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Old 18-12-13, 08:20 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 21st, '13

Since 2002


































"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval." – Judge Richard J. Leon


"90.1% of businesses reported that copyrights were 'not important' to them." – The National Science Foundation






































December 21st, 2013




When Asked, Vast Majority of Businesses Say IP is Not Important
Gabriel J. Michael

This post is licensed CC-BY SA 3.0, and may be shared and reposted with attribution. Please include a link back to this page, which will contain the most up-to-date version.

Last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a widely cited report entitled “Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus.” This report played up the importance of IP, claiming “the entire U.S. economy relies on some form of IP,” and estimated that “IP-intensive industries” accounted for 40 million American jobs and 35% of the U.S. GDP in 2010.

While many pro-IP groups hailed the report as demonstrating the importance of IP to the American economy, the report was panned by critics who pointed out that the definition of “IP-intensive industries” was so broad as to be meaningless. Indeed, according to the report, the number one IP-intensive industry by employment in the United States was… grocery stores. Furthermore, although supporters of stricter IP regulation and enforcement continue to rely on the report to justify policies relating to copyrights and patents, the vast majority of the report’s purported economic benefits were attributed to trademarks.

USPTO’s report was released in March 2012, and received a lot of attention. Yet just one month prior, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released the findings of a survey on business use of intellectual property. While a few sites picked up on the NSF report last year, it received far less media attention than it deserved. Why? Perhaps because it turns out that if you actually ask, the vast majority of businesses report that intellectual property is not important to them.

Infojustice.org was among the few noting that the NSF’s findings directly contradict the USPTO report. The initial NSF report, published in February 2012, included data from 2008. However, it has recently been updated to include data from 2009 and 2010.

But wait – surely I’m making all this up. If “IP-intensive” industries account for 40 million jobs and 35% of GDP, intellectual property must be very important to businesses. What’s this “vast majority,” then?

• In 2010, 87.2% of businesses reported that trademarks were “not important” to them.
• 90.1% of businesses reported that copyrights were “not important” to them.
• 96.2% of businesses reported that patents were “not important” to them.

If you still think I’m making these numbers up (and I wouldn’t blame you if you did), head on over to the NSF’s page describing the survey, results, and methodology. Note that these results are consistent across the three years of the survey, and the survey itself is a representative sample across the country.

According to the NSF, the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) “is an annual, nationally representative sample survey of approximately 43,000 companies, including companies in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries. The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”

If you examine the details, the survey results begin to make more sense. Larger companies tend to report intellectual property as being more important; businesses designated as especially “R&D active” also place more importance on various kinds of intellectual property.

Nevertheless, the results of this survey (now in its third year) are striking. Even when looking at a sector where one would expect heavy reliance on intellectual property, the results do not match expectations. For example, take one of the most copyright-dependent sectors we can imagine: “R&D active” software publishing. In 2010, 51.4% of respondents in this sector said copyright was “very important”; 34.6% said it was “somewhat important”; and 13.9% said it was “not important.” That is, only about half of respondents in a purportedly heavily copyright-dependent sector describe copyright as “very important” to their business.

In my mind, there are two ways of interpreting these data: either all the survey respondents are totally uninformed about what is going on in their businesses, or formal intellectual property protection is far less important to the vast majority of U.S. businesses than some would like us to believe.

Some additional highlights:

• 61.7% of businesses manufacturing computer and electronic products report that patents are “not important” to them.
• 96.3% of businesses with less than 500 employees report that patents are “not important” to them.
• 45.6% of businesses with 25,000 or more employees report that patents are “not important” to them.
• 53.6% of businesses classified in the information sector (NAICS code 51 – i.e., a sector we’d expect to rely heavily on copyright) report that copyrights are “not important” to them.
• Overall, businesses report that trade secrets are the most important form of intellectual property protection, with 13.2% of businesses calling trade secrets “very important” or “somewhat important.” Trademarks are a close second, with copyrights and patents significantly farther behind. Trailing in last place is sui generis protection for semiconductor mask works, although that is no surprise.

