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Old 02-09-15, 06:51 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 5th, '15

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"We will not comply with this request and access to The Pirate Bay will not be blocked." – Helmut Spudich, T-Mobile






































September 5th, 2015




Tor Exit Relays in Libraries: a New LFP Project
Alison Macrina and Nima Fatemi

Greetings! It’s been an exceptionally busy few months over here at the Library Freedom Project. We’ve been conducting privacy trainings at libraries across the United States and some internationally, and in June we held our first Digital Rights in Libraries conference. We’re also starting an HTTPS campaign for libraries with friend o’ the Library Freedom Project Eric Hellman and the good folks working on Let’s Encrypt (more on that to come in about a week or so). LFP: can’t stop, won’t stop.

Today, we’re announcing the start of a new initiative, a collaboration between the Library Freedom Project and our friends at the Tor Project: Tor exit relays in libraries. Nima Fatemi, the Tor Project member who’s already helped Library Freedom Project in a number of ways, is our main partner on this project. This is an idea whose time has come; libraries are our most democratic public spaces, protecting our intellectual freedom, privacy, and unfettered access to information, and Tor Project creates software that allows all people to have these rights on the internet. What’s more, Tor Project is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), which is the best defense against government and corporate surveillance. We’re excited to combine our efforts to help libraries protect internet freedom, strengthen the Tor network, and educate the public about how Tor can help protect their right to digital free expression.

Libraries have been committed to intellectual freedom and privacy for decades, outlining these commitments in the ALA Core Values of Librarianship, the Freedom to Read Statement, and the ALA Code of Ethics. They’re also centers of education in their local communities, offering free classes on a variety of subjects, including computer instruction. Libraries serve a diverse audience; many of our community members are people who need Tor but don’t know that it exists. Some of these patrons are part of vulnerable groups, like domestic violence survivors, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ communities. Others belong to local law enforcement or municipal government. All of them could benefit from learning about Tor in a trusted, welcoming environment like the library.

Bringing Tor exit relays into our libraries would not only be a powerful symbolic gesture demonstrating our commitment to a free internet, but also a practical way to help the Tor network, and an excellent opportunity to help educate our patrons, staff, boards of trustees, and other stakeholders about the importance of Tor. Relays make up the backbone of the Tor network, which is what powers the Tor Browser. Tor Browser is the only web browser that gives the user anonymity and prevents tracking and censorship. It’s a powerful tool for free expression, one that libraries should be installing on their public PCs and teaching to patrons. I’ve written about the importance of using and teaching Tor Browser in libraries here.

When a user opens the Tor Browser and navigates to a website, her traffic is bounced over three relays, scrambling her traffic with three layers of encryption, making her original IP address undetectable. The exit relay is the last relay in this circuit, the one that talks to the public internet. Fast, stable exit relays are vital to the strength of the Tor network. Non-exit relays – guards, middle relays, and bridges – are also important to the Tor network, but exit nodes are the most needed, and libraries can afford some of the legal exposure that comes with an exit. It’s not dangerous to run an exit, but because the exit node is the only identifiable one on the circuit, exit operators might face the occasional DMCA notice or law enforcement officer inquiring about traffic on the node. Since libraries already provide public internet services, we are protected by from DMCA takedowns by safe harbor provisions and are shielded from the threats that an individual exit relay operator might face in trying to explain to law enforcement that the traffic leaving her exit is not her own. For more on how the Tor network and Tor Browser work, check out this awesome animation from Tor Project.

To begin this new project, we needed a pilot, and we had just the library in mind – Kilton Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, one of two Lebanon Libraries. Chuck McAndrew is the IT librarian there, and he’s done amazing things to the computers on his network, like running them all on GNU/Linux distributions. Why is this significant? Most library environments run Microsoft Windows, and we know that Microsoft participated in the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program. By choosing GNU/Linux operating systems and installing some privacy-protecting browser extensions too, Chuck’s helping his staff and patrons opt-out of pervasive government and corporate surveillance. Pretty awesome.

Kilton Library is not only exemplary because of its GNU/Linux computer environment; it’s also beautiful and brand-new, LEED Gold-certified, with an inviting and sunny open floor plan and an outdoor community garden. It’s an example of the amazing potential inherent in libraries. We drove up to New Hampshire last week to start phase one.

At Kilton Library, we began with a library PC running Linux Debian Jessie. Tor relays can be set up on any operating system, but FOSS systems like Debian are ideal. The Tor Project publishes instructions for anyone who wants to set up a relay on Debian, but having Nima present to explain the configuration steps and take extra measures to secure the relay was invaluable.

We decided to set our pilot up as a middle relay to start – we want to ensure that it is stable and doesn’t interfere in any way with the library’s other network traffic. We nicknamed the new relay LebLibraries, and gave it 10 Mbytes/s of the library’s bandwidth. You can check out how our relay is doing by visiting Globe, which gives information about how relays are performing. Globe includes graphs of a relay’s bandwidth, uptime, and the weight of the relay in the network. For more on the lifecycle of a new relay, read this post on the Tor blog.

Yes, you can borrow a telescope from this library and take it home. How cool is that?!?

After the LebLibraries relay is up for a few months, we’ll return for phase two of the project and convert it into an exit node. Our goal is to make exit relay configuration a part of the Library Freedom Project’s privacy trainings for librarians; we’ll meet with library directors and boards of trustees to talk about how Tor fits into the mission of libraries as beacons of intellectual freedom, and how we’re perfectly positioned not only to help our patrons use Tor Browser, but are the ideal location to run Tor exit relays to help give back to the Tor community.

We’d love for you to join us in this new project. Want your library to be our next exit relay site? Please send your answers to this questionnaire to us via contact page or send it directly to exits at libraryfreedomproject dot org. We’re also looking for libraries to host FOSS seedboxes, that is, torrent machines that will seed free software to help make it more available to the public. And as always, we want libraries to install and run the Tor Browser on library computers. Want to support this project and more like it? You can make a donation to the Library Freedom Project. You can also donate directly to the Tor Project. And stay tuned for phase two of our pilot with Kilton Library.
https://libraryfreedomproject.org/torexitpilotphase1/





Popcorn Time Lawsuits Continue as 16 are Sued for Watching Survivor

App that makes piracy easy has become a target for one Oregon lawyer.
Joe Mullin

The "Popcorn Time" app was launched in 2014 as a kind of "BitTorrent for dummies" with a simple Netflix-style interface for viewing movies. But now with a second lawsuit filed against users of the app, it looks like 16 as-yet-anonymous watchers may soon need a primer on "mass copyright suits for dummies."

The lawsuit, entitled Survivor Productions Inc. v. Anonymous Users of Popcorn Time (Does 1-16), targets 16 Comcast subscribers who allegedly used the app to watch Survivor—not the reality series, but a thriller starring Pierce Brosnan released earlier this year.

Lawsuits over BitTorrent piracy of non-pornographic content are rare to begin with. Survivor Productions now joins Voltage Pictures in being one of just a few movie studios willing to pursue individual downloaders over copyright claims.

