J. Edgar Hoover would have loved the internet (TechRepublic)

J. Edgar Hoover would have loved the internet

By Scott Robinson                                                     March 28, 2014, 

The case of Edward Snowden and the subsequent revelations about the behaviors of the NSA raise serious questions about privacy, liberty and the future role of the internet, by way of J. Edgar Hoover. 

J. Edgar Hoover

It seems like urban legend, but it's a matter of history that J. Edgar Hoover - director of the FBI for over five decades - kept secret files on US citizens, and used their contents to keep himself in power.

This history has been the subject of books and movies, is well explored in both Hoover's biographies and those of the presidents and attorney generals whom he blackmailed. Harry Truman was the first to publicly decry Hoover's abuse of power, based on scandalous content on over 2,000 people, most of it illegally obtained.

And what's particularly poignant about that episode in US history is the public reaction. That a public servant could go so very far off the reservation in the abuse of power, that such a bold and openly brazen enterprise could have existed, was in its time an almost unfathomable breach.

Yet today, only a generation later, we take it for granted.

Trading away privacy

It was "The West Wing" that made the point that the debate of our grandparents' time was the role of government; our parents, civil rights; and our generation is now debating privacy, in the endless sea of the internet and the cell phone. It isn't turning out to be much of a debate; on the contrary, there seems to be an almost unspoken negotiation in place, a sense that the information we now command, via the internet, is far greater than the information we give up. Yes, there is less privacy, but there is also far more empowerment than the average citizen has ever enjoyed, through free access to information.

That seems like a fair trade, perhaps, to millennials or even Gen X'ers, whose facility with the flow of information enabled throughout their lifetimes may vastly exceed their elders. They understand that information defines their future. The question remains, is the trade-off worth it, and by what reasoning is it in any way necessary?

The magnitude of privacy breach

The horror over what Hoover did a generation ago has certainly dimmed with time, but it could well be because those emotions were focused on an individual - a public figure of dark and dubious reputation to begin with, an easy emotional target to fix upon.

The NSA is another matter. Edward Snowden's revelation of the agency's abuses of power, systematic illegal espionage and general disregard of constitutional process inspires controversy and some civil outrage, but somehow we don't feel as violated. Is it a matter of acclimation to the new digital age, or the facelessness of the enemy?

Whatever the reason, it numbs us to the numbers: the NSA's violation of civilian privacy potentially exceeds Hoover's by at least five orders of magnitude. Hoover wasn't interested in you or me; he was interested in presidents and actors and civil rights leaders. The NSA is certainly interested in all of that, but its reach is endless. It extends to all of us.

Where is power like this most effectively leveraged? Exactly where Hoover applied it: self-preservation. It is common these days for Facebook to clog up with posts about how Congress is bought off by special interest lobbyists (who outnumber legislators 25-to-1), but that influence is nothing compared to the Hooveresque threat of a legislator's most private communications, held hostage by an enterprise who essentially has the same dirt on everyone.

IT and the NSA 

If any one solution to this growing problem is in the wind, it hasn't made itself known. The issue of privacy, and in particular our own government's casual disregard of it, is front and center; reigning in the powers in question is only now beginning to be seen as something that can't be done with the stroke of a presidential pen. The implications are disturbing, and it's not out of line to feel a little paranoid about it.

But the take-home point is this: it is those who really understand the internet, the flow of information, the mechanics of security, the management of information access rights and the growing complexity of social information channels who are able to articulate both the nature and the scope of the threat: and those people are, more than anyone else, the membership of the IT community. Those whose body of professional knowledge and experience include these areas of technical expertise have much to say about what is happening and what could happen. And we should.

We may not have the answers to this very serious problem. But we are able to inform others as to what questions we should all be asking.

Scott Robinson is a 20-year IT veteran with extensive experience in business intelligence and systems integration. An enterprise architect with a background in social psychology, he frequently consults and lectures on analytics, business intelligence...

US Boycotts UN Drone Talks

By Colum Lynch,                                          Foreign Policy

akistan is trying to push a resolution through the United Nations Human Rights Council that would trigger greater scrutiny of whether U.S. drone strikes violate international human rights law. Washington, though, doesn't want to talk about it.

