Protected areas in the ocean now exceed size of Europe

Nearly three percent of the world's oceans – an area slightly larger than Europe – now lies within designated marine protected areas, according to new data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This is a significant increase from 2010 when the area protected was just 1.2 per cent. However, many of the new protected zones may be of little value in terms of conservation.

The IUCN, which yesterday released the latest official map of marine protected areas (MPAs), defines a protected area as "a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values". In practical terms, this can mean implementing measures to restrict the amount of fishing and mineral exploitation that can take place in the waters, for example.

The rapid increase in coverage of MPAs means that the world should soon be able to meet the UN Convention on Biological Diversity target of having 10 per cent of the oceans protected. "It's encouraging to see the progress we've made so far," said Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of the IUCN's Global Marine and Polar Programme. "If we continue to increase this area by one per cent each year, we should be able to reach the agreed 10 per cent by 2020."
Antarctic talks

We may get even closer to meeting the target when the results of negotiations to create huge marine reserves around Antarctica – which would include some of the world's last remaining pristine waters – are announced next week. The MPAs being discussed in Hobart, Australia, would introduce a ban on fishing in the spawning areas of some species and put limits on the amount of fish caught elsewhere. If the proposals being discussed are agreed on, the global protected area will jump by about another percentage point.

But a preoccupation with the size of MPAs is counterproductive, says marine conservationist Bob Pressey from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. "It's the wrong measure." He says conservation only occurs when a threat, such as species loss from overfishing or pollution, has been mitigated. Many of the protected areas do not enjoy sufficient enforcement.

The largest network of marine reserves in the world is around Australia, and was significantly added to in 2012. Pressey points out that many of those areas allow oil and gas exploration, while others allow recreational fishing.
Motivated by numbers

The focus on the 2020 target means governments are motivated to protect the low-hanging fruit – large areas that are of little conservation value or that are not under any threat, Pressey says.

"If you look at the no-take zones [off Australia], you find them way offshore in deep water and you find them in areas with no oil or gas interest," he says. "In the world map, we see a repetition of that. The big MPAs are remote as hell," he says.

Hugh Possingham from the University of Queensland, who together with Pressey built the open-source software that countries use to design MPAs, agrees. "We don't want countries just bragging about the size and percentages. There's more to this than size," he says. One important factor is that an example of each type of ecosystem in a country's waters should be protected, such as mangrove forests or salt marshes, but this effort is often perverted by commercial interests, he says.

Pressey says the Antarctic MPAs currently being negotiated would be a valuable addition because of the region's important biodiversity – the Ross Sea, for example, boasts orcas, minke whales, seals, Adélie and emperor penguins – and the threat the area faces from overfishing.

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Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security

 US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.
This story has been reported in partnership between the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by the Guardian.

For the Guardian: James Ball, Julian Borger, Glenn Greenwald

    For the New York Times: Nicole Perlroth, Scott Shane

    For ProPublica: Jeff Larson

    Read the New York Times story here

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.

The files, from both the NSA and GCHQ, were obtained by the Guardian, and the details are being published today in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica. They reveal:

• A 10-year NSA program against encryption technologies made a breakthrough in 2010 which made "vast amounts" of data collected through internet cable taps newly "exploitable".

• The NSA spends $250m a year on a program which, among other goals, works with technology companies to "covertly influence" their product designs.

• The secrecy of their capabilities against encryption is closely guarded, with analysts warned: "Do not ask about or speculate on sources or methods."

• The NSA describes strong decryption programs as the "price of admission for the US to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace".

• A GCHQ team has been working to develop ways into encrypted traffic on the "big four" service providers, named as Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

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NSA surveillance: Germany to send intelligence officials to US

 New claims emerged last night over the extent that US intelligence agencies have been monitoring the mobile phone of Angela Merkel. The allegations were made after German secret service officials were already preparing to travel to Washington to seek explanations into the alleged surveillance of its chancellor.a

A report in Der Spiegel said Merkel's mobile number had been listed by the NSA's Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002 and may have been monitored for more than 10 years. It was still on the list – marked as "GE Chancellor Merkel" – weeks before President Barack Obama visited Berlin in June.