"The fight against counterfeiting and piracy are critical issues of importance to the both the United States of America and the State of Oregon," states the complaint. "Popcorn Time exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to steal copyrighted content."

The complaint includes warnings from the Popcorn Time software as exhibits, and it notes that the movie Survivor was promoted to users of the app.

The Survivor Productions lawsuit is nearly identical to another lawsuit against Popcorn Time users filed four days earlier over the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler. Both were filed by the same attorney, Oregon-based practitioner Carl Crowell.

In an earlier e-mail interview with Ars, Crowell said his client does not seek more than the statutory minimum for damages, which is $750. "The goal is to deter infringement," he said.

In addition to the Popcorn Time lawsuit, Survivor Productions filed 12 lawsuits against individual users who allegedly used standard BitTorrent technology to get their copies. The suits were filed between July 13 and August 21.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...hing-survivor/





Canadian Music Industry Hit With Competition Complaint Over Public Domain Recordings
Michael Geist

Earlier this year, I wrote about the secret campaign by major record labels and publishers to stop the release of public domain recordings, most notably Beatles records that outsold the offerings from major label records at retail giant Wal-Mart. The campaign included extensive lobbying for an extension in the term of copyright for sound recordings. The government included the extension in the April 2015 budget, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper writing personally to the Graham Henderson of Music Canada to inform him of the change. The reforms were a gift to the recording industry, with the result that Canadian consumers now face higher prices and less choice.

Stargrove Entertainment, the company behind the public domain Beatles releases, has found that the industry is still blocking attempts to bring works in the public domain to market. As a result, this week it filed a complaint with the Canadian Competition Tribunal, claiming that major record labels such as Universal Music and Sony Music, music publishers, and CMRRA are violating Canadian competition law by refusing to deal, engaging in illegal price maintenance, and exclusive dealing. The company is seeking an order requiring the companies to provide a mechanical licence so that it can continue to produce and sell public domain records. The complaint (CT-2015-009) should be posted on the Tribunal site shortly.

The complaint tells a fascinating behind-the-scenes tale, with the recording industry doing everything in its powers – including posting false reviews and pressuring distributors – to stop the sale of competing records. The complaint notably identifies Universal Music Canada as a key player in the alleged activities, including former President Randy Lennox, who last week jumped to Bell Media.

The Stargrove complaint alleges three violations of Canadian competition law by the record labels, music publishers, and CMRRA. First, it argues a violation of refusal to deal (Section 75(1) of the Competition Act) because rights holders are denying Stargrove mechnical licences on the usual trade terms. The company notes that these licences are “normally granted as a matter of course”. The effect has been to deny the public access to competitively priced, popular recordings. Second, it argues violation of the illegal price maintenance provisions (Section 76 of the Competition Act) since the denial of licences is designed to keep Stargrove out of the market and maintain market share and higher pricing. Third, it argues a violation of exclusive dealing (Section 77 of the Competition Act), pointing to Universal’s pressure on distributors and posting of false reviews to keep Stargrove out of the market. Given these violations, Stargrove has asked the Competition Tribunal to order a stop to the violations and to enter into an agreement on standard trade terms.

While the legal issues will be played out at the Competition Tribunal, the evidence included in the application paints a picture of an industry desperate to keep low-priced, consumer friendly alternatives out of the market. Indeed, this had little to do with compensating artists (Stargrove was trying to pay the songwriters) but rather was about maintaining market and price discipline by any means possible.

The application includes evidence of the enormous popularity of the public domain Beatles records. For example, in their first week in Wal-Mart, one of the Beatles CDs was the top seller for all of Wal-Mart Canada. In the months that followed, Wal-Mart and the distributor were anxious for more releases, noting the popularity among Canadian consumers. Stargrove says it planned 45 more releases for 2016, but the industry and the Canadian government has presumably put a stop (for now) to those plans.

In response to the release, the record labels and music publishers tried to shut down the distribution chain. Several rights holders refused to grant mechanical licences, resulting in the removal of a new public domain CD from the Rolling Stones. Later CMRRA, which grants blanket licences, sought to withdraw their licence. Moreover, Universal Music Group, headed at the time by Lennox, allegedly began fabricating negative reviews of the public domain CDs on the Wal-Mart site. Terry Pursini, the President of Stargrove, says in his affidavit that a Universal Music account manager admitted creating the reviews and urged other employees to do the same. Meanwhile, Lennox allegedly wrote to the CD distributor to ask how it could partner “to resolve the public domain issue.”

In addition to the business pressures and false reviews, Universal Music began lobbying the Canadian government to change the law. The affidavit notes that the distributor advised Stargrove of the lobbying effort as early as December 2014. Despite months of advance notice, the government never publicly raised the issue or consulted with the public. In fact, in documents I obtained under Access to Information, Canadian Heritage officials admitted in February 2015 that there during the many years of copyright reform, there was no evidence of requests for sound recording copyright term extension from Music Canada or the major record labels (including Universal Music).

With the government’s sound recording term extension – completed without any public consultation and without the opportunity for anyone other than the recording industry to appear before committee – Canadian consumers will now pay higher prices for some music with less choice. The latest legal move by Stargrove offers some hope that at least existing public domain records might eventually make their way into the Canadian marketplace.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/09/c...in-recordings/





Steinway’s New Piano Can Play a Perfect Concerto by Itself
Liz Stinson

The black and white keys move so fast it’s hard to tell if Jenny Lin is even touching them. Lin, a classical pianist known for virtuosic speed, is sitting at a grand piano in Steinway’s New York offices, as the rest of the room listens intently, focused on the keyboard.

No, she’s definitely not touching the keys. Not this time. Minutes earlier, Lin played a hyper-speed arrangement of George Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm.” The same song is playing now, except this time Lin hands are on her lap. It’s uncanny, really: The exact same keys are pressed, the exact same trills are heard, the same dynamics are present. It’s a little magical—or “almost scary” as Lin puts it—as though you’re witnessing a prodigious ghost mimic her every move.

It’s not a ghost, of course. It’s technology. Which, considering Steinway’s old-school legacy, is nearly as unlikely an explanation as a poltergeist. Lin is demonstrating the Spirio, Steinway’s newest and first self-playing piano.

When you buy a Spirio—not you, necessarily; they run upwards of $110,000—it comes with an iPad loaded with a Spotify-like app. This app communicates with the piano via Bluetooth, prompting the piano to play any one of the 1,700 songs recorded specifically for the instrument. New songs will sync every week. By itself, an iPad-controlled piano is nifty, if not exactly a technological marvel. What makes Spirio different is that it can play songs with an unprecedented level of accuracy and nuance.

Better Data, Better Music

To understand Spirio’s magic, a brief primer on pianos is in order. Each of the piano’s 88 keys acts as a lever. When you push a key, the hidden part of this lever forces a hammer to hit the piano strings, causing a vibration that creates the sounds you hear. When you release the key, a felt-covered hammer called a damper lands on top of the string, stopping the vibration.

