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Old 18-09-19, 06:40 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 21st, ’19

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September 21st, 2019




French Court Rules that Steam’s Ban on Reselling Used Games is Contrary to European Law

Valve pledges to fight ruling
Colin Campbell

A French high court this week delivered a blow to Valve, ruling that European consumers are legally free to resell digital games bought on Steam, just as they’re able to resell packaged, physical games.

The ruling was delivered by the High Court of Paris (Tribunal de grande instance de Paris) two days ago, according to a report on French games site Numerama. In a statement released today, Valve pledged to appeal the decision.

The court’s ruling is a victory for French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, which filed a suit against Steam four years ago, alleging anti-consumer rights activities.

The court rejected Valve’s defense that argued Steam is a subscription service. According to Numerama, the court found that Steam sells games in perpetuity, and not as part of a subscription package.

The ban on reselling games is therefore counter to European Union laws on digital goods that are designed to block prohibitions on “the free movement of goods within the Union.” According to EU law, all goods, including software, can be sold used without the permission of the maker or the original seller.

The court clarified that any resale of the game must be of a single copy, and not of duplicates. According to the ruling, Valve has three months to amend its terms of service, though this is likely to be delayed during the appeal process.

“We disagree with the decision of the Paris Court of First Instance and will appeal it,” a Valve spokesperson told Polygon in an emailed statement. “The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal.”
https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/19/20...d-games-eu-law





Swiss Federal Supreme Court Proclaims ISPs Cannot be Forced to Block Access of Illegal Websites
S.S. Rana & Co

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court in its Judgement 4A_433 / 2018 dated February 08, 2019 held that the Internet Service Providers cannot be forced to block websites containing copyrighted content which are made illegally available on their portals. Brief facts of the case, the plaintiff was the owner of partial copyrights of the film which were being made available on the illegal websites of the third parties which were on the server of the Internet service provider. The plaintiff prayed before the lower courts and the Supreme Court, to direct the internet service provider to block access of these websites. The Court while denying the prayers observed that the access provider does not have any concrete contribution to the content provided by the third-party portals. Since no adequate causal connection to the copyright infringement could be justified, therefore an injunction against the access providers was denied by the Court.

The Swiss Federal Court, however, made an observation that a regulation for the integration of access providers to combat copyright infringement on the Internet with appropriate procedures and technical blocking measures would be taken by the legislator. However, the introduction of appropriate regulatory measures against access providers has so far been waived.1 The draft bill for Copyright Act amendment of 2017, provides for a “stay down” order which directs Hosting Providers to remove infringing content and once removed to keep such content removed. The draft bill also clarifies that the processing of data for the purposes of prosecuting copyright infringement will be permissible. Both of these measures end a long debate on the obligations of providers and therefore create legal certainty for all parties. 2In view thereof, it can be said that even though the Court passed an order against the plaintiff, however, the Court also understands the need for regulations which can help in combating the copyright infringement matters by illegal online portals.

The judgment of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court differs largely when considering the Indian laws, as in India the provisions for intermediary liability under the IT laws is a strong check for testing the acts of intermediaries. Even though, the practice in India is also similar, wherein the intermediary has been given a safe harbour protection, where such intermediary only provides for a platform and has no role in content regulation or contribution in managing the contents on its portal. However, the Courts in India have put strict checks while determining if the platforms are actually an intermediary or have further cause to contribute towards the infringement.

With respect to laws in place, the major laws which govern the process in online portal infringements, are Information and Technology Act 2000, The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 and Copyright Rules 2013. In a brief, the provision wherein the intermediary can claim safe harbour are clearly laid down under section 79 of the IT Act, however, the procedures to be followed by the Intermediary in order to avoid any violation is provided under the guidelines of 2011. Similarly, under the Copyright laws, the storage provider if satisfied of infringement, when a complaint is received, then the access provider must take measures to refrain the facilitating access for a period of 21 days from the date of complaint or an order in this regard from competent court, whichever is earlier.

With the internet service providers and online platforms playing a crucial role in giving access to third party websites, to provide unauthorized information / copyrighted works to the public at large, it is now essential to keep a strict guideline in ensuring protection of intellectual property of the owners. Rather than keeping it dependent on case to case basis, the law makers may consider amending the Acts to incorporate the factors to determine role and contribution of the intermediaries, in its services.
https://www.lexology.com/library/det...9-65fbc8110b50





Swiss Parliament Approves Anti-Piracy Legislation

Personal downloading to remain legal.
Sarah Morgan

Switzerland’s Parliament amended its copyright law earlier this week, in a bid to modernise the law for the digital age and crack down on piracy.

While Swiss-based hosting providers will be forced to remove illegal content from their servers, the reforms don’t punish consumers for downloading pirated content.

According to news site Swissinfo.ch, the government had argued that its proposal is a compromise between artists, and consumers who like to download films, music and books.

Consumers will be able to download content for private use on peer-to-peer networks and can still access illegal sites, said news website 24heures.

Although services that host pirate sites can expect legal consequences for failing to remove content, Parliament rejected rules that would force online platforms to check whether uploaded content is copyright-protected, added Swissinfo.ch.

In addition, copyright protection for musical and photographic works will be extended from 50 years to 70 years, a move that will be welcomed by copyright owners.

Finally, two World Intellectual Property Organization treaties will be ratified.

Switzerland will ratify the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances (which regulates copyright for audiovisual performances and expands performers' rights) and the Marrakesh Treaty (which facilitates access to published works for visually impaired people).

The US Trade Representative’s (USTR) placed Switzerland on its country watch list in its “2019 Special 301 Report”, an annually-published report that reviews IP protection and enforcement abroad,

“Switzerland remains on the watch list this year due to US concerns regarding specific difficulties in Switzerland’s system of online copyright protection and enforcement,” said the report.

The report added that the US welcomed steps that Switzerland was considering to strengthen online copyright protection.

“These actions should address outstanding protection and enforcement concerns and ensure compliance with international standards, as informed by public consultations and stakeholder engagements,” it concluded.
https://www.worldipreview.com/news/s...islation-18637





German Law Firm Threatens Criminal Complaint if We Don’t Disclose Client Data
Mark E. Jeftovic

We recently received a copyright notice from Fechner Law in Germany. They were asking for an immediate takedown of the offending URL plus a cash settlement for use of an allegedly infringing image on an easyDNS customer’s website (which we are neither the webhost nor DNS provider for, just registrar).

They had apparently sent earlier requests which we had never received (the email address they cite has a typo in it), we finally received the copy via postal mail, instructing our client and/or MyPrivacy.net to transfer € 1,481 to their law firm.

