland, said he felt compelled to show up because of the "apathy" he sees among much of the public towards whistleblowers. Reed said he attended the trial of Chelsea Manning, the military whistleblower who leaked thousands of State Department cables to Wikileaks, as an observer, and was "disappointed that so few people showed up".
  
  "The courtroom only held about 30 people, and there were few days that it was filled up," said Reed, who described himself as "just a concerned citizen". "We just stand by and watch."
  
   
• A protester wears a mask depicting a skull beneath the head of the Statue of Liberty, beneath a model of a US drone aircraft. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
  The program at the reflecting pool included ex-politicians, whistleblowers, professional activists, poets and a punk band, YACHT, who performed their song Party at the NSA. ("Party at the NSA/Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours a day!")
  
  Thomas Drake, the former NSA official who blew the whistle on government surveillance and waste following 9/11 and was charged under the Espionage Act, was on hand, talking to reporters about, among other things, recent revelations that the US government had tapped the phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and other world leaders. 
  
  "For what? Why would you violate her rights? Because, what, she might know something about terrorism?" he said. "What is that all about? They're an ally! They're partnered with us. I mean there are threats to the international order and stability. Why would you breach the trust of the chancellor of Germany?"
  
  When Drake addressed the crowd, he said any domestic surveillance legislation that might result from the Snowden leaks "must include whistleblower protection", because "without adequate protections, [government employees] are more likely to turn a blind eye" to abuses of power. He warned against the "acid turned up by the potent brew of secrecy and surveillance".
  
  Another well-received speaker, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and 2012 Libertarian party candidate for president, said "there's only one way to fix the Patriot Act: and that's to repeal the Patriot Act". He too was concerned about the apathy towards surveillance programs that comes when someone thinks it's "not about me".
  
   
•   Demonstrators hold placards supporting Edward Snowden. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
  
  
  But the big star of the day, despite his physical absence, was Edward Snowden – "Thank you, Edward Snowden" was the most popular banner slogan among the cord. Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department ethics advisor who is now a director with the Government Accountability Project, read a statement from Snowden to the crowd. 
  
  
  "This isn't about red or blue party lines, and it definitely isn't about terrorism," Snowden wrote. "It's about being able to live in a free and open society." He also noted that "elections are coming up, and we are watching you". Members of Congress and government officials, he said, were supposed to be "public servants, not private investigators".
  
  William Evans, of Richmond, Virginia, may have best embodied the nonpartisan atmosphere and message of the event. He wore a "Richmond Tea Party" baseball cap, as well as a Code Pink sticker saying "Make Out, Not War". He is a member of the Richmond Tea Party but not of Code Pink, he said, adding that he "just loved" what the sticker said. Evans said he was attending to protest the "shredding of the constitution" and added that he was happy that "you guys on the left are finally starting to see it".
  
  "We may not always agree on our belief system," he added, "but thank God we agree on the Constitution."
  

NSA Bugs Friendly Leaders' Phones

NSA Monitored Calls of 35 World Leaders After US Official Handed Over Contacts

Angela Merkel was right. Leaders calling it "unprecedented breach of trust."

Photo Credit: Terrance Emerson/Shutterstock.com

October 24, 2013  |  by James Ball, Guardian, London

 

The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The confidential memo reveals that the  NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their  surveillance systems.
The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA.
The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor  Angela Merkel on Wednesday  accused the US of tapping her mobile phone.
After Merkel's allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor" the German chancellor's communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past.
The NSA memo obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders – and even asks for the assistance of other US officials to do so.
The memo, dated October 2006 and which was issued to staff in the agency's Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID), was titled "Customers Can Help SID Obtain Targetable Phone Numbers".
It begins by setting out an example of how US officials who mixed with world leaders and politicians could help agency surveillance.
"In one recent case," the memo notes, "a US official provided NSA with 200 phone numbers to 35 world leaders … Despite the fact that the majority is probably available via open source, the PCs [intelligence production centers] have noted 43 previously unknown phone numbers. These numbers plus several others have been tasked."
The document continues by saying the new phone numbers had helped the agency discover still more new contact details to add to their monitoring: "These numbers have provided lead information to other numbers that have subsequently been tasked."
But the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced "little reportable intelligence". In the wake of the Merkel row, the US is facing growing international criticism that any intelligence benefit from spying on friendly governments is far outweighed by the potential diplomatic damage.

