Boing Boing » Civlib

Perils of smart cities

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:12:56 +0000

Here'a an excellent piece on the promise and peril of "smart cities," which could be part of a system to make cities fairer and more transparent, or could form the basis for an authoritarian lockdown. As Adam Greenfield says, "[the centralized model of the smart city is] disturbingly consonant with the exercise of authoritarianism." The author mentions Greenfield's upcoming book "The City is Here for You to Use" (a very promising-looking read) as well as Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, which is out in the fall.

These critics are advocating not that cities shun technology, but that they foster a more open debate about how best to adopt it—and a public airing of the questions cities need to ask. One question is how deeply cities rely on private companies to set up and maintain the systems they run on. Smart-city projects rely on sophisticated infrastructure that municipal governments aren’t capable of creating themselves, Townsend points out, arguing that the more they rely on software, the more cities are increasingly shunting important civic functions and information into private hands. In recent talks and in his upcoming book, “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia,” Townsend portrays companies as rushing to become the indispensable middlemen without which the city cannot function.
Cities can easily lose leverage to private companies their citizens rely on, as the persistent battles of political leaders against telecom companies over price increases show. And private-sector software can operate behind a veil: Townsend says that while cities have made lots of data freely available online, there’s less concern about opening up the proprietary tools used to analyze that data—software that might help a city official decide who is eligible for services, or which neighborhoods are crime hotspots. “It’s the algorithms in government that need to be brought out to the light of day, not the data,” he says. “What I worry about are the de facto laws that are being coded in software without public scrutiny.”
Another concern is what will be done to protect the huge amount of data cities can gather about their citizens. The wealth of video at the Boston Marathon bombings, though it came from private cameras, showed how useful surveillance footage can be—and also how pervasive. Cameras, sensors, and tracking technologies like the Mass Pike’s EZPass can reveal a great deal about your life: where you live and travel, what you buy, even what time you take a shower. Smart grid utility-metering systems, for instance, collect and transmit detailed energy consumption information, which help consumers understand and curb their energy use but can also reveal their habits. As such, they have come under fire for threatening privacy and civil liberties, and several states have adopted legislation governing what kind of data can be shared with third parties and how customers can opt out. In Massachusetts, automated license plate recognition technology used by police cruisers has raised concerns about authorities tracking the whereabouts of citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has been pushing for a License Plate Privacy Act that would limit law enforcement’s ability to retain and use the information.

The too-smart city [Courtney Humphries/Boston Globe]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Computer scientists to FBI: don't require all our devices to have backdoors for spies

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:59:45 +0000

In an urgent, important blog post, computer scientist and security expert Ed Felten lays out the case against rules requiring manufacturers to put wiretapping backdoors in their communications tools. Since the early 1990s, manufacturers of telephone switching equipment have had to follow a US law called CALEA that says that phone switches have to have a deliberate back-door that cops can use to secretly listen in on phone calls without having to physically attach anything to them. This has already been a huge security problem -- through much of the 1990s, AT&T's CALEA controls went through a Solaris machine that was thoroughly compromised by hackers, meaning that criminals could listen in on any call; during the 2005/6 Olympic bid, spies used the CALEA backdoors on the Greek phone company's switches to listen in on the highest levels of government.

But now, thanks to the widespread adoption of cryptographically secured messaging services, law enforcement is finding that its CALEA backdoors are of declining utility -- it doesn't matter if you can intercept someone else's phone calls or network traffic if the data you're captured is unbreakably scrambled. In response, the FBI has floated the idea of "CALEA II": a mandate to put wiretapping capabilities in computers, phones, and software.

As Felten points out, this is a terrible idea. If your phone is designed to secretly record you or stream video, location data, and messages to an adverse party, and to stop you from discovering that it's doing this, it puts you at huge risk when that facility is hijacked by criminals. It doesn't matter if you trust the government not to abuse this power (though, for the record, I don't -- especially since anything mandated by the US government would also be present in devices used in China, Belarus and Iran) -- deliberately weakening device security makes you vulnerable to everyone, including the worst criminals:

Our report argues that mandating a virtual wiretap port in endpoint systems is harmful. The port makes it easier for attackers to capture the very same data that law enforcement wants. Intruders want to capture everything that happens on a compromised computer. They will be happy to see a built-in tool for capturing and extracting large amounts of audio, video, and text traffic. Better yet (for the intruder), the capability will be stealthy by design, making it difficult for the user to tell that anything is amiss.
Beyond this, the mandate would make it harder for users to understand, monitor, and fix their own systems—which is bad for security. If a system’s design is too simple or its operation too transparent or too easy to monitor, then wiretaps will be evident. So a wiretappability mandate will push providers toward complex, obfuscated designs that are harder to secure and raise the total cost of building and operating the system.
Finally, our report argues that it will not be possible to block non-compliant implementations. Many of today’s communication tools are open source, and there is no way to hide a capability within an open source code base, nor to prevent people from simply removing or disabling an undesired feature. Even closed source systems are routinely modified by users—as with jailbreaking of phones—and users will find ways to disable features they don’t want. Criminals will want to disable these features. Ordinary users will also want to disable them, to mitigate their security risks.

Felten's remarks summarize a report [PDF] signed by 20 distinguished computer scientists criticizing the FBI's proposal. It's an important read -- maybe the most important thing you'll read all month. If you can't trust your devices, you face enormous danger.

CALEA II: Risks of wiretap modifications to endpoints

TSA hearing for "Naked American Hero" John Brennan

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:36:04 +0000

Remember our happy mutant comrade John Brennan, who removed his clothes at the Portland Airport during a TSA screening? He was acquitted of a ridiculous indecent exposure charge, and now he is appealing an equally stupid fine from the Transportation Security Administration for “interfering with the screening process.” This might sound silly, but it's serious business. As Brennan points out in his press release below, "This is the first time the TSA has followed through on assessing civil penalties for 'interference with screening" purely for nonviolent, non-obstructive protected expressive conduct.'"

I'm grateful to Brennan for being a civil liberties champion.

John Brennan’s TSA Hearing for Nude Protest on May 14, 2013

May 09, 2013

Portland, OR - John Brennan, the man who protested TSA at Portland International Airport in 2012 by removing his clothes, has a TSA hearing at 9AM on May 14, 2013, in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Brennan is appealing a fine from the Transportation Security Administration for “interfering with the screening process.” Under docket # 12-TSA-0092, Administrative Law Judge George J. Jordan will preside at U.S. Bankruptcy Court 1001 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 700 Portland, OR 97204 Room: 9th Floor, Courtroom #2. Robert Callahan of the Northwest Law Center represents Mr. Brennan.