As is standard procedure, we acknowledged receipt of their letter and asked that they supply a digital copy of it so that we may forward their complaint to our customer along with a reminder that our Plain English Terms of Service require that all clients action copyright takedown notices.

Instead of supplying that requested digital copy, we received an email response that we are obligated to provide our customer’s name and email address, and if we did not comply would have a criminal complaint brought against us:

From: Robert Fechner <robert.fechner@[redacted].com>
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2019 22:20:25 +0200
Subject: [Redacted] / MyPrivacy.net [14-00380]

Dear Mr Jeftovic,

I appreciate your alleged concern for your users’ privacy.

Nonetheless, according to OLG Frankfurt a. Main, Urteil v. 22.8.2017,
Az. 11 U 71/16 you have to provide us at least with a name and e-mail of the infringer.

If you fail to comply with the law, further proceedings will be to file a criminal complaint against you in order to acquire this information on the basis of § 14 II TMG.

In this case, additional damages due to your uncooperative and unlawful behaviour will be claimed.

We await your reply until 20.09.2019.

Sincerely,

Rechtsanwalt Robert Fechner
FECHNER LEGAL


(emphasis added)

It’s almost as if Herr Fechner doesn’t understand that Canada is a completely different country than Germany, and thus businesses operating here are subject to Canadian, not German law, meaning:

• We are subject to Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA)
• Canadian Copyright Law provides for ISPs to forward copyright infringement notices to customers (for which the ISP may charge the complainant a fee for doing so).
• We only disclose client data pursuant to a valid court order, subpoena or warrant lawfully executed in the Province of Ontario

We have further advised Herr Fechner that both easyDNS and our lawyers take a dim view of being threatened with a criminal complaint over something like this and we wonder out loud if the German bar association would have anything to say about one of their own abusing their position and misrepresenting the law in this manner.
https://easydns.com/blog/2019/09/16/...lient-privacy/





Italian Police Help Smash 'World's Largest Pirate TV Streaming Network'

An illegal streaming network allowed subscribers to view pirated content.
AFP

Italian authorities said on Wednesday they have helped smash what they called "the world's largest" pirate streaming TV network, with five million customers in Italy alone.

Italian police stormed various locations while police in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands also carried out raids coordinated by the EU's judicial cooperation agency Eurojust.

Police arrested at least 23 suspects as part of the ongoing operation against Xtream Codes, an alleged illegal pirating operation which Eurojust said caused damages worth some €6.5 million to the market.

Italian financial police said the operation had "deactivated the largest international pirate pay TV streaming network".

For €12, far below normal prices, subscribers to the cut-price pirate streams could access all content from such giants as Sky Italy, Netflix and Mediaset.

"The damage caused to the broadcast companies, the private sector and public institutions so far is immense," Filippo Spiezia, Italy's representative at Eurojust, told a press conference in The Hague. "The effects created by this illegal activity include unfair competition, financial loss... and thousands of jobs put in danger," he said.

Germany, France and the Netherlands shut down around 200 computer servers as part of the operation. Law officers also seized hardware and shut down 800 internet sites used to re-broadcast channels.

The piracy operation was allegedly created by two Greek nationals, said Valeria Sico, deputy prosecutor at the public prosecutions office in Naples. Italian media reported that the network's mastermind had been arrested in Thessaloniki, Greece.

"We discovered a new system... which was much more evolved" than previous pirating attempts, Sico said in The Hague. The gang's platform decrypted copyright protected television images and re-broadcast them on the internet "on a wide scale".

The scheme was first discovered when police raided a home in Naples, where they found that the criminals used a new system to infiltrate legitimate pay-per-view channels, Sico said. Once the signal was intercepted, it was re-routed through internet servers in the Netherlands and France and then sent to viewers' IP addresses.

Subscriptions were advertised on a Facebook page "telling people for a small price they could access all TV channels on demand", Sico said.

Lodewijk van Zwieten, Dutch prosecutor specialising in cybercrime, said the Netherlands shut down 93 servers based in and around The Hague.

"This was a criminal group that used a sophisticated technical network that was really intended to resist actions by the authorities," he said.

Those responsible for the piracy face up to three years in prison and a fine of €25,000.
https://www.thelocal.it/20190918/ita...eaming-network





Best Buy, Staples Accused of 'Urging' Customers to Pirate TV Shows with Devices Sold in Stores

4 retailers named in a lawsuit launched by Super Channel deny the allegations
Sophia Harris

Premium TV network Super Channel has filed a lawsuit against four Canadian retailers for allegedly selling "pirate devices" and educating customers how to use them to watch TV without paying for it.

In a court document filed in Federal Court this week, Super Channel accuses Best Buy, Staples, Canada Computers and London Drugs of copyright infringement, claiming their employees are "urging" customers to pirate online content using streaming devices that are sold in store.

The four retailers "are advertently contributing to the creation of a culture of widespread infringement and theft," Super Channel alleges in the document. "Their actions are high-handed and unfair to their customers and causing damage to the plaintiff."

Also listed as defendants in the lawsuit are customers who bought the "pirate devices" and received accompanying advice in store. They're currently listed as "John Doe customers" because Super Channel doesn't have their names, although it plans to pursue this information.

The network wouldn't name each of the "pirate devices" involved, but said that the case includes Android boxes, which have become the scourge of the cable industry. When special software is added and the boxes are connected to TVs, they can be used to stream unauthorized content — including movies and TV shows that Super Channel owns the rights to in Canada.

Customers only pay a one-time fee for the box, usually around $60 to $200.

Caught on camera

As part of its case, Super Channel claims to have more than 100 hours of undercover video gathered by private investigators who visited multiple Best Buy, Staples, Canada Computers and London Drugs locations, posing as customers curious about pirating content.

Super Channel provided CBC News with a segment of the video. It includes audio allegedly from employees from each of the four retailers, who offer advice about in-store devices that can be set up to stream shows without paying for them.

"This gets you free content, like free TV and movies," someone said in one audio clip from the video.

"You don't have to pay for anything else when you pay for this," said another.

Super Channel CEO Don McDonald said he was "shocked" when he viewed the footage. The video captures more than 150 incidents supporting Super Channel's case, he said, and that the employees involved in promoting these devices range from floor staff to higher-ups.

"Managers that are not kids — they're in their 30s and 40s, telling people how to do it," McDonald said. "It is rampant."

Why would store staff assist customers? In the court document, Super Channel alleges the motive is "to encourage and increase the sales of the pirate devices."

