By Cory Doctorow at 9:07 am Wednesday, May 23
• Comments • Share
Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future (standard-bearers in the fight against SOPA) sez,
Congressional hero of the SOPA wars, Senator Wyden, said about cyber security legislation (CISPA and Lieberman-Collins) that is expected to be taken up and passed in early June:
"I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans' private data. These bills create a cyber industrial complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution."
Furthermore, privacy is awesome -- it lets you be yourself without fear of unjust scrutiny. But, these bills would end meaningful privacy and install meaningful surveillance. But, we can change the game: www.privacyisawesome.com.
CISPA passed the house recently. That seems like a blow, but unless a similar bill passes the Senate, that means nothing. We have one week to kill CISPA indefinitely.
The playbook for this is rolling out today. If we can get senators to just stop and think for a minute before they vote on the bill, the clock will run out on it. To do that, we need to call Senate offices in the thousands requesting meeting at and information on Memorial Day events and during the Senators' recess, and get meetings in every state.
We're looking for people who can help keep building the movement for internet freedom, and who want to help stop CISPA.
Privacy is Awesome. Kill CISPA.
(
Thnaks, Tiffiniy)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:58 am Tuesday, May 22
• Comments • Share
A number of civil rights groups including PEN, will be represented by the ACLU in a Supreme Court case on the legality of the US government's program of mass, warrantless surveillance.
The groups went to court in July 2008 to overturn provisions of the FISA Amendments Act that allow the dragnet surveillance of American’s international emails and phone calls, arguing that the expectation of monitoring harms their ability to communicate freely with international clients and colleagues. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have sought to have the suit dismissed on the ground that because the groups cannot show that their communications have been monitored under the secret program, they cannot demonstrate they have been harmed by the program and so lack “standing” to sue. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that logic, ruling that PEN and its co-plaintiffs have a reasonable basis to fear that the government may be monitoring their conversations under the terms of the law, and that the groups should be allowed their day in court.
The Obama administration appealed that decision, and today’s announcement means that the Supreme Court will review the standing question later this year. The ACLU, which is representing PEN and its co-plaintiffs, will argue the case.
“With the FAA up for reauthorization at the end of the year, it is disappointing that we must once again argue the standing question instead of examining the legality of the program itself,” said Peter Godwin, president of PEN American Center. “For us, the important question is whether the system of checks and balances works, so that laws allowing programs that are utterly secret must at least be subject to independent judicial review. We look to the Supreme Court to uphold our right to clarify how the NSA’s surveillance program affects our organization’s sensitive international communications.”
PEN Heading to Supreme Court in Warrantless Surveillance Case
By Cory Doctorow at 5:59 am Saturday, May 19
• Comments • Share
The Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning has posted an hour-long investigative journalism piece establishing the link between the giant Swedish telcoms company Teliasonera and oppressive regimes around the world. Teliasonera sold and supported network equipment that was used to spy on dissidents, journalists, political reformers, union leaders, and the general public in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Here's EFF's writeup of the piece:
The investigative report, titled “Black Boxes,” in reference to the black boxes Teliasonera allowed police and security services to install in their operation centers--which granted them the unrestricted capability to monitor all communications—including Internet traffic, phone calls, location data from cell phones, and text messages—in real-time. This has caused concern among Swedish citizens and Teliasonera shareholders, who had previously been assuaged by assurances from the telecommunications company that they follow the law in the countries in which they are operating. After a meeting with Peter Norman, Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets, the chairman of Teliasonera’s board of directors issued a statement, announcing that they had launched “an action programme for handling issues related to protection of privacy and freedom of expression in non-democratic countries, in a better and more transparent way.”
Teliasonera’s declaration of good intentions may be too little too late after the damning evidence of abuse compiled by Uppdrag Granskning. Documents obtained by their investigators showed an Azerbaijani had his phone tapped after he published a piece about being beaten at the hands of government security agents while covering a story. The report also found that black-box surveillance was used in Belarus to track down, arrest, and prosecute protesters who attended an anti-government protest rally following the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. One Azerbaijani citizen says he was interrogated solely due to the fact that he voted for the Armenian representative in the 2009 Eurovision song contest.
Swedish Telcom Giant Teliasonera Caught Helping Authoritarian Regimes Spy on Their Citizens
By Cory Doctorow at 1:47 am Friday, May 18
• Comments • Share
Disclosures made by the UK Department of Work and Pensions in response Freedom of Information requests show that over 1,000 civil servants illegally snooped on private citizens' data over a 13-month period. A separate disclosure from the Department of Health showed over 150 illegal breaches in the same period. As Zack Whittaker points out in a piece on ZDNet, these are the same civil servants who will havvess to unlimited amounts of sensitive personal information if the government's plan to require mandatory snooping on all Internet traffic goes through. Who needs crooks breaking into government databases when you've got civil servants stomping through them with impunity?