Mr. Brennan is charged with an alleged civil violation of Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § Part 1540, Section 109, which states, “No person may interfere with, assault, or intimidate screening personnel in the performance of their screening duties under this subchapter.” The first step in appealing this fine is an administrative hearing. Mr. Brennan was acquitted of the criminal charges of indecent exposure in 2012.

Mr. Brennan’s TSA hearing is of note for several reasons: This is the first time the TSA has followed through on assessing civil penalties for "interference with screening" purely for nonviolent, non-obstructive protected expressive conduct.

Mr. Brennan’s hearing will have an administrative record resulting from a public hearing, the first of its kind in the United States with TSA legal proceedings according to Freedom To Travel USA, http://fttusa.org/.

The Administrative Law Judge has no authority to consider the Constitutionality of TSA regulations or orders.

While the criminal charge of indecent exposure, initiated by the State of Oregon, were resolved within months of Mr. Brennan’s protest, the civil charges, initiated by TSA, are on-going. TSA provided verbal notification of an investigation at the time of Mr. Brennan’s arrest, April 17, 2012, and written notification on April 26, 2012. On August 30, 2012, Mr. Brennan was notified in writing that TSA proposed to assess a civil penalty. Mr. Brennan’s hearing on May 14, 2013, comes more than a year after his protest.

If Mr. Brennan loses at this hearing, his next action is an administrative appeal to the head of the TSA. If he loses the administrative appeal, Mr. Brennan will have 60 days from the administrative appeal decision to file a "Petition for Review" of the TSA decision by the Circuit Court of Appeals.

On April 17, 2012, TSA referred the Port of Portland Police Department (POPPD) to John Brennan, who was going through TSA screening and chose to engage in a political protest of the TSA after allegedly testing positive for nitrates, an explosive. In, what he says was “effective and appropriate” protest (and a way to show TSA that he was not carrying explosives), Mr. Brennan removed all his clothes. POPPD arrested Mr. Brennan for the criminal charges of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct. Disorderly conduct charges were immediately dropped, and Mr. Brennan was acquitted of the indecent exposure charges on July 18, 2012. The trial judge concluded, “…it is the speech itself that the State is attempting to punish and that it cannot do, so I am finding Mr. Brennan not guilty.”

Follow John Brennan on Twitter

Short UK documentary about woman threatened with terrorism charges for videorecording cops while they stop-and-searched her boyfriend on the tube

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:00:38 +0000

Gemma sez, "You wrote a blog post about how I was assaulted by the police after filming my boyfriend being searched, back in 2009. The publicity we got from your post and the other press we got (Guardian and BBC) helped make thousands more people aware of this issue which led to the Metropolitan police eventually having to change their guidelines on photographing and filming the police. It was always my aim to get section 58a of the terrorism act clearer to all citizens in the UK and this hasn't changed. Today I'm releasing the animated short film about the case - It deals with broad issues of police accountability and citizen''s rights as well as the specifics of my case. We also hope it entertains you on its way."

Act of Terror

Obama's regressive record makes Nixon look like Che

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:06:32 +0000

Redditor Federal Reservations has made a handy post enumerating all the regressive, authoritarian, corporatist policies enacted by the Obama administration in its one-and-a-bit terms. You know, for someone the right wing press likes to call a socialist, Obama sure makes Richard Nixon look like Che Guevara. And what's more, this is only a partial list, and excludes the parade of copyright horrors and bad Internet policy emanating from the White House, via Joe Biden's push for Six Strikes, the US Trade Rep's push for secret Internet censorship and surveillance treaties like TPP and ACTA and TAFTA; the DoJ's push to criminalize every Internet user by expanding the CFAA, and much, much more.

Obama extends Patriot Act without reform - [1]
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-05-27/news/29610822_1_terrorist-groups-law-enforcement-secret-intelligence-surveillance
Signs NDAA 2011 (and 2012, and 2013) - [2]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/02/president-obama-signed-the-national-defense-authorization-act-now-what/
Appeals the Federal Court decision that “indefinite detention” is unconstitutional - [3]
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/ndaa-hedges-v-obama-did-bill-of-rights.html
Double-taps a 16-year-old American-born US citizen living in Yemen, weeks after the boy's father was killed. Administration's rationale? He "should have [had] a far more responsible father" - [4]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/anwar-al-awlakis-family-speaks-out-against-his-sons-deaths/2011/10/17/gIQA8kFssL_story.html
Continues to approve drone strikes that kill thousands of innocent civilians including women and children in Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries that do not want the US intervening; meanwhile, according to the Brookings Institute's Daniel Byman, we are killing 10 civilians for every one mid- to high- level Al Qaeda/Taliban operative. This is particularly disturbing, since now any military-aged male in a strike zone is now officially considered an enemy combatant - [5]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7361630/One-in-three-killed-by-US-drones-in-Pakistan-is-a-civilian-report-claims.html
Protects Bush’s war crimes as State Secrets - [6] [7] [8]
http://www.salon.com/2010/09/08/obama_138/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush
http://washingtonindependent.com/33985/in-torture-cases-obama-toes-bush-line
Waives sections of a law meant to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers in Africa in order to deepen military relationship with countries that have poor human rights records -[9]
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/26/why_is_obama_easing_restrictions_on_child_soldiers

Appoints Monsanto, GMO company with multiple unsafe practice violations, lobbyist to head the FDA - [10]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/monsanto-petition-tells-obama-cease-fda-ties-to-monsanto/2012/01/30/gIQAA9dZcQ_blog.html
DOJ raids marijuana dispensaries that are now legal pursuant state law - [11]
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=685_1342311527
Obama protects AG Holder from Congressional “Fast and Furious” gun walking investigations - [12]
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/white-house-invokes-executive-privilege-on-fast-and-furious-documents/
Brings no criminal charges against bank executives that misused bailouts - [13]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/no-crime-no-punishment.html
Engages in a war on whistleblowers - [14]
http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/31/the-obama-administrations-war-on-whistleblowers/
Grants immunity to CIA torturers - [15]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/31/obama-justice-department-immunity-bush-cia-torturer
Quadruples Bush's warrantless wiretapping program - [16]
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase
Allows innocent man to die at gitmo - [17]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzanne-nossel/the-death-of-guantanamo_b_1878375.html
Increases Drug War budget - [18]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/the-national-drug-control-budget-fy-2013-funding-highlights
Supports intrusive TSA pat-downs and body scans - [19]
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/20/obama.tsa/index.html
Says it’s legal to track individuals by pinpointing their cellphone without warrant - [20]
http://www.businessinsider.com/government-says-its-to-track-cell-phones-2012-10
Renews FISA and NSA’s unregulated spying and banking of all wireless communication - [21] [22]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us Appeals SCOTUS ruling that warrantless installation of tracking devices on cars is unconstitutional - [23]
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/11591-obama-admin-argues-no-warrant-required-for-gps-tracking-of-citizens
DOJ overzealously prosecutes [read: persecutes] activist Aaron Swartz, ultimately leading to his suicide in the face of trumped-up charges brought forth to silence his movement for open information - [24]
http://rt.com/usa/secret-service-accused-of-misconduct-in-aaron-swartz-case-020/ Obama nominates JP Morgan defense lawyer to head the SEC, the regulatory agency in charge of keeping Wall Street in line - [25]
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/choice-of-mary-jo-white-to-head-sec-puts-fox-in-charge-of-hen-house-20130125
Picks Goldman Sachs partner Bruce Heyman—who, along with his wife, raised $1 million for Obama—as an ambassador to Canada - [26]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/03/pol-us-ambassador-to-canada-obama.html

