New Czardas
05-01-2008, 20:24
AP - When you first meet him, Robert A. Muller is a quiet, soft-spoken, well-groomed man in his late seventies. Only when he speaks does the force of personality below the unassuming exterior show; the same force of personality that allowed him to lead his telecommunications company, Cellnet Limited, to dominance in the mid-80s. Now retired and living with his wife and servants in a spacious mansion on a private island off Dzanjir, Mr. Muller has admitted that from the very beginning his company was told to forward logs of the conversations, web histories, and e-mails of more than a billion Czardians to the Provincial Authority for Internal Defence.
"It was a standard industry regulation," Mr. Muller says. "I have no doubt that Worldvision, Acela, and John Nash all follow similar practices." In addition, with increasing network linking between the four major telecommunications companies of New Czardas, any one company could have access to information on the subscribers of all of the others.
Mr. Muller turns to his desktop computer and navigates to a bill on the Czardian Provincial Authority website. "This," he says, "is the law that authorizes -- no, mandates -- the invasion of privacy of millions." The law, Act 00R17E98, is a set of standards and requirements for telecommunications companies; it has been otherwise criticized for its intricacy and length -- 2,929 pages, over 200,000 words -- which make it difficult for any new telecommunications companies to be established within New Czardas. Mr. Muller skips to page 968 of the bill and points out the paragraph in question; fifty-five words out of two hundred thousand.
Section nine, subsection 71, D, 3:
(iv) All communications received by the Company as defined above in 9-71-D-2, including but not limited to those forms of transmission carried through electrical lines or via satellite, must be recorded or logged as defined in (iii) and made available to PAID. Transmissions not covered by 9-71-D-2 may be requested by PAID in cases of emergency.
While calls to Worldvision, Acela, and John Nash offices went unanswered, several other former employees of Cellnet have confirmed Mr. Muller's claim. An employee who asked not to be identified said, "It sort of happened on its own. The switch was always on; everything was recorded and forwarded on to PAID. Nobody talked about it, it just got done." John X., another former employee who retired two years ago, said: "I asked once about that switch. They gave me funny looks, as though it wasn't the sort of thing you were supposed to ask about. But I remember especially what my supervisor told me.... it was all one hundred per cent legal."
What does PAID have to say about all this? The day after Muller first leaked this skeleton in the closet to the media, PAID chairman William La Roche said in a press conference: "Does PAID have surveillance? Yes. We do. We do surveil citizens. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. We have solved many more crimes by monitoring people's communications; we have prevented crime. With the advent of the Internet, we have been able to prevent Internet-coordinated acts of terrorism and child abuse.... as have happened in other countries without such surveillance systems."
But Czardians are not so confident. In polls, only about a third of citizens say they would support a surveillance system, with 46% being against and 20% unsure or neutral. The dissidents cited potential abuse of government powers as the primary reason for not supporting an active surveillance system, with invasion of privacy close behind.
Dissident Leslie Hibachnik said, meeting me in a darkened room while looking over her shoulder for black helicopters, "Historically it's been a pattern. First the surveillance systems, then the government creates death camps to torture undesirables, and people start disappearing in the middle of the night." Mrs. Hibachnik was then abducted by aliens.
Others view the creation of a surveillance system as inevitable. Devout Calvinist and computer programmer Peter Buckley says, "When God created the Internet, He made it with a very specific purpose and set of guidelines in mind. And that set of guidelines allows anyone to see anything that happens on the internet. You can't adequately protect something online from prying eyes, that's not the way God intended it, and He rains down catastrophic hard drive failure on many who attempt; so in the end, it was God's will that the Czardian government should gain access to this data, and in the same breath prevent foreign espionage agencies from doing the same."
It is unknown whether foreign nationals living in Czardian territory are also being monitored; according to Chairman La Roche, the surveillance is so extensive it is difficult to tell who is being monitored and who is not, with only those foreigners granted diplomatic immunity completely free of monitoring.
[OOC: I was bored.]
"It was a standard industry regulation," Mr. Muller says. "I have no doubt that Worldvision, Acela, and John Nash all follow similar practices." In addition, with increasing network linking between the four major telecommunications companies of New Czardas, any one company could have access to information on the subscribers of all of the others.
Mr. Muller turns to his desktop computer and navigates to a bill on the Czardian Provincial Authority website. "This," he says, "is the law that authorizes -- no, mandates -- the invasion of privacy of millions." The law, Act 00R17E98, is a set of standards and requirements for telecommunications companies; it has been otherwise criticized for its intricacy and length -- 2,929 pages, over 200,000 words -- which make it difficult for any new telecommunications companies to be established within New Czardas. Mr. Muller skips to page 968 of the bill and points out the paragraph in question; fifty-five words out of two hundred thousand.
Section nine, subsection 71, D, 3:
(iv) All communications received by the Company as defined above in 9-71-D-2, including but not limited to those forms of transmission carried through electrical lines or via satellite, must be recorded or logged as defined in (iii) and made available to PAID. Transmissions not covered by 9-71-D-2 may be requested by PAID in cases of emergency.
While calls to Worldvision, Acela, and John Nash offices went unanswered, several other former employees of Cellnet have confirmed Mr. Muller's claim. An employee who asked not to be identified said, "It sort of happened on its own. The switch was always on; everything was recorded and forwarded on to PAID. Nobody talked about it, it just got done." John X., another former employee who retired two years ago, said: "I asked once about that switch. They gave me funny looks, as though it wasn't the sort of thing you were supposed to ask about. But I remember especially what my supervisor told me.... it was all one hundred per cent legal."
What does PAID have to say about all this? The day after Muller first leaked this skeleton in the closet to the media, PAID chairman William La Roche said in a press conference: "Does PAID have surveillance? Yes. We do. We do surveil citizens. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. We have solved many more crimes by monitoring people's communications; we have prevented crime. With the advent of the Internet, we have been able to prevent Internet-coordinated acts of terrorism and child abuse.... as have happened in other countries without such surveillance systems."
But Czardians are not so confident. In polls, only about a third of citizens say they would support a surveillance system, with 46% being against and 20% unsure or neutral. The dissidents cited potential abuse of government powers as the primary reason for not supporting an active surveillance system, with invasion of privacy close behind.
Dissident Leslie Hibachnik said, meeting me in a darkened room while looking over her shoulder for black helicopters, "Historically it's been a pattern. First the surveillance systems, then the government creates death camps to torture undesirables, and people start disappearing in the middle of the night." Mrs. Hibachnik was then abducted by aliens.
Others view the creation of a surveillance system as inevitable. Devout Calvinist and computer programmer Peter Buckley says, "When God created the Internet, He made it with a very specific purpose and set of guidelines in mind. And that set of guidelines allows anyone to see anything that happens on the internet. You can't adequately protect something online from prying eyes, that's not the way God intended it, and He rains down catastrophic hard drive failure on many who attempt; so in the end, it was God's will that the Czardian government should gain access to this data, and in the same breath prevent foreign espionage agencies from doing the same."
It is unknown whether foreign nationals living in Czardian territory are also being monitored; according to Chairman La Roche, the surveillance is so extensive it is difficult to tell who is being monitored and who is not, with only those foreigners granted diplomatic immunity completely free of monitoring.
[OOC: I was bored.]