Between April 2010 and March 2011, 513 civil servants were found to have made “unauthorised disclosures of official, sensitive, private and/or personal information”. The year continuing, between April 2011 and January 2012, more than 460 staff were disciplined.
The DoH on the other hand said it did not log each and every breach of unlawful access to U.K. medical records. It did say there were 158 recorded breaches in 2011. Only four years earlier, there were only 28 cases, representing a fivefold increase.
The FOI requests were made by Channel 4’s investigative series, Dispatches.
UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:54 pm Wednesday, May 16
• Comments • Share
Remember Canada's Bill C-30, the sweeping surveillance bill proposed by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who declared that if you opposed unlimited, unaccountable, secret warrantless snooping on networked communications by the police and by appointed civilians, you "stand with the child pornographers?" The bill that was a sure thing to pass, given the Conservative majority in Parliament and its total commitment to the bill?
It's dead.
The Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson describes how a combination of social media campaigns (the #TellVicEverything hashtag, which saw Canadians revealing the trivial facts of their life to the snoopy minister; and the @Vikileaks30 account, which tweeted the humiliating details of Toews' ugly divorce and estrangement from his family) and Toews's own idiocy killed the seemingly unkillable plan:
That new bill, if there is one, will probably be shepherded by a different minister. That’s how much damage this botched legislation inflicted on the government and on Mr. Toews...
Normally, after a bill receives first reading, debate begins on second reading, which is approval in principle. Once the bill passes second reading, it goes to a committee, where only minor amendments are permitted before the bill returns for third and final reading.
Instead of this usual route, House Leader Peter Van Loan decided to send C-30 to the public safety committee first, where it is supposed to be extensively revised, before returning to the House for second and third reading.
But before any of that can happen, the rules state that the House must debate the motion to send the bill to committee. That debate must last at least five hours – in effect, one sitting day.
But that debate hasn’t happened. And sources report that it won’t happen before the House rises for summer recess. That makes C-30 dead in the water.
Here's our previous C-30 coverage.
How the Toews-sponsored Internet surveillance bill quietly died
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Wednesday, May 9
• Comments • Share
Emmanuel Goldstein from
2600 magazine writes, "We've begun work on the 2013 Hacker Calendar after a really good response to the 2012 edition.
This time the theme is surveillance, something near and dear to all of us. We're looking for ideas for calendar photos that capture some of the surveillance technology that's so pervasive - cameras, sensors, microphones, and a whole lot more. We have a team of photographers ready to capture all kinds of images of the watchers. Anyone who knows of particularly egregious, ironic, frightening, or silly examples of surveillance that we can photograph, please send an email to calendar@2600.com. (We're also looking to document some of the historical hacker-related events that took place in the past year so we can mark those on the next edition.)"
(
Thanks, Emannuel!)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:22 am Friday, May 4
• Comments • Share
Riseup, a "progressive Internet organization" that operates an anonymous remailer had its servers seized by the FBI without notice two weeks ago. They installed a little CCTV camera after the seizure. On Wednesday, that camera recorded footage of the FBI putting the servers back.
On April 18, 2012, a Riseup server located in MF/PL's colocation cabinet and managed by ECN, a progressive provider in Italy, was seized by the FBI. MF/PL found out about the seizure when Riseup reported that there was no response from the server. Technologists visited the server location and found that the machine had been removed.
The FBI is investigating bomb threats being made to facilities and people at the University of Pittsburgh and believed that one of the servers used to email these threats was an anonymous email server operated by ECN. "These servers have no logs or traces of who used them," MF/PL Director Jamie McClelland said. "Nothing useful could be gotten from this seizure but there is a concrete outcome: the seizure disrupted May First's work and disrupted the communications of hundreds of people who lawfully use that server for email and website services everyday."
Anonymous email servers keep no records of their users and are frequently used by activists, organizers and information sources world-wide.
FBI returns Riseup server to May First/People Link cabinet
(Thanks, Jacob!)
By Xeni Jardin at 5:49 pm Thursday, May 3
• Comments • Share
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) reports today that the US Justice Department made 1,745 requests last year to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) for permission to wiretap electronic communications or search for physical evidence in counter-terrorism cases.
