FACEBOOK AND OTHER CYBER PRIVACY THAT THE PNG GOVERNMENT AND JIMMY MIRINGTORO CANNOT PENETRATE
by JACK P KELUA
Most PNG laws are just but some are not. Certain laws passed under the O'Neill regime seem aimed at dismantling checks and balances that are considered essential for vibrant democracies. These checks and balances are clearly stated in our constitution but Peter O'Neill is very clear that unless someone has the big money to mount legal challenges as to the unconstitutionality of a particular law, the law will stay in place and can be enforced. In other words, the government wins not by upholding justice but by threatening to bankrupt those who fight for justice.
Such is the case with the cybersecurity law currently on the table. The law is almost certain to pass and when it does, it likely infringes on free speech rights provided by our Constitution. Thus, it is an unjust law.
Martin Luther King said the following about unjust laws: "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." That is why Niugini Outlook is providing this information to you about how you can get around the new cybersecurity laws. We advocate this only for those who would otherwise be suppressed in their political free speech or in providing information and news to the masses because they are afraid that they might be prosecuted under the law.
There should be no such fear amongst us!
Today's lesson focuses on the matter of electronic encryption for information going across the internet.
Certain communications you do on your smart phone can be easily spied on and monitored while others cannot. Any text message you put out on your phone can be monitored using special software that searches every text message in PNG for certain key words. We do not know if Digicel does this, but would only do so if lawfully directed to by the government. The current slowness at which Digicel is forcing registration of SIM cards suggests to us that Digicel and the government are not exactly on friendly terms regarding any extra work the government wants them to do (which of course is likely to reduce Digicel's profits) to monitor or track citizens.
Nevertheless the technology and software exists for your texts to be selected out of millions because they contain certain words in them such as "O'Neill". Once the text message with certain key words is picked out from the rest, Digicel can then link that text to a phone number, which after SIM card registration, can be linked to the name of a person. Digicel could also monitor all text messages coming out of a particular SIM card/phone number, whether or not they contain any particular words of interest.
Even if you somehow managed to register your SIM card with a fake name, Digicel can trace your location to the nearest mobile phone tower. Many smart phones these days have GPS, which pinpoints your location to a very specific area. This is how you can be tracked down even if Digicel doesn't know who you are.
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It is a different ballgame in regards to using the internet and social media with your computer or smartphone.
Digicel can spy on any electronic communication that is going to and from your computer as long as it is not encrypted into code. Encrypted internet traffic cannot be spied upon by Digicel nor by the PNG government.
You can see for yourself by looking at the window in your browser where you enter the URL address of a web site whether the content of a web page can be spied on or not as it travels through the internet.
If the first letters are HTTP:// that means the web page content is not encrypted. That means that if Digicel has the right software, it can pick out that you are visiting that web page. Once it knows what web page you are visiting then it can easily see the content that you are looking at. For example, if you go to the PNG Blogs site, you will see that the address ishttp://www.pngblogs.com That means that Digicel (giving the information to the PNG government) could monitor that you are visiting PNG blogs and also what pages you are going to. It can do this by going through the logs kept of each web page you visit. Every internet service provider keeps these logs. The logs are linked to your IP address which these days is often unique and tied to one phone number or one internet subscriber.
On the other hand, if the first letters you see in your internet browser window is HTTPS://, this means that the web site content is encrypted in code. No one between your computer and that web site can spy on what you are doing except to see the main domain you are going to.
WARNING: If you are on a computer network at work, the above paragraph must be rewritten to read: "No one between your computer network and that web site can spy on what you are doing....." In other words, your employer usually can see exactly what pages you are going to, whether it is HTTPS or not.
Most sites that require a password that you must use to log in, will switch from HTTP to HTTPS. This prevents your password from being captured by software that is set up to filter internet traffic to detect and pull out possible passwords and user names.
Facebook now encrypts nearly everything on Facebook to prevent spying by any government or internet service provider on what you are looking at on Facebook. See this page for more information about encrypting e-mails that go back and forth from Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-graph/securing-email-communications-from-facebook/1611941762379302/ Facebook is working on encrypting everything you send or receive using it messaging feature, see this article: https://techcrunch.com/…/messenger-adds-end-to-end-encrypt…/
To make it short, HTTPS allows Digicel or another PNG service provider to only see on their logs that you are accessing Facebook. They cannot see what page of the hundreds of millions of pages on Facebook you are looking at, or what postings you are reading. They cannot tell if you are looking at a soft porn page on Facebook or PNG Pulse.
