After years of complaints from mainly Hollywood-affiliated companies and anti-piracy groups, Australia is now having to deal with its online piracy issues.
Faced with deadlock the government ordered ISPs and entertainment companies to find a solution and against a backdrop of failed negotiations, last week telecoms body Communications Alliance published a draft proposal on behalf of its ISP members.
Titled ‘Copyright Notice Scheme Industry Code‘, the document outlined a graduated response “three strikes”-style mechanism to deal with file-sharers. It was put together in concert with rightsholders, so it’s fair to assume Hollywood is somewhat satisfied with the framework.
The same cannot be said about Australia’s leading consumer group, however.
Choice, which has long warned against a file-sharing crackdown, says that current proposals raise the specter of a streamlined conveyor belt of consumers heading towards a notoriously litigious entertainment industry.
“Although an ‘education scheme’ to stop piracy sounds harmless, the proposed Code will actually funnel internet users into court actions where industry can seek unlimited amounts of money for alleged piracy, and provide a way for rights holders to gain access to your internet records and personal details so they can sue you or send you a letter demanding payment,” the group warns this morning.
Highlighting mechanisms already in place in the US, UK and New Zealand, Choice says that the proposals for Australia are the worst of the bunch. ‘Education’, ‘Warning’ and ‘Final’ notices could be followed by rightsholder access to subscriber details alongside threats of legal action and potentially limitless fines.
“The system proposed by the industry purports to be educational, but clearly has a focus on facilitating court actions. There is no limit on the amount of money that a rights holder can seek from the customer,” Choice explains.
Also under fire is consumer access to remedy should they have complaints about notices received in error, for example. While there is a system being proposed, access costs Internet subscribers $25, and even then the adjudication panel is far from impartial.
“If a consumer objects to any notice received, they can lodge a complaint with a largely industry-controlled body. There is no avenue for appeal if the consumer disagrees with the decision made,” Choice complains.
In order to raise awareness of these shortcomings, Choice says it has now implemented its own “three-strikes” program. And the first notice is about to go out.
“CHOICE is concerned that this scheme will funnel consumers into legal action, bypassing ordinary checks and balances. We’re sending an Education Notice to the Minister for Communications to let him know about the dangers of these ‘education’ measures for consumers,” the group says.
The notice to Malcolm Turnbull reads as follows:
EDUCATION NOTICE
You are receiving this Education Notice due to a complaint from the Australian public that it has detected the development of a damaging, industry-run internet policing scheme in your portfolio.This scheme will allow big Hollywood corporations to obtain consumers’ contact details and internet records from Internet Service Providers, based on unproven accusations.
There is no limit to the amount of money that could be sought in court. In the US, a student was recently ordered to pay $675,000 for downloading and sharing 30 songs.
You may not be aware of this anti-consumer scheme. Perhaps somebody else in your household accessed your internet account and provided instructions to your Department without your knowledge.
If you believe this is the case, please forward this notice to the person who may be responsible. If the Government is serious about addressing piracy, it needs to address the real causes of the problem: the fact that Australians pay far too much for content that is often delayed or completely unavailable..
We know that you are a well-educated consumer, so we ask you to step in before it is too late.
This Education Notice is your first warning. If Australian consumers detect further infractions, we reserve the right to take further action.
The warning letter is being “authorized” by the Australian public who are being asked to sign a petition in support of Choice’s position.
After just a few hours online the petition is already close to reaching its initial target but whether it will make any difference remains to be seen. It’s taken so long for the ISPs and Hollywood to agree on any action against piracy, it will take something huge to derail it now.
Tag: UK
Head Of UK Parliamentary Committee Overseeing Intelligence Agencies Resigns After Being Caught In Sting
The UK government’s response to Snowden’s leaks has been twofold: that everything is legal, and that everything is subject to rigorous scrutiny. We now know that the first of these is not true, and the second is hardly credible either, given that the UK’s main intelligence watchdog has only one full-time member. There’s one other main oversight body, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), which is tasked with examining:
the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service, Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
The ISC was criticized as part of a larger condemnation of intelligence oversight by another UK Parliament committee. The head of the ISC, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was reported by the Guardian as dismissing those criticisms as “old hat,” as if that somehow made them acceptable. Rifkind has now been caught up in a rather more serious row, which involves reporters from the UK’s Channel 4 and The Telegraph newspaper posing as representatives of a Chinese company:
PMR, a communications agency based in Hong Kong was set up, backed by a fictitious Chinese businessman. PMR has plenty of money to spend and wants to hire influential British politicians to join its advisory board and get a foothold in the UK and Europe.
