A judicial advisory panel Monday quietly approved a rule change that will broaden the FBI’s hacking authority despite fears raised by Google that the amended language represents a “monumental” constitutional concern.
The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted 11-1 to modify an arcane federal rule to allow judges more flexibility in how they approve search warrants for electronic data, according to a Justice Department spokesman.
Month: March 2015
USTR Pushes Congress To Approve Trade Deals… But Threatens Reps With Criminal Prosecution If They Tell The Public What’s In Them
For years now, we’ve been trying to understand why the US Trade Rep (USTR) is so anti-transparency with its trade negotiations. It insists that everything it’s negotiating be kept in near total secrecy until everything is settled, and the public can no longer give input to fix the problems in the agreement. It’s a highly questionable stance. Whenever this criticism is put to the USTR directly, it responds by saying that it will listen to anyone who wants to come and talk to the USTR. But, as we’ve explained multiple times, “listening” is about information going into the USTR. “Transparency” is about information coming out of the USTR. They’re not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
As the fight over new trade agreements gets louder and louder, a key stumbling block is having Congress approve so-called “fast track authority” or “Trade Promotion Authority,” which basically means that Congress can’t even jump in to try to fix the problems in whatever the USTR negotiates — it can only give a straight “yes” or “no” vote on the entire package. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Congressional Republicans are all for this, even though it means directly giving up Congress’s Constitutional authority to a President that the Republicans appear to hate. Meanwhile, Democrats seem reasonably skeptical of these new trade deals.
So the White House and the USTR have been pushing a charm offensive on Congressional Democrats concerning these trade deals, but the charm offensive also comes with this rather startling statement: if you reveal what we’re telling you, you may go to jail:
As the Obama administration gives House Democrats a hard sell on a major controversial trade pact this week, it will be doing so under severe conditions: Any member of Congress who shares information with the public from a Wednesday briefing could be prosecuted for a crime.
Yes, the USTR has declared that the briefing is entirely classified. Why? Mainly to keep the details secret from the American public. As Rep. Alan Grayson notes:
“It is part of a multi-year campaign of deception and destruction. Why do we classify information? It’s to keep sensitive information out of the hands of foreign governments. In this case, foreign governments already have this information. They’re the people the administration is negotiating with. The only purpose of classifying this information is to keep it from the American people.”
The USTR’s lame response to all of this is that any member of Congerss is allowed to come to its office and see the text of the negotiating documents. But that’s misleading in the extreme. As we’ve discussed before, the USTR tells elected officials that they can’t copy anything, take any notes, or even bring staff experts on trade agreements (or related issues)… even when those staffers have security clearance.
We pointed out this was a problem back in 2012 and it appears to be ongoing. The Huffington Post article above quotes Rep. Rosa DeLauro who appears to be having the same problem:
“Even now, when they are finally beginning to share details of the proposed deal with Members of Congress, they are denying us the ability to consult with our staff or discuss details of the agreement with experts. This flies in the face of how past negotiations have been conducted and does not help the Administration’s credibility. If the TPP would be as good for American jobs as they claim, there should be nothing to hide.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett also seems amazed that his staffers with security clearance are blocked from getting information about the TPP agreement:
“I tried to find out what level of classification applies,” he said. “Can my top cleared staff read it? If he can hear about ISIS, is there something in here that prevents him from seeing these trade documents?”
It really does make you wonder, once again, just what is the USTR hiding here? There is simply no reason to keep these details secret — except if you know that the American public won’t approve of them.
The Thin Blue Line of Entitlement
Something unnatural is happening in Portland, and Police Union President Daryl Turner isn’t going to put up with it.
The proper order of things is upended. Black is white and white is black, cats and dogs cohabit. Madness!
A judge has disbelieved a cop.
Last week Circuit Judge Diana Stuart acquitted teenager Thai Gurule on juvenile charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and attempted assault on a cop. She acquitted him even though the cops said he did it.Is Judge Stuart some sort of pro-criminal agitator? Apparently. In an extensive written order she weighed the testimony of sworn police officers against irrelevant trifles like actual videorecordings of their encounter with Gurule. Even though the cops swore that Gurule threw punches at them, Judge Stuart disbelieved them simply because she could not see any punches on the cell phone videos. Is she some sort of video-fisticuffs expert? Worse than that, she specifically stated that she didn’t find some of their testimony credible. As if they weren’t cops.