Thanks Obama!

Today, we save the Internet (again): fix the CFAA!

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:49:02 +0000

Read this if you want to stay out of jail.

When my friend Aaron Swartz committed suicide in January, he'd been the subject of a DoJ press-release stating that the Federal prosecutors who had indicted him were planning on imprisoning him for 25 years for violating the terms of service of a site that hosted academic journals. Aaron had downloaded millions of articles from that website, but that wasn't the problem. He was licensed to read all the articles they hosted. The problem was, the way he downloaded the articles violated the terms and conditions of the service. And bizarrely -- even though the website didn't want to press the matter -- the DoJ decided that this was an imprisonable felony, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to "exceed your authorization" on any online service.

The DoJ reasoned that if the law said that doing anything "unauthorized" was a crime, and if the long, gnarly hairball of legalese that no one reads before clicking "I agree" set out what you were allowed to do, then violations of that "agreement" were a felony.

Aaron's death galvanized some Congresscritters to do something about this oversight. The ancient CFAA predated the widespread use of terms of service in everyday activities like hanging out with your friends, reading the newspaper, getting an education or signing up for a dating service. Congress did not intend to create a situation where companies that provided services could put any unreasonable condition they wanted into an "agreement" you might never see ("By using this website, you accept all terms and conditions") and then ask the DoJ to put people in prison for decades if they violated them.

The reform to CFAA was welcome and long overdue. But the DoJ has asked some members of the House Judiciary Committee to make it worse.

Under the amendments, which might be voted on as early as April 10, violating terms of service could be defined as racketeering -- so that you could be prosecuted as though your violation of terms of service made you into a mobster.

They also add "conspiring" to violate terms of service to the list of offenses that are a felony under the CFAA. So you can be thrown in jail just for talking about ways to violate terms of service.

The amendments also make it a felony to obtain information that you are entitled to obtain, if you do so in a way that violates terms of service. My wife and I share some online accounts, including our "family" airmiles account with British Airways, which we both contribute to and use, but only my wife can see the details of them (she signed up for the service, so it's linked to her login). We're both entitled to see those details, but poor service design makes it impossible to do this without sharing a login and password. No problem, except that BA's terms of service forbid this. So looking up my own airmiles, which I earned, and which I'm entitled to see and use, would be a felony under these amendments because I was looking at them in a way that violates BA's terms.

The amendments also include increased powers for seizure of property, which will enable the Feds to take away the assets you might use to defend yourself against a CFAA claim.

This is a trainwreck. It will allow the DoJ to put every single American Internet user in prison at their discretion, because we all violate terms of service every day. For example, Seventeen magazine's terms of service forbid you from visiting its website if you're under eighteen (!), and that means that its 4.5 million underage readers would all be felons under the CFAA, and liable to decades in prison.

The fact that Congress is contemplating this is a testament to its awful authoritarian venality. The fact that they're doing it as part of a reform triggered by Aaron's death is a fucking travesty.

Aaron helped design the widgets that put through 8,000,000 phone calls to Congress about the awfulness of SOPA and killed legislation that everyone on the inside considered unstoppable. Now, Demand Progress -- the group Aaron helped found -- has got another "Tell Congress" widget, which we've embedded for today. You can (and should) embed it too. You can get your own at FixTheCFAA.com, along with a cute tool to put your social media profile photo behind bars and let your friends know what's going on.

Today, we save the Internet. Again.

Demand Justice for Aaron Swartz

What problem are we trying to solve in the copyright wars?

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:13:11 +0000

My latest Guardian column is "Copyright wars are damaging the health of the internet" and it looks at what we really need from proposed solutions to the copyright wars:

I've sat through more presentations about the way to solve the copyright wars than I've had hot dinners, and all of them has fallen short of the mark. That's because virtually everyone with a solution to the copyright wars is worried about the income of artists, while I'm worried about the health of the internet.
Oh, sure, I worry about the income of artists, too, but that's a secondary concern. After all, practically everyone who ever set out to earn a living from the arts has failed – indeed, a substantial portion of those who try end up losing money in the bargain. That's nothing to do with the internet: the arts are a terrible business, one where the majority of the income accrues to a statistically insignificant fraction of practitioners – a lopsided long tail with a very fat head. I happen to be one of the extremely lucky lotto winners in this strange and improbable field – I support my family with creative work – but I'm not parochial enough to think that my destiny and the destiny of my fellow 0.0000000000000000001 percenters are the real issue here.
What is the real issue here? Put simply, it's the health of the internet.

UK Open Rights Group is holding its first ever digital rights conference in the north

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:07:09 +0000

Ruth from the UK Open Rights Group sez:

ORGCon North is the first regional conference to build on the success of the national sell-out event, ORGCon, which takes place in London every year. On Saturday 13th April Open Rights Group, the UK digital rights campaigning organisation, will be running ORGCon North at the Manchester Friends' Meeting House. The event is a great introduction to digital rights issues that affect every internet user - like freedom from surveillance and free speech on Twitter and Facebook. The event runs from 11am till 5pm and is hosted by ORG-Manchester, the local campaigning group.
ORGCon North gathers experts from many technology fields and civil liberties groups across the country debating some of the big issues like: Will copyright eat the internet? Do we have a right to be offensive? There will be a keynote speech from John Buckman, chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and founder of the independent record label Magnatune. He will be talking about upcoming challenges to digital rights, drawing on his experiences in the UK and US. Open Rights Group are also offering an 'unconference track' with room for anyone to lead sessions or pop up a debate, to build to the conference they want.
Individual tickets are priced at £11 or £6 for ORG supporters. Tickets are free if you join ORG this month.