The Pakistani draft, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, urges states to "ensure transparency" in record-keeping on drone strikes and to "conduct prompt, independent and impartial investigations whenever there are indications of any violations to human rights caused by their use." It also calls for the convening of "an interactive panel discussion" on the use of drones.

The Geneva-based human rights council held its third round of discussions about the draft on Wednesday, but the Obama administration boycotted the talks.

The White House decision to sit out the negotiations is a departure from the collaborative approach the administration promised to take when it first announced plans to join the Human Rights Council in March 2009.

The Bush administration had refused to join the body out of concern that repressive states might exercise undue influence over the council and that it would focus disproportionate attention on Israel. The Obama administration, by contrast, argued it was better to reshape an imperfect organization from within than to complain about its failings from afar.

"Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement at the time. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system.... We believe every nation must live by and help shape global rules that ensure people enjoy the right to live freely and participate fully in their societies."

Rhetoric aside, though, the Obama administration has largely refused to supply U.N. experts with details about the classified U.S. drone program, which has killed hundreds of suspected militants in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries over the past decade. Independent investigators say the strikes have also killed thousands of civilians, including large numbers of women and children, a charge the White House -- without providing evidence to the contrary -- denies.

Ben Emmerson, the U.N.'s current special rapporteur for the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, has urged the United States to provide more basic information on the U.S. program, including its own list of civilian casualties. "The single greatest obstacle to an evaluation of the civilian impact of drone strikes is lack of transparency, which makes it extremely difficult to assess claims of precision targeting objectively," he said.

Those demands are nothing new. Micah Zenko, an FP columnist and expert on drones at the Council on Foreign Relations, recalled in a recent piece that U.N. human rights investigators have been raising concerns about the U.S. targeted killing program since Nov. 15, 2002, just 12 days after the first confirmed American strike.

Asma Jahangir, then the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, asked the United States and Yemen for information the Nov. 3, 2002, missile strike, which killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi and five suspected al Qaeda militants in Yemen. She also expressed concern that "an alarming precedent might have been set for extrajudicial execution by consent of government." The United States declined to comment on the specific allegations, but it challenged any suggestion that "military operations against enemy combatants could be regarded as 'extrajudicial executions by consent of governments.'"

It remains unclear what Washington will do when the Pakistani resolution is put forward for consideration next week.

Most resolutions in the Human Rights Council are adopted by consensus, but the United States has the option of forcing a vote on the resolution.But a State Department official made it clear that the United States would not support the resolution. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that the United States has in the past "regularly participated in negotiations on resolutions dealing with the need to protect human rights while countering terrorism. But this particular resolution deals solely with the use of remotely piloted aircraft."

"We just don’t see the Human Rights Council as the right forum for discussion narrowly focused on a single weapons delivery system," the official said in prepared remarks. "That has not been a traditional focus area for the HRC [Human Rights Council], in part for reasons of expertise. We do not see how refinements to the text can address this core concern. We know that others may have a different perspective, and of course we respect their right to do so."

"It is incorrect that we are unwilling to deal with important counterterrorism issues at the HRC and with its mandate holders," the official added. "We have met with UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on counter-terrorism at senior levels when he traveled to Washington."

Speaking last week at a U.N. review of the U.S. human rights record, a top State Department lawyer, Mary McLeod, said that Washington's use of armed drones complies with international law and stressed that Washington goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

Russia, which is facing international condemnation for its annexation of Crimea, used the body's most recent meeting to argue that a provision raising concern about the prospects for civilian casualties from drone attacks wasn't strong enough. The current provision, Russia's delegate noted, "doesn't reflect the seriousness of situation with remotely piloted aircraft," according to notes from the meeting.

Andrea Prasow, an American lawyer who tracks national security issues for Human Rights Watch, said the United States was passing up a golden opportunity to influence the U.N. debate on drones.

"This resolution would be the first time the council is going to do anything about drones and the U.S. is not participating in any of the informal discussion about language, " she said. "They are telling us they are reserving judgment on the resolution, which means they won't be happy with it. We have also heard from them and others as well they are concerned that the council doesn't have jurisdiction over this issue. I think it's ludicrous to say the Human Rights Council doesn't have anything to say about drone strikes."