Best Buy, Staples, Canada Computers and London Drugs — which each received copies of the lawsuit this week — told CBC News that they deny the allegations and follow Canadian copyright laws.

"[We] believe that the claims are entirely without merit," a Best Buy spokesperson said in an email. "We respect and value intellectual property, and believe content providers and artists should be fairly compensated for their work."

McDonald said that Super Channel showed the video to the four retailers in the spring, but that failed to put a stop to the problem. "I wanted them to be step up and be a champion in changing the culture," he said. "They didn't see the light."

CBC News asked each retailer about their meeting with Super Channel. Only London Drugs responded, stating that the network refused to disclose which products it took issue with.

"Nevertheless, we took the opportunity to remind our employees of the importance of Canadian copyright compliance and adherence to our code of conduct," London Drugs spokesperson Wendy Hartley said in an email.

War on piracy

Super Channel is seeking damages for loss of business due to the retailers' customers pirating its content. It also wants a permanent injunction to prevent Best Buy, Staples, Canada Computers and London Drugs from selling and promoting "pirate devices."

"We want the stores to stop. We want the stores to say, 'Hey this is wrong,'" said McDonald.
Rob Sokalski, in Winnipeg, shows CBC News how he can access pirated content using his loaded Android box. (CBC)

The lawsuit is just the latest attempt to curb piracy in Canada. In 2016, Bell, Rogers and Videotron launched a legal battle in Federal Court, targeting smaller dealers who sell Android boxes pre-loaded with software used to pirate content.

The case is ongoing and the list of defendants has ballooned from five in 2016 to more than 130 today.

Last year, Bell and Rogers also joined a coalition of more than 30 members, including CBC and Super Channel, which proposed blocking Canadians from websites offering pirated content. However, the plan was rejected by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which said it didn't have jurisdiction to enforce it.

Critics have argued it's impossible to stamp out technology that enables piracy, so the best solution is to offer affordable and easily accessible programming.

McDonald estimates Super Channel loses about $12 million a year from subscribers who turn to piracy. He said he hopes the lawsuit will help change the culture of piracy by sending a message that it's not acceptable

"This affects our business and it's the wrong thing to do," he said. "If we can even start to make a dent in this from an awareness point of view, then we are on the right track."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bes...oxes-1.5283504





Ironically, Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy
Karl Bode

To be very clear the rise in streaming video competitors is a very good thing. It's providing users with more choice, lower prices, and better customer service than consumers traditionally received from entrenched vanilla cable TV companies. It's the perfect example of how disruption and innovation are supposed to work. And given the abysmal customer satisfaction ratings of most big cable TV providers, this was an industry that's been absolutely begging for a disruptive kick in the ass since the 1980s.

But we've also noted that, ironically, the glut of video choices--more specifically the glut of streaming exclusivity silos--risks driving users back to piracy. Studies predict that every broadcaster and their uncle will have launched their own direct-to-consumer streaming platform by 2022. Most of these companies are understandably keen on locking their own content behind exclusivity paywalls, whether that's HBO Now's Game of Thrones, or CBS All Access's Stark Trek: Discovery.

But as consumers are forced to pay for more and more subscriptions to get all of the content they're looking for, they're not only getting frustrated by the growing costs (defeating the whole point of cutting the cord), they're frustrated by the experience of having to hunt and peck through an endlessly shifting sea of exclusivity arrangements and licensing deals that make it difficult to track where your favorite show or film resides this month.

In response, there's some early anecdotal data to suggest this is already happening. But because these companies are fixated on building market share, and this will likely be an industry-wide issue, most aren't seeing the problem yet.

Others are. The 13th edition of Deloitte’s annual Digital Media Trends survey makes it clear that too many options and shifting exclusivity arrangements are increasingly annoying paying customers:

But the plethora of options has a downside: Nearly half (47%) of U.S. consumers say they’re frustrated by the growing number of subscriptions and services required to watch what they want, according to the 13th edition of Deloitte’s annual Digital Media Trends survey. An even bigger pet peeve: 57% said they’re frustrated when content vanishes because rights to their favorite TV shows or movies have expired.

“Consumers want choice — but only up to a point,” said Kevin Westcott, Deloitte vice chairman and U.S. telecom and media and entertainment leader, who oversees the study. “We may be entering a time of ‘subscription fatigue.'”


As it turns out, people don't like Comcast, but they do ironically want a little more centralization than they're seeing in the streaming space. What that looks like isn't clear yet, but it's something that will slowly get built as some of the 300 options (and growing) currently available fail to gain traction in the space:

All told, there are more than 300 over-the-top video options in the U.S. With that fragmentation, there’s a clear opportunity for larger platforms to reaggregate these services in a way that can provide access across all sources and make recommendations based on all of someone’s interests, Westcott said. “Consumers are looking for less friction in the consumption process,” he said.

Variety's otherwise excellent report doesn't mention this, but a lot of these customers are going to revert to piracy. It's not clear why this isn't mentioned, but it's kind of standard practice for larger outlets to avoid mentioning piracy in the odd belief that acknowledging it somehow condones it. But if you don't mention it, you don't learn from it. You don't understand that piracy is best seen as just another competitor, and a useful tool to gain insight into what customers (studies repeatedly show pirates buy more content than most anybody else) really want.

It's easy to dismiss this as privileged whining ("poor baby is upset because they have too many choices), and that's certainly what a big segment of the market is going to do.

But it would be a mistake to ignore consumer frustration and the obviously annoying rise of endless exclusivity silos, given the effort it took to migrate users away from piracy and toward legitimate services in the first place. The primary lesson learned during that experience is you need to compete with piracy. It's not really a choice. It's real, it's impossible to stop, and the best way to mitigate it is to listen to your customers. Building more walled gardens, raising rates, and ignoring what subscribers want is the precise opposite of that.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...o-piracy.shtml





Apple is Being Accused of Pirating Some Huge Classic Songs

Is that Apple Music, or Pirate Music?
Oliver Haslam

What you need to know

• Four Jays Music Company has filed a copyright lawsuit.
• Apple and three other defendants are accused of piracy.
• Huge artists including Billie Holliday and Miles Davis allegedly had their music pirated.

Music companies accusing people of copyright infringement isn't anything new, but when it accuses Apple it's worth taking note. Four Jays Music Company has filed a new lawsuit claiming that Apple and a further three defendants pirated material that the plaintiff owns the rights to.

All of the music seems to be from popular artists from years past, including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, and Frank Sinatra. But according to Four Jays Music Company, Apple nor the other defendants ever obtained a license that would allow them to use the music in question.