But Police Union President Daryl Turner understands the natural order of things, even if this upstart judge doesn’t.
First, Turner understands that when a cop uses force, that decision should be beyond judicial review, and their description of the event beyond question
Massive Coalition of Japanese Organizations Campaigns Against TPP Copyright Provisions
“We are deeply concerned about this situation in which important decisions for our nation’s culture and society are being made behind closed doors” reads a joint public statement from Japanese activists who are fighting the copyright provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A group of artists, archivists, academics, and activists, have joined forces in Japan to call on their negotiators to oppose requirements in the TPP that would require their country, and five of the other 11 nations negotiating this secretive agreement, to expand their copyright terms to match the United States’ already excessive length of copyright.
Negotiators have reportedly agreed to set their copyright terms to the length of an author’s life plus 70 years. Since the news was leaked, there has been growing opposition among Japanese users, artists, and fans against this copyright expansion—which is nicknamed the “Mickey Mouse Law” there due to Disney’s heavy lobbying that led to the copyright extension in the United States nearly two decades ago. The issue gained substantial awareness when prominent Japanese copyright lawyer, Kensaku Fukui, wrote a blog post about the TPP’s threats to Japanese Internet users and culture that went viral a month ago.
Australians Get Their Own SOPA; Attorney General Doesn’t Even Bother To See If His Censorship Regime Is Technically Feasible
Back in December, we noted that it appeared that Australia was about to get its own SOPA, and that appears to now be happening. The Australian press is reporting that Attorney General George Brandis is ready to introduce site blocking legislation that mimics SOPA almost directly, in that it would force ISPs to block access to foreign websites, based on claims that those websites facilitated copyright infringement. This was the key part of SOPA, which was rejected, in part, because it would lead to serious concerns about the way in which the underlying internet functioned. Forcing ISPs to block entire sites breaks some fundamental principles of the internet. So, you wouldthink that perhaps the geniuses behind Australia’s plan would at least talk to internet providers first before moving forward with this plan, right? Well, you’d be wrong:
John Stanton, CEO of telco industry body the Communications Alliance, said it was “disappointing” that the industry had not been consulted on the bill prior to its impending introduction.
The bill is coming from Australian Attorney General George Brandis, who has been pushing for exactly this for quite some time, after only listening to the entertainment industry voices, and refusing to discuss the issue with consumer advocates, or those who understand the pointlessness and danger of full site blocking. Brandis also has ignored the careful, and detailed, process that the Australia Law Reform Commission went through investigating copyright reform, in which it proposed a number of ways to modernize Australia’s copyright system. Instead, Brandis is just focused on giving Hollywood what it wants, with apparently no consideration for what that means for the public or the internet.
Of course, we all know what happened when the US Congress tried to rush through SOPA. It will be interesting to see how Australians react to a similar proposal, pushed by a politician who has made it pretty clear that the technical details of the internet laws he pushes are not that important to him, just so long as he can pretend that he’s being “tough” on criminals.
Universal Music Hijacks YouTube Videos of Indie Artist
Day in and day out automated bots detect and report millions of alleged copyright infringements, which are processed by popular web services without a human ever looking at them.
Needless to say, this process is far from flawless, but YouTube’s takedown system is particularly problematic. YouTube allows copyright holders to upload their work into a fingerprint database so matching content can easily be detected.
This results in some rather hilarious mismatches, such as a cat purring video being flagged as pirated music. But there are also mistakes of a different order, where original artists are targeted over their own work.
These include Norwegian musician Bjorn Lynne who has had two of his videos hijacked by Universal Music Group (UMG) which is now running ads alongside his work.
“Can I just state publicly that I hate Universal Music Group. For the second time now, they have hijacked my music and claimed ownership of it in all YouTube videos that include my music, thereby monetizing my music,” Lynne writes.