Questions about the legality and morality of drone strikes have bedeviled the administration for years. Last May, President Barack Obama announced in a speech before the National Defense University that he would curtail the use of drones and other controversial practices associated with the U.S.-led war on terrorism. And there have been no reported U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan for months.

Still, the classified guidelines outlining the new policy call for transferring control over drone strikes to the military have never been implemented. Earlier this year, the White House reportedlydebated whether to launch a drone strike against a Pakistan-based American citizen suspected of plotting a terror attack against the United States. Had he been killed, the unnamed man would have been the fifth U.S. citizen killed by an American drone during Obama's presidency.

Netflix Just Opened the Door to Paying ISPs More Access Fees

By Justin Bachman                                                         March 21, 2014

Netflix (NFLX) Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings is seeking your help to keep Internet service providers from charging higher fees to stream all the video its customers watch. In the process, he may have just opened his wallet to any Cox,Time Warner Cable (TWC), Verizon Communications (VZ), or AT&T (T) across the nation.

In a blog post on Thursday, Hastings said the company’s recent decision to payComcast (CMCSA) millions in access fees arose from a degradation of the cable provider’s handling of Netflix data. That led to streaming glitches and other problems for Netflix customers, a situation that has also been reported by Verizon’s FiOS customers. After its payment to Comcast last month, Hastings wrote, “our members are now getting a good experience again.”

However, in the process of agitating for new, tougher net-neutrality rules, Hastings may have validated that same strategy for other ISPs: Throttle Netflix streaming until it’s unwatchable, and wait for the video service to write you a check. Net neutrality means that the companies controlling the infrastructure of the Internet can’t treat different kinds of Web activity differently. “Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience,” Hastings wrote.

STORY: Netflix and Comcast Are Only Trying to Help You    

Given the tone of the post—and the issue’s high profile in Washington—Comcast responded swiftly, saying that companies such as Netflix “have always paid for their interconnection to the Internet” and can guarantee good performance for a fair price. “We are happy that Comcast and Netflix were able to reach an amicable, market-based solution to our interconnection issues and believe that our agreement demonstrates the effectiveness of the market as a mechanism to deal with these matters,” Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said.

The issue of online gatekeeping by large ISPs has gained new attention following the Feb. 13 merger announcement by Comcast and Time Warner Cable. That deal is drawing regulatory scrutiny over the market power the enlarged Comcast would hold as the nation’s largest provider of high-speed Internet access and whether that position could be abused to consumer detriment. Hastings did not mention the proposed merger in his comments.

In January, an appeals court sided with Verizon and dismissed equal-treatment rules the Federal Communications Commission adopted in 2010. That decision essentially freed ISPs to extract tolls from companies that send heavy data loads across Internet networks. “If this kind of leverage is effective against Netflix, which is pretty large, imagine the plight of smaller services today and in the future,” Hastings wrote. The FCC has said it will examine the issue.

STORY: Netflix’s Deal With Comcast Isn’t About Net Neutrality—Except That It Is

Daniel Ernst, an analyst with Hudson Square Research, told Bloomberg News that Hastings has enjoined a battle of public opinion, hoping that Americans who enjoy data-heavy services such as Skype (MSFT), Netflix, and YouTube (GOOG) will demand lawmakers address the issue.

In the meantime, Netflix executives may be writing plenty more of those checks.

STORY: As It Warned, Amazon Boosts the Price of Prime

Bachman is an associate editor for Businessweek.com.

After Crimea, This Tiny ‘Republic’ Says: ‘Annex Us Next’ (Bloomberg)

By Jeffrey Tayler                                                             March 20, 2014

A billboard near a housing project in Tiraspol, Trans-Dniester, a separatist region of Moldova

Trans-Dniester, a tiny, self-proclaimed “independent republic” wedged between Moldova and Ukraine, has a hammer and sickle on its flag, a parliament called the Supreme Soviet, a Soviet-sounding national anthem praising “the friendship of peoples,” and about 200,000 Russians out of a total population of 510,000. Following Crimea’s annexation, it also wants to join the Russian Federation.