The memo then asks analysts to think about any customers they currently serve who might similarly be happy to turn over details of their contacts.

"This success leads S2 [Signals Intelligence] to wonder if there are NSA liaisons whose supported customers may be willing to share their 'Rolodexes' or phone lists with NSA as potential sources of intelligence," it states. "S2 welcomes such information!"
The document suggests that sometimes these offers come unsolicited, with US "customers" spontaneously offering the agency access to their overseas networks.
"From time to time, SID is offered access to the personal contact databases of US officials," it states. "Such 'Rolodexes' may contain contact information for foreign political or military leaders, to include direct line, fax, residence and cellular numbers."
The Guardian approached the  Obama administration for comment on the latest document. Officials declined to respond directly to the new material, instead referring to comments delivered by Carney at Thursday's daily briefing.
Carney told reporters: "The [NSA] revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries, and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels.

Editor:  Sounds like NSA spin.  Instead of hard wiring and grabbing, hacking they Get Numbers from Friends in other Departments.  Maybe.  The point is, they swore to never listen to US citizens.  They have violated their oath of Office, for at least a decade, and need to be fired.  And not allowed to work in "intelligence" again.

Right-wing German Gov't Outraged at NSA Spying

Germany summons US ambassador over claim NSA bugged Merkel's phone

Allegations that US spying has reached highest level of government met with outrage and disappointment in Germany

The decision by Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, to summon the ambassador was seen as an unusally drastic move. Photograph: Corbis

 

Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has called the US ambassador to a personal meeting to discuss allegations that US secret services bugged Angela Merkel's mobile phone.
The decision to call in John B Emerson, who has only been the US representative in Berlin since mid-August, is an unusually drastic measure. During previous upheavals in relations, such as over the Syrian crisis, conversations have taken place between diplomats.

Allegations that the US government's spying had reached the highest level were met with outrage and disappointment in Germany on Thursday. The country's defence minister, Thomas de Maiziere, told ARD television it would be bad if the reports turned out to be true. Washington and Berlin could not return to business as usual, he said.

Informed sources in Germany said Merkel was livid about the reports that the NSA had bugged her phone and was convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.

The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that the chancellor's mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. She found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.

The outrage in Berlin came days after the French president, François Hollande, called the White House to confront Barack Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.

Link to video: Merkel's phone bug: EU commission calls for action on data protection
While European leaders have generally been keen to play down the impact of the whistleblowing disclosures in recent months, events in the EU's two biggest countries this week threatened an increasing lack of trust in transatlantic relations.

On Wednesday Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, made plain that the chancellor upbraided Obama unusually sharply and also voiced exasperation at the slowness of the Americans to respond to detailed questions about the NSA scandal since the Snowden revelations first appeared in the Guardian in June.

Merkel told Obama that "she unmistakably disapproves of and views as completely unacceptable such practices, if the indications are authenticated", Seifert said. "This would be a serious breach of confidence. Such practices have to be halted immediately."

The sharpness of the German complaint direct to a US president strongly suggested that Berlin had no doubt about the grounds for protest. Seibert voiced irritation that Berlin had waited for months for proper answers from Washington on the NSA operations.

On Thursday Süddeutsche Zeitung conveyed a strong sense of the depth of disillusionment with the US president in Germany when it wrote that "Barack Obama is not a Nobel peace prize winner, he is a troublemaker".

In a comment piece in the German broadsheet, Robert Rossmann wrote that during his last visit to Germany, "the American president had flamboyantly promised more trusting collaboration between the countries. Even Merkel seems to have lost faith in that promise by now. One doesn't dare imagine how Obama's secret services deal with enemy states, when we see how they treat their closest allies."

Die Zeit wrote that Obama's "half-hearted denial" of the allegations raised more questions than it answered. "Was Merkel's mobile the target of NSA surveillance in the past? … It is time for Obama and the US Congress to be ruthlessly transparent about the macabre practices of the NSA and restrain them strongly. They promised it months ago, but until recently very little has happened. With each revelation trust is eroded further. If America wants to stop annoying its friends and allies, it only has one option. Get on the front foot and be open."