That's up from 1,579 requests in 2010. Every single one of the requests submitted in 2011 were accepted, though 30 were modified by the court.
All of this is noted in a new annual report to Congress. More context from the FAS blog post today by Steven Aftergood:
The new report says that the government filed 205 applications for business records (including “tangible things”) for foreign intelligence purposes last year, compared to 96 in the previous year.
But the number of “national security letters” (a type of administrative subpoena) declined last year. In 2011, the FBI requested 16,511 national security letters pertaining to 7,201 U.S. persons, the new report said, compared to the 2010 total of 24,287 letter requests concerning 14,212 U.S. persons.
(via Associated Press)
Photo: Vladi/Shutterstock
By Cory Doctorow at 5:12 pm Thursday, May 3
• Comments • Share
Devon sez, "Portland, OR is the next city to consider a plan to implement police surveillance cameras throughout the downtown area. The proposal is to have surveillance cameras that can be accessed and controlled by police officers through their mobile devices. Although the Portland Police Bureau has assured the city council that the mobile devices will be secure, they are proposing to have the system operated through a wi-fi network. This proposal is coming at a time of significant municipal budget woes, when Portland Police are facing the potential layoff of 56 officers. Mayor Adams maintains that this system will have a deterrent effect upon crime in downtown Portland."
Maxine Bernstein reports in The Oregonian:
Amid unaddressed concerns, the Portland City Council on Wednesday sent Police Chief Mike Reese back to his bureau to draft stricter policies before allowing police to place surveillance cameras on private property in Old Town and Chinatown.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman echoed concerns raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon when he asked for assurances that police wouldn't use the cameras to peep into private residences.
Reese, who wants to put up the video surveillance cameras to help officers monitor drug deals, said "These cameras are not focused on anything but public right-of-ways."
The chief, though, did acknowledge in response to a question that the cameras the bureau has are able to "pan, tilt and zoom."
While Reese said any footage obtained from a private residence wouldn't be allowed in a criminal prosecution, Saltzman wasn't satisfied.
He said he wouldn't support the ordinance unless a clear policy was in place prohibiting the misuse of the camera technology.
Portland Council wants more assurances before allowing police to put surveillance cameras on private property
(Thanks, Devon!)
(Image: CCTV camera, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from flem007_uk's photostream)
By Xeni Jardin at 4:35 pm Wednesday, May 2
• Comments • Share
Cue up the Yakity Sax! In case you missed it, there have been a number of Boing Boing posts of late documenting outrageous TSA incidents:
• A terminal in Newark airport was evacuated because the TSA forgot to screen a tiny baby.
• TSA agents discovered an "anomaly in the crotchital area" of a 79-year-old woman.
• TSA agents at JFK harassed the family of a 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and developmental disability.
• TSA screeners in LA ran a drug ring and took bribes from drug dealers.
• The TSA's anti-hugging squad caught a terrorist masquerading as a 4-year-old girl who loves her grandma.
• A 95-year-old US Air Force veteran from World War II and his 85-year-old friend were humiliated, searched and robbed at a San Diego TSA checkpoint.
Did we miss anything else in the past week or so? Let us know in the comments.
Photo: Carolina K. Smith, M.D. / Shutterstock.com
By Xeni Jardin at 1:02 pm Wednesday, May 2
• Comments • Share
Via the BB Submitterator, BB reader rbrammer says:
The Sikh Coalition just released the FlyRights app. It’s a smart phone app that gives travelers who believe they’ve been the victim of discrimination by the TSA the ability to submit formal complaints directly from their smart phones.
You should have this on your phone the next time you fly!
Available for both Android and iOS. Makes perfect sense to me that a Sikh organization would be the one to put this together, given all of the idiot-hate that community has received post-9/11.
By Cory Doctorow at 10:39 am Wednesday, May 2
• Comments • Share
Ken Macleod writes, "Over two hundred years ago, reformer Jeremy Bentham tried to design a prison he called the Panopticon - where wardens could at all times observe prisoners, while unobserved themselves. He failed. But everyone reading this is already in a virtual Panopticon, where states and corporations track all online activity, and where CCTV cameras and tiny surveillance drones can watch us from above. 1 - 2.30 pm this Saturday, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, an ACLU-sponsored panel at the Cooper Union in New York asks what this means for our liberty and privacy. Chaired by Julian Sanchez, the panel includes Catherine Crump (ACLU), Gabriela Ademsestanu (Romania), Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia), and Ken MacLeod (UK)."