As Patently Apple notes, Apple contracted two companies called Cleopatra and Orchard to provide a catalog of music to be used in the iTunes store. But those companies didn't have the rights to do so.

Apple specifically selected and contracted with Orchard to provide its digital music catalog to be sold in its iTunes store on negotiated financial terms. Apple reproduced and distributed pirated recordings of the Subject Compositions it received from Cleopatra and/or Orchard as permanent downloads among other types of digital phonorecord deliveries.

Orchard unlawfully reproduced and distributed the pirated recordings of the Subject Compositions and distributed them to Apple, at the direction of Cleopatra, and unlawfully authorized Apple's making of digital phonorecord deliveries in the iTunes store, at Cleopatra's direction.


To make matters worse, the lalwsuit also claims that Apple knew that it had infringed upon copyright for years.

Finally, Apple has had knowledge of its own infringing conduct and that of Cleopatra and Orchard for several years and have continued to work with them and make digital phonorecord deliveries and other reproductions and distributions of the pirated recordings of the Subject Compositions that Cleopatra and Orchard provide and/or were recklessly indifferent or willfully blind to their own infringing conduct.

Those interested in the full rundown can read the lawsuit on Scribd.
https://www.imore.com/apple-being-ac...-classic-songs





Amazon Music Rolls Out a Lossless Streaming Tier that Spotify and Apple Can’t Match

RIP Tidal?
Dieter Bohn and Chris Welch

Amazon is launching a new tier of its music service today, dubbed Amazon Music HD. It offers lossless versions of audio files for streaming or downloading at a price that aggressively undercuts Tidal, the main competition for this kind of audio. Amazon will charge $14.99 a month for the HD tier, or $12.99 if you’re an Amazon Prime customer. Tidal’s Hi-Fi plan costs $19.99 monthly. The new plan was rumored a few months ago.

Amazon says it has a catalog of over 50 million songs that it calls “High Definition,” which is the term it’s applying to songs with CD-quality bit depth of 16 bits and a 44.1kHz sample rate. It also has “millions” (read: less than 10 million, more than one million) of songs it’s calling “Ultra HD,” which translates to 24-bit with sample rates that range from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. Amazon Music HD will deliver them all in the lossless FLAC file format, instead of the MQA format that Tidal uses.

Amazon’s VP of Music, Steve Boom, tells me that Amazon chose the HD and UltraHD terminology because it found it was more comprehensible to a mass audience than the current terminology for audio quality. And “mass audience” is exactly what Amazon is going for; it doesn’t want Amazon Music HD to be a niche player like Tidal and other lossless music platforms like HDtracks or Qobuz.

Boom says that “It’s a pretty big deal that one of the big three global streaming services is doing this — we’re the first one.” Amazon Music isn’t often in the conversation about music streaming competition, which usually ends up following a Spotify vs. Apple Music narrative. But Amazon considers itself in their company, and with the new HD offering it’s looking to differentiate itself and perhaps raise its profile.

Boom declined to give new subscriber numbers, but Amazon’s music service did reportedly have more than 32 million subscribers as of this past April. Spotify hit 100 million paid subscribers that same month. But remember that millions of people have access to a sampling of Amazon’s catalog through Prime Music, which comes included for free with a Prime subscription. That’s a powerful tool for getting them to step up to an Amazon Music Unlimited or Amazon Music HD plan.

Giving users a specific reason to switch to Amazon Music, beyond working slightly better with Echo speakers, could give Amazon a boost. Right now Spotify is sort of the global default and Apple has been aggressive at making carrier deals in the US to boost its numbers. But even if Amazon can’t peel off subscribers from those services, it seems likely that it’ll pull some users — perhaps many — away from Tidal, though that’s not exactly a big pool to draw from.

Spotify has at times tested lossless audio but has yet to officially launch a plan for all customers. Apple, meanwhile, is doing everything it can to extract the most quality from the AAC format it uses, but has always stopped short of going in on lossless. If it finds success, Amazon’s latest move could give both companies another push to come up with something similar. Lossless demands a lot more bandwidth, however, and some listeners might struggle to tell a difference between it and the “high” quality setting streaming apps currently offer.

Rock legend Neil Young, who has for years extolled the benefits of high-res music (remember Pono?), really took the hyperbole up to 11 in reacting to today’s news. “Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses,” he said in Amazon’s press release. “This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago.”

I got a brief demo of the service yesterday and of course it sounded amazing — anything would in the Hi-Fi setup Amazon had in its San Francisco office. Audiophiles with similar setups will be able to take advantage of Amazon’s service with the right DAC attached to their phone. And if you’ve got one of LG’s smartphones with a built-in DAC, this is another instance where that hardware will pay off.

Amazon says that its HD service will be compatible with products from “Denon and Marantz with HEOS Built-in, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Sonos, McIntosh, Sennheiser, and many more.” Of course, you also aren’t likely to hear a big different on most Echo speakers — especially earlier models and Echo Dots. Boom says that most recent models have a line-out, though.

When you’re playing an HD or UltraHD song, you can tap on the HD logo to bring up a screen that provides more details about the actual quality of that stream or file. Amazon will dynamically reduce quality if you’re on a low bandwidth connection. You will definitely hear the difference on both iPhones and Android phones, but since they max out at 24-bit/44.1kHz quality on their built-in DACs, you won’t get the very best quality without an external DAC. Plus, if you’re using Bluetooth you’re unlikely to hear the difference, Boom says.

The service is launching today and Amazon is offering a 90-day free trial. It will be available in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/2...-spotify-apple





AT&T Sued for Allegedly Inflating DirecTV Now Subscriber Numbers

A lawsuit says the carrier uses various shady tactics to charge real customers without their knowledge.
Mariella Moon

A lawsuit seeking class action status says AT&T is inflating AT&T TV Now -- previously known as DirecTV Now -- subscriber numbers by creating fake users. It's accusing the company's management of carrying out the scheme in an effort to make the service look good in the eyes of investors even though it was struggling with serious technical and financial problems. The management did so, according to the lawsuit, by encouraging employees to add DirecTV Now subscription fees to subscribers' accounts without their knowledge or consent.

One of the methods employees allegedly used is tacking on up to three accounts to a single customer's phone number -- including those who just signed up for a free trial -- and running their credit card three times. In some cases, customers were reportedly charged for a subscription even though they made it clear that they didn't want it. Sales employees allegedly made and used fake email accounts in both instances.

Customers were sometimes charged for a DirectTV Now subscription but were told that they were being charged for another thing. There were reportedly even times when customers were told that DirecTV Now was part of a package when they were actually charged an extra monthly fee.