Here’s what Channel 4 and the Telegraph allege happened in their meeting with Rifkind:
Sir Malcolm also claimed he could write to a minister on behalf of our company without saying exactly who he was representing
Sir Malcolm added that he could see any foreign ambassador in London if he wanted, so could provide ‘access’ that is ‘useful’
Rifkind said that he was “self-employed” — in fact, he is a Member of Parliament, and receives a salary of £67,000 per year — and that his normal fee was “somewhere in the region of £5,000 to £8,000” for half a day’s work. There’s no suggestion that Rifkind made any reference during the sting to his role as head of the ISC, but that’s not really the point. He was offering a Chinese company access to influential people purely because he would get paid to do so, and that is surely not the kind of person you would want to grant the high-level security clearance Rifkind enjoys.
European Lawmakers Demand Answers on Phone Key Theft
European officials are demanding answers and investigations into a joint U.S. and U.K. hack of the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile SIM cards, following a report published by The Intercept Thursday.
The report, based on leaked documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed the U.S. spy agency and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, hacked the Franco-Dutch digital security giant Gemalto in a sophisticated heist of encrypted cell-phone keys.
The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union’s data protection law, Jan Philipp Albrecht, said the hack was “obviously based on some illegal activities.”
“Member states like the U.K. are frankly not respecting the [law of the] Netherlands and partner states,” Albrecht told the Wall Street Journal.
Sophie in ’t Veld, an EU parliamentarian with D66, the Netherlands’ largest opposition party, added, “Year after year we have heard about cowboy practices of secret services, but governments did nothing and kept quiet […] In fact, those very same governments push for ever-more surveillance capabilities, while it remains unclear how effective these practices are.”
“If the average IT whizzkid breaks into a company system, he’ll end up behind bars,” In ’t Veld added in a tweet Friday.
The EU itself is barred from undertaking such investigations, leaving individual countries responsible for looking into cases that impact their national security matters. “We even get letters from the U.K. government saying we shouldn’t deal with these issues because it’s their own issue of national security,” Albrecht said.
Still, lawmakers in the Netherlands are seeking investigations. Gerard Schouw, a Dutch member of parliament, also with the D66 party, has called on Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister of the interior, to answer questions before parliament. On Tuesday, the Dutch parliament will debate Schouw’s request.
Additionally, European legal experts tell The Intercept, public prosecutors in EU member states that are both party to the Cybercrime Convention, which prohibits computer hacking, and home to Gemalto subsidiaries could pursue investigations into the breach of the company’s systems.
According to secret documents from 2010 and 2011, a joint NSA-GCHQ unit penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks and infiltrated the private communications of its employees in order to steal encryption keys, embedded on tiny SIM cards, which are used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the world. Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year.
The company’s clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers. “[We] believe we have their entire network,” GCHQ boasted in a leaked slide, referring to the Gemalto heist.
THE GREAT SIM HEIST HOW SPIES STOLE THE KEYS TO THE ENCRYPTION CASTLE
AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.
In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
After Brit spies ‘snoop’ on families’ lawyers, UK govt admits: We flouted human rights laws
The British government has admitted that its practice of spying on confidential communications between lawyers and their clients was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Details of the controversial snooping emerged in November: lawyers suing Blighty over its rendition of two Libyan families to be tortured by the late and unlamented Gaddafi regime claimed Her Majesty’s own lawyers seemed to have access to the defense team’s emails.
The families’ briefs asked for a probe by the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a move that led to Wednesday’s admission.
“The concession the government has made today relates to the agencies’ policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the ECHR,” a government spokesman said in a statement to the media, via the Press Association.
“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies applied since 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically Article 8. This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.”
The guidelines revealed by the investigation showed that MI5 – which handles the UK’s domestic security – had free reign to spy on highly private and sensitive lawyer-client conversations between April 2011 and January 2014.
UK Police Raid Movie & TV Show Site, Three Arrested
Following an investigation by the Hollywood-affiliated anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), this morning detectives raided individuals said to be involved in the operations of a movie and TV show download site.
The men, aged 24, 25 and 26, all from the Southwark area of London, were arrested at 06:45 on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringement offenses. Equipment and financial documents were also seized.
Speaking with TorrentFreak a few moments ago, FACT said that they weren’t able to name the site “for operational reasons.” Nevertheless, police say it was popular among users.
“The site was extremely popular. It was viewed about 70,000 times a day and, internationally, it ranked thousands of places higher than a well-known and legitimate film download site,” said investigating officer Detective Sergeant Neil Reynolds.