Whereas most player pianos reproduce human performances solely by recording the key strike, Steinway amassed Spirio’s catalog with a far more sophisticated system. Hardware and software embedded into the piano measured the velocity of the hammer hitting the string in 1,020 increments, taking stock of the the hammer’s location and speed 800 times a second. The pedal motion was similarly documented at 200 times per second. This data created a vastly more nuanced picture of what the pianist was doing at any given time, meaning the piano’s built-in songs capture dynamics, repeating notes and the subtleties of the transition, say, from staccato to legato.

A software-controlled solenoid (electro-magnetic) system that’s installed underneath the piano activates the notes. Think of it this way: If you give a robot a paintbrush and tell it to paint Picasso, it might get the lines exactly right. What’s missing is pressure of the brushstroke, the depth of color, the expression that makes it art. That’s what Steinway is trying to achieve with the Spirio.

Who’s Buying?

Generally speaking, there are two types of people who buy pianos: Those who plan to play them and those who plan to use them as extraordinarily expensive pieces of furniture. This breakdown ignores the many potential buyers who can’t play the piano but might throw down big bucks if there was some additional justification for the purchase.

If you’re a company like Steinway, that’s a problem. For more than a century, its been the piano of choice for top-tier artists. In order to grow, it wants to position itself as the piano for top-tier listeners, too. Player pianos have always been a little cheesy. They’re the stuff of old timey saloons and Christmastime mall shopping. They are not well regarded in the world of classical music—at least not yet. You can think of Spirio as the world’s best hi-fi for classical music lovers. Except it’s not playing a reproduction of the music—it’s playing the music itself.

Steinway has been developing the technology for Spirio since it bought a company called Live Performance over a year ago. Founded by engineer Wayne Stahnke, Live Performance is considered to be one of the forefathers of autonomously-playing piano systems. “What he was working on was a much higher resolution system,” says Steinway CEO Mike Sweeney. Steinway didn’t want to create a high-fidelity speaker; it’s aiming to create an at-home, autonomously-playing concert piano. “The finest audio equipment only hopes to replicate what the acoustic instrument actually sounded like,” Sweeney says.

The first version of the Spirio will introduce the idea of a high-fidelity player piano to consumers. But it’s interesting to think about where the technology could go next. Tapping your iPad to pull up a Chopin Nocturne is great, but imagine if you could listen to Lin or any number of artists playing a piece in real time. Maybe you can’t make it to the Village Vanguard, but perhaps you could settle in for the same concert in your living room. Artists, too could play duets with themselves. Grandkids’ recitals could be transmitted to other pianos across the country, or preserved for later enjoyment. In every case, it could drag the self-playing piano well out of the dusty old saloon.
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/steinwa...fect-concerto/





The Pirate Bay News: Torrent File Sharing Site Far from Being Stopped for Good
Ikeen Torres

The Pirate Bay has been facing immense pressure in Austria since last month as local music rights group LSG called for the blocking of the site among Austrian network operators. After the commercial court of Vienna decreed that Austrian A1 Telekom block subscriber access to the site, other providers in the country were expected to follow suit. But one of the local networks, T-Mobile, simply refused to comply with the request.

"We will not comply with this request and access to The Pirate Bay will not be blocked," said Helmut Spudich, T-Mobile Austria's spokesperson, as reported by Futurezone.

Because the court order is only for A1 Telekom, LSG cannot force T-Mobile to do the same. This stalemate is reflective of the efforts in enforcing intellectual rights in Europe and in other countries as well.

The Pirate Bay is a notorious torrent download site with its operations considered illegal in almost every country in the world. But it has evaded legal action by moving its location on the Web as frequently as they need to. So far, they have been very successful at this.

Torrent file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay are thriving, contrary to popular belief. Digital Music News presented data that shows file sharing in North America is on the rise. In 2008, 555 Petabytes (1 Petabyte = 1 million Gigabytes) worth of files were shared. In 2015 however, it is estimated that file sharing will reach a total of 858 petabytes, an increase of more than 40 percent. This tells a very clear story of where the world is when it comes to going after copyright infringement violations.

It could be remembered that The Pirate Bay was raided in Sweden in 2014 resulting to a long 7-week hiatus for the torrent site. However, the demand for illegal file downloads prompted The Pirate Bay to go on with its operations.
http://www.christiantoday.com/articl...good/63558.htm





T-Mobile Starts Going After LTE Tethered Data ‘Thieves’, Says Some Use Up to 2TB Per Month
Ken Yeung

T-Mobile chief executive John Legere is upset about customers stealing data from the carrier. In an open letter on T-Mobile’s site, he writes that starting on August 31, his company will be targeting the 3,000 users who knowingly are stealing more than their share of LTE tethered data.

Customer experience is my top priority & that means eliminating anyone who abuses our network. #byebye http://t.co/VdfpTBIQ3J

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015

This is the first official word from the carrier that seems to confirm a memo that was leaked earlier this month. At that time, it was said action would be taken starting August 17 and would go after those who used their unlimited LTE data for Torrents and peer-to-peer networking.

Legere states that at the heart of the issue are customers that have unlimited 4G LTE plans for their smartphones who have come up with workarounds to steal more than their allotment. He claims that these “thieves” are “downloading apps that hide their tether usage, rooting their phones, writing code to mask their activity, etc.”

Network abusers using 2TB (that’s 2k GB!) in a month and jeopardizing experience of honest customers. #nomore http://t.co/VdfpTBIQ3J

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015

Only a small percentage of T-Mobile’s 59 million customers with high-speed tethering are suspect, but it’s having an impact on the network. Legere writes that some of the culprits are using as much as 2 terabytes of data in a single month. He doesn’t know what they’re using it for, but says he doesn’t care. Initially customers will be warned, but then will cease to have access to their unlimited 4G LTE smartphone data plan. They’ll still have service with T-Mobile, but be resigned to using its entry-level limited 4G LTE data plan, which should ease any network issues.

On the carrier’s support page, it indicates that T-Mobile has developed technology to help detect users that are violating its terms and conditions.

“I’m not in this business to play data cop, but we started this wireless revolution to change the industry for good and to fight for consumers,” writes Legere. “I won’t let a few thieves ruin things for anyone else. We’re going to lead from the front on this, just like we always do. Count on it!”

This action will only affect post-paid T-Mobile customers, not those on Pay in Advance (prepaid) or MetroPCS.

.@tmobile has the fastest 4G LTE network in America. I won’t let anyone change that! #badguys #notonmywatch http://t.co/VdfpTBIQ3J

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015

https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/30/t...2tb-per-month/





Comcast Now Charging $30 To Avoid Company's Usage Caps
Karl Bode

Comcast has modified its usage cap "trials" and will begin charging users a $30 premium if they want to avoid being capped. In current trial markets, users face a 300 GB monthly cap, after which users have to pay $10 for each additional 50 GB of usage. According to Comcast usage trial FAQ changes noticed by DSLReports, users in the Florida trial markets now have the choice of paying a $30 premium on top of their current monthly rate to avoid usage caps.

