How a few EU and Middle East nations could lead to build the digital tools we need to enable fair and effective global dialogue for peace and cooperation.

Severe threats to peace and stability in Europe and the World have resulted from Russia invasion of Ukraine, that was unprovoked but arguably “facilitated” by long-standing unanswered concerns and grievances related to US and NATO expansion and unilateralism. 

Such tensions pile up on long standing tensions in the Middle East, due primarily to Israel inability to resolved Palestinian issue, Iran’s and terrorists’ proclamations against Israel, and efforts of the latter to defend itself, that are widely perceived as overbearing.

Several nations in the EU dn Middle East, while constrained by their security alliances or needs, have more than others tried to play a role of builders of peace and multilateralism, through their foreign policy.

In Europe, among larger member states, Italy and Germany have arguably stood out, due likely to the fact that - due to their responsibilities in causing the authoritarianism that lead to WW2 - they ensured that multilateral, pacifism and anti-authoritarianism were ingrained in their constitutions, civic culture and media sphere - also via their social democratic model of public broadcasters, also via their global operations via Deutsche Welle, and the much smaller Rai International.

In the middle east, Qatar, while being a monarchy, has been especially active in promoting peace and stability, albeit in an opinionated way - by promoting the emergence of shared truths across the Arab world and across geopolitical blocks - via the creation of the Al Jazeera Media Network, which has earned a world-wide appreciation for unique regional and global neutrality, and quality journalism; and their recent role in Iran nuclear talks with the West.

Other nations like Israel, culturally a promoter of international peace and democracy, has been since WW2 focused on what is their priority n.1, national security, at the expense of those other two values.

Status and prospects of democratic digital sovereignty worldwide

In the Digital Age, the ability of peace-loving nations and their citizens to promote security, peace and sovereignty within and beyond their borders depends primarily on its ability to shape digital communications technologies and platforms in their region, in three key domains. 

First, national or democratic sovereign control over the news outlets and social networks that shape the consent of populations. Second, the ability to prevent spying and blackmailing of law-abiding political and economic leaders, and ability to investigate criminal or malicious ones. 

Lastly, the ability of leaders, and citizens at large, to access convenient digital tools that enables them to find shared truths and common ground, and engage in empathetic, constructive, fair and effective dialogue.

Unfortunately all three are severely lacking. 

Global social networks are acting sowing divisions and disinformation. Political leaders, journalists and civil society leaders are subject to illegitimate spying by state and non-state entities on the global communication platforms, devices and operating systems - such as iPhone, Chinese Android phones, and secure messaging platforms -  that have become unescapable to communicate among themselves and their close associates.

For example, it was reported among many others that even the Spanish prime minister and minister of defense, or the former prime minister of Qatar,or the son of former Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and journalists at Al Jazeera, are spied upon on their mobile devices without any legitimate national or international authorization. That’s just scratching the surface as the nature of such devices makes it very often impossible to know who is or was illegally or illegitimately spied on, and by whom, at a scale that is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands world-wide.

On the other hand, even recent history shows that even peace-loving nations cannot be blindly trusted. For example, in Germany and Italy, there was resurgence of neo-nazi and fascism within the most sensitive institutions and attempts to hide them - as it happened in Germany in 2012 and in 2020. In Qatar, some of its foreign policy programs and editorial choices of Al Jazeera have provided concern for several nations in the region about their potential impact on their internal instability, subversion or terrorism.

So therefore there is a need for leaders and citizens of those countries to be subject to interception when legitimate. The need for such interceptions is recognized, with the need to subject them to (international) legal and reasonable oversights - even by the former prime minister of Qatar, mentioned above when he declared last year that "while states must monitor and follow up on that which impacts its own security and threatens its sovereignty, this must be carried out through responsible agencies and under the supervision of trusted individuals." 

Yet, currently such need is satisfied in obscure and unaccountable ways by a few western cyber powers, via their direct or indirect control on oligopolistic platforms and their leadership in state-grade hacking tools - such as, for example, the Apple iPhone and NSO Group Pegasus. This model also unwittingly enables their abuse at huge scale by other state and non-state actors, which ultimately compromise their own democratic system, in a digital Wild West.

Classified and non-classified communications

For classified (i.g. State secret) communications, top state officials and their staff use, and are required to use, devices that comply with various classification levels by EU and/or by NATO and/or so-called “national crypto standards”, that are custom-made by national dedicated companies. 

Here the situation is not much better, but details are severely lacking because the source design of systems and their failures are treated as state secrets, as are part of their certification processes, and even secret encryption protocols and algorithms - against the scientific consensus that public inspectability of source when adequate security review is ensured. 

We know from personal accounts, that they fail, and are very inconvenient, so that even EU defence ministers have no idea who could be recording everything at all times, and find themselves forced to use insecure means.

So, therefore, three or more good-willed nations like those mentioned above - and even leading western cyber powers - could join together to create the non-classified digital communication tools and digital sphere that we need, and invite all other nations to join in. 

On the information front, they could create joint democratic international news outlets - TV, video, audio and text - to foster globally-neutral information sources and shared truths, via a multilateral and diverse democratic governance. They could also create a new sort of a new “Wikipedia for diplomacy”, that preserves its many positives, but mitigates many of its biases, and vulnerability to abuse by powerful entities.

On the communications front, through the same governance model, they could build a new global standard for the most sensitive digital communications and social interactions that can be trusted by all nations, diplomats and citizens, to enable fair, democratic and effective dialogue for peace and security - while ensuring international legitimate lawful access.