Apparently UMG has the rights to an audiobook that uses Lynne’s music track “Kingdom of the Persians” as background music. This isn’t a problem, as his music can be freely used as long as the license fees are paid.
However, UMG have entered the audiobook in YouTube’s Content-ID system, and as a result they’ve hijacked the ads on the original video. Making matters even worse, UMG also rejected Lynne’s dispute through YouTube after he explained the situation.
“One thing would have been to have done this unwittingly, by mistake. But I have ‘disputed’ the claim on YouTube, written an explanation and told them about the origins of this music — then waited the FULL 30 DAYS that the claimant has to process the dispute, only to be told that UMG have reviewed the dispute and UPHELD their claim!” Lynne notes.
What’s Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name?
The French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered that five websites be blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. “I do not want to see sites that could lead people to take up arms on the Internet,” proclaimed Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
When the block functions properly, visitors to those banned sites, rather than accessing the content of the sites they chose to visit, will be automatically redirected to the Interior Ministry website. There, they will be greeted by a graphic of a large red hand, and text informing them that they were attempting to access a site that causes or promotes terrorism: “you are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism publicly.”
No judge reviews the Interior Ministry’s decisions. The minister first requests that the website owner voluntarily remove the content he deems transgressive; upon disobedience, the minister unilaterally issues the order to Internet service providers for the sites to be blocked. This censorship power is vested pursuant to a law recently enacted in France empowering the interior minister to block websites.Forcibly taking down websites deemed to be supportive of terrorism, or criminalizing speech deemed to “advocate” terrorism, is a major trend in both Europe and the West generally. Last month in Brussels, the European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator issued a memo proclaiming that “Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat,” and argued that increased state control over the Internet is crucial to combating it.
France To Require Internet Companies To Detect ‘Suspicious’ Behavior Automatically, And To Decrypt Communications On Demand
[the proposed law] wants to force intermediaries to “detect, using automatic processing, suspicious flows of connection data”. Internet service providers as well as platforms like Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter would themselves have to identify suspicious behavior, according to instructions they have received, and pass the results to investigators. The text does not specify, but this could mean frequent connections to monitored pages.
As well as being extremely vague, none of this “automatic detection” will require a warrant, which means that the scope for abuse and errors will be huge. And then there’s this:
the Intelligence bill also addresses the obligations placed on operators and platforms “concerning the decryption of data.” More than ever, France is keen to have the [encryption] keys necessary to read intercepted conversations, even if they are protected.
As we’ve noted before, there is a global push to demonize encryption by presenting it as a “dark place” where bad people can safely hide. What’s particularly worrying is that the measures propposed by France are easy to circumvent using client-side encryption. The fear has to be that once the French government realizes that fact, it will then seek to control or ban this form too.
Hertz Puts Video Cameras Inside Its Rental Cars, Has ‘No Current Plans’ To Use Them
Last week we wrote about the hypothetical situation of CCTV cameras being installed in every home. It turns out that this particular dystopia is closer than we thought: an article by Kashmir Hill on the Fusion site passes on the news that Hertz is putting cameras inside its rental cars as part of its “NeverLost” navigational system:
Hertz has offered the NeverLost navigational device for years, but it only added the built-in camera feature (which includes audio and video) to its latest version of the device — NeverLost 6 — in mid-2014. “Approximately a quarter of our vehicles across the country have a NeverLost unit and slightly more than half of those vehicles have the NeverLost 6 model installed,” Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice said by email. In other words, one in 8 Hertz cars has a camera inside — but Imperatrice says that, for now, they are inactive. “We do not have adequate bandwidth capabilities to the car to support streaming video at this time,” she said.
So why did it install them?
“Hertz added the camera as a feature of the NeverLost 6 in the event it was decided, in the future, to activate live agent connectivity to customers by video. In that plan the customer would have needed to turn on the camera by pushing a button (while stationary),” Imperatrice explained. “The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so.”