ORGCon North 2013 (Thanks, Ruth!)

Politely refusing to talk to DHS checkpoints

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:16:53 +0000

Hugh sez, "Apparently DHS checkpoints nowhere near the border are a new thing. This video cuts together recordings of such encounters and citizens' polite refusal to answer questions."

Top quote: "Am I being detained?"

Checkpoints (some would say illegal checkpoints) have been popping up quite frequently in the USA. As you see in this video, you DO NOT have to comply with their question's or demands. Don't forget, you have rights.

Top DHS checkpoint refusals (Thanks, Hugh!)

MacLeod's dystopian masterpiece Intrusion in paperback

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:35:08 +0000

Ken Macleod's amazing dystopian novel Intrusion is out in paperback today. Here's my review from last March:

Ken MacLeod's new novel Intrusion is a new kind of dystopian novel: a vision of a near future "benevolent dictatorship" run by Tony Blair-style technocrats who believe freedom isn't the right to choose, it's the right to have the government decide what you would choose, if only you knew what they knew.
Set in North London, Intrusion begins with the story of Hope, a mother who has become a pariah because she won't take "the fix," a pill that repairs known defects in a gestating fetus's genome. Hope has a "natural" toddler and is pregnant with her second, and England is in the midst of a transition from the fix being optional to being mandatory for anyone who doesn't have a "faith-based" objection. Hope's objection isn't based on religion, and she refuses to profess a belief she doesn't have, and so the net of social services and laws begins to close around her.
MacLeod widens the story from Hope, and her husband Hugh (a carpenter working with carbon-sequestering, self-forming "New Wood") who has moved to London from an independent Scotland, and whose childhood hides a series of vivid hallucinations of ancient people from the Ice Age-locked past. Soon we're learning about the bioscientists who toil to improve the world's genomes, the academics who study their work, the refuseniks who defy the system in small and large ways, and the Naxals, city-burning wreckers who would obliterate all of society. The Naxals, along with a newly belligerent India and Russia, are a ready-made excuse for a war-on-terror style crackdown on every corner of human activity that includes ubiquitous CCTV, algorithmic behavior monitors, and drones in every corner of the sky.
With Intrusion, MacLeod pays homage to Orwell, showing us how a society besotted with paternalistic, Cass Sunstein-style "nudging" of behavior can come to the same torturing, authoritarian totalitarianism of brutal Stalinism. MacLeod himself is a Marxist who is lauded by libertarians, and his unique perspective, combined with a flair for storytelling, yields up a haunting, gripping story of resistance, terror, and an all-consuming state that commits its atrocities with the best of intentions.

Intrusion

Transcript of Lessig's talk: "Aaron's Law"

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:14:26 +0000

On Naked Capitalism, The Unknown Transcriber has transcribed the full text of Lawrence Lessig's Aaron's Law talk, which was one of Larry's finest moments.

So Aaron was a hacker. But he was not just a hacker. He was an Internet activist, but not just an Internet activist. Indeed, the most important part of Aaron’s life is the part most run over too quickly – the last chunk, when he shifted his focus from this effort to advance freedom in the space of copyright, to an effort to advance freedom and social justice more generally.
And I shared this shift with him. In June of 2007 I too announced I was giving up my work on Internet and copyright to work in this area of corruption. And I’m not sure when for him this change made sense, but I’m fairly sure when it made sense for me. Happened in 2006. Aaron had come to a conference, the C3 conference, the 23rd C3 conference in Berlin, and I was with my family at the American Academy in Berlin and Aaron came to visit me. And we had a long conversation, and in the course of that conversation Aaron said to me, how are you ever going to make progress in the areas that I was working on, copyright reform, Internet regulation reform, so long as there is, as he put it, this, quote, “corruption” in the political field. I tried to deflect him a bit. I said, “Look, that’s not my field.” Not my field. And he said, “I get it. As an academic, you mean?” And I said, “Yes, as an academic, that’s not my field.” And he said, “And as a citizen, is it your field?” As a citizen is it your field?
And this was his power. Amazing, unpatented power. Like the very best teachers, he taught by asking. Like the most effective leaders, his questions were on a path, his path. They coerced you, if you wanted to be as he was. They forced you to think of who you were and what you believed in and decide, were you to be the person you thought you were? So when people refer to me as Aaron Swartz’s mentor, they have it exactly backwards. Aaron was my mentor. He taught me, he pushed me, he led me. He led me to where I work today.

Transcript: Lawrence Lessig on “Aaron’s Laws – Law and Justice in a Digital Age”: Section I

EFF-Austin benefit after Cory's Book People event on Feb 22

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:17:47 +0000

After my event at Austin's Book People on Feb 22, I'll be doing a benefit for EFF-Austin on their location privacy campaign. We did this the last time I came through town and it was tremendous -- come on out!

An evening with Cory Doctorow and EFF-Austin

Cypherpunks: articulates and challenges Internet freedom

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:58:51 +0000

Cypherpunks -- a quick, stirring, scary read -- transcribes a wide-ranging conversation between Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum (Wikileaks/Tor Project), Andy Müller-Maguhn (Chaos Computer Club) and Jérémie Zimmermann (La Quadrature Du Net).

Edited together in thematic chapters (The Militarization of Cyberspace, Fighting Total Surveillance With the Laws of Physics, Private Sector Spying), Cypherpunks exceeded my expectations. I know some of the book's protagonists personally and know how smart and principled they are. But I was afraid, going into this, that what would emerge would be a kind of preaching-to-the-choir consensus, because all four of the participants are on the same side.

Instead, I found Cypherpunks to be a genuine debate, where each speaker's best arguments -- well-polished, well-spoken, and convincing -- were mercilessly tested by the others, who subjected them to hard questions and rigorous inspection. Most of our discussions about Wikileaks lack nuance, and they're often hijacked by personal questions about Assange. Whatever you feel about Assange, he is not Wikileaks -- Wikileaks is an activity, not an organization, and its participants, including Bradley Manning, are engaged in something important and difficult and fraught, and there is a place for a debate about whether the tactics of Wikileaks best serve a the strategic end of a free and open Internet in a just and humane society.

The debate recorded in Cypherpunks -- though leavened with humor and easy to follow -- covers a lot of nuance of the sort that has been missing from the discussion. The wider points -- that the universe's in-built mathematics favor the keeping of secrets because it is easier to encrypt a message than decrypt it, say -- may dazzle, but the getting down to cases afterward, the chewing the point over and challenging it, that's where the book shines.

There aren't many titles that pack as much argument, ambiguity and theory into as small a package as Cypherpunks. It's a book you can read in an hour or two, but you'll be thinking about it for years.