Tiny surveillance drones that hover and stare. An Internet where every keystroke is recorded. The automated government inspection of hundreds of millions of e-mails for suspicious characteristics. The technological advancements spurred by the computing revolution have improved our lives, but have also diminished our privacy and enhanced the government’s power to monitor us. Writers and directors who have grappled with technology’s mixed blessings join civil liberties advocates to discuss ways of preserving our freedom in an era in which we all dwell in Bentham’s Panopticon—a prison that allows our wardens to observe us at all times without being seen themselves.
Life in the Panopticon: Thoughts on Freedom in an Era of Pervasive Surveillance
(
Thanks, Ken!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 am Wednesday, May 2
• Comments • Share
Laptops issued to students by the Portland, Maine school boards will come with censorware that watches all their clicks and attempts to prevent them from visiting social media sites, even when working from home or other non-school premises, and even after school hours. Tom Bell's article in the Kennebec Journal quotes Peter Eglinton, chief operating officer, stating that this is a legal requirement. He's almost certainly incorrect; the law in question states that school networks must be filtered as a condition of receiving federal funding, but doesn't explicitly extend this to school-issued laptops used on non-school networks.
By taking this aggressive approach to censorship and surveillance of its student body, I fear that the Portland school board is compromising its students' network and media literacy, ensuring that they can't be supervised and mentored through positive use of the Internet services most widely used by their cohort. I also believe that close, continuous surveillance of students' network activity, with the concomitant prohibition on the use of privacy tools, sends absolutely the wrong message about how to manage your private information online. How can students learn to use technology to prevent their personal information from leaking out online if we spy on everything they do and punish them if they try to stop us?
There is debate nationally about whether schools should integrate social media in the classrooms, said Rebecca Randall, vice president of education programs for Common Sense Media, based in San Francisco. She said she is not aware of any school district that has blocked access to social media sites from school computers that are used at home.
She said the debate over filtering policies can be summed up into two approaches: the "walled playground" or the "open sandbox."
Her organization advocates the latter approach, allowing broad access and teaching children how to safely navigate the Internet.
"Simply shielding students from social media is not going to stop them from seeing it," she said, because teenagers will have access to unfiltered Internet on home computers and other devices, such as smartphones and tablets. "We have a saying: 'You can't always cover kids' eyes. You have to teach them how to see it.' "
While federal law requires school districts to take measures like creating an Internet safety policy and blocking sexually explicit content, there is no requirement that social media sites be blocked, said Doug Levin, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, based in Maryland.
Portland school district to beef up online filters
By Cory Doctorow at 4:02 pm Monday, Apr 30
• Comments • Share
A New Aesthetic eruption I caught yesterday off Brick Lane in east London: this LCD adverscreen displaying rotating, chiding public safety messages beneath a CCTV camera, nestled among the graffiti-daubed old buildings above the cobbled and thronged street.
CCTV and LCD adverscreen with anti-booze PSA, a New Aesthetic Eruption, Brick Lane, Hackney, London, UK.jpg
By Cory Doctorow at 7:46 am Friday, Apr 27
• Comments • Share
I've just finished Rebecca MacKinnon's Consent of the Networked, and now I'm kicking myself for letting it languish in my review pile for as long as I did. It is an absolutely indispensable account of the way that technology both serves freedom and removes it. MacKinnon is co-founder of the Global Voices project, and a director of the Global Network Initiative, and is one of the best-informed, clearest commentators on issues of networks and freedom from a truly global perspective.
MacKinnon does a fantastic job of tying her theory and analysis to real-world stories. She illustrates how governments are figuring out how to use networks to take freedom away, to control debate, to find and crush dissent. She shows how Internet corporations -- even the ones with a good track-record on protecting their users -- are prone to cooperating with the worst, most repressive instincts of governments (including supposedly liberal western governments).
But she also describes how technology contributes to freedom, and how savvy use of technology, combined with activism in the realm of Internet governance, lawmaking, and corporate affairs can turn technology into a force for liberation, accountability and freedom. She teases out the good and the bad of technology, working from recent examples like the Arab Spring uprisings, and names names and cites facts and figures when it comes to companies and governments who worked to undo the liberating power of technology.
Most of all, MacKinnon lays out a roadmap for tipping the technological balance towards freedom. She describes how diverse groups, including ones she works with, provide opportunities for all of us to work for positive change, in our capacity as citizens, employees of corporations, members of government, and as clued-in techies.
MacKinnon is a realist, but never a cynic, and provides a much-needed straight-shooting, levelheaded account of how the Internet changes power-relationships. This book should be read by anyone who cares about freedom today and in the decades to come.
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom
Official book site