The complete 2008-2010 BRDIS survey data can be downloaded here, or you can check out the individual tables referenced in this post right now: Utility Patents, Design Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, Mask Works.
http://topromotetheprogress.wordpres...not-important/





Swedish 'Pirate' Hit with £403,000 Damages for Sharing Single Movie

Former moderator of film piracy site who distributed 517 other films and TV shows via BitTorrent ordered to pay record sum
Samuel Gibbs

A 28-year-old Swedish man has been ordered to pay £403,000 in damages for uploading a single pre-release film to a BitTorrent site.

The movie, Beck – Buried Alive, was shared on of Sweden’s oldest piracy BitTorrent sites, Swebits, which shut down a week after the man was arrested in 2011.

"The high damages shows what damage creators and rights holders suffer through illegal file sharing of a movie. Going forward, we have a number of processes which we can use to seek compensation for piracy of one or more films," said Henrik Pontén, a lawyer for anti-piracy firm Legal Alliance.
Sweden’s “worst ever” individual movie pirate

The 28-year-old, described by rightsholders as Sweden’s “worst ever” individual movie pirate, was a moderator and uploader for the Swebits BitTorrent tracker site from 2008 to its closure.

An investigation carried out by Rights Alliance with Nordisk Film discovered the 28-year-old Swede had distributed 517 other movies and TV shows on the site, for which he was handed a suspended jail sentence and ordered to complete 160 hours of community service.

The Swedish District Court handed down the record 4.5m Swedish Krona restitution, which far exceeds the $150,000 statutory damages permitted per pirated title in the US. The damages in included the cost of licensing the movie from the rightsholders for distribution. The video quality of the pirated film – described as being poor enough to have damaged the its reputation – was also taken into consideration.
26th Martin Beck movie

The movie, originally released in 2009 in Germany before landing in Sweden in 2010, is the 26th movie in the Swedish language series featuring the fictional police detective Martin Beck, who has featured in films, books and a radio series produced by the BBC.

"To receive such a harsh penalty for doing something that millions of other Swedes displays how outdated current legislation is. The only way forward is a radical reform of copyright law that allows the sharing of culture," said Gustav Nipe chairman of the Pirate Party’s Young Pirate youth organisation.
http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...in-beck-swebit





AT&T Patents File Sharing Blocker

Summary: AT&T has developed and patented technology which detects and blocks file-sharing software.

Charlie Osborne

AT&T has added a new invention to its portfolio: technology that can detect, block and ban file-sharers on a network.

Based on network activities, a user is assigned a "risk class" which, upon further monitoring, can result in file-sharing website access blockades, as reported by TorrentFreak.

The U.S. 8,590,054 patent, titled "Methods, devices and computer program products for regulating network activity using a subscriber scoring system," describes a network regulation system that keeps an eye on user behaviour before assigning them a "risk class" -- and allows the ISP to take action to curtail illegal behavior if necessary.

"Although the Internet may provide many useful resources for users, widespread access also provides an avenue for unscrupulous users and/or activities," the patent application reads.

"In this regard, many Internet users do not possess the knowledge and/or sophistication to avoid risks associated with accessing the Internet. Accordingly, many users may fall victim to exploits and/or malicious schemes of undesirable elements on the Internet, such as, for example, hackers. Internet piracy may account for significant bandwidth usage, which may be problematic for a service provider. Thus far, copyright protection measures that have been deployed by, for example, the entertainment industry, have failed to curtail increases in Internet piracy."

AT&T"s patent documentation also says that efforts to date to curtail piracy are insufficient, as "millions of downloads may result from just one file that is posted on a shared network." This, in turn, "may pose significant risks to the user, network and/or service provider."

However, by categorizing Internet subscribers and using surveillance methods, AT&T's patent says that while the system can potentially be used to keep surfers safe from hacking attempts, online file-sharing is one of the main problems which could be discovered and regulated. Dubbed "high-risk network activity," file-sharing -- which may involve copyrighted content -- could be stopped.