The investors involved in the lawsuit called the service's "apparent success" a "complete mirage." They said the "information provided by multiple former employees of AT&T and its affiliates from across the country collectively confirm a wide-ranging fraud, perpetrated at the highest levels of the company." As for AT&T, the company told Bloomberg and later confirmed to Engadget that it plans "to fight these baseless claims in court." We also reached out to the carrier for more details and will update this post when we hear back.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/17/...w-subscribers/





Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps For $60 After Years Of Battling Comcast
Karl Bode

A new community broadband network went live in Fort Collins, Colorado recently offering locals there gigabit fiber speeds for $60 a month with no caps, restrictions, or hidden fees. The network launch comes years after telecom giants like Comcast worked tirelessly to crush the effort. Voters approved the effort as part of a November 2017 ballot initiative, despite the telecom industry spending nearly $1 million on misleading ads to try and derail the effort. A study (pdf) by the Institute for Local Reliance estimated that actual competition in the town was likely to cost Comcast between $5.4 million and $22.8 million each year.

Unlike private operations, the Fort Collins Connexion network pledges to adhere to net neutrality. The folks behind the network told Ars Technica the goal is to offer faster broadband to the lion's share of the city within the next few years:

"The initial number of homes we're targeting this week is 20-30. We will notify new homes weekly, slowly ramping up in volume," Connexion spokesperson Erin Shanley told Ars. While Connexion's fiber lines currently pass just a small percentage of the city's homes and businesses, Shanley said the city's plan is to build out to the city limits within two or three years.

"Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont," another Colorado city that built its own network, Shanley said. Beta testers at seven homes are already using the Fort Collins service, and the plan is to start notifying potential customers about service availability today.

The telecom sector simply loves trying to insist that community-run broadband is an inevitable taxpayer boondoggle. But such efforts are just like any other proposal and depend greatly on the quality of the business plan. And the industry likes to ignore the fact that such efforts would not be happening in the first place if American consumers weren't outraged by the high prices, slow speeds, and terrible customer service the industry is known for. All symptoms of the limited competition industry apologists are usually very quick to pretend aren't real problems (because when quarterly returns are all that matter to you, they aren't).

For years we've noted how large ISPs like Comcast quite literally write and buy protectionist state laws preventing towns and cities from building their own broadband networks (or striking public/private partnerships). These ISPs don't want to spend money to improve or expand service into lower ROI areas, but they don't want towns and cities to either -- since many of these networks operate on an open access model encouraging a little something known as competition. As such it's much cheaper to buy a state law and a lawmaker who'll support it -- than to actually try and give a damn.

And while roughly nineteen states have passed such laws, Colorado's SB 152, co-crafted by Comcast and Centurylink in 2005, was notably unique in that it let local towns and cities hold local referendums on whether they'd like to ignore it. And over the last few years, an overwhelming number of Colorado towns and cities have voted to do so, preferring to decide local infrastructure issues for themselves instead of having lobbyists for Comcast dictate what they can or can't do in their own communities, with their own tax dollars.

There's probably not a day that goes by without these companies regretting letting that caveat make it into the final bill.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-comcast.shtml





Silicon Valley is Terrified of California’s Privacy Law. Good.
Zack Whittaker

Silicon Valley is terrified.

In a little over three months, California will see the widest-sweeping state-wide changes to its privacy law in years. California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) kicks in on January 1 and rolls out sweeping new privacy benefits to the state’s 40 million residents — and every tech company in Silicon Valley.

California’s law is similar to Europe’s GDPR. It grants state consumers a right to know what information companies have on them, a right to have that information deleted and the right to opt-out of the sale of that information.

For California residents, these are extremely powerful provisions that allow consumers access to their own information from companies that collect an increasingly alarming amount of data on their users. Look no further than Cambridge Analytica, which saw Facebook profile page data weaponized and used against millions to try to sway an election. And given some of the heavy fines levied in recent months under GDPR, tech companies will have to brace for more fines when the enforcement provision kicks in six months later.

No wonder the law has Silicon Valley shaking in its boots. It absolutely should.

It’s no surprise that some of the largest tech companies in the U.S. — most of which are located in California — lobbied to weaken the CCPA’s provisions. These companies don’t want to be on the hook for having to deal with what they see as burdensome requests enshrined in the state’s new law any more than they currently are for Europeans with GDPR.

Despite the extensive lobbying, California’s legislature passed the bill with minor amendments, much to the chagrin of tech companies in the state.

“Don’t let this post-Cambridge Analytica ‘mea culpa’ fool you into believing these companies have consumers’ best interests in mind,” wrote the ACLU’s Neema Singh Guliani last year, shortly after the bill was signed into law. “This seeming willingness to subject themselves to federal regulation is, in fact, an effort to enlist the Trump administration and Congress in companies’ efforts to weaken state-level consumer privacy protections,” she wrote.

Since the law passed, tech giants have pulled out their last card: pushing for an overarching federal bill.

In doing so, the companies would be able to control their messaging through their extensive lobbying efforts, allowing them to push for a weaker statute that would nullify some of the provisions in California’s new privacy law. In doing so, companies wouldn’t have to spend a ton on more resources to ensure their compliance with a variety of statutes in multiple states.

Just this month, a group of 51 chief executives — including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, IBM’s Ginni Rometty and SAP’s Bill McDermott — signed an open letter to senior lawmakers asking for a federal privacy bill, arguing that consumers aren’t clever enough to “understand rules that may change depending upon the state in which they reside.”

Then, the Internet Association, which counts Dropbox, Facebook, Reddit, Snap, Uber (and just today ZipRecruiter) as members, also pushed for a federal privacy law. “The time to act is now,” said the industry group. If the group gets its wish before the end of the year, the California privacy law could be sunk before it kicks in.

And TechNet, a “national, bipartisan network of technology CEOs and senior executives,” also demanded a federal privacy law, claiming — and without providing evidence — that any privacy law should ensure “businesses can comply with the law while continuing to innovate.” Its members include major venture capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins and JC2 Ventures, as well as other big tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch).

You know there’s something fishy going on when tech giants and telcos team up. But it’s not fooling anyone.

“It’s no accident that the tech industry launched this campaign right after the California legislature rejected their attempts to undermine the California Consumer Privacy Act,” Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, told TechCrunch.

“Instead of pushing for federal legislation that wipes away state privacy law, technology companies should ensure that Californians can fully exercise their privacy rights under the CCPA on January 1, 2020, as the law requires,” he said.

There’s little lawmakers in Congress can do in three months before the CCPA deadline, but it won’t stop tech giants from trying.