"The Unlimited Data Option provides additional choice and flexibility for our customers who may make heavier use of the Internet," notes the updated Comcast FAQ.

"The Unlimited Data Option costs the current additional fee of $30 per calendar month, regardless of actual data usage," states Comcast. "Note that customers enrolled in the Unlimited Data Option who use less than 300 GB in a given month will still be charged $30 for that month," the FAQ informs.

Comcast's intent on this front has been clear for some time. Comcast lobbyist and VP David Cohen last year strongly suggested that usage caps would be arriving for all Comcast customers sooner or later. The idea of charging users a premium to avoid arbitrary usage restrictions has been a pipe dream of incumbent ISP executives for a decade.

The problem? They're hugely unpopular with US consumers, who already pay some of the highest rates for broadband in all developed nations. So some companies interested in this route have moved slowly in the hopes that consumer outrage can be minimized (think of the boiling frog anecdote).

Comcast's usage-cap trials have slowly but surely expanded since first being announced back in 2012. Currently, the trials are underway in Huntsville; Mobile; Tucson; Atlanta; Augusta; Savannah; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson; Tupelo; Knoxville; Memphis; Nashville; Tennessee; and Charleston. Fort Lauderdale, the Florida Keys, and Miami only just today became the latest trial expansion.

While the cable industry has tried to insist usage caps are necessary to handle congestion, it has since backed away from that justification and now insists that caps are necessary due to fairness. Critics and consumer advocates instead argue that bandwidth costs are dropping, congestion and fairness are red herrings when talking about well-managed modern fixed-line networks, and usage caps are about one thing: protecting legacy TV revenues from Internet video.

What do you think, readers? Is paying a $30 premium on top of Comcast's existing rates worth it? Should data usage policies exist, and if so, what should they be?
https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/...ge-Caps-134972





Enough: It’s Time for Major Tech Companies to Take a Stand Against ISP Data Caps
Brad Reed

Why Is Comcast So Bad

Let’s be honest: The only reason we tolerate mobile data caps at all is because we at least have wireline networks at home that we can fall back on. Comcast and other ISPs seem determined to end unlimited data for home networks as well, however.

Last month, Comcast unveiled yet another iteration of its wireline usage caps that encompass many major markets in the southern United States as well as the entire state of Maine. Comcast apparently discovered from its earlier trials that a low-level data cap of just 250GB per month was too small for most users’ tastes, which is why it’s “generously” offered them an upgrade to a 300GB monthly allotment.

While Comcast may claim that 300GB of data is enough to meet most of its customers’ data needs right now, the amount of data that popular applications consume is increasing by a significant amount and it won’t be long before these usage caps are woefully insufficient.

Consider, for example, Microsoft’s ambitious plans to roll out Windows 10 updates every week. Or think about the increasing amount of Netflix streaming that will be in 4K, not to mention how many more online video streaming options Americans have now compared to last year thanks to Sling TV, HBO Now and Showtime’s standalone streaming option.

If you’re still not convinced, think about how more people now are choosing to download console games straight from the web instead of buying them on disc. The newest version of Madden, for example is just under 20GB and that’s before any patches roll in. Grand Theft Auto V, meanwhile, weighs in at just under 49GB, which means that downloading just one game can blow through 16% of your monthly cap.

And let’s be clear about this: These data caps are not necessary tools for network management. Even Comcast executives have admitted that the choice to impose a 300GB data cap is a “business decision” and not an engineering one. ISPs only want data caps to extract more money from customers or from tech companies that are willing to pay them off as part of “sponsored data” schemes.

And this is why tech companies need to come out and take a stand against these caps. Companies like Microsoft, Netflix and EA can’t be happy that some of their users might hesitate to use their services because they fear doing so would get them hit with overage charges. If they want to see their ambitious plans for digital content distribution succeed, then they’ll have to start actively calling out unnecessary data caps that hurt both their own businesses and the customers they serve.
https://bgr.com/2015/09/01/why-is-comcast-so-bad-53/





Union Says Verizon Spends $3.50 Per Year Maintaining Each Landline

Verizon lets copper landlines degrade in fiberless areas, union claims.
Jon Brodkin

A union representing Verizon workers has called for investigations into whether the company is allowing its copper phone and DSL networks to deteriorate.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) said it is sending letters to regulators in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, DC. The union, which is trying to pressure Verizon while it negotiates a new contract, pointed to a Verizon statement that the telco has spent $200 million on its copper network since 2008.

"$200 million represents 0.39 percent of the $50.7 billion Verizon spent on its wireline network from 2008 to 2014," the CWA said.

Nearly all of the $50.7 billion was spent building Verizon's fiber network, a project the union supports. But Verizon still has more than eight million customers on its copper network, and "where Verizon has refused to deploy its all-fiber FiOS network, Verizon has the statutory obligation to maintain its copper plant to provide safe, reliable service," the union said.

The $200 million amounts to $28.6 million a year, or about $3.50 per line per year for "poles, cables, wires, pedestals, terminals, batteries, and other plant and equipment needed to build, maintain, repair, and service its copper network," the union said. With copper landline customers paying $300 to $370 a year for basic voice service and about $400 a year for DSL Internet, "Verizon spends less than one percent of the rate it charges for basic voice service and less than half a percent of the rate it charges for a voice/DSL bundled service on the upkeep of its copper network," the union said.

In its letters to state regulators, the union referred to repeated complaints from customers about degraded service. For example, the letter to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said that since 2012, more than 6,000 customers complained to the state "about the quality and reliability of service they receive from Verizon."

The union told Pennsylvania officials that Verizon technicians and customer service employees can confirm that the telco "is not providing safe, adequate, and reasonable telephone service." The requested state investigation should analyze network revenue and expenditures; the condition of the copper infrastructure; staffing levels for preventive maintenance, repair, installation; customer service; and policies and procedures that impact the quality of phone and Internet service, the union said.

CWA, which accuses Verizon of trying to slash benefits, is one of two unions representing a total of 39,000 Verizon employees who have been working without a contract since August 1.

"Verizon makes $1 billion in profits every month and has refused to bargain constructively with its 39,000 employees over the terms of its contract, continuing to insist on the ability to outsource more jobs, increase health care costs by thousands of dollars a person and slash retirement security," the union said.

The union isn't the only one criticizing Verizon's network priorities. Consumer advocacy groups last year asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate complaints that Verizon is letting copper landlines deteriorate. The FCC subsequently said it would do so, and it has been considering how best to protect customers as copper networks age.

Verizon: “No company has invested more in broadband”

Verizon has previously dismissed union claims about network maintenance as "meaningless rhetoric and hyperbole" that's par for the course during bargaining.

When contacted by Ars yesterday, Verizon called the latest claims "absurd" but didn't respond to any of the specific points made by the union.

"CWA leadership’s claims are absurd and nothing more than a tired tactic from the union playbook to avoid serious negotiations on a fair contract for their members," Verizon said. "Verizon’s commitment to invest heavily in its wireline network is well documented and unquestioned. No company has invested more in broadband; last year alone we invested almost $6 billion in our wireline networks."