The patent says that in some cases of identifying users engaged in "high-risk network activities such as, for example, file sharing and/or Internet piracy," there may be consequences:
"Some embodiments provide that subscriber protection may include providing a walled-off and/or secured portion in the network in which the subscriber can have limited access to the network. For example, in some embodiments, access to risky network resources, such as, for example, illegal file sharing websites, may be denied."

With all patents, it is unknown whether the U.S. communications giant will ever implement this technology on its own network -- or lease it to other firms. However, despite efforts by organizations including the MPAA and court orders which have stipulated blocks for websites including The Pirate Bay by ISPs in various countries, piracy still proves to be a quick and free way to acquire content including music and films.

According to a NetNames study in January this year, between 2010 and 2012, nearly one-fourth of the total bandwidth used by all Internet users was used to acquire intellectual property protected content. The majority of infringing users -- 327 million out of 432 million -- come from North America, Europe and Asia. Dr. David Price, director of piracy analysis for NetNames and the author of the study, called piracy "tenacious and persistent," despite the growing availability of legal options for content-hungry consumers.
http://www.zdnet.com/at-and-t-patent...er-7000024330/





Porn Filters Block Sex Education Websites
Mike Deri Smith

Pornography filters used by major internet service providers are blocking websites offering sex education and advice on sexual health and porn addiction, the BBC has learned.

The four major internet companies have started to roll out so-called porn filters to their users.

BT launched its filter this week, Virgin has a pilot programme ahead of a full launch early in 2014, and Sky's was turned on a month ago.

TalkTalk's filter started in May 2011.

Last month, Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed "family-friendly" filters and said they were important to stop children "stumbling across hardcore legal pornography".

But BBC's Newsnight has discovered all the major ISPs that have launched full default filters are also failing to block hardcore porn-hosting sites.

All new customers will be prompted to decide whether to opt in or out, while existing customers of major ISPs will be presented with an "unavoidable choice" about whether to sign up.

Among the sites TalkTalk blocked as "pornographic" was BishUK.com, an award-winning British sex education site, which receives more than a million visits each year.

TalkTalk also lists Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre website as "pornographic."

The company also blocked a programme run by sex education experts, and taught to 81,000 American children, that has been in development for more than 20 years.

TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight.

Sky's filter fared much better, blocking 99% of sites, but it did block six porn-addiction sites.

Advertising campaign

BT blocked sites including Sexual Health Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Helpline, and Reducing The Risk, a site which tackles domestic abuse.

In the new year the four major ISPs will fund a £25m advertising campaign to explain the filters and other aspects of children's safety online.

The filters were brought in following increased parental awareness of the ease with which children can access pornography online.

Victoria Shotbolt, chief executive of the Parent Zone, said: "It's great that the four ISPs have got together and are doing an awareness-raising campaign. But it isn't even starting to be enough.

"We're focusing so heavily on filters and all of the ISPs having them and public wi-fi having filters that the message getting through to parents is that those filters will do the job."

Justin Hancock runs BishUK and was not aware his site was being blocked by some filters until he was alerted by Newsnight.

He said: "It's really frustrating because I'm trying to provide a sex education site for young people and it's hard enough directing young people to good quality information on the internet.

Over-blocking problem

"They might fix my site in the short-term but what about all the other sites that are out there for young people, not just sex education sites… who are TalkTalk to say what is allowed and isn't?"

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety has a working group to discuss over-blocking.

A TalkTalk spokesman said: " Sadly there is no silver bullet when it comes to internet safety and we have always been clear that no solution can ever be 100%. We continue to develop HomeSafe and welcome feedback to help us continually improve the service."

A Sky spokesman said: "We know that no one single technology currently provides all the answers. That's why we have a quick and easy way for misclassified sites to be unblocked. Any Sky home has the ability to fully customise their filters."

A BT spokesman said: "Categorisations are constantly updated to keep pace with changing content on the internet and we will investigate any concerns and make changes as necessary. BT Parental Controls can be customised to suit each individual family's needs."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25430582





New BT Customers Will Have Porn Filters Turned On Automatically
Katie Collins

BT has announced that new customers will from today have porn filters automatically switched on when they subscribe to its broadband service.