In an SCS document cited by the magazine, the agency said it had a "not legally registered spying branch" in the US embassy in Berlin, the exposure of which would lead to "grave damage for the relations of the United States to another government".

From there, NSA and CIA staff were tapping communication in Berlin's government district with high-tech surveillance. Quoting a secret document from 2010, Der Spiegel said such branches existed in about 80 locations around the world, including Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague, Geneva and Frankfurt. Merkel's spokesman and the White House declined to comment on the report.

The nature of the monitoring of Merkel's mobile phone is not clear from the files, Der Spiegel said. It might be that the chancellor's conversations were recorded, or that her contacts were simply assessed.

Ahead of the latest claims , the German government's deputy spokesman, Georg Streiter, said a high-level delegation was heading to the White House and National Security Agency to "push forward" investigations into earlier surveillance allegations.

Meanwhile several thousand people marched to the US Capitol in Washington yesterday to protest against the NSA's spying programme and to demand a limit to the surveillance. Some of them held banners in support of Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who revealed the extent of the NSA's activities.

The march attracted protesters from both ends of the political spectrum as liberal privacy advocates walked alongside members of the conservative Tea Party movement.

The delegation will include senior officials from the German secret service, according to German media reports.

Germany and Brazil are spearheading efforts at the UN to protect the privacy of electronic communications. Diplomats from the two countries, which have both been targeted by the NSA, are leading efforts by a coalition of nations to draft a UN general assembly resolution calling for the right to privacy on the internet. Although non-binding, the resolution would be one of the strongest condemnations of US snooping to date.

"This resolution will probably have enormous support in the GA [general assembly] since no one likes the NSA spying on them," a western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, had previously cancelled a state visit to Washington over the revelation that the NSA was scooping up large amounts of Brazilian communications data, including from the state-run oil company Petrobras. The drafting of the UN resolution was confirmed by the country's foreign ministry.

The Associated Press quoted a diplomat who said the language of the resolution would not be "offensive" to any nation, particularly the US. He added that it would expand the right to privacy guaranteed by the international covenant on civil and political rights, which went into force in 1976.

The draft would be sent next week to the general assembly subcommittee on social, humanitarian, cultural and human rights issues, and be put to the full general assembly in late November.

Germany and France demanded on Thursday that the Americans agree to new transatlantic rules on intelligence and security service behaviour by the end of the year. Merkel added that she wanted action from Obama, not just apologetic words.

British and US civil liberties groups on Saturday added their voices to the criticism of snooping by both UK and US intelligence services after the Guardian revealed that the British intelligence agency GCHQ repeatedly said it feared a "damaging public debate" on the scale of its own activities.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, and Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued a joint statement, saying: "The Guardian's publication of information from Edward Snowden has uncovered a breach of trust by the US and UK governments on the grandest scale. The newspaper's principled and selective revelations demonstrate our rulers' contempt for personal rights, freedoms and the rule of law.

"Across the globe, these disclosures continue to raise fundamental questions about the lack of effective legal protection against the interception of all our communications. Yet in Britain that conversation is in danger of being lost beneath self-serving spin and scaremongering, with journalists who dare to question the secret state accused of aiding the enemy.

"A balance must of course be struck between security and transparency, but that cannot be achieved while the intelligence services and their political masters seek to avoid any scrutiny of, or debate about, their actions."

"The Guardian's decision to expose the extent to which our privacy is being violated should be applauded and not condemned."

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said the fact GCHQ had doubts about the legality of its surveillance "reinforces the public interest in the disclosures about what has taken place in America and closer to home

"Parliament never legislated to allow the scale of interception that has been exposed, with laws written long before widespread broadband internet access or Facebook existed. There is a clear and overwhelming need for a fundamental review of our legal framework."

"If companies are handing over customer data or access to their equipment when there is no legal authority, then those businesses may well have broken the law. This should be urgently investigated by the information commissioner."

Defending the NSA's actions, the US administration has insisted that it is necessary to intercept vast amounts of electronic data to effectively fight terrorism, but the White House has said it is examining countries' concerns as part of an ongoing review of how the US gathers intelligence.