More precisely, they could build a new standards setting and certification body for digital strategic communications - and initial compliant IT systems - that ensures radically unprecedented confidentiality and integrity, as well as international "in-person" procedural legitimate lawful access. Communications among citizens and leaders of different nations would be subject to such new international democratic arrangement, while communications between a nation's citizens would be superseded by national laws and authorities. 

A post-Cold War Crypto AG?

Such a governance body and its resulting interoperable IT would constitute a sort of new post-Cold War version of Crypto AG, the leading Swiss-based global standard for sensitive and diplomatic digital communications. 

As opposed to the original Crypto AG, it is based on open democratic multilateralism, uncompromising transparency - and an ultra-resilient procedural front-door instead of technical back-door, and available to all. 

Such new standards will be made available to all via 2mm-thin standalone ultra-secure mobile devices - embedded in the back of their future smartphones or inserted in custom leather wallets - and apps for mainstream stores, both mandatorily interoperable, and related private clouds, running on the open internet.

We are realizing such a vision via the Trustless Computing Certification Body and Seevik Net. TCCB was established last June in Geneva during the 8th Edition of our Free and Safe in Cyberspace, while Seevik Net is being built via a “spin-in” public-private democratic innovation model. We’ve mounted substantial interest from Italy, and especially Germany as can be desumed by this recent blog post.

We invite all peace-loving nations and private entities to join other like-minded nations to give final form to this initiative as founding governance partners during the public and closed-door meeting and 9th Edition of such a conference that will be held next Fall in TBD capital, likely in the EU.

Ramifications of the War in Ukraine

Other factors favoring the joining of those nations to build such infrastructure, derive from two already-clear long-term ramifications of the war in Ukraine.

A first ramification is the choice by Italy and Germany to replace their dependency on Russian piped gas largely with liquified gas from Qatar and a few other nations - for at least a decade until the energy transition can make a dent - which calls for strengthening their trust and economic relations.

A second ramification is the shift gears by Italy and Germany, and other EU nations, widely supported by public opinion, in achieving joint strategic autonomy in foreing policy and defense via some form of EU enhanced cooperation, and the connected need to progressively replace Russian, Chinese and US cyber security and secure IT solutions with IT that can affirm true national and European digital sovereignty, at least in the most critical domains. This can be achieved only by involving other EU and like-minded nations given the complexity of the task, declared last week by the top Italian security official Gabrielli (min 9.10) at the Israeli 2022 Cybertech Europe conference. 

Multinational collaboration can only produce digital sovereignty concurrently at the national, European, like-minded nations’, and democratic (i.e. citizens’) levels, if it is based on the utmost transparency and intense participation of participating nations in all stages, as our TCCB is. The German Foreign Office and BSI is already developing ultra-secure communications for their ministries, to be extended by 2024 to allied and like-minded nations and then the private market. 

Italy and Germany (and France) are already moving in that direction as they increasingly work on the same base technologies, including open source Element/Matrix for secure messaging over mainstream devices, and open source Risc-V and Sel4 via Hensoldt Cyber for secure OS and CPUs for secure endpoints. They both rely on Samsung as a base for some secure devices. 

Would Israel ever join?

Of course Israel would also be an ideal partner. If it would ever join.

On first examination, it would seem very unlikely because Israel has a decisive upper hand in the current situation, together with the US, and parly UK and Germany. 

Israel has much higher capability than other nations to exploit the vulnerabilities on even the most secure iOS or Android smartphones - directly and indirectly through its “private” spyware companies - and in part to protect its officials and citizens against hacking from others. 

Why should they join an initiative that sets international rule-based and fair playing ground?

Israel leverages that to further its national security, which is by far on top of its priorities, for very valid reasons due to highly adversarial international relations in its neighborhood.  Even more, it indirectly uses world-leading “private” spyware makers, like NSO Group, for foreign policy in the Middle East. 

Sure, it is a moon-shot to think that intel agencies from Israel (and US) will accept that an IT system/service goes to market that will require for them to ask for permission to a international multi-governmental body, if they determine there is a need to intercept, for example, a Danish parliamentarian or a French journalist. Yet, there are huge collateral damages to the current “iPhone+NSOs” model that our model would eliminate or radically mitigate.

First, Israel security agencies (as other western ones) already have a process of asking each other's permission when having to spy on targets that are citizens of an ally country via an obscure complex web of written, oral and software-coded agreements. For example, such “rules” that traditionally prevented any nation-state client of NSO group to hack target users with a US number or while they are on US territory. Following the scandals in October 2021, was extended Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Second, current Israeli intelligence agencies' legitimate hacking capability produces unreliable and untrustworthy evidence, since client devices could have been hacked by others and do not support forensi, as it was highlighted by Rami Efrati, former Head of Cyber Division of the Prime Minister Office of Israel, during a recent university lecture (min 9.35).

Third, the currents scenario whereby even the son of Israel prime minister or any Israeli parliamentarian - as the Spanish prime minister and their close associates - can be hacked undetectably for months by unknown entities, fosters widening division with Israeli societies where everyone is an accuser and victim, and mines citizens’ trust in Israeli democratic institutions citizen, creating an untenable situation that could lead Israel down the similar paths as the US democracy.

Fourth, Israel's reputation and trustworthiness towards its allies has been damaged by wide reporting of the large-scale abuse of nation state clients of NSO Group to spy on journalists and even prime ministers of allied countries, such as the prime minister of Spain. 

Fifth, the role that their control of NSO and similar companies excises in the Middle East to reduce its terrorist and Iran threat, can be assumed by a trustworthy international body that will ensure that legitimate cyber-investigtion even of the communications of a nation leader.