Verizon's statement that it spent $200 million on copper maintenance since 2008 came in a filing to the FCC on July 15. In the filing, Verizon urged the commission to avoid imposing new regulations on what's being called "de facto" retirement of copper networks, meaning retirement of networks through neglect rather than upgrades to better technology.

"Here’s what the data show: our trouble rate for customers still served by copper—a measurement of the number of 'troubles' per 100 access lines, and likely the best indicator of network reliability—has steadily declined since 2011 to just over two troubles per 100 lines," Verizon said in a blog post in July. "This is well below the benchmark generally set by states that engage in service-quality regulation."

Though Verizon consistently touts fiber's superiority over copper, it isn't upgrading all of its customers. An audit by New York City officials in June found that Verizon has failed to deliver on its commitment to extend its FiOS network to all homes in the city. In Pennsylvania, Verizon promised to bring fiber Internet or "comparable technology" to its entire service area but instead has left more than two million homes with nothing but slower DSL or wireless service.

Last week, Verizon declined to accept government funding that could have been used to boost Internet speeds in areas where it hasn't deployed fiber.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...deterioration/





CenturyLink to Bring Broadband to 1.2 Million Rural Households in 33 States

Company to accept approximately $500 million from the Connect America Fund
Press release

CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) announced today that it will bring high-speed Internet services to approximately 1.2 million rural households and businesses in 33 states by accepting approximately $500 million a year for six years from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Connect America Fund (CAF).

CenturyLink is accepting 33 CAF phase II statewide offers from the FCC to bring Internet service with speeds of at least 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload to locations in FCC-designated, high-cost census blocks.

"Our acceptance of the CAF II funding continues our commitment to further bridge the urban-rural digital divide by bringing high-speed broadband to households and businesses in many of CenturyLink's most rural markets," said John Jones, CenturyLink senior vice president for public policy and government relations. "These are high-cost markets with many deployment challenges. The Connect America Fund, along with our significant capital investments over the years, help make deploying rural broadband more cost effective. We believe the high-speed connectivity we will provide will bring many benefits to rural communities, including economic development and better access to education and healthcare services such as distance learning and telemedicine."

Once CenturyLink's CAF II six-year build-out plan is finalized over the coming months, construction is expected to begin in early 2016. CenturyLink is accepting the CAF II obligation to build and maintain a broadband network that reaches these high-cost locations, thus committing billions of dollars in capital expenditures to rural America.

CenturyLink has decided to decline the CAF II statewide offers for the states of California, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wyoming. According to the CAF II rules, companies must decide whether to accept CAF II funding and related service obligations for their service areas on a statewide basis. If a company declines to accept a CAF II statewide offer, that funding will be subject to a competitive bidding process prescribed by the FCC whereby eligible providers can bid to serve all or part of those areas. CenturyLink remains committed to meeting the communications needs of its customers and may elect to participate in the FCC's bidding process and compete for CAF II support once the auction rules and requirements are finalized by the FCC.

The FCC created the CAF program in 2011 to facilitate the deployment of high-speed Internet access in high-cost locations by transitioning Universal Service Fund money that was supporting rural landline service to the build-out of broadband infrastructure in rural communities.

CenturyLink previously accepted approximately $75 million in CAF phase I interim, one-time support to bring broadband with 4 Mbps download speed to nearly 114,000 unserved rural locations.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...300134032.html





City-Run ISP Makes 10Gbps Available to All Residents and Businesses

We're not sure who needs 10 gigs, but it's available in Salisbury, NC.
Jon Brodkin

A municipal Internet service provider in Salisbury, North Carolina, announced today that it is making 10Gbps service available throughout the city, to both businesses and residents.

The city-run Fibrant, which has deployed fiber throughout Salisbury, was created five years ago after city officials were unable to persuade private ISPs to upgrade their infrastructure. Gigabit download and upload speeds have been available to residents since last year for $105 a month, while customers can pay as little as $45 a month for 50Mbps symmetrical service. TV and phone service is available, too.

Fibrant officials don’t actually expect much, if any demand from residents for the 10Gbps download and upload service. The big speed upgrade is mainly targeted at businesses, but the announcement said 10Gbps service is now "available to every premises in the city," including all homes.

While business pricing varies based on the deployment, residents would pay about $400 a month for 10Ggbps service. Someone running a business from their home might want more bandwidth than a typical person, but there definitely won't be a hard sell to residents, local officials said.

“We don't want to oversell customers and have you paying for a 10Gbps service when you're using 100Mbps,” said Robert Van Geons, head of the county’s economic development commission, which is partnering with Fibrant.

"To be honest with you, we're not anticipating residents taking 10Gbps service," Fibrant Director of Broadband and Infrastructure Kent Winrich told Ars. “The reason for 10 gig is economic development... This is really geared toward attracting businesses that need this type of bandwidth and have it anywhere they want in the city.”

Network upgrades related to the 10Gbps project should boost connection reliability for residents, even if they don't opt for ultra-high speed service, he said.

“You go to many cities at 9 o’clock at night and you see your bandwidth drop,” Winrich said. “We've got so much headroom now that at 9 o’clock when everyone's hitting Netflix, it'll come right through and we won't have any choke points.”

The first 10Gbps customer is Catawba College, which wants the bandwidth for computer labs and other school buildings. High-definition videoconferencing figures into the college’s heavy bandwidth plans.

Fibrant and one of its main technology vendors, Calix, claimed in their announcement today that Salisbury is now “America’s first 10 gigabit city.” 10Gbps service to businesses isn’t unusual, but Fibrant believes it is unique in making it available to any home or business in the whole city.

(UPDATE: After this story posted, we were pointed to Vermont Telephone (VTel), which in June said it is offering 10Gbps to every home in its rural Vermont service area, for $400 a month. We wrote about VTel's gigabit service back in July 2013.)

Initially, Fibrant says it is supporting 10Gbps using point-to-point Ethernet technology, but will start shifting to Calix equipment using the NG-PON2 (next generation passive optical network) standard next year. That’s the same standard Verizon is testing for future deployments of 10Gbps to 80Gbps.

Between Fibrant’s enterprise-level Cisco routers and robust Internet transit agreements, the ISP has “plenty more [bandwidth] if we need it,” Winrich said.

North Carolina trying to stop muni broadband expansion

Fibrant decided to build its network before the North Carolina legislature voted in 2011 to limit the rights of cities to offer broadband. North Carolina’s anti-municipal broadband law is now the subject of a court fight, with the Federal Communications Commission arguing that it should be invalidated. If the FCC wins, municipal providers could expand Internet service to surrounding cities and towns.

Fibrant has 3,300 home and business customers, including about 25 percent of households. Since Fibrant already deployed fiber throughout the city, getting to 10Gbps required mostly back-end upgrades. But the optical network terminals (ONTs) at customers' homes support only up to 1Gbps, so if a customer wants 10Gbps, Fibrant would have to install a new ONT at the home.