Roughly the size of Rhode Island and lacking its own Internet domain, direct-dialing codes, or even an airport, Trans-Dniester depends economically on Moldova while maintaining its own currency (the Trans-Dniester ruble), military, and police force. It contains the greater part of what was Moldova’s heavy industry, mostly steel. Known for little besides being a hotbed of organized crime, it has enjoyed de facto sovereignty since declaring independence from Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in 1990.

Two years later, Trans-Dniester fought a war with Moldova, the MSSR’s successor, ending with a cease-fire that failed to resolve Trans-Dniester’s status as a nation. No United Nations member country, much less Moldova, recognizes Trans-Dniester’s independence; two other zones of frozen conflict and quasi-statehood—Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the Caucasus Mountain region—do. Apart from Moldovans and possibly Ukrainians, who would oppose Trans-Dniester’s annexation? It’s not clear.

VIDEO: Russia’s Putin Signs Legislation to Annex Crimea

On March 18, the same day Russia accepted Crimea back into its fold after a 60-year separation, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Burla, sent his counterpart in Russia’s State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin, a request that Russia consider annexing the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (as Trans-Dniester has formally styled itself). There would surely be great popular support for joining Russia; whether Russia would want it is another question. The Russian government has intermittently been involved in trying to resolve the territory’s status, but Putin himself has not voiced any desire to admit it into the Russian Federation. It’s unclear why he would want to. With a gross domestic product of about $1 billion, the economy of Trans-Dniester would represent a drop in Russia’s oil and gas bucket.

The legal basis for Trans-Dniester’s request for annexation rests on a controversial bill introduced in late February, just as Putin was beginning his stealth takeover of Crimea. The bill would have made it legislatively easier for Russia to unilaterally incorporate foreign territories if they lack “effective legitimate” governance and hold referendums in favor of switching sovereignty to Russia. State Duma deputies of the A Just Russia party crafted the legislation, apparently, to pave the way for Crimea to join Russia, but Putin chose a different way to induct the peninsula and the bill was withdrawn. As Vladimir Pligin, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Constitutional Legislation explained: “The need for this legislation disappeared, and all decisions concerning changes to the status [of Crimea’s] autonomy can be made within the framework of existing Russian legislation.”

Joining Russia would likely receive plenty of support in Trans-Dniester. In a 2006 referendum, 97.2 percent of the breakaway republic’s population—which is about evenly divided among Russians, Ukrainians, and Moldovans (with Russian as their lingua franca)—voted in favor of accession to Russia. Trans-Dniester’s Supreme Soviet has already passed the first reading of a bill adopting Russian legislation as its own and has made Russian the republic’s official language. Moreover, Trans-Dniester faces economic isolation if Moldova signs an Association Agreement with the European Union, as it soon may. (The rejection of this same type of agreement by Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, sparked unrest in November 2013, which led to his ouster in late February.)

STORY: Strange Invasion: On the Ground as Russia Takes Crimea From Ukraine

The Russian government is due to take up Trans-Dniester’s accession request as soon as Thursday. Ukraine’s recent actions may influence its decision, if it makes one, on whether to accept Trans-Dniester’s entreaty. Ukraine’s interim government, fearing infiltration by “terrorists,” last week banned entrance by Russian passport-holders of Trans-Dniester ages 18 to 65 and halted freight shipments to Russian troops stationed there. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, known for nationalist views shared by the Kremlin, has called Ukraine’s partial closing of the border with Trans-Dniester a “most flagrant violation” of Ukraine’s status as a peacekeeper.

Russia is dealing with the diplomatic fallout from its annexation of Crimea, which is perhaps reason enough for it to forestall bringing Trans-Dniester into the mix. Russia also lacks a land border with Trans-Dniester, which could complicate Russian efforts at supporting it. Nevertheless, Putin’s speech announcing Crimea’s annexation leaves little doubt that the Kremlin will, from now on, certainly take notice when Russian speakers clamor for the salvation of the mother country.

STORY: A Humiliated Putin Plans His Next Move in Ukraine

Marco Rubio's Got a Plan for Everything (BusinessWeek)

By Joshua Green                                                        March 13, 2014


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In the weeks after Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election, no Republican appeared to have a brighter future than Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Young, Spanish-speaking, and oratorically gifted, he seemed like the answer to everything ailing the GOP—he was the anti-Romney.