Cypherpunks

ACLU guide to running an online business that respects privacy & free speech

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:25:40 +0000

Danielle from the ACLU sez, "The ACLU has just released a new guide for tech companies on why they should and how they can better protect user privacy and free speech. The guide features dozens of real-life case studies from A(mazon) to Z(ynga) and updated recommendations for policies and practices to take the guesswork out of avoiding expensive lawsuits, government investigations, and public relations nightmares. It walks companies through essential questions and lays out steps to spot potential privacy and free speech issues in products and business models and address these issues head-on."

Five things companies can do to protect user privacy and free speech:
Respect your data.
Companies should carefully evaluate the costs of collecting and retaining data to avoid the fallout, lawsuits, and government fines that Path suffered for silently uploading users’ contacts.
Stand up for your users’ rights.
Companies can earn public praise and user trust for protecting user privacy rights like Amazon or for supporting free speech like Facebook.
Plan ahead.
Incorporate privacy and security from start to finish, and evaluate these practices as the company grows.
Be Transparent.
Give users the ability to make informed choices by letting them know what data you collect, and how it can be used, shared, or demanded by the government. Transparency reports like Google’s are important tools.
Encourage users to speak freely.
Give users control over the content they access and the tools they use rather than censoring content like PayPal.

ACLU Guide: Tips for Companies on Protecting User Privacy and Free Speech in 2013 (Thanks, Danielle!)

Law and Little Brother

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 19:45:18 +0000

I'm excited to see the folks at Law and the Multiverse (a blog that considers legal questions through the lens of comics, movies and fiction) having a look at the legal issues raised in Little Brother. It's very timely, what with the sequel, Homeland, coming out on Tuesday!

A large portion of the book’s plot rests on the intersection of law and technology. Bruce Schneier thought the technology was handled pretty well, which is a strong endorsement. But what about the law? There are a couple of minor errors (e.g. referring to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as the “9th Circuit Appellate Division Court”) that make one wonder about the larger issues. Was it illegal for Marcus and his friends to have been imprisoned at “Gitmo-by-the-Bay” without access to an attorney and without being charged with a crime? And what about the waterboarding? Could the Bay Area Department of Homeland Security be headed by a Major General and staffed by other members of the military? Could the State Troopers have saved the day?

The Law and the Multiverse people wrote a great book that runs through all the high points of US law by examining how it applies to superheros in comic books.

Little Brother, Part 1

National Day of Courage for the Rosa Parks centennial

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 02:46:33 +0000

Lish from The Henry Ford Museum writes, "Henry Ford Museum in metro Detroit is hosting a National Day of Courage in honor of Rosa Parks' 100th birthday. We're encouraging folks to share a digital badge of courage that they want to stand up for. We'll also be unveiling the new Rosa Parks stamp from the USPS that day, too."

How the NY Daily News covered Stonewall

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 01:36:43 +0000

The Stonewall Riots kicked off on June 28, 1969, and marked a turning-point in the gay rights movement. Today, they're remembered as a kind of shot heard round the world, but at the time, the coverage was a lot less sympathetic. Here's a mirror of "Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad," a story by Jerry Lisker that ran in the New York Daily News on July 6, 1969.

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.
Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.
"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad (via Making Light)

(Image: New York Public Library/Wikimedia Commons)

It's Internet Freedom Day: time to share MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:33:45 +0000

Update: Holmes from Fight For the Future sez, "For Martin Luther King day, we made a video about how if SOPA had passed, you could have gone to jail for posting 'I Have a Dream'. Ironically, the video has already been taken down. Remember, if SOPA had passed, *entire sites* could have been shut down simply for linking to a video of Dr. King's historic speech."

Update 2: It's back up.

Tiffiniy from Fight For the Future sez,

A year ago today, the internet went on strike and dealt the final knockout to censorship bills in the U.S. Congress, SOPA and PIPA. To celebrate, a bunch of the people have declared January 18th, 'Internet Freedom Day.' They're asking people to help with a new holiday tradition of sharing one thing -- on their blogs or social networks -- that should never be censored. Doing that reminds us all that we can and will protect free speech on the web.
For our part at Fight for the Future, as MLK Day is coming up, we realized that one thing that we all care about deeply that faces constant censorship is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic 'I Have a Dream' speech. It's hard to find something that is as important to watch and learn from, yet since it is copyrighted until 2038, Youtube and other sites censor unabridged versions of the speech. You're supposed to wait 25 years to share it.
To celebrate both Internet Freedom Day and MLK Day, we made a video containing the complete 17-minute 'I Have a Dream' speech... so people can share it on Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs. Doing just that is a small act of civil disobedience to celebrate the freedom that Dr. King fought for and make sure his words reach people around the globe this weekend. Dr. King said, 'one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.'
Aaron Swartz passed almost a week ago today. Before that, he spent his life creating massive equality and freedom of spirit through his internet activism. Aaron and the loss of him more than ever reminds me that I am not okay with a world where when someone who is just learning about civil rights, race, and our history, goes on the web to see MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech and is confronted with a notice that says "this video has been removed." That kind of world is untenable, and we should fight against it.
We've been reeling from Aaron's death, so we're sorry this may be the first you're hearing about Internet Freedom Day. But, please do what you can, and tell people how they can commemorate how powerful the internet-using public can be in creating and protecting our social goods.

MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is copyrighted. Share it anyway.

City buses across America now covertly recording passengers' conversations

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:39:10 +0000

City buses across America increasingly have hidden microphones that track and record the conversations that take place on them. It's easy to see the reasoning behind this: once it's acceptable to video-record everything and everyone on a bus because some crime, somewhere was thus thwarted, then why not add audio? If all you need to justify an intrusion into privacy is to show that some bad thing, somewhere, can be so prevented, then why not? After all, "If you've got nothing to hide..."

According to the product pamphlet for the RoadRecorder 7000 system made by SafetyVision (.pdf), “Remote connectivity to the RoadRecorder 7000 NVR can be established via the Gigabit Ethernet port or the built-in 3G modem. A robust software ecosystem including LiveTrax vehicle tracking and video streaming service combined with SafetyNet central management system allows authorized users to check health status, create custom alerts, track vehicles, automate event downloads and much more.”
The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.
Cities that have installed the systems or have taken steps to procure them include San Francisco, California; Eugene, Oregon; Traverse City, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore Maryland; Hartford, Connecticut; and Athens, Georgia.

There are lots more exciting possibilities opened up here. For example, our phones and laptops could continuously stream all the audio from our immediate surroundings when we're in public, even when we're not actively using them. No one would listen to them in real-time (or, at least, no one would be authorized to do this), unless they were a cop or someone in government. But when a crime was committed, imagine how useful it would be if all the phones in the vicinity could be tapped for a record of the event!