“It's a one-day installation of new hardware,” Van Geons told Ars. “It's less time than it would take installing if you were a new customer of ours.”

Salisbury residents can also buy Internet service from Time Warner Cable or AT&T. But city officials concluded years ago that they would need to build their own network to make sure residents and businesses could get the fastest broadband speeds.

“We knew to be competitive we needed faster Internet," Winrich said. "We went to the incumbents [in 2009] and asked them if they had any plans to make a faster network and they said, ‘no,’ We went back to them and said, ‘well, if we pay you will you do it?’ They said, ‘no.’ We had to end up building our own because the incumbents had no plans on increasing the speeds of the network.”
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...nd-businesses/





Ad-blockers are Scaring Companies and Publishers Witless
Patrick Kulp

There's a battle raging over the Internet right now — one that pits a multibillion-dollar industry against a few lines of code.

On the surface, the sticking point is whether or not people should have to look at the pop-ups, banners, autoplay videos and the other attention-grabbing ploys that subsidize most free websites. The tools that enable them not to do so are easier than ever to use.

But at stake, those who make their livelihood on the web warn, is the future of the Internet as we know it.

Once the province of a small, dedicated core of code-savvy web surfers, ad-blocking software is enjoying more mainstream popularity thanks to simplified installation processes, security concerns and growing unease over mass personal data collection.

The number of people who use ad-blocking software worldwide has ballooned by 41% to nearly 200 million in the past year, according to a report released this week by Adobe and PageFair, an Ireland-based startup that helps companies combat ad-blockers.

That's a small fraction of the nearly 3 billion people estimated to use the Internet worldwide but enough to evaporate an almost $22 billion chunk of total online ads revenue this year, the report says.

The United States saw a 48% spike in the past year to a total of 45 million ad-block users, the report said. In some European countries, where ad-blockers are more widespread, more than a third of Internet users have installed them.

A growing threat

Advertising dollars are the lifeblood of the free Internet, fueling every site from social media titans to scrappy blogs.

Some web publishers and advertisers are haranguing ad-blocking programs over this fact and even going so far as to accuse their users of stealing content.

But many ad-block users counter that websites brought this on themselves by flooding the Internet for years with obnoxious, and sometimes malicious ads with no regard for the toll it takes on loading speeds or screen clutter. The dozens of hidden trackers and cookies built in to most ad-supported websites only further justifies the need for blocking in their eyes.

It may be something of a vicious circle: Publishers are especially vulnerable to the threat of blocked ads because they are still grappling with how to make meaningful money from slippery online ads — even when they do shower them on readers. The cold reality is that readers tend to ignore most types of ads even without blockers.

To make matters worse, people are increasingly spending their time online on their smartphones, where ads are even less lucrative.

The New York Times, for example, gets as many as 60 million visitors to its website each month, about one million of whom pay for a subscription. Only about 625,000 people still pay for the daily paper.

Yet print accounts for a lopsided 70% of the paper's total revenue. And half of digital traffic comes through mobile, but it only accounts for 10% of its online ads revenue.

With Apple set to usher ad-blockers onto mobile Safari browsers and Google losing its fight to keep them off of Android, mobile ad-blockers are expected to soon be commonplace.

Part of the profit struggle has to do with an overload of clunky, low-grade ads — especially on mobile, where the learning curve is still steep — and the difficulty of gauging whether people pay attention to them.

"The onus will be on advertisers to elevate how they look at digital advertising," says Elizabeth Kalmbach, vice president and group media director at ad agency Kelly Scott Madison.

Advertisers have already made strides in that direction, she said. More personalization, improved techniques for measuring engagement and native ads that blend in with editorial content are all promising bright spots.

But they are still losing a race against the clock, says Ben Barokas, CEO and co-founder of Sourcepoint, a startup aimed at fending off ad-blockers.

"We're beyond the threat stage," Barokas said. "There is large impact that are occurring — billions of dollars a year — and it will get much, much worse before it gets better."

It's a lopsided match-up that lays bare the shaky ground that some online companies have built their business on: A massive industry pumped with billions of dollars at the mercy of a handful of startups with some run-of-the-mill Java script code.

Blocking the blockers

It's like one little pirate holding the royal navy hostage," said Matt Adkisson, another Sourcepoint co-founder.

Their company just raised $10 million in investor funding to make software that essentially blocks ad-blockers. As of now, Sourcepoint's software is offered to publishers for free until the company figures out how it will charge them.

The service will eventually give publishers a few different options: it can bypass the ad-blocker and show the ad anyway, display a message reminding the visitor that the site loses money when ads are blocked, offer a subscription plan or let readers choose ads that are more to their liking.

It may sound naive to assume that ad-block users will make an exception for a publisher that appeals to their empathy, but Adkisson claims that a lot of people aren't aware of the plight publishers are facing. Many people have ad-blockers installed automatically along with security software packages or don't realize they are hurting the sites they visit, he said.

Barokas, a longtime veteran of the ad tech industry, previously founded a display advertising called Admeld that was later acquired by Google. He left his job at Google to found Sourcepoint after noticing the growing number of publishers clamoring for an ad blocking solution.

"Publisher after publisher after publisher approached me and said, 'Please fix our ad block problem," Barokas said.

Sourcepoint's founders don't think much of the business models behind the ad-block industry. Adkisson calls AdBlock Plus—one of the biggest ad blocking services on the market — an "extortion" scheme because it makes allowances for ads of companies that pay to be on its wide-ranging whitelist.

Sourcepoint isn't the first to propose this type of counter-attack. Piercing through ad-blocking walls is relatively easy, and there is similar software already on the market. PageFair, for one, aims to recoup advertiser revenue by displaying non-intrusive, ad-block-friendly ads.

Besides a sizable venture capital investment and the backing of seasoned ad tech veterans, Adkisson hopes the startup will stand out by recognizing that a brute force approach is at best a band-aid solution to make way for an eventual improvement in ad quality.

"What we are trying to do is not just beat the ad-blockers and say, 'Ha ha ha now you're seeing ads,'" Adkisson said. "What we have a really cool opportunity to do is to use the who dilemma of ad-block to evolve the web into a much better place where users have more control over the advertising experience."

When asked about whether fledgling business has been received well, Adkisson would only say that Sourcepoint has "dozens of premium publishers" on board.

Is it ethical? There's an app for that

Publishers have occasionally thrown around an accusation that readers who visit sites ad-free are stealing the content they view.

Every time you block an ad, what you're really blocking is food from entering a child's mouth," Tom’s Guide editorial director Avram Piltch wrote in May.

But Irina Raicu, Internet ethics program director at Santa Clara University, said publishers should do some soul-searching of their own before leveling such a charge.

In terms of spreading the most possible good — or as the philosopher John Stuart Mill would say, utility — ad-blockers are ethical because they can benefit the Internet at large with a smoother web experience as opposed to a select group of publishers that reap the profits of ads.

On top of that, many ads are actually in questionable ethical territory because they harass users and in some cases—such as a recent high-profile incident involving Yahoo — infect computers with malware.