Many Republicans agreed. Charles Krauthammer, the influential conservative columnist, called on his party to embrace immigration reform and enlist Rubio to lead the way. “Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016,” Krauthammer gushed. “It would transform the landscape. He’d win the Hispanic vote. Yes, win it.” Time magazine dubbed Rubio “The Republican Savior.” Political forces looked to be aligning in a way that would practically anoint him the GOP front-runner for 2016. Last March, Rubio solidified his “savior” status by almost knocking off Kentucky Senator Rand Paul in the annual Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, a popular cattle call for Republican presidential aspirants.

Rubio, whose presidential ambitions are plain, heeded the call and became the Republican face of the push for comprehensive immigration reform. His efforts paid off last June when the Senate passed a bipartisan bill. Then immigration reform—and Rubio—smacked into a brick wall.

VIDEO: Marco Rubio Is Toast: Hunt

Even before the Senate vote, grass-roots conservatives were in revolt. Antipathy toward politicians who would grant “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants was particularly intense among Tea Partyers, the same group that had launched Rubio to an upset Senate victory in 2010. Overnight, his support among conservatives collapsed and hasn’t recovered. At this year’s CPAC straw poll on March 6, he finished a distant sixth.

Rubio’s response to this setback has been to regroup and try a different approach. As the media’s infatuation moved on to Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, he began the painstaking work of trying to recast himself as a policy wonk. On March 10 he appeared at Google’s (GOOG) offices in Washington, D.C., to deliver an address loftily titled “Sparking Dynamic Growth in 21st Century America.” “The world around us is changing quickly, and we have waited for far too long to change with it,” Rubio told the audience. “We still have time to build the new American Century. But we do not have forever.”

What distinguished his speech from politicians’ standard paeans to American entrepreneurialism was the specificity of his prescriptions: auctioning off 200 megahertz of government wireless spectrum to corporations; constructing an interstate energy pipeline system; promoting cooperation between the private sector and NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense to commercialize public research; thwarting United Nations efforts to regulate the Internet through legislation he’ll soon introduce. “Do I think Republicans have done enough [to promote economic growth]?” he said in an interview afterward. “No. I think we’re lagging—except in comparison to Democrats.”

VIDEO: Rubio Seeks Immigration Overhaul, Tax Code Changes

The Google speech was the latest in a series of sober, policy-themed events that Rubio’s staff has orchestrated to burnish his image and broaden the public’s perception of him. In January, to mark the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, he delivered a speech in which he proposed consolidating dozens of federal antipoverty programs within a single agency that would disburse money to states. Liberals point out that this is a shopworn conservative approach to almost any federal program. But Rubio has also talked up cutting-edge policies such as federal wage subsidies for the working poor and is working with conservative scholars including Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute to write legislation.

Last month, Rubio rolled out a series of higher-education reforms aimed at broadening access and limiting costs. These include accreditation for free online college courses and other nontraditional forms of learning, as well as a proposal that would allow private investors to pay students’ tuition in exchange for a portion of their future income.

And like presidents do when they encounter trouble at home, Rubio has looked overseas to revive his fortunes. In December he traveled to London to deliver a speech on American leadership and the future of the transatlantic alliance at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank. In January he met with foreign leaders in Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. He’s emerged as an ardent foreign policy hawk, offering a conspicuous counterpoint to Paul and President Obama. He’s become a fount of policy proposals with a plan, or at least a promise of one, for just about everything.

VIDEO: Would Wall Street Back a Tea Partier in 2016?

Rubio’s transformation from rock star to professor is a work in progress. At Google he promoted a tax reform proposal that he’s working on with fellow Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. But afterward he couldn’t say how his plan would differ from the one offered by Republican House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a bill three years in the making that has been intensely scrutinized by everyone in Washington from the moment it was unveiled on Feb. 26. “I haven’t read it,” Rubio said, which, if true, is an egregious betrayal of wonk cred.

A bigger impediment to his resurrection may be the lingering sting of immigration reform. Although Google is a vocal proponent of opening the borders to skilled foreign workers and has championed their economic contributions, Rubio made no mention of the subject in his speech. Still, there was no escaping it. In the question-and-answer session that followed, a reporter from a right-wing news service confronted him with a question about whether granting citizenship to “illegal aliens” would inhibit economic growth, and Fox News (FOXA) raised the issue, too. Rubio reiterated the need for reform. But afterward, he seemed slightly exasperated by his inability to get beyond immigration. “The point of the speech was to introduce new ideas,” he said. Politico headlined its story about the speech, “Rubio Talks Immigration at Google.”