Californians might not have the CCPA for long if Silicon Valley tech giants and their lobbyists get their way, but rest easy knowing the consumer won — for once.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/si...a-privacy-law/





Smart TVs, Smart-Home Devices Found to be Leaking Sensitive User Data, Researchers Find

"Nearly all TV devices in our testbeds contacts Netflix even though we never configured any TV with a Netflix account," the researchers wrote.
Jason Abbruzzese

Smart-home devices, such as televisions and streaming boxes, are collecting reams of data — including sensitive information such as device locations — that is then being sent to third parties like advertisers and major tech companies, researchers said Tuesday.

As the findings show, even as privacy concerns have become a part of the discussion around consumer technology, new devices are adding to the hidden and often convoluted industry around data collection and monetization.

A team of researchers from Northeastern University and the Imperial College of London found that a variety of internet-connected devices collected and distributed data to outside companies, including smart TV and TV streaming devices from Roku and Amazon — even if a consumer did not interact with those companies.

"Nearly all TV devices in our testbeds contacts Netflix even though we never configured any TV with a Netflix account," the Northeastern and Imperial College researchers wrote.

The researchers tested a total of 81 devices in the U.S. and U.K. in an effort to gain a broad idea of how much data is collected by smart-home devices, and where that data goes.

The research was first reported by The Financial Times.

The researchers found data sent to a variety of companies, some known to consumers including Google, Facebook and Amazon, as well as companies that operate out of the public eye such as Mixpanel.com, a company that tracks users to help companies improve their products.

One of the researchers, David Choffnes, a professor of computer science at Northeastern, said that his previous work looking at the data collection and dissemination habits of mobile apps led him to expect similar practices with smart-home devices.

But he noted that he was surprised to see more encryption used by the devices his team tested, a good thing for consumers but also a change that makes it harder to see what information companies are sending to third parties.

He said one takeaway for the consumer is that devices with screens — everything from smart TVs to internet-connected refrigerators — tend to collect and share more data than other devices.

"You can usually install apps and as a result you're going to see somewhat similar behavior as you do on a mobile device," he said.

Choffnes said that consumers currently don't have many options to curtail these practices aside from removing the devices. He pointed to tools such as ad blockers on web browsers as examples of features that he is interested in pursuing to keep consumers safe.

"What happens if you start blocking network traffic?" he said
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...-user-n1055796





HP Printers Try to Send Data Back to HP About Your Devices and What You Print
15 Sep 2019

Last week my in-laws politely but firmly asked me to set up their new HP printer. I protested that I’m completely clueless about that sort of thing, despite my tax-return-job-title of “software engineer”. Still remonstrating, I was gently bundled into their study with an instruction pamphlet, a cup of tea, a promise to unlock the door once I’d printed everyone’s passport forms, and a warning not to try the window because the roof tiles are very loose.

At first the setup process was so simple that even a computer programmer could do it. But then, after I had finished removing pieces of cardboard and blue tape from the various drawers of the machine, I noticed that the final step required the downloading of an app of some sort onto a phone or computer. This set off my crapware detector.

It’s possible that I was being too cynical. I suppose that it was theoretically possible that the app could have been a thoughtfully-constructed wizard, which did nothing more than gently guide non-technical users through the sometimes-harrowing process of installing and testing printer drivers. It was at least conceivable that it could then quietly uninstall itself, satisfied with a simple job well done.

Of course, in reality it was a way to try and get people to sign up for expensive ink subscriptions and/or hand over their email addresses, plus something even more nefarious that we’ll talk about shortly (there were also some instructions for how to download a printer driver tacked onto the end). This was a shame, but not unexpected. I’m sure that the HP ink department is saddled with aggressive sales quotas, and no doubt the only way to hit them is to ruthlessly exploit people who don’t know that third-party cartridges are just as good as HP’s and are much cheaper. Fortunately, the careful user can still emerge unscathed from this phase of the setup process by gingerly navigating the UI patterns that presumably do fool some people who aren’t paying attention.

But it is only then, once the user has found the combination of “Next” and “Cancel” buttons that lead out of the swamp of hard sells and bad deals, that they are confronted with their biggest test: the “Data Collection Notice & Settings”.

In summary, HP wants its printer to collect all kinds of data that a reasonable person would never expect it to. This includes metadata about your devices, as well as information about all the documents that you print, including timestamps, number of pages, and the application doing the printing (HP state that they do stop short of looking at the contents of your documents). From the HP privacy policy, linked to from the setup program:

Product Usage Data – We collect product usage data such as pages printed, print mode, media used, ink or toner brand, file type printed (.pdf, .jpg, etc.), application used for printing (Word, Excel, Adobe Photoshop, etc.), file size, time stamp, and usage and status of other printer supplies. We do not scan or collect the content of any file or information that might be displayed by an application.

Device Data – We collect information about your computer, printer and/or device such as operating system, firmware, amount of memory, region, language, time zone, model number, first start date, age of device, device manufacture date, browser version, device manufacturer, connection port, warranty status, unique device identifiers, advertising identifiers and additional technical information that varies by product.


HP wants to use the data they collect for a wide range of purposes, the most eyebrow-raising of which is for serving advertising. Note the last column in this “Privacy Matrix”, which states that “Product Usage Data” and “Device Data” (amongst many other types of data) are collected and shared with “service providers” for purposes of advertising.

HP delicately balances short-term profits with reasonable-man-ethics by only half-obscuring the checkboxes and language in this part of the setup.

At this point everything has become clear - the job of this setup app is not only to sell expensive ink subscriptions; it’s also to collect what apparently passes for informed consent in a court of law. I clicked the boxes to indicate “Jesus Christ no, obviously not, why would anyone ever knowingly consent to that”, and then spent 5 minutes Googling how to make sure that this setting was disabled. My research suggests that it’s controlled by an item in the settings menu of the printer itself labelled “Store anonymous usage information”. However, I don’t think any reasonable person would think that the meaning of “Store anonymous usage information” includes “send analytics data back to HP’s servers so that it can be used for targeted advertising”, so either HP is being deliberately coy or there’s another option that disables sending your data that I haven’t found yet.

I bet there’s also a vigorous debate to be had over whether HP’s definition of “anonymous” is the same as mine.

I imagine that a user’s data is exfiltrated back to HP by the printer itself, rather than any client-side software. Once HP has a user’s data then I don’t know what they do with it. Maybe if they can see that you are printing documents from Photoshop then they can send you spam for photo paper? I also don’t know anything about how much a user’s data is worth. My guess is that it’s depressingly little. I’d almost prefer it if HP was snatching highly valuable information that was worth making a high-risk, high-reward play for. But I can’t help but feel like they’re just grabbing whatever data is lying around because they might as well, it might be worth a few cents, and they (correctly) don’t anticipate any real risk to their reputation and bottom line from doing so.