Why not? If you've got nothing to hide?

This is the NSA's argument, by the way. They're recording all of the Internet and voice traffic in the USA, but they only plan on examining it after the fact, to find criminals who do bad, bad things. Once you accept that logic, there's no reason that they shouldn't put prisoner-tracking ankle-cuffs on all of us (mobile phones are only slightly less invasive than these, anyway, in the current legislative regime), start using lawful interception backdoors to watch us through the webcams in our consoles and computers, and so on.

It's also UK Home Secretary Theresa May's argument in favour of her "Snooper's Charter" -- the communications act she's pushing, which will give law enforcement the power to order service providers to retain any data, and give government and law enforcement access to it.

Public Buses Across Country Quietly Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations [Kim Zetter/Wired] (via Wil Wheaton)

EFF Power Up fundraiser: every dollar you give is matched 2-to-1

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:00:44 +0000

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is running a fundraising challenge called "Power Up Your Donation," where every dollar donated is matched two-to-one by a group of major donors. My family has put up part of the $140,000 matching fund, because we're living in a world where technology could go either way: it might end up continuing to empower us and improve our lives, or become the agent of an unimaginably invasive corporate surveillance state. Without EFF and groups like it, we don't stand a chance. I worked for EFF for many years, and I've never seen an organization watch the pennies more closely and make a dollar go further.

Power Up Your Donation | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Donate to Public Knowledge, avert the Mayapocalypse

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:19:27 +0000

Michael sez, "While preparing the PK bunker for the December 21st Mayan Apocalypse, we made a startling discovery: a machine powerful enough to prevent the end of the world. Needless to say, we were excited. The only problem? The machine's only power source is donations to Public Knowledge. And, yes, we shot some video. We are so confident that this device will work that we offer you this UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE: if you donate to Public Knowledge before the Mayan Apocalypse, the world will not end on December 21st."

Help Us Stop the Mayan Apocalypse (Thanks, Michael)

Understanding the NDAA, a US law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:43:41 +0000

Omems sends us, "ProPublica's point-by-point discussion of why this year's NDAA might not allow for the indefinite detention of US citizens. As clear and concise a summary as I've seen, and provides a bit of hope that our rights aren't completely irrelevant to our representatives."

I don't know that I'd got that far. ProPublica concludes that some of the senators who voted for NDAA clearly believe (and intend) that it will be used to lock up American citizens and lawful residents forever, without a trial or any meaningful due process. And all of them expect that the NDAA will allow for indefinite detention without charge or trial for foreigners who are captured abroad, or who happen to visit the USA (tourists beware). As one of those foreigners who often visits the USA on a work-visa, I'm not exactly comforted by this news.

What about people detained in the U.S. who aren’t citizens or permanent residents?
They could still be indefinitely detained.
Human rights and civil libertarian groups criticized the amendment for falling short of the protections in the constitution under the Fifth Amendment, which says that any “person” in the U.S. be afforded due process.
In the floor debate, Feinstein said she agreed with critics that allowing anybody in the U.S. to be detained indefinitely without charges “violates fundamental American rights.” Feinstein said she didn’t think she had the necessary votes to pass a due-process guarantee for all.

Cutting through the Controversy about Indefinite Detention and the NDAA (Thanks, Omem!)

Texas student suspended for refusing RFID tracker

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:55:16 +0000

A student in San Antonio, TX, has been suspended from school for refusing wear a RFID tracking device on privacy and religious grounds (she believes the tracker is somehow related to the "Mark of the Beast"). The school's funding is based on student attendance, so they use prisoner-style trackers to follow students' movements. A judge has temporarily reversed the suspension.

The suspended student, sophomore Andrea Hernandez, was notified by the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio that she won’t be able to continue attending John Jay High School unless she wears the badge around her neck, which she has been refusing to do. The district said the girl, who objects on privacy and religious grounds, beginning Monday would have to attend another high school in the district that does not yet employ the RFID tags.
The Rutherford Institute said it would go to court and try to nullify the district’s decision. The institute said that the district’s stated purpose for the program — to enhance their coffers — is “fundamentally disturbing.”
“There is something fundamentally disturbing about this school district’s insistence on steamrolling students into complying with programs that have nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to do with fattening school coffers,” said John Whitehead, the institute’s president.

Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker [David Kravets/Wired]

Encounter with a New Mexico "internal border" checkpoint

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 02:00:20 +0000

Paul sez, "Man is illegally detained at an internal border patrol checkpoint in New Mexico for nearly a half hour, not being allowed to leave and at first told that he wasn't being detained until the border patrol eventually told him he was being detained for unspecified reasons. He recorded the entire exchange on video, and spends most of the time asking when he is free to go. Eventually the patrol gives up and allows him to leave, but not before making threatening gestures, warning him that New Mexico police were on their way, and accusing him of criminally blocking traffic when he was asking to leave and wasn't given permission."

Abusive Border Patrol Agents NM Checkpoint (Thanks, Paul!)

Help fund a legal officer for the Open Rights Group

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:48:48 +0000

Ruth from the UK Open Rights Group sez, "Open Rights Group have launched a campaign to fund a legal officer position and intervene in the courts. The link is a page which gives more details about the kind of cases we want to take on and encourages supporters to join. We want in the first place 150 new supporters for a part time job and 300 for a full time. It will allow the Open Rights Group to expand from policy work to challenging government in the courts, facilitate legal advice on digital rights issues and prepare ammendments to section 127 used to prosecute Paul Chambers in the twitter joke trial. It's an exciting prospect for protecting digital rights in the UK."

ORG is ready for legal action (Thanks, Ruth!)

(Disclosure: I co-founded the Open Rights Group and volunteer on its advisory board)

Bits of Freedom's annual donation campaign is today: defend digital freedom in the Netherlands!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:44:49 +0000

Ot sez, "Bits of Freedom is organizing its annual donation campaign today. Why? Because privacy and freedom on the internet are under threat and we need to defend our rights online. We can only do so with your help. If you want to help, you can write a blog, use one of our banners on your own site or become a supporter. Thanks!"

Bits of Freedom is the Netherlands' answer to groups like EFF, Open Rights Group, Netzpolitik, La Quadrature du Net, and many others (thankfully, there's more than can be readily enumerated here -- it's a global movement). They really deserve your support.