"If this continues, maybe at some point we will all end up having an ethical obligation to install ad-blockers," Raicu said.

Of course, there are arguments to be made about the magnitude of the harm to each party, and no one would be much better off if ad-blockers choked out an industry, so there are shades of nuance and different schools of thought to consider.

That's why Raicu's department, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, has created a smartphone app that lets users evaluate their decisions online through what Raicu refers to as "Instagram filters" of different ethical philosophies.

But the true implications down the road are hard to predict. Ashley Scott Madison's Kalmbach said there's a chance that panic over ad-blockers is overwrought, much like when the television industry worried that DVR commercial-skipping could be its undoing.

On the other hand, Adkisson pictures a scenario in which a flailing ad industry starves all but the biggest publishers and advertisers, who are then forced to make deals for protection with the tech giants who maintain "walled gardens."

"Whereas today there's an immense amount of wild, wild west of content creation, sharing and consumption," he says. "If you kill the ads on the web, you will drive all of that back into the only place that can afford to run it, which are these giant walled gardens."
http://mashable.com/2015/08/31/ad-block/





Former Secret Service Agent Pleads Guilty in Bitcoin Theft
Dan Levine

A former Secret Service agent pleaded guilty on Monday to diverting to his personal account over $800,000 worth of bitcoins during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road.

Shaun Bridges, 33, appeared in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to money laundering and obstruction of justice.

Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down in October 2013, generating more than $214 million in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoins, prosecutors said.

Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road's creator, who authorities say used the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts," was sentenced to life in prison in May after a federal jury in Manhattan found him guilty of several charges, including distributing drugs through the Internet.

Bridges belonged to a Baltimore-based federal task force that investigated Silk Road. Another member of that unit, former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force, has admitted to charges of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

An attorney for Ulbricht has said those charges "removes any question about the corruption that pervaded the investigation of Silk Road."

In court on Monday, Bridges admitted his theft made Ulbricht believe that another individual was stealing from Silk Road and helped lead Ulbricht to try to hire someone to kill that person.

Sentencing for Bridges was scheduled for December.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Leslie Adler)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0R027F20150831





'Extremely Critical' OS X Keychain Vulnerability Stealthily Steals Passwords via SMS
Mark Wilson

Two security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability in OS X that could allow an attacker to steal passwords and other credentials in an almost invisible way. Antoine Vincent Jebara and Raja Rahbani -- two of the team behind the myki identity management security software -- found that a series of terminal commands can be used to extract a range of stored credentials.

What is particularly worrying about the vulnerability is that it requires virtually no interaction from the victim; simulated mouse clicks can be used to click on hidden buttons to grant permission to access the keychain. Apple has been informed of the issue, but a fix is yet to be issued. The attack, known as brokenchain, is disturbingly easy to execute.

Special-crafted commands can be triggered by malware -- or even an image or video -- which causes OS X to display a prompt to click an Allow button. But rather than relying on users clicking on a button that appears unexpectedly, the button is displayed very briefly off the edge of the screen or behind the dock, and is automatically pressed using a further command. It is then possible to intercept a user's password and send it to the attacker via SMS or any other means.

The entire process takes less than a second to complete, and is stealthy enough to bypass many, if not all, security products. In an email to CSO, Jebara said:

We disclosed, because we feel that it is the right thing to do, knowing that a vulnerability of this magnitude would have disastrous consequences (you wouldn’t be able to open any third-party file on your computer without the risk of losing all of your sensitive information until Apple issues a patch). But this doesn’t prevent us from going public either.

The vulnerability is extremely critical. It allows anyone to steal all of your passwords remotely by simply downloading a file that doesn’t look malicious, and can’t be detected by malware detectors - as it doesn’t behave the way malware usually does.

There are a number of possible attack vectors that could be exploited, including sending a malicious file via email, displaying a malicious file in a web browser, or a P2P attack. Jebara has posted a video that shows brokenchain in action as a proof-of-concept:

Apple has been told about the vulnerability. The company has not only failed to issue a fix yet, but has not even responded to Jebara and Rahbani.
http://betanews.com/2015/09/02/extre...words-via-sms/





Vice News Fixer 'Charged Over Encryption Software'

Turkey official tells Al Jazeera charges made after fixer found to have encryption software used by ISIL on his laptop.
Umut Uras

Three staff members from Vice News were charged with "engaging in terrorist activity" because one of the men was using an encryption system on his personal computer which is often used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a senior press official in the Turkish government has told Al Jazeera.

Two UK journalists, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, along with their Turkey-based Iraqi fixer and a driver, were arrested on Thursday in Diyarbakir while filming clashes between security forces and youth members of the outlawed and armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

On Monday, the three men were charged by a Turkish judge in Diyarbakir with "engaging in terrorist activity" on behalf of ISIL, the driver was released without charge.

The Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera: "The main issue seems to be that the fixer uses a complex encryption system on his personal computer that a lot of ISIL militants also utilise for strategic communications."

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tahir Elci, the head of the Diyarbakir lawyers association, said: "I find it ridiculous that they were taken into custody. I don't believe there is any accuracy to what they are charged for.

"To me, it seems like an attempt by the government to get international journalists away from the area of conflict.

"These people have obviously been in contact with YDG-H members [the youth wing of the PKK] because of their jobs, because they are covering stories. This might not have been welcomed by the security forces."

Rejecting the accusations, the Turkish press official said: "This is an unpleasant incident, but the judiciary is moving forward with the investigation independently and, contrary to claims, the government has no role in the proceedings."

'Freedom of expression'

In response to the charges, Kevin Sutcliffe, Vice head of news programming for Europe, said on Monday that the judge "has levelled baseless and alarmingly false charges of 'working on behalf of a terrorist organisation' against three Vice News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage.

"Prior to being unjustly detained, these journalists were reporting and documenting the situation in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir.

"Vice News condemns in the strongest possible terms the Turkish government's attempts to silence our reporters who have been providing vital coverage from the region.

"We continue to work with all relevant authorities to expedite the safe release of our three colleagues and friends."

In Brussels, EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said on Tuesday: "Any country negotiating EU accession needs to guarantee the respect for human rights, including freedom of expression."

The PKK and the Turkish state were engaged in a war for almost 30 years until a 2013 ceasefire was declared after the two sides held peace talks.

There have been clashes between security forces and protesters in different parts of Turkey following the unravelling of the ceasefire and the beginning of an air campaign by Turkey against the group.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/0...200622345.html





Judge Eager to Re-Enter NSA Surveillance Fight
Josh Gerstein

Warning that the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans are being violated, a federal judge said Wednesday that he's eager to expedite a lawsuit seeking to shut down the National Security Agency's controversial program to collect data on large volumes of U.S. telephone calls.

During an hourlong hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Richard Leon repeatedly urged the conservative lawyer who brought the suit to take steps to allow the case to move forward quickly by asking a federal appeals court to formally relinquish control over an appeal in the case.

Leon noted that the so-called bulk collection program is set to shut down on November 29 as part of a transition to a new system where queries will be sent to telephone companies rather than to a central database stored at the NSA.