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A perspective on principles for Internet surveillance

Technology is often double-edged. On the one hand, innovations in communication technologies have increased the possibilities for individuals to share information and ideas beyond borders, access educational material and discover other cultures. On the other hand, the very same tools have also generated opportunities for State surveillance of users' personal exchanges. Such actions not only threaten privacy and the free flow of information, but they can also generate chilling effects on the Internet architecture and undermine the trust that users have in the network as a global, interoperable and resilient platform of communication

In recent weeks we have seen an emerging debate on government surveillance activities and their impact on users' fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Part of this global debate focused on principles and guidelines that should govern these activities. Whether new principles and guidelines emerge or whether existing ones are being seen with fresh eyes, we observe an increasing interest in exploring ways to provide additional safeguards when it comes to the surveillance of online activities.
 Last week, the Internet Society Board of Trustees took the opportunity at its meeting on the margins of the IETF meeting, in Berlin, to release a statement calling for "the global Internet community to stand together to support open Internet access, freedom and privacy". This statement re-emphasises the concerns of the Internet Society regarding the recently exposed information about government Internet surveillance programs, which risk threatening both the fundamental freedoms of Internet users, as well as the openness of the Internet as a whole.

In the past few weeks, many voices in the Internet community have made the point that security should not be sought at the expense of individual rights, challenging the notion that achieving security by necessity has to be the product of a trade-off with freedom of expression, privacy or social development.

Robert Hinden, Chair of the Board of Trustees, used the setting of Berlin to remind us that human progress and technological innovation are not based on building walls, and that such surveillance activities, including those carried by countries who have traditionally advocated for an open Internet, threaten the trust and confidence that are so important for the Internet ecosystem and the relation between different stakeholders.

The ISOC Board of Trustees endorsed in its statement the initiative by some civil society organizations to promote "International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance." These principles, developed over the past year by a set of civil society organisations, are intended to explain how existing human rights standards, international law, and jurisprudence should apply in the context of new capabilities and risks of digital surveillance.

In societies marked by increasing cross-border interactions, adapting the application of existing laws and rights to the online environment, while preserving the Internet's sustainability and openness, seems to be a key challenge. These international principles on communication surveillance offer guidelines and safeguards so that laws are applied to the online environment in a way that is respectful of individual rights.

Released at the April 2013 session of the Human Rights Council - before the revelations about sweeping surveillance by security services made the news worldwide - the latest report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression also offers a timely focus on the implications of States’ surveillance of communications on the exercise of the human rights to privacy and to freedom of opinion and expression.

The report underlines the need to further study new modalities of surveillance and calls for a revision of national laws regulating these practices in line with human rights standards.
"Generally, legislation has not kept pace with the changes in technology. In most States, legal standards are either non-existent or inadequate to deal with the modern communications surveillance environment. As a result, States are increasingly seeking to justify the use of new technologies within the ambits of old legal frameworks, without recognizing that the expanded capabilities they now possess go far beyond what such frameworks envisaged"
The report also contends that changes in technology have been paralleled by changes in attitudes towards communications surveillance. The example that is given is the practice of official wiretapping in the U.S., which was first conducted on a restricted basis and only reluctantly sanctioned by the courts given its serious impact on privacy. The report goes on to argue that declining costs of technology and data storage have now eradicated financial or practical disincentives to conducting surveillance, which as a result is more invasive and on a greater scale than ever before. Hence, the report's call for additional safeguards.

While government plays an important role in protecting its citizens, and acknowledging the fact that national security sometimes involves secretive actions, real security can only be realized within a broader context of trust and the respect of fundamental rights, such as privacy
As the Internet Society stated before, large scale surveillance activities underscore the importance of an open and inclusive global dialogue regarding online privacy in the realm of national security and the need for all stakeholders to abide by the norms and principles outlined in international agreements on data protection and other fundamental rights. Cooperation among stakeholders is indeed essential to reach efficient and legitimate solutions in an ecosystem marked by cross-border interactions and dependencies.

A trust-enabled infrastructure, fostering trusted interactions in cyberspace, is critical not only for the future of the global interoperability and openness of the Internet, but also for continued innovation, economic and political progress and a vibrant global community.

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