Recommended for who?

I’m further unsure how a user’s printing data is connected back to the rest of their identity and used to power online advertising. It could be some combination of IP address, printer and computer MAC addresses, a serial number of some sort, or maybe just if the user gave HP their email address as part of setting up an expensive ink subscription. I pondered this question in some detail once I had set up my in-laws’ printer. I wanted to use the extremely convenient feature where the printer scans a document and sends it to you via email, but then I got scared that HP would purloin my email address, associate it with my printing data, and ship this information over to an online ad retargeting platform. I’m not a lawyer and I can’t be bothered to properly parse their privacy policy to understand whether this technically falls under “product usage” or “sharing with third-party services”, or whether I really did manage to tick and untick the right combination of boxes to make it clear that I don’t want them to do this. I especially can’t be bothered to have the debate over whether taking the hash of an email address suddenly makes it completely anonymous and harmless (it doesn’t).

When programmers write code, they also write “unit tests” in order to verify that the code works as expected. Whenever I find out about a grubby design decision made by a technology company, I always find it fun to muse about what the unit tests must look like.

Code:
# https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html
describe 'when a Doordash driver receives a tip' {
  it 'keeps the extra money and does not give it to the driver' {
    driver_pay_with_tip = calculate_pay(tip = 10)
    driver_pay_without_tip = calculate_pay(tip = 0)

    assert_equal(driver_pay_with_tip, driver_pay_without_tip)
  }
}
Code:
describe 'when a user prints a document' {
  it 'sends metadata on their activity back to HP servers' {
    print_file()
    assert(data_was_received())
  }
}
To the people who are actually writing these unit tests: I know that we all accumulate status and pay rises and health insurance inside our companies that don’t always carry over into the rest of the world. I know that it can be hard to voice dissent, especially at decisions where the harm is nebulous and is only what everyone else is doing anyway. And I’m sure that it’s especially hard to reconcile conflicting emotions when you’re otherwise quite proud of the low-cost, reasonable-quality printers that your division churns out, spyware notwithstanding.

Actually it’s only now that I’ve started this bit that I realize I don’t have a punchline.

Where’s the harm in all this? I think it depends on what you care about and how much. I’m personally allergic to this kind of data-appropriation because I don’t believe I gain anything from it and the scummy tactics that try (and mostly succeed) to get my data just viscerally piss me off. But even if you would be perfectly happy to publish all your printing and device data to the entire internet, I’d still argue that it’s a grim world in which HP feels entitled to take it from you. And if nothing else, I believe that over ninety-nine percent of people whose printer sends their data to HP have no idea that this is happening, and would much prefer if it didn’t. This is not an exaggeration - I really do think that if you surveyed every single owner of every single spy-printer, ninety-nine out of every hundred would be unaware of the data collection and would want it to stop. If this claim is right then it would put the lie to any claim that this type of data-snagging is done with users’ knowing consent. I of course have no evidence for it, but it feels plausible, and since I’m not a journalist I don’t have to obey the Journalists’ Code. I can even invent the Journalists’ Code in the same sentence as I flout it.

Plus, I really don’t think that the onus should be on me to come up with watertight reasons why HP shouldn’t collect data on what people print in order to target them with online ads.

I don’t think that “is it OK if we have your printer collect metadata about your devices and what you print, and then use it online advertising?” is a question that HP should even be asking. They already know the answer, and all they’re really doing is giving people who have already paid them several hundred dollars for a cheap but functional printer the opportunity to make a mistake. Life is so much harder when you feel like you’re in a constant cold war standoff with your otherwise perfectly useful gadgets. The top of HP’s privacy policy page reads “HP recognizes that privacy is a fundamental human right and further recognizes the importance of privacy, security and data protection to our customers and partners worldwide.” Which just goes to show that you should probably ignore everything that a company says that doesn’t carry a specific and enforceable legal obligation.

If pressed then I would have to concede that HP have at least made it possible for a moderately informed and motivated user (i.e. me) to work out the gist of what they are hoping to do with my data. They’ve camouflaged, but (as far as I can tell) they haven’t lied, and I imagine that they’ve been careful not to do anything illegal. And at the end of the day, how else is a company meant to persuade users to part with data that they would never knowingly part with if they properly understood what was happening?
https://robertheaton.com/2019/09/15/...nt-back-to-hp/





Spouse of Ring Exec Among Lawmakers Trying to Weaken Calif. Privacy Law

The assemblywoman said her husband's job has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Kate Cox

The California legislature worked through the summer to finalize the text of the state's landmark data privacy law before time to make amendments ran out on Friday. In the Assembly (California's lower house), Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin has been a key voice and vote backing motions that would weaken the law, and a new report says her reasoning may be very, very close to home.

A review of state ethics documents conducted by Politico found that Ms. Irwin is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer of Amazon's controversial Ring home surveillance business. That company stands to benefit if the California law is weakened in certain key ways before it can take effect.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the California Consumer Privacy Act into law in June 2018. This legislation gives California residents several protections with regard to their personal information, including the rights to know what is being collected, what is being sold, and to whom it is being sold. It also grants Californians the right to access their personal information, the right to delete data collected from them, and the right to opt out—without being charged extra for services if they choose to do so.

The provisions in the CCPA become effective as of January 1, 2020, a little more than three months from now. There was a window in 2019 where the state legislature could still alter the text of the law, and so a flurry of proposed amendments hit the Assembly and the state Senate before last week's deadline.

One proposal put forth by Assemblywoman Irwin would expand what kind of data would be exempt from CCPA provisions, and this drew the ire of consumer protection groups, Politico reports. Irwin also initially proposed striking out "a provision requiring companies to disclose or delete data associated with 'households' upon request," a regulation that will likely affect companies like Ring. She also voted against an amendment that would have required smart speaker systems, like Amazon's Alexa or Google Home, to obtain user consent to sell recorded conversations, and "used store security-camera footage as an example of data that would be burdensome and risky for businesses to be required to link to consumers in response to data-deletion requests."

Ring has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks following a spate of media reports about the company's working partnerships with hundreds of police departments around the country. These agreements, which often require and incentivize law enforcement to encourage widespread Ring adoption in their jurisdictions, are generally made with very little public transparency about what data is collected or shared between the Amazon subsidiary and the police.