This is the predicament Rubio must overcome to make a competitive run at the Republican nomination. “I’ll decide by this point next year,” he says. Until then, he’ll keep grinding out legislation and talking up spectrum reform and the like. As presidential strategies go, this is the opposite of campaigning through dramatic stunts, such as Cruz’s 21-hour speech protesting federal funding for Obamacare. It’s a self-conscious nod to the old notion that ideas, expertise, and experience are prerequisites for the White House—and a bet that, despite today’s poll numbers and headlines, voters will eventually come to agree.

STORY: Conservative Intellectuals Fear the GOP Isn't Connecting 

The bottom line: Rubio is trying to stand out from the presidential pack and win over voters in an unusual way: by flaunting policy expertise.

Green is senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek in Washington. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaGreen.

Why Malaysia Will Say Almost Nothing About the Missing Plane (BusinessWeek)

By Joshua Kurlantzick                                                                   March 12, 2014

Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation Director General Azharuddin Abdul Rahman speaks during a press conference on March 10

With an international team of investigators still seemingly baffled about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared over the weekend, relatives of the passengers and diplomats from countries touched by the mishap have vented their frustration with the Malaysian government. For days, it seems, Malaysian officials and the state-owned carrier have released almost no information about the flight or working theories of why it vanished. Malaysia Airlines did not even inform relatives for 15 hours that the plane had disappeared, sending the distraught families to a hotel in Beijing to wait, and Kuala Lumpur’s envoys still have mostly kept the relatives in the dark days later.

More than 100 friends and relatives of the vanished passengers signed a petition on Monday calling on the Malaysian government to be more transparent and answer questions. Several of the relatives threw bottles at Malaysia Airlines employees who came to speak with them in Beijing, where the missing plane had been headed, but mostly the officials maintained their tight-lipped approach.

The frustration felt by families of the missing is understandable and reasonable, but no one should have expected much better from the Malaysian government. Although theoretically a democracy with regular, contested elections, Malaysia has been ruled since independence by the same governing coalition that has become known for its lack of transparency and disinterest—even outright hostility—toward the press and inquiring citizens. For a relatively wealthy country, Malaysia is also unusually prone to corruption. Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the revelations that al-Qaeda members had convened planning meetings in Malaysia, the government has become intensely controlling of any information about potential terror threats while maintaining a liberal visa policy for arrivals.

STORY: Why Do Airlines Keep ‘Black Box’ Flight Data Trapped on Planes? 

Malaysia’s actual air safety record is, according to aviation experts, relatively strong. That achievement is unsurprising for a country with a per capita gross domestic product of about $10,400, which has become a global hub for electronics production and other high-tech manufacturing. Before the disappearance of Flight MH370, Malaysia Airlines had not suffered a fatal crash since 1995. Kuala Lumpur, where the plane originated, has an even higher GDP per capita than the rest of the country—about $18,000—and boasts a vast, modern skyline, efficient transport, and gleaming new suburbs.

But Malaysia’s politics have not kept pace with its economic expansion. The long-ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has continued to win elections through massive gerrymandering, outright thuggery, and opposition parties’ inability to stop squabbling and make connections with rural voters.

In the most recent national elections, held in May 2013, the Barisan Nasional coalition won the largest number of seats in parliament, although the opposition actually won the popular vote; only gerrymandering, massive handouts to voters, and many election irregularities ensured the Barisan Nasional’s victory. In addition, the ruling party squeaked home by appealing primarily to the most hardline elements within its coalition, politicians and voters disdainful of the country’s multiethnic identity and the incremental freedoms of expression and social life that have developed in the past 20 years.

STORY: Missing Malaysian Air Flight Highlights Stolen Passport Epidemic 

So even though Malaysia is far richer than neighboring Indonesia or the Philippines, those countries’ histories of democratic politics have made their politicians more accountable and more attuned to public expectations. Since independence in 1957, Malaysia has had only six prime ministers and the senior ranks of the ruling coalition have gained little fresh blood. In the current crisis, Prime Minister Najib Razak has made few substantive comments on the plane, while Malaysia’s major state-controlled media outlets, which in theory could have been ahead of the plane investigation story, have been very timid in their reporting.