Criticism was not focused solely on Obama, but was extended to Merkel, whose chief of staff only recently declared that the NSA scandal was finished. Many feel Merkel failed to react appropriately to the Snowden revelations, and was only stepping up the rhetoric now that she had been personally affected.

Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, said that the reports showed "the absurdity of politicians trying to draw to a close the debate about surveillance of everyday communication here". He said it had been irresponsible of politicians not to be more upfront in calling for the US to clear up the matter.

Anke Domscheit-Berg, of the German Pirate party, told the Guardian: "In the past few months, Chancellor Merkel did very little to make the US government answer all those questions that should have had highest political priority. Now she gets a taste of what it feels like when foreign secret services spy on all your communication. We have stopped trusting empty promises and so should Angela Merkel. It is about time to get all dirty secrets on the table."

The debate in the coming days is likely to focus on how the allegations will affect new data protection regulation at the European level, with some MEPs calling for a Europe-only data cloud. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Georg Mascolo and Ben Scott warned of the creation of a "digital Maginot line" between Europe and the US, and instead called for a "no-spy treaty" between European countries.

"Storing data and surveillance would only be allowed for previously agreed goals – the fight against terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as grave acts of crime. All forms of political and economic espionage would be banned. The privacy of every EU citizen has to be respected by each EU secret service as if they were their own."

Slipping Past NSA Spies

New Google technology ‘uProxy’ to provide uncensored Internet for global activists

Published time: October 22, 2013 00:45
Edited time: October 22, 2013 13:33

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Reuters / Cathal McNaughton

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Hacking, Human rights, Information Technology, Intelligence, Internet, USA

Internet privacy advocates and activists suffering under repressive government regimes may now have a new avenue for free expression with uProxy, a tool developed by Google that is expected to bypass censorship and invasive government monitoring.
Developed by Google’s New York City-based think tank Google Ideas, uProxy is a peer-to-peer service that allows one to establish an encrypted internet connection with someone they trust. Google, which provided the funding to developers Brave New Software and the University of Washington, hopes the new technology will outwit government officials around the world who have cracked down on the internet in recent years.
“If you look at existing proxy tools today, as soon as they’re effective for dissidents, the government finds out about them and either blocks them or infiltrates them,” Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, told Time magazine. “Every dissident we know in every repressive society has friends outside the country whom they know and trust. What if those trusted friends could unblock the access in those repressive societies by sharing their own access? That was the problem we tried to solve.”
Like Tor, uProxy consists of a simple browser extension that is capable of finding a user’s friends on Facebook. The service, currently in “restricted beta” mode, is not an anonymizing network like Tor but will render an individual connection indistinguishable from all other encrypted conversations online. That anonymity might itself be valuable, considering the lengths that agencies such as the NSA have gone to in order to crack Tor’s security.
“There’s no uProxy-specific mark on traffic that identifies the traffic as being sent by uProxy,” the service’s website notes.
A user in the US would essentially be able to provide an American connection to a friend in Iran, for example, without fear that the link would be revealed.
“The user in Iran can get unfiltered access to the internet that’s completely uncensored and will look just like it does in the US,” Cohen went on. “Every dissident we know in every repressive society has friend outside the country whom they know and trust. What if those trusted friends could unblock the access in those repressive societies by sharing their own access? That was the problem we tried to solve.”
“This is a company of activists and white-hat hackers,” he said. “When you work at Google and tell these engineers that their skill-set is relevant to somebody in Iran who doesn’t have access to information in their country or the rest of the world, it really inspires them to want to do something about it. There is a genuine altruism that exists at this company, and that’s why I’m here and not anywhere else.”
Google Ideas will introduce uProxy in a New York City conference titled “Conflict in a Connected World.” The event will also be the debut of Project Shield, a measure that will help human rights groups, major media organizations, and others fend off the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks which incapacitate a website by overwhelming it with traffic.
“We believe in human rights, we believe in free expression,” Cohen said. “We believe in election monitoring, and we believe in independent media.”