The company is also introducing new BT Parental Controls that go beyond the remit of its current free privacy controls, which only focuses on desktops and laptops. The new controls will cover all internet-connected devices in the home, including tablets, games consoles and smartphones.

New customers, says BT in a press release, "[will] have to make a choice on whether or not to activate the parental controls when setting up their internet connection for the first time", but adds that "the option of having the controls implemented is pre-selected". You'll either have to confirm that you're happy with the pre-selected protection level, or actively choose to change the settings, which BT is keen to remind you might expose you to "content potentially unsuitable for children".

"BT takes the issue of online child protection extremely seriously and we are very pleased to be able to launch the whole-home filter to help parents keep their families safe online. It adds to the many tools we already make available for free to our customers. We've been focused on the issue of online safety since we developed the world's first Cleanfeed filter to block child abuse images and made the technology available free to other ISPs across the world a decade ago," says Pete Oliver, MD of consumer commercial marketing and digital at BT.

If you're already a BT customer, the company will be contacting you some time over the next year in order to make you aware of the new controls and give you the option to implement them or not.

BT, along with other major ISPs, has signed up to the government's campaign to protect children from pornography, which involves forcing 95 percent of houses currently connected to the internet to choose whether to switch on filters by the end of next year. Sky and TalkTalk have already launched filter choice at the point of sign up and Virgin Media is set to introduce a similar system soon.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...c-porn-filters





Copyright Strikes Again: No Online Access To UK Internet Archive
Glyn Moody

Last week we wrote about how Norway had come up with a way to provide online access to all books in Norwegian, including the most recent ones, available to anyone in the country. Here, by contrast, is how not to do it, courtesy of publishers in the UK:

The UK is preparing to launch its official internet archive without internet access, after the publishing industry put restrictions on its release.

The archive was held up by a decade of negotiations between publishers and the British Library, meaning that regulations permitting the library to perform its first archive copy of every UK website were not passed until April this year, more than 20 years since the World Wide Web took off and 10 years since Parliament passed a law making it possible.


In my post about the Norwegian system, I joked about what form a typical copyright maximalist approach to providing online access to a nation's heritage might take:

available in a specially constructed room deep in the basement of the National Library on a (small) screen, and with guards stationed either side of it to ensure that no unauthorized copies were made.

Little did I suspect that reality was way ahead of me, as the story in Computer Weekly quoted above explains:

The British Library gave the first demonstration of the UK internet archive to publishers last week, to demonstrate how it would meet their restrictions that the only people who could see it were those privileged few people eligible for readers' passes at one of the UK's six major academic libraries -- and only then one at a time, in person, at a terminal in the library.

What's particularly tragic here is that the ten years of foot-dragging and obstructionism by the British publishers has resulted in a loss of countless millions of older Web pages that are now probably gone for ever -- and with them, a key part of the UK's early digital heritage. Once again, we see that contrary to the dogma, copyright does not always promote culture, but can destroy it, too.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...-archive.shtml





Unreleased 1963 Beatles Tracks Hit iTunes Ahead of Copyright Deadline
Alan Duke

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Releasing the songs now gives Apple records 20 more years of copyright
Many of these Beatles tracks have circulated in bootleg fashion for decades
The first tracks are rejects from their legendary marathon recording Abbey Road session
Most tracks are from live BBC radio performances in 1963

Songs recorded by the Beatles 50 years ago went on sale Tuesday to meet a deadline that otherwise would have made bootlegging the music legal.

If the the music sounds familiar, you may have heard unauthorized, lesser-quality versions circulated by fans for decades -- or similar takes on the several anthology albums released over the years by the Beatles' label, Apple Corps.

The 59 tracks downloadable on iTunes for $40 are previously unreleased. When John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr worked through a dozen or more takes of a song to get one they and producer George Martin liked, they likely hoped fans would never hear their mistakes. Some takes were so disliked that the tapes were destroyed.

The surviving recordings became a liability for the record label, because their copyright on unreleased material ends on January 1, 2014. Independent labels could legally sell compilations of rejected versions of Beatles hits. Releasing them now gives Apple another 20 years' protection under a recent change in European law.