This lack of accountability filters down, especially at state-owned enterprises such as Malaysia Airlines, which are notorious in Malaysia for insider dealing, corruption, and lack of transparency. Even before the crash, Malaysia Airlines’ parent company had lost money the last three years, including a huge loss of more than $350 million in 2013, in part because of its terrible management. One comprehensive study of government-linked companies, conducted by a group of economists in Australia and Malaysia, found that Malaysia state-run firms had worse corporate governance than publicly traded Malaysian companies not controlled by the state. Partly because investors understood that state-run companies were so poorly managed, the study found lower overall valuations on the Malaysian stock market. In other words, these state companies traded at a discount because of their mismanagement.

STORY: War, Yes? War, No? The Ukraine Standoff as Diplomatic Mashup 

Malaysia’s lack of transparency and weak institutions have made graft and corruption endemic, making it easy for people to be smuggled in or out of the country, often on stolen passports. The watchdog organization Global Financial Integrity has ranked Malaysia as one of the countries with the biggest illicit outflows of money in the world, while corruption monitoring organization Transparency International ranks Malaysia 53rd in the world in terms of clean government, below many poorer nations with fewer potential resources to combat graft.

At least two of the people on the vanished flight, and possibly more, apparently traveled on stolen passports and may have been migrants using people smugglers to get through Malaysia and on, eventually, to Europe. The head of Interpol, Ronald Noble, has expressed surprise at how easy these people with stolen passports boarded the plane.

Malaysia’s fraught relationship with other Muslim-majority countries and the U.S. has made Kuala Lumpur’s leaders, never very transparent, even more opaque when it comes to intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism. Although no one seems to have determined whether the flight’s disappearance is related to terrorism, do not expect the Malaysian government to be the one providing any answers to the public if it turns out terrorism was involved. Malaysia has long had a relatively liberal visa policy toward Muslims from other countries, in part because it needed foreign workers and in part because this policy had traditionally been popular. (That policy, in part, is why Osama bin Laden recommended Malaysia as a place for terror operatives to meet and for wounded fighters to recover.)

STORY: In Fake Classes Scandal, UNC Fails Its Athletes—and Whistle-Blower

But at the same time Malaysia has maintained a relatively liberal visa policy, it has cooperated closely with Britain and the U.S. on intelligence and security matters. This cooperation has always been extremely unpopular with the majority of Malaysians, and so successive prime ministers have worked hard to conceal it from public discourse. Unfortunately for the relatives of the vanished plane, the prime minister’s natural secrecy seems to have become so normal, for him and other government officials, that he cannot break the habit even in times of horrible tragedy.

STORY: Why Negativity Is Really Awesome

Kurlantzick is Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government.

Why an internet 'bill of rights' will never work, and what's more important (TechRepublic)

By Conner Forrest                                                                           March 13, 2014,

Tim Berners-Lee is often cited as the creator of the world wide web.

 Image: World Wide Web Consortium

Tim Berners-Lee recently called on the internet to adopt a bill of rights for the world wide web. It sounds wonderful in theory, but here is why it will never work, and why that's okay. 

As long as the Internet has existed, conversations about its use and implications have been present. In the post-Snowden era, Internet privacy issues and the concept of net neutrality have come to the front of the stage; and the concept of a "free" and "open" Internet is more fragmented than ever.

On Tuesday, March 11, web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee called Internet users to rally around the idea of an "open web for everyone" in a guest post on Google's blog.  

"On the 25th birthday of the web, I ask you to join in—to help us imagine and build the future standards for the web, and to press for every country to develop a digital bill of rights to advance a free and open web for everyone," Berners-Lee wrote in the post.

The concept of an Internet bill of rights is nothing new. In 2012 the Human Rights Council affirmed that specific human rights must be protected on the Internet. Also in 2012, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Ron Wyden proposed a "digital bill of rights" at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. The same year, Reddit began drafting its own set of rights for the Internet.