Bits of Freedom is een onafhankelijke beweging, en dat willen we blijven. We kunnen alleen bestaan dankzij donaties van Nederlanders die geven om hun vrijheid en privacy. Wil jij ook meehelpen om internetvrijheid te beschermen? Word dan donateur.
Met jouw steun kunnen we doorgaan met:
* Schendingen van online rechten signaleren en aanpakken
* Slecht beleid terugdraaien en goed beleid stimuleren. Zowel in Den Haag als in Brussel
* Tools ontwikkelen en kennis delen waarmee jij je eigen internetvrijheid kunt beschermen
* Elk jaar de Big Brother Awards uitreiken aan de grofste privacyschenders

Do your bit! (Thanks, Ot!)

Russian beard tax token from the reign of Peter the Great

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 04:12:04 +0000

This is a Russian beard tax token from the reign of Peter the Great, who set out to modernize Russia by getting everyone to shave. Anyone who wanted to keep a beard had to buy one of these tokens (which bore the legend "the beard is a superfluous burden"). Costs varied by profession -- nobles and officers paid 60 rubles, top merchants paid 100, and so on. Additionally, everyone passing into a city while wearing a beard had to pay a kopek's worth of face-fur-toll.

Update: You can buy replica beard tokens, too.

Beard Tax Token, 1705 (via Neatorama)

Kindle user claims Amazon deleted whole library without explanation

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:08:43 +0000

According to Martin Bekkelund, a Norwegian Amazon customer identified only as Linn had her Kindle access revoked without warning or explanation. Her account was closed, and her Kindle was remotely wiped. Bekkelund has posted a string of emails that he says were sent to Linn by the company. They are a sort of Kafkaesque dumbshow of bureaucratic non-answering, culminating in the customer service version of "Die in a fire," to whit, "We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters," a comment signed by "Michael Murphy, Executive Customer Relations, Amazon.co.uk."

Update: Simon Phipp sez, "Kindlegate update: Linn says her account was mysteriously re-activated after my article published."

Pity that there isn't any ground between "Go to hell" and "Sorry, we made a mistake," such as, perhaps, "Huh, before we take away all the books you've given us money for, I guess we'd better look into this, and here's what we think you did, can you help us understand it?"

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.
Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.
I appreciate this is not the outcome you hoped for and apologise for any disappointment this may cause.

Update:: Simon Phipps talked to Linn and got her story:

Linn lives in Norway, where Amazon does not operate (Amazon.no redirects to the Amazon Europe page). She bought a Kindle in the UK, liked it and read a number of books on it. She then gave that Kindle to her mother, and bought a used Kindle on a Danish classifieds site to which she transferred her account. She has been happily reading on it for some time, purchasing her books with a Norwegian address and credit card. She told me she'd read 30 or 40 books on it.
Sadly, the device developed a fault (actually a second time, it was also replaced in 2011 for the same reason) and started to display black lines on the screen (something I've heard from other friends as it happens). She called Amazon customer service, and they agreed to replace it if she returned it, although they insisted on shipping the replacement to a UK address rather to her in Norway.
Then the e-mails that her friend Martin re-posted arrived. Linn has had no explanation from Amazon about what they think she has done wrong. All the e-mails simply refer to "another account which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies", in a tone reminiscent of a patronising official saying "you know what you did wrong so I'm not going to tell you". The e-mails also look as if they are simply a cut-and-paste from some procedure manual, because others have received exactly the same text (with just as little warning, explanation or recourse).

Back in 2009, when Amazon settled the lawsuit over its remote deletion of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (you really can't make this stuff up), it promised that it would not perform any further deletions unless ordered to do so by a court. I repeatedly asked Amazon whether DRM-free ebooks, or files that users load onto their Kindles themselves, could be remotely deleted. I never received a response of any kind.

My guess is that Amazon has the capability to wipe any file from any Kindle, and likely also has the ability to read any file on any Kindle. I'd further speculate that the policy violation that Linn stands accused of is using a friend's UK address to buy Amazon UK English Kindle books from Norway. This is a symptom of Amazon's -- and every single other ebook retailer's -- hopelessness at managing "open territory" for ebooks.

"Open territory" is a publishing term describing places where no publisher holds exclusive retail rights. In English-language book-contracts, it's almost always the case that countries where English isn't the native or official language are "open territory," meaning that if a writer sells her English language rights in Canada and the US to Macmillan, and her UK/Australia/NZ/South African rights to Penguin, both Penguin and Macmillan are legally allowed to sell competing English print and electronic editions in Norway, Rwanda, India, China, and Russia.

However, the universal approach taken by ebook retailers to "open territory" is to pretend that it doesn't exist. If no publisher is registered as the exclusive provider of an edition in a given country, the ebook retailers just refuse to sell to people in those countries. I've spoken to e-rights people in the major publishing houses, and they hate this, because a) it just drives piracy; and b) it represents lost sales. But there's no shifting the etailers, apparently.

If my conjecture about Linn's offense is correct, then she has not violated copyright, nor has she done anything that would upset a publisher. She's merely violated the thousands of words of impossible fine-print that comes with your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iPad, as have all of us. This fine print will always have a clause that says you are a mere tenant farmer of your books, and not their owner, and your right to carry around your "purchases" (which are really conditional licenses, despite misleading buttons labelled with words like "Buy this with one click" -- I suppose "Conditionally license this with one click" is deemed too cumbersome for a button) can be revoked without notice or explanation (or, notably, refund) at any time.

It's likely that the EU's open market directives prohibit any kind of discrimination of sales based on national borders within the EU (though Norway isn't technically in the EU). However, the EUCD's strict prohibition on DRM circumvention (which Norway both voluntarily adopted and exceeded) means that purchasers of ebooks and ereaders can't take any steps to enforce their legal rights, nor can any business or nonprofit assist them in these matters.

I was a bookseller for many years. I have no idea whether everything that my customers did with their books was legal. It's likely that some of them photocopied their books and passed them around. Embarrassingly enough, I once sold a small stack of rather excellent novels to a guy who bought them with a counterfeit bill. Despite all this, I -- as a bookseller -- was never, ever expected to repossess those books. I was not expected to police my customers' use of those books. I did not have -- nor did I want -- the facility to know what else my customers shelved on their bookshelves next to the books I sold them.

Reading without surveillance, publishing without after-the-fact censorship, owning books without having to account for your ongoing use of them: these are rights that are older than copyright. They predate publishing. They are fundamentals that every bookseller, every publisher, every distributor, every reader, should desire. They are foundational to a free press and to a free society. If you sell an ebook reader is designed to allow Kafkaesque repossessions, you are a fool if you expect anything but Kafkaesque repossessions in their future. We've been fighting over book-bans since the time of Martin Luther and before. There is no excuse for being surprised when your attractive nuisance attracts nuisances.