"The clock is running and there isn't much time between now and November 29," Leon told conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. "This court believes there are millions and millions of Americans whose constitutional rights have been and are being violated, but the window...for action is very small....It's time to move."

Leon also told Justice Department lawyers that he was intent on moving the case forward and would not countenance any stalling aimed at preventing him from acting in the case before the program, aimed at aiding terrorism investigations, ends.

In November 2013, Leon ruled that the program involved a search and seizure that was likely unconstitutional and "almost Orwellian" in its scope. He issued an injunction against the NSA effort, but put that ban on hold so the government could appeal.

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the preliminary injunction on the grounds that Klayman and his fellow plaintiffs had not made a sufficient showing that data on their phone calls was gathered by the NSA program. However, two of the three appellate judges said Klayman's suit could proceed, allowing him an opportunity to try to gather proof that the plaintiffs were directly affected by the surveillance.

Leon made clear Wednesday that his conclusion that the program was unconstitutional has not changed. "I don't have to hear new arguments on the constitutional issue," the judge said. "It has been written. It has been written."

At one point during Wednesday's hearing, the judge noted that the D.C. Circuit decision did not address the central legal issue of whether the NSA program was unconstitutional. "I don't think the D.C. Circuit ruled on the merits," said Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

However, at another juncture, the judge suggested that the appeals judges did not see things his way on the issue. "They don't agree with me. It remains to be seen if anyone agrees with me," Leon said.

"The American people agree with you," Klayman chimed in.

Justice Department lawyer Rodney Patton noted that the wind-down of the NSA program follows Congress's passage in June of the USA Freedom Act, which ends the phone metadata collection program but also extended for about six months the legal authority under which the g was set up.

"The political branches came to a compromise," Patton said. "This court should consider what the political branches decided to do.....and not consider the extraordinary remedy of [a new] injunction."

After Patton spoke, Leon leaned in and pointed for emphasis as he warned against foot-dragging by the government. "I am not going to allow, if I can help it, any misimpression or impression that the government is trying to run out the clock here," the judge said. "I'm not going to tolerate that."

One complication in the case at the moment is that while the appeals court issued its opinion--or rather a brief ruling and three separate opinions--last week, it has not yet formally ended the appeal. Leon repeatedly urged Klayman to ask the D.C. Circuit to hand down the official mandate immediately. Getting the mandate issued would remove questions about Leon's ability to proceed with the lawsuit.

While insisting that he was not coaching Klayman about how to pursue the case, the judge encouraged Klayman to resolve some issues raised by the appeals court by adding someone to the case who used a Verizon business subsidiary known back in 2013 to be providing data to the NSA under the program. Klayman and the other plaintiffs are customers of Verizon Wireless, which is technically a different company.

Klayman said Wednesday that the distinction was irrelevant, particularly since a document released to the New York Times last month in response to a Freedom of Information Act request indicated that Verizon Wireless was also involved in the NSA effort. The conservative lawyer also accused government lawyer James Gilligan of having lied about Verizon Wireless' involvement earlier in the case, but the comments Klayman pointed to were of a Gilligan saying there was "no evidence" that the wireless carrier took part--apparently meaning no evidence in the court record at that point.

Patton dismissed Klayman's assertion that Gilligan lied. "It's factually wrong. It's legally wrong," Patton said.

Leon cautioned that it was a serious matter to accuse a lawyer of lying in court. "That's a big allegation. Be careful with the L word, throwing the L word around in this room," the judge said. He added that he was confident in the integrity of Gilligan, who was not in court Wednesday.

In May, the New York-based 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA phone metadata program was unlawful because the Patriot Act provision used to authorize it did not in fact provide authority for bulk collection of records largely unrelated to terrorism. The appeals court heard a new round of oral arguments on that case Wednesday, focusing on the impact the law passed in June will have on the litigation.

Another challenge to the program is pending in the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, but that case is on hold pending a ruling by the 2nd Circuit.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-...e-fight-213272





New Cellphone Surveillance Safeguards Imposed On Federal Law Enforcement
Carrie Johnson

The Justice Department says it will beef up legal requirements for using cell-site simulators, an increasingly controversial form of surveillance technology that secretly gathers data about mobile devices.

Under the new policy, federal investigators will be required to get a warrant from a judge demonstrating probable cause, in most domestic criminal probes. Agents will need to explain to judges how the technology is being used. And they'll be directed to destroy volumes of bystanders' data "no less than once daily."

"This policy is really designed to ... try to promote transparency, consistency and accountability, all while being mindful of the public's privacy interest," said Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates.

Yates said the devices, commonly known as StingRays or dirt boxes, have been critical in cracking drug cases, finding fugitives and determining the whereabouts of kidnap victims. She declined to provide numbers on how often cell-site simulators are used but said they're deployed in only "a fraction" of federal investigations in keeping with public safety.

The new policy applies to federal agents under Justice Department control and to state or local investigators who work on federal task forces. Yates also said she expects the FBI to modify the terms of its "nondisclosure" agreements with state and local entities, some of which have barred those law enforcement agencies from disclosing the use of the devices, even to criminal defendants.

Yates said the Justice Department is trying to balance privacy interests of citizens with a desire to solve crimes while "not giving a road map to the bad guys who are trying to defeat it." In emergency or "exigent" circumstances, agents may not need to secure a warrant, but approval of high-level attorneys will be required.

The federal action follows outcry from judges, privacy advocates and members of Congress over the intrusive nature of the technology, which mimics cellphone towers to collect identifying information from mobile phones in a particular area. The StingRays can sweep in high volumes of information from innocent people inside homes or parks.

Over the past year, the top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee have sent at least three letters to the Justice Department requesting information about agencies that use the technology, privacy safeguards and how much judges are told about it. In May, Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote that "DOJ's failure to answer these questions has heightened our concerns."

Immediate reaction to the policy change was generally positive. "The Department of Justice's new policies are finally starting to catch up with the rapid advancement of this tracking technology," said Leahy. "Today's announcement is a welcome step forward, and has the potential to bring transparency and consistency to the Department's use of these tracking devices. However, I have serious questions about the exceptions to the warrant requirement that are set forth in this new policy, and I will press the Department to justify them."

Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said requiring the FBI, DEA and U.S. Marshals Service to obtain warrants to use the devices represents a "positive first step."

"After decades of secrecy in which the government hid this surveillance technology from courts, defense lawyers and the American public, we are happy to see that the Justice Department is now willing to openly discuss its policies," Wessler said.

But he expressed strong reservations that the new policy will not apply to many state and local police departments, which use federal grant money to buy the devices.

"In addition, the guidance leaves the door open to warrantless use of StingRays in undefined 'exceptional circumstances' while permitting retention of innocent bystander data for up to 30 days in certain cases," Wessler added. "The Justice Department must close these loopholes, and Congress should act to pass more comprehensive legislation to ensure that Americans' privacy is protected from these devices and other location tracking technologies."
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpo...aw-enforcement

















Until next week,

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