But of course, Hertz would hardly go to the trouble and expense of fitting its cars with this feature unless, at some future point, it did plan to use them. Morever, that future use might go well beyond “live agent connectivity”, as Hill rightly points out:
you could imagine camera mission creep, such as Hertz using it to capture video of what a trouble renter is up to in the vehicle, or to see who is really driving the car, or to snoop on a singing — or snuggling — driver.
According to the Fusion article, Hertz doesn’t seem to be telling anyone about the camera, on the grounds that the company doesn’t plan to use it, and so there’s nothing for customers to know. But if and when it does announce its presence, there will be precisely the problem Techdirt mentioned last week: that people in front of it would naturally be worried they were being spied upon — even if assured to the contrary — and would start constraining their speech and behavior.
Internet Brands Targets Techdirt Post For Removal Because Of ‘Infringing’ Comment Left By A Reader
We really do need a way to properly punish abuses of DMCA takedown requests.
The DMCA takedown notice allows rights holders to perform targeted removals of infringing… I can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face. IN THEORY, it can. In reality, it often resembles targeting mosquitoes with a shotgun. Collateral damage is assumed.
Case in point: Internet Brands recently issued two takedown requests to protect some of its cruelty-free, farmed content originating at LawFirms.com. It’s this phrase — taken verbatim from LawFirms’ “Penalties for Tax Evasion” — that has triggered the takedown notices from Internet Brands.
Tax evasion refers to attempts by individuals, corporations or trusts to avoid paying the total amount of taxes owed through illegal means, known as tax evasion fraud.
The first takedown targets several URLs, some of them merely content scrapers. Other URLs listed (like this one) target posts with comments containing parts of IB’s post — even comments providing a link back to the original article being quoted.
The second (at least according to Google’s non-numeric sorting) is a repeat of the first, except for the addition of a Techdirt post. At first glance, the targeting of this article by Tim Geigner — “Dear Famous People: Stop Attempting Online Reputation Scrubbing; I Don’t Want To Write Streisand Stories Anymore” — would appear to be exactly the sort of behavior Dark Helmet was decrying. But it isn’t.
The phrase triggering the Internet Brands takedown can be found in a very late arrival to the comment thread, more than one-and-a-half years after the original post went live. It opens up with this:
This is a very interesting. I read the whole article at New York Magazine. So someone is accused of tax evasion and then charges are dropped and then tries to clean up his reputation…. nothing wrong with that.
Then, for no apparent reason, the commenter drops in the LawFirms.com paragraph highlighted above.
Now, here’s the problem. If blogs and other sites are reposting others’ content without permission, that’s one thing. But targeting whole posts for delisting just because a commenter copy-pasted some content is abusive. It could very possibly take out someone else’s created content — covered under their copyright. Using a DMCA notice in this fashion can allow unscrupulous rights holders to bypass Section 230 protections — effectively holding site owners “responsible” for comments and other third-party posts by removing the site’s original content from Google’s listings.
From the looks of it, Internet Brands did nothing more than perform a google search for this phrase and issue takedown notices for every direct quote that originated from somewhere other than its sites. It didn’t bother vetting the search results for third-party postings, fair use or anything else that might have made its takedown request more targeted. Internet Brands doesn’t issue many takedowns, so it’s not as though its IP enforcement squad had its hands full. In fact, there’s every reason to believe actual humans are involved in this process, rather than just algorithms — all the more reason to handle this more carefully. Here’s a little bit of snark it inserted into a 2014 DMCA takedown notice.
The interview and photos are published on our website and permission hasn’t been granted for anyone else to republish them. Not only is the content stolen it out ranks our website in a Google search for the keyword “th taylor”. So much for Google being able to identify the source of original content!
If a company has the time to leave personal notes for Google (which doesn’t have the time to read them), then it has time to ensure its requests aren’t targeting the creative works of others just to protect its own. The DMCA notice isnot some sort of IP-measuring contest with Google holding the ruler. If Internet Brands thinks it is — or just hasn’t bothered to vet its takedown requests before sending — it’s usually going to be the one coming up short. If Google doesn’t ignore the request, those on the receiving end of a bogus takedown will make a lot of noise. Either way, it”s accomplished nothing.