The British government, following the change in European copyright law, implemented a law last month providing "that if a record label is not commercially releasing a track that is over 50 years old, then the performers can request that the rights in the performance revert to them -- a 'use it or lose it' clause," the government's website said.

Apple Corps did not comment to CNN on the motivation for the release, but the timing of the release and their naming it "The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963" suggests the connection.

No doubt many hardcore Beatles fans around the world are bingeing on the 14 outtakes from three 1963 studio sessions, and the 44 songs from the dozens of BBC radio shows the group performed on when their fan base was mostly limited to the British Isles. The album also offers two demo recordings of songs written for others.

The first Beatles Abbey Road session

59 rare Beatles tracks released

The first several tracks came from their legendary 13-hour session with Martin on February 11, 1963.

You'll hear three full takes of "There's a Place," the first song they recorded that fateful day at EMI Studios in Abbey Road, London.

Some of the tracks apparently were recorded for good measure after the group already got a take they were satisfied with.

The new release includes the seventh take of "Do You Want to Know a Secret," while the sixth one was released in 1963. At the end of the take McCartney comments about the "the do-da-do bits" in the vocal harmonies.

The sixth take of "Taste of Honey" is included from that session. It was the fifth take with added vocals that made it on the 1963 album.

The Beatles got only three complete takes of "I Saw Her Standing There" out of nine attempts during that marathon first session. One was released in 1963 and a second in a 1995 anthology project. The new release, the second take, is the third and only previously unreleased complete version.

Two takes of "Misery" -- the first and seventh recording that afternoon -- are included. You will not hear Martin's piano, which was dubbed onto the final version a week later.

Abbey Road Studio: March 1963

The two tracks of "From Me to You" offer a glimpse of the group's studio demeanor during another Abbey Road session on March 5, 1963. They stop playing abruptly in the first take, with Martin asking why. "I just thought I heard you talking actually. Did you whistle? "

One Beatle to another at the end of the second take: "Ah, you missed the ending, baby."

"George is to play the first bit of the instrumental, isn't he?" Lennon asks before they start another take. "Key right into the harmony."

"Thank You Girl," a song written as a tribute to their already dedicated female groupies, is next. The new release includes the first and fifth of 13 takes from the March session. The song was used as a B-side on a single.

Fans can enjoy a lot of chatter between the group on the two takes of "One After 909" in the March session. "What are you doing?" Lennon asks another when the first take falls apart. "Are you out of your mind?" The song was not released until the Beatles played it on a rooftop for the 1970 "Let It Be" album.

The band seemed to struggle in that March session with "Hold Me Tight," a song they later said they never cared for. The bootleg project gives you take 21.

The last studio outtake on the album is "Money (That's What I Want)," recorded on July 18, 1963.

Beatles on the BBC 1963

The next 44 tracks are from the dozens of Beatles live appearances on BBC radio programs in 1963, including "Saturday Club," "Easy Beat," "Here We Go," "Side By Side," "From Us To Us" and the group's own weekly series, "Pop Go The Beatles."

Several versions of their first big hit in England, "Love Me Do," "Taste of Honey" and "She Loves You" are included. Some of the shows had live audiences, adding the flavor of screaming fans. The recording quality, none in stereo, varies from show to show, since the BBC was not trying to save the performances for later release.

The tracks include the BBC hosts' introductions, which remind the listener of where the Beatles were in early 1963.

"For the moment the majority of the Beatles fans are in their hometown of Liverpool, and I have a very strong suspicion that it won't be long before they're all over the country," the announcer said as he introduced their performance of "Love Me Do" on the BBC's "Easy Beat" show on January 26, 1963.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/17/sh...tles-bootlegs/





The TPP's Attack on Artists' Termination Rights
Parker Higgins and Sarah Jeong

There are any number of controversial proposals in the leaked text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chapter on intellectual property. Here’s one that’s not getting enough attention: the TPP appears to contain yet another attempt to undermine "termination rights," which grant artists the ability to regain control over copyrights they've assigned away after 35 years.