While Berners-Lee standing behind an Internet bill of rights as thecreator of the web has renewed the conversation on the future of the web, it will not make much of a difference in how the concept is realized. Not much has come to pass, legally, from past efforts to regulate the web, and not much will come from this call to arms either.

Let's talk about why.

The American dream

One of the main issues with the proposal of a bill of rights for the Internet is that most people aren't proposing an Internet bill of rights, they are proposing an American Bill of Rights for the Internet. Alex Howard, a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University (and a TechRepublic columnist), said this is due, in part, to the history of the Internet.  

"The way that technologies are built is a political expression. I don't think it's an accident that the Internet was created in a Western society," Howard said.

The Internet was built in the U.S. and as we export these technologies, we are also exporting our beliefs. As a journalist, I am proud to live in a country that values and supports a freedom of speech. However, I have to question the idea that our role as Americans is to tell other people how to live. There have been universal declarations of human rights, but in practice rights are enacted by the governing body of an individual country. Howard's position is that laws that govern individual citizens in a country should govern them online as well.

"My position is simply that, we have a perfectly good [Bill of Rights], let's just enforce it online," Howard said.

The U.S. has had the Privacy Act in place since 1974, but regulations on disclosure of information is not a reality for many countries. It's not necessarily a bad thing to believe that some of these rights should exist in other countries, but we have to ask if the citizens of these countries want these rights in the same ways we do.

It is entirely possible that most Internet users believe in an open and free Internet, but that doesn't change the fact that their country of residence defines their rights online. Creating a bill of rights for the use of a service won't mean anything if most of the countries it is targeting are already abusing those proposed rights.

An Internet bill of rights will probably never exist, but that doesn't matter. The idea and conversation behind an Internet bill of rights is far more important than the bill itself, and that should be our focal point.

The idea is more important

"Will we allow others to package and restrict our online experience, or will we protect the magic of the open web and the power it gives us to say, discover, and create anything? How can we build systems of checks and balances to hold the groups that can spy on the net accountable to the public? "

These are some of the questions posed by Berners-Lee in his blog post. He later goes on to ask readers to sign a petition for an Internet bill of rights, which is secondary to the conversation he has already started. It's easy to be cynical about online advocacy, but let's disregard the petition and focus on the language he is using.

"He is drawing our attention to the fact that some of the things we take for granted are actually under threat," said Matthew Shears, global Internet policy and human rights director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Countries like the U.S. have come to expect a right to privacy and freedom of speech, but in doing so we have also come to take these rights for granted. Our 24 hour breaking news cycles have given us short attention spans for what really matters, and we need to be reminded of the fact that our rights have been violated.  

The Internet has given countries around the world a way to express themselves freely. I believe Berners-Lee's blog post serves two purposes—it keeps the dialogue open about what freedom is online and it helps to set a high expectation for countries who don't already have these rights in place.

"The discussion about principles and rights will elevate the discussion about the future of the Internet and its governance," Shears said.

The blog post was nicely timed to celebrate the 25th year of the Internet, but Shears mentioned that it also dovetails as a precursor for the Net Mundial conference happening in São Paulo, Brazil in late April. Berners-Lee may have alluded to this when he wrote, "Key decisions on the governance and future of the Internet are looming, and it’s vital for all of us to speak up for the web’s future."  

The conference, which is billed as The Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, will "focus on crafting Internet governance principles and proposing a roadmap for the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem," according to its website.

Net Mundial came about after a UN debate where Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff urged the General Assembly to protect Internet users from privacy violations that she called, "serious violations of human rights." Berners-Lee wants to make sure that these ideas are at the forefront of the conversations at the conference, and that they come back to the forefront of activists' conversations.

If recent events like the Arab Spring are any indication, the global community is better equipped to act on an idea than they have ever been. I am not trying to equate challenging Internet use policies with challenging an oppressive government; I am merely trying to point out that an idea can fundamentally change a culture.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "One idea lights a thousand candles."

Again, while it is unlikely that there will ever be a global consensus on an Internet bill of rights, the important thing is the conversation around these issues. It creates expectations of freedom and privacy among Internet citizens, and it pressures governments and corporations to act in response to those expectations.

Conner Forrest is a Staff Writer for TechRepublic. He covers Google and startups and is passionate about the convergence of technology and culture.