It's true that the ability to revoke files over the air is a boon to people whose devices are stolen or lost. Much of that benefit can be realized by designing devices that encrypt their storage (to a user password) by default (though we know about the weaknesses of passwords, of course). It's also conceivable to have an over-the-air deletion system that requires a sign-in from the device owner/user at a Web-browser, and that isn't available to the manufacturer alone. Both of these are more cumbersome than simply reporting your device stolen and knowing that the next time it's connected to the Internet, it will delete itself.

But as we learned when Mat Honan's phone, laptop, and backups were remotely wiped by a hacker, having a manufacturer-controlled remote wipe facility means that your data is only as safe as the most careless front-line telephone-bank service rep at the manufacturer, which is to say, not very.

If it's a choice between paving the way for tyranny and risking the loss of your digital life at the press of a button by some deceived customer service rep, and having to remember a password, I think the password is the way to go. The former works better, but the latter fails better.

A note to anyone from Amazon PR contemplating sending me a comment regarding this: I expect that any comment from Amazon regarding this story will disclose whether and when Amazon can delete files (including files loaded by users) from Kindles, and whether DRM-free files can still be deleted. Also: as a policy, I do not quote anonymous spokespeople for firms unless they are telling me something that could cost them their jobs.

Update: Here's how Ashleigh from Kobo explained their Open Territory workings:

I was happy to see an article on the open territory issue - as it's not often discussed and I think it's an important issue for publishers today. But, as one of these e-Retailers you mention, I object to your statement below:
"This is a symptom of Amazon's -- and every single other ebook retailer's -- hopelessness at managing "open territory" for ebooks."
I can't speak for our competitors, but I can speak to how books are managed at Kobo. Our contracts state that we will faithfully represent the rights declaration for each title. We have to respect where we've been told any given books have the right to sell, and we treat these statements as gospel.
All the details about a book are communicated in our industry's xml standard, ONIX Each book's metadata contains an explicit statement on what territories we are allowed to sell in as a retailer of this title. As a global retailer, we encourage all publishers to be complete in these details and to provide us with maximum rights. In fact, I had hundreds of conversations about this a few weeks ago during the Frankfurt Book Fair. But, many publishers are very conservative about communicating rights in territories they are not actively engaged with. Also, many of the agency publishers insist on setting the prices themselves, and an unfortunate side effect to that is that the territories they haven't made the effort to price in the local currency remain unavailable.

However, it looks like my own publisher, Tor, are pretty good on this. She adds,

Looking at one title (For the Win) as an example, it looks like your publisher is doing a great job. ISO country codes below - but it looks like our friend in Norway who lost their account would have no problems buying your book on Kobo.
US CA AE AF AL AM AN AO AQ AR AS AT AW AX AZ BA BE BF BG BH BI BJ BO BR BT BV BY CD CF CG CH CI CK CL CN CO CR CU CV CX CZ DE DJ DK DO DZ EC EE EG EH ER ES ET FI FM FO FR GA GE GF GI GL GN GP GQ GR GS GT GU GW HK HM HN HR HT HU ID IL IO IR IS IT JO JP KG KH KM KP KR KZ LA LB LI LR LT LU LV LY MA MC MD ME MG MH MK ML MN MO MP MQ MR MT MV MX MY MZ NC NE NG NI NL NO NP NU NZ OM PA PE PF PH PL PM PR PS PT PW PY QA RE RO RS RU RW SA SD SE SG SI SJ SK SL SM SN SO SR ST SV SY TD TF TG TH TJ TL TM TN TR TW UA UM UY UZ VA VE VI VN WF YE YT ZA

This suggests that all the other ebook retailers who won't sell you my books (and, likely, other Tor titles) are doing so because they lack the technical chops to parse out the metadata supplied by Tor.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

Outlawed by Amazon DRM (Google cache)

(Thanks to Eirik and all the others who sent this in)

(Image: DRM PNG 1 900, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice's photostream)

Universal Computer Users

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:00:29 +0000

Citing my talk on General Purpose Computing and regulation (and many other works), Olia Lialina describes a "General Purpose User... that was formed through three decades of adjusting general purpose technology to their needs":

General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without flickr, tweet without twitter, like without facebook, make a black frame around pictures without instagram, remove a black frame from an instagram picture and even wake up at 7:00 without a “wake up at 7:00” app.
Maybe these Users could more accurately be called Universal Users or Turing Complete Users, as a reference to the Universal Machine, also known as Universal Turing Machine — Alan Turing’s conception of a computer that can solve any logical task given enough time and memory. Turing’s 1936 vision and design predated and most likely influenced von Neuman’s First Draft and All-purpose Machine.
But whatever name I chose, what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user.
There can be different examples and levels of autonomy that users can imagine for themselves, but the capacity to be universal is still in all of us. Sometimes it is a conscious choice not to delegate particular jobs to the computer, and sometimes it is just a habit. Most often it is not more than a click or two that uncover your general purpose architecture.

The whole thing is a refreshing addition to the long debate and discussion over users, user experience design, and interfaces.

Turing Complete User (via Beyond the Beyond)

San Antonio students and parents upset at mandatory radio-tracking snitch-tags

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:28:25 +0000

Chris Matyszczyk on CNet rounds up a variety of reports on the outrage over the schools in San Antonio, Texas, which have insisted that their students wear radio-tag trackers. The schools are using every conceivable technique for coercing their students into submitting to wearing the technology, which reminds me of the tracker anklets that paroled felons wear. For example, one student was told she couldn't cast a vote for homecoming queen unless she submitted to the tracking regime. The schools say that the students are being tracked to reduce truancy, which will make them money -- presumably by saving them on the cost of tracking and punishing students. The practice is old hat in Houston, where students have been chipped for some time.

What some might find truly beastly, though, is that his daughter, Andrea, claims that she was told by a teacher that without the ID badge, she couldn't vote for homecoming king and queen. At least that's what Catholic Online reports.
Some might find it odd that Hernandez also reportedly claimed that the school only wanted to co-operate with his feelings if he stopped publicly criticizing the tagging.
His daughter told The Alex Jones Channel that the tags don't make her feel safer.
"I feel completely unsafe knowing that this can be hacked by pedophiles and dangerous offenders," she said.
She added: "I walk home. Dangerous offenders can pick up on my signal."

For the record, I don't think that this is a very realistic fear. On the other hand, I think that there are very good reasons to want to enjoy the privacy of being un-tracked -- for example, the fundamental freedom of association is compromised if your snitch-tag tells the administration who you hang out with.

No homecoming queen vote if you don't wear RFID tag? (Thanks, Dave!)