Termination rights are, under U.S. law, an inalienable counterweight to the power imbalance built into many content industry contracts. Not surprisingly, those same industries have been pushing for years to eliminate these rights, including a notorious 1999 incident where a Congressional staffer, later hired as an RIAA lobbyist, snuck anti-artist language into an entirely unrelated bill.

Termination rights aren’t the sexiest part of the copyright scheme, but they matter for artists—especially musicians. But if a trade agreement mandates the unencumbered contractual transfer of economic rights without legal limitations—as contemplated in the TPP—then existing rights granted to artists under U.S. law could be deemed out of compliance.

How Musicians Can Take Their Copyrights Back

Artists and other creators transfer their copyrights all the time: musicians, for example, will assign some copyrights to their label, usually in exchange for an advance and agreed-to royalties. These contracts have been critiqued for perpetuating a huge power imbalance between the artist and the recording industry. Termination of transfer gives artists—as in, the original holder of the copyright, before it is assigned to anybody else—a way to get out of those deals. Thirty-five years after publication, the original copyright holder can terminate the transfer of rights and once again claim exclusive rights to her work.

The Recording Industry's Efforts to Kill Termination Rights

Record companies have long been concerned that as the termination rights became available, artists would try to get out of deals they deemed unfair. That's come to a head in 2013, the 35th year since the Copyright Act came into effect in 1978 (and so the first time artists have been able to take advantage of these termination rights). Victor Willis of the Village People successfully terminated the copyright transfers of many of his recordings, including “YMCA,” but for many musicians, securing termination has been a difficult and litigious affair, fraught with legal technicalities. For example, in 2010, a court found that Bob Marley’s pre-1978 recordings were not entitled to termination, denying his family the chance to reap the benefits of owning copyright in many of his now-iconic songs.

Why the complexity? After all, termination rights are supposed to be inalienable: according to the statute, any contract provisions waiving these rights is unenforceable. To borrow language from the TPP, U.S. law does not allow “free” and “separate” transfer of “that right by contract.” But termination rights are also limited in nature: they are not granted to employees that create works within the “scope of their employment,” or to independent contractors who create contractual “works-for-hire”—which are limited to a very specific, enumerated list within the Copyright Act.

But that list does not include sound recordings. Thus, the recording industry's attempts to restrict termination rights have primarily taken two forms: either challenging termination rights directly, or changing the definitions of things, by reclassifying sound recordings as works-for-hire, musicians as employees, or (seriously!) albums as "compilations" instead of individual songs—each of which would seriously restrict the ability of musicians to exercise termination rights.

In 1999, for example, a Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier took the reclassification route by surreptitiously adding a provision to an unrelated bill that amended the Copyright Act to include sound recordings as works for hire. The bill passed, and just three months later, the staffer was hired by the RIAA. The ensuing outrage from artists resulted in a rare legislative reversal: the Glazier amendment was repealed.

TPP as New Weapon of Choice

The section of the TPP labeled QQ.G.9 appears to be a more direct challenge to termination rights. It says:

Each Party shall provide that for copyright and related rights, any person acquiring or holding any economic right in a work, performance, or phonogram: may freely and separately transfer that right by contract; and by virtue of a contract, including contracts of employment underlying the creation of works, performances, and phonograms, shall be able to exercise that right in that person's own name and enjoy fully the benefits derived from that right.1

The termination right, of course, is a limit on free transfer. As a result, instead of a narrow attack on the termination rights of musicians by reclassifying their works as “works-for-hire,” the text here could eliminate termination rights for everyone. It is an open question whether QQ.G.9 would actually mandate such a significant change in U.S. law, but it is worth noting that the provision specifically targets “phonograms”—legal jargon for sound recordings. Furthermore, an addition proposed by Chile seems to have been designed to mitigate the possibility of broad scale legal changes, leaving us concerned about the ramifications of the current language.

Was this TPP provision written to finish the work started fourteen years ago? The RIAA (which still employs Mitch Glazier) has certainly been influential in the TPP negotiations, and has well-documented ties to the US Trade Representative’s office. But we have no way to know for sure, and it is possible that QQ.G.9 is only intended to lay the groundwork for the U.S. Trade Representative to place similar language in the still nascent Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and erode the robust set of inalienable rights present in EU copyright.