GCHQ Will Have To Start Letting Everyone Know Whether Or Not They’ve Been Illegally Spied On
Last December, the IPT (Investigatory Powers Tribunal) ruled that GCHQ’s surveillance programs didn’t violate human rights, despite being broad and untargeted dragnets. This ruling — in response to several legal challenges brought in the wake of the Snowden leaks — was unsurprising. The IPT has overwhelmingly supported GCHQ’s spying efforts in the past, having only sided against it in one-half of one percent of the challenges brought against it.
The IPT’s ongoing support of the UK’s intelligence community is unsurprising. To declare any of its programs as illegal or in violation of citizens’ rights would be to implicate itself for its near-constant approval of surveillance programs. That makes its February decision a bit of an aberration. In response to Privacy International’s legal challenge, it changed course slightly, declaring certain elements of the GCHQ’s spying efforts “illegal” — specifically, information sharing with the NSA. But this was only a partial capitulation. The IPT went on to say that this was once illegal but now was not, thanks to its December 2014 ruling. In some bizarre way, the legal complaints brought against the GCHQ managed to legalize its once-illegal partnership with the NSA.
However, its February decision makes it clear that operations prior to December 2014 were illegal, and provides an opening for UK citizens to force a bit more transparency on their intelligence community.
Because the IPT found the intelligence sharing to be illegal, anyone, inside or outside the UK, can file a complaint to the IPT and ask if their communications were part of that illegal sharing, and be legally entitled to an answer. [Privacy International’s Eric] King explained, “If they don’t find anything, it’s likely they respond ‘no determination’. If they do find something, the IPT is obliged to give a declaration to the individual that their communications were illegally interfered with.”
This is far more transparency than has been granted by the NSA, which still responds to similar inquiries about files on citizens (from those citizens themselves) with its omnipresent Glomar declaration, neither confirming nor denying the collected results of its domestic surveillance programs.
Researchers Find ‘Astonishing’ Malware Linked to NSA Spying
Security researchers have uncovered highly sophisticated malware that is linked to a secret National Security Agency hacking operation exposed by The Intercept last year.
Russian security firm Kaspersky published a report Monday documenting the malware, which it said had been used to infect thousands of computer systems and steal data in 30 countries around the world. Among the targets were a series of unnamed governments, telecom, energy, and aerospace companies, as well as Islamic scholars, and media organizations.
Kaspersky did not name the NSA as the author of the malware. However, Reuters reported later on Monday that the agency had created the technology, citing anonymous former U.S. intelligence officials.
Kaspersky’s researchers noted that the newly found malware is similar to Stuxnet, a covert tool reportedly created by the U.S. government to sabotage Iranian nuclear systems. The researchers also identified a series of codenames that they found contained within the samples of malware, including STRAIGHTACID, STRAITSHOOTER, and GROK.
Notably, GROK, which Kaspersky said is a piece of malware used to secretly log keystrokes, is tied to secret NSA hacking tactics described in documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Last year, The Intercept revealed that the NSA was using a tool called GROK to log keystrokes as part of a toolkit it uses to hack computers and collect data.
The other codenames identified by Kaspersky on Tuesday—such as STRAIGHTACID, STRAITSHOOTER—are strikingly similar to known NSA hacking operations. Leaked NSA documents have revealed that the agency uses hacking tools known as STRAIGHTBIZARRE and FOXACID to break into computers and grab data.
According to Kaspersky, the malware found in the latest discovery is the most advanced ever found and represents an “astonishing technical accomplishment.” It hides deep within an infected computer and can stay on the machine even after attempts to wipe or reformat the hard drive. The security firm has dubbed different variants of the malware EquationLaser, EquationDrug and GrayFish, and they are calling its creators the “Equation Group,” because of the way the spy technology attempts to hide itself in an infected computer using complex encryption.
Terrorized Into Irrationality: UK Police Demand Names of Charlie Hebdo *Supporters*
A British police force has apologised after an officer told a newsagent to hand over details of customers who purchased copies of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
Wiltshire police confirmed that one of their officers visited a newsagent in Corsham, Wiltshire, to ask for the names of four customers who ordered the commemorative “survivors’ issue” of the magazine.
British Army To Create 1500-Strong Social Media Propaganda Force
The British army is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age.
The unit, which is quite substantial — 1500-strong — will formally come into being in April. The Guardian story provides some interesting background to the announcement:
The move is partly a result of experience in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. It can also be seen as a response to events of the last year that include Russia’s actions in Ukraine, in particular Crimea, and Islamic State’s (Isis) takeover of large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Nato has so far been unable to find a counter to what the US and UK claim is Russia creating unrest by sending in regular troops disguised as local militia, allowing president Vladimir Putin to deny responsibility. Isis has proved adept at exploiting social media to attract fighters from around the world.