California law, meanwhile, is often extremely high stakes. Because the state has such a high population and level of influence, and because of the way the Internet tends to work, California privacy law has in the past become a de facto national standard over time. The CCPA is widely expected to have a similarly large impact—and as an unsurprising result, it has faced significant opposition from industry groups.

Assemblywoman Irwin told Politico she found questions about her spouse to be offensive, given her own personal background as a systems engineer. "My role in the privacy debate in the Legislature is focused on bringing people together and solving the practical issues posed to us as policy makers and is independent of any job or role my husband may have," she said.

Potential conflicts of interest for California lawmakers, whose spouses, children, or other close relations may work for companies being regulated, are not exactly unheard of, Politico notes. Nor are such conflicts limited to the Golden State by any means. A joint report by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity in late 2017 found dozens of cases where state lawmakers around the country were involved in bills that could affect businesses belonging to themselves or their families. More recently, a joint report between ProPublica and local media in West Virginia found the governor benefiting financially every time state money is spent at one of his resorts—a situation strongly echoing certain federal-level conflicts in the spotlight at the moment as well.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...f-privacy-law/





Secret F.B.I. Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data From Scores of Companies
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries

The F.B.I. has used secret subpoenas to obtain personal data from far more companies than previously disclosed, newly released documents show.

The requests, which the F.B.I. says are critical to its counterterrorism efforts, have raised privacy concerns for years but have been associated mainly with tech companies. Now, records show how far beyond Silicon Valley the practice extends — encompassing scores of banks, credit agencies, cellphone carriers and even universities.

The demands can scoop up a variety of information, including usernames, locations, IP addresses and records of purchases. They don’t require a judge’s approval and usually come with a gag order, leaving them shrouded in secrecy. Fewer than 20 entities, most of them tech companies, have ever revealed that they’ve received the subpoenas, known as national security letters.

The documents, obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and shared with The New York Times, shed light on the scope of the demands — more than 120 companies and other entities were included in the filing — and raise questions about the effectiveness of a 2015 law that was intended to increase transparency around them.

“This is a pretty potent authority for the government,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who specializes in national security. “The question is: Do we have a right to know when the government is collecting information on us?”

The documents provide information on about 750 of the subpoenas — representing a small but telling fraction of the half-million issued since 2001, when the Patriot Act expanded their powers.

The credit agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion received a large number of the letters in the filing. So did financial institutions like Bank of America, Western Union and even the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. All declined to explain how they handle the letters. An array of other entities received smaller numbers of requests — including Kansas State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, probably because of their role in providing internet service.

Other companies included major cellular providers such as AT&T and Verizon, as well as tech giants like Google and Facebook, which have acknowledged receiving the letters in the past.

Albert Gidari, a lawyer who long represented tech and telecommunications companies and is now the privacy director at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, said Silicon Valley had been associated with the subpoenas because it was more willing than other industries to fight the gag orders. “Telecoms and financial institutions get little attention,” he said, even though the law specifically says they are fair game.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that information on the roughly 750 letters could be disclosed under a 2015 law, the USA Freedom Act, that requires the government to review the secrecy orders “at appropriate intervals.”

The Justice Department’s interpretation of those instructions has left many letters secret indefinitely. Department guidelines say the gag orders must be evaluated three years after an investigation starts and also when an investigation is closed. But a federal judge noted “several large loopholes,” suggesting that “a large swath” of gag orders might never be reviewed.

According to the new documents, the F.B.I. evaluated 11,874 orders between early 2016, when the rules went into effect, and September 2017, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, requested the information.

“We are not sure the F.B.I. is taking its obligations under USA Freedom seriously,” said Andrew Crocker, a lawyer with the foundation. “There still is a huge problem with permanent gag orders.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

National security letters, which the F.B.I. has issued since the 1980s, have long been a point of contention in the debate over privacy and security. Initially, the bureau had to show “specific and articulable facts” indicating that the target was an agent of a foreign power. Now, the F.B.I. must certify that the information is “relevant” to a terrorism, counterintelligence or leak investigation.

“NSLs are an indispensable investigative tool,” the Justice Department argued in the Freedom of Information Act case. The department has said in legal documents that the information gleaned from the letters is important to identifying subjects and their associates, while helping to clear the innocent of suspicion.

According to a 2007 report from the Justice Department inspector general, the F.B.I. didn’t track how often information from the letters was used in criminal proceedings. But the report also said the letters had led to guilty pleas for arms trading, at least one conviction for material support of terrorism, and multiple charges of fraud and money laundering. The tool was also cited in efforts to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Much of the concern about the letters has focused on the gag orders, which accompany nearly every request and prevent the recipient — typically indefinitely — from disclosing even the existence of the letter. The federal government has argued that the secrecy is necessary to avoid alerting targets, giving would-be terrorists clues about how the government conducts its surveillance or hurting diplomatic relations.

After a series of court rulings found that the gag orders violated First Amendment protections, Congress enacted the review requirements.

The documents obtained through the lawsuit include the number of orders reviewed, as well as redacted copies of 751 letters from the F.B.I. informing companies and organizations their gag orders had been lifted. These so-called termination letters do not reveal the contents of the original national security letters, but indicate which entities received them.

Because so few gag orders have been reviewed and rescinded, it isn’t possible to say whether the companies that received the most termination letters also received the most national security letters. But given the overall secrecy around the program, the termination letters offer a rare glimpse into these subpoenas.

Equifax, Experian and AT&T received the most termination letters: more than 50 each. TransUnion, T-Mobile and Verizon each received more than 40. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft got more than 20 apiece. Over 60 companies received just one.

The underlying national security letters were not included in the documents, and it is unclear when most of them were issued and who the individual targets were.

Tech companies have disclosed more information about the letters they received than the major phone providers, which included general information about them in transparency reports.

“We have fought for the right to be transparent about our receipt” of national security letters, Richard Salgado, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, said in a 2016 statement explaining why the company was releasing the subpoenas. “Our goal in doing so is to shed more light on the nature and scope” of the requests, he added.

Other companies have generally remained mum. In response to inquiries, a TransUnion spokesman would say only that the company “has not disclosed the receipt of any national security letters.” A spokesman for Equifax said it was “compliant with the national security letters process.”

Mr. Gidari, the former tech lawyer, attributed some of that lack of reporting to differences in company culture, noting that tech firms were more predisposed to openness, and financial institutions less likely to discuss any outside access to customer data. And most small companies, he said, don’t have the resources to keep long-term track of or challenge the subpoenas.

“That’s the problem with the Freedom Act: It procedurally pretended to solve the problem,” he said. “But the whole structure of this involves presumption in favor of the government for perpetual sealing.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/u...ivacy-fbi.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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