HTTPS encryption is being adopted by many companies. When you look for images using images.google.com you will see that the site uses HTTPS. That means no third party can spy on what key words you are typing in or what image thumbnails you are looking at. If you click into one of those images to go to the actual site, usually the original image location page will not be encrypted, however, so watch out.
Google now uses HTTPS which means that no one can spy on what words you are using to search for web content or what links appear after you hit the submit key. Once you click into one of the links, however, you likely will leave HTTPS, which means that a third party can see what site you are visiting.
REPEAT WARNING: If you are on a computer network at work, the encryption may only work between the web site you visit and the computer server that your work computer is linked into. In other words, your employer usually can see exactly what pages you are going to, whether it is HTTPS or not, either by looking on their computer logs or by using spying software to even see what is on your computer screen at any moment in time.
Gmail also uses HTTPS, which means that not only is your password and user name encrypted, but also the content of your e-mails so long as you e-mail to another Google account.
The HTTPS encryption makes it impossible for the PNG government to find out certain things that you are doing on the internet. Facebook wants to protect the privacy of its users, which is why Facebook is putting special effort into encrypting more and more of its features.
Most PNG laws are just but some are not. Certain laws passed under the O'Neill regime seem aimed at dismantling checks and balances that are considered essential for vibrant democracies. These checks and balances are clearly stated in our constitution but Peter O'Neill is very clear that unless someone has the big money to mount legal challenges as to the unconstitutionality of a particular law, the law will stay in place and can be enforced. In other words, the government wins not by upholding justice but by threatening to bankrupt those who fight for justice.
Such is the case with the cybersecurity law currently on the table. The law is almost certain to pass and when it does, it likely infringes on free speech rights provided by our Constitution. Thus, it is an unjust law.
Martin Luther King said the following about unjust laws: "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." That is why Niugini Outlook is providing this information to you about how you can get around the new cybersecurity laws. We advocate this only for those who would otherwise be suppressed in their political free speech or in providing information and news to the masses because they are afraid that they might be prosecuted under the law.
There should be no such fear amongst us!
Today's lesson focuses on the matter of IP numbers that are part of using the internet. You will see many threats on Facebook of one person telling another "we will get your IP number and find you!" Sometimes that can be done, sometime not. This lesson explains why when you use Facebook, Gmail or some other site that uses encryption that the PNG government will not be able to discover who you are so long as you are not threatening a specific person with violence or engaging in theft or fraud that would be considered illegal in any country of the world.
Firstly understand that the PNG government has no interest in you unless you are doing something (see last paragraph) that is illegal everywhere in the world, or are in the habit of posting information on the social media that the government feels threatened by. In our banana republic our politicians have the tendency to scream that they are going to find out whoever is making bad comments about them on the internet.
That is much easier for the government to threaten than actually accomplish!
Because Facebook, Gmail, and Google, including Google Images all use HTTPS encryption (see Part 1), this means that so long as you are not on a work network of computers connected to a server, the PNG government, through any PNG internet provider, cannot see what you are writing or doing on those sites. However, read Part 1 of this series for more details.
Certainly if you are using Facebook and posting comments or actual articles, you are protected by encryption. The government seeing what you are writing or reading. However, in theory the government could contact Facebook and find out what IP number is attached to certain postings that they don't like.
Can this really happen?
It cannot, so long as your comments do not violate any law in the country where Facebook has its main servers and is headquartered: United States.
No matter how rude or disgusting you may get in saying something about a politician or other public figure, you are not violating any law in the United States. The USA is no different from most western democracies. They strongly protect the free speech rights of citizens under their own constitutions.
If you are not violating any USA law, then no matter how much the PNG government may ask Facebook to give them the IP numbers linked to certain postings and comments, Facebook will essentially reply, "piss off, PNG government!"
Most internet companies in the world will never release information on IP numbers to anyone or any government unless they are served with a court order. Court orders only work if they come from the country where the company is registered to do business. If Facebook is served with a court order from PNG, it can legally ignore it. Only if served with a court order from the USA does it comply. The PNG government would only be able to get a USA court order if a USA law was being broken. As stated already, nothing you say about the PNG government (or the American government) or any politicians in the world will be so bad that it would break any USA law. If you threaten to kill a politician or any other human being, you are breaking USA law. Don't write such a posting and put it on Facebook! Anything else, you don't have to worry about. Your IP number is safe with Facebook.
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