We Need Transparency

Regardless of the intent behind the provision, it is clear that the lack of transparency regarding the TPP is a problem. In 1999, much of the outrage was directed at the manner in which the Glazier amendment was added to an unrelated bill—“No hearings were held, no public debate took place, and no member of Congress sponsored the act[ion].”

When intellectual property policy is taken up in the trade context, that very lack of democracy and transparency becomes the standard. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement—indeed most bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements—are negotiated in secret by unelected officials. Citizen stakeholders are locked out of discussions, the text is inaccessible to the public until it is finalized, and the final product is often railroaded through Congress with little more than a rubber stamp thanks to a mechanism called Fast Track Authority.

The game has been rigged so that the options are limited for those who are affected by QQ.G.9. Indeed, we owe a debt to WikiLeaks: if they had never published the text of the agreement, opposition to the bill would be based on much shakier information. But leaks are not a substitute for transparency and accountability.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is inherently anti-democratic, and is being used as a forum to rehash and launder in policies that have already been blocked by democratic processes. What QQ.G.9 shows is that the secrecy surrounding the TPP is not just a threat to the Internet and to Internet users. It is a threat to creators, musicians, artists, and copyright-holders as well.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/1...ination-rights





Obama Administration Sued Over its Secretive Trade Negotiations
Timothy B. Lee

For the last few years, the Obama administration has been negotiating a treaty known as the Trans Pacific Partnership. While the treaty is officially focused on promoting international trade, it also includes language on a number of other issues. One of them is the "intellectual property" section, which critics have warned could force the United States to adopt legal changes favorable to copyright holders.

But when critics of these policies have sought details about what the Obama administration is negotiating, they have been rebuffed. So on Wednesday, the news site IP Watch filed a lawsuit to force the U.S. Trade Representative to release more documents related to the treaty. The lawsuit argues that USTR failed to adequately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request the news organization filed more than a year ago.

"It's really only the American public that's been shut out of access to these documents," says Joshua Weinger, a law student at Yale. The Obama administration has shared some of the documents at issue in the lawsuit with foreign governments and others with domestic industry groups. But the documents are not available to the general public, and academics and public interest groups interested in IP issues have struggled to obtain information about the treaty.

Weinger is part of a team of students in Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic that has been helping IP Watch reporter Michael New seek access to TPP-related documents. With help from the MFIA, New filed a Freedom of Information Act request to USTR on Mar. 23, 2012. According to Wednesday's lawsuit, it took USTR nearly a year to respond to the request, and USTR refused to provide most of the documents New had requested.

Instead, USTR responded that the "draft text of the TPP, circulated among TPP negotiating parties is classified per Executive Order 13,526." That executive order relates to national security information. "It seems puzzling to us that any of these documents should be classified," Weinger argues, since the documents they're seeking relate to copyright and patent law, not normally regarded as national security issues.

USTR also declined to provide information about correspondence between USTR and industry groups, arguing that the communications fell under the "deliberative process privilege," designed to protect the confidentiality of the executive branch's internal deliberations.

USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie disputes Weinger's claim that the TPP negotiating process has been secretive. "The reality is that TPP negotiations have been more transparent and consultative than any U.S. trade agreement in history while maintaining the confidentiality appropriate for a government-to-government negotiation," she said in an e-mailed statement. "Releasing internal deliberative documents would undermine U.S. leverage in negotiations and impair our ability to pursue the strongest possible outcomes on issues ranging from labor and environmental protections to market access for U.S. goods and services."

Guthrie also faulted the IP Watch lawsuit for "factual misrepresentations," including what she described as "the inaccurate assertion to the court that only industry representatives have access to the draft negotiating text."

It's true that some non-industry groups have access to the text. For example, there are advisory committees for labor unions and environmental groups. But the IP Watch lawsuit is focused on the TPP's IP provisions. Guthrie wasn't able to identify non-industry groups focused on those issues that have been granted access to confidential documents.

Guthrie also stressed that USTR has worked extensively with Congress. "USTR has held more than 1,100 separate meetings on the TPP with Members of Congress and with their staffs, to make sure the people's representatives know what's being negotiated and get to shape the talks," she said.

But Weinger argues that's not good enough. In his view, the public should have access to information about the TPP. "The treaty could have profound effects on intellectual property rights," he says. "It will affect everybody, because everyone uses patented technology and copyrighted works."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-negotiations/





Aereo to TV Companies: You Want a Supreme Court Fight? No Problem.

The high court should hear Aereo's case, not "purported" rival FilmOn's.
Joe Mullin

When Aereo launched its TV-over-Internet business based on tiny antennas, it drew quick legal attack from broadcasters, who have said Aereo's scheme breaks copyright laws.

But Aereo has won every key legal battle since, beating the TV companies in federal courts in New York and Boston as well as at a key appeals court—twice. Aereo has relied on the landmark 2008 Cablevision case, which ruled that use of a remote-DVR is legal and doesn't constitute a "public performance" under copyright law.

TV executives are livid over the Aereo wins and have even made outlandish claims that they may go off the air if Aereo keeps winning. In October, lawyers for the major TV networks sent a petition asking for the Supreme Court to consider the case.

Today Aereo filed its response brief (PDF), and it takes a surprising position. Usually a company that experiences a total win on appeal, as Aereo did, would want the Supreme Court to not take their case. But Aereo argued just the opposite, saying that while the decision at the 2nd Circuit was spot-on, the Supreme Court should go ahead and consider it as well.

Stop the "war of attrition"

Aereo needs a decision for two reasons. The first reason, addressed directly by the company today, is simple: TV broadcasters are going to keep waging a scorched-earth litigation campaign until they can't anymore. They have sued Aereo in five cases in three states, and there's no sign it's going to let up.

"We have decided to not oppose the broadcasters’ petition for certiorari before the United States Supreme Court," said Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia in a statement today. "Broadcasters appear determined to keep litigating the same issues against Aereo in every jurisdiction that we enter. We want this resolved on the merits rather than through a wasteful war of attrition."

A second important reason is addressed, albeit curtly, in Aereo's legal brief. The company really, really doesn't want courts to decide the issue based on a case involving its "purported competitor" FilmOn.

In its brief, Aereo explains to the court that its technology allows users to make "an individual copy of the programming... recorded to hard disk storage," similar to a home DVR. The system includes extra reproductions that aren't technologically necessary in order to adhere to copyright law.

"Even if two users choose to view the same television program at the same time—as they often will—they will never share an antenna, data stream, or digital recording," point out Aereo lawyers.

The four TV broadcasters suing Aereo—ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox—are relying on case law that has, at times, found that even individual viewings can be considered "public performances" under copyright law. For instance, movie studios prevailed in a 1991 case that found a hotel's video-on-demand system infringed public performance rights even when viewed in private rooms. In 2011, DVD-over-Internet company Zediva was shut down with a similar line of legal reasoning.

In recent years, those large TV broadcasters have started earning large sums from cable and satellite companies that pay "retransmission fees" for carrying their content. But as much as they may want those fees, Aereo doesn't have to pay them, its lawyers argue. "Petitioners have no right to collect retransmission fees from consumers who use antennas and DVRs," states Aereo's brief.

Aereo: We are not FilmOn

Underlying Aereo's decision is the risk that a company called FilmOn—also building a TV-over-Internet business and also involved in litigation against TV companies—will interfere with its own strategy.

FilmOn is run by the eccentric Alki David, who has combined a spirited but unsuccessful legal battle with odd CBS-bashing videos and a parody site called BarryDriller.com (mocking the name of Aereo investor Barry Diller.)

In the brief, Aereo urges the court to take up this case before lawsuits regarding its "purported competitor" FilmOn result in a circuit split.

Aereo clearly doesn't want the nation's high court to consider the issue with FilmOn—which has been held in contempt for violating a court order in one of its cases—arguing in its place.

Kanojia described the issue today as a matter of consumer rights.

"Consumers have the right to use an antenna to access the over-the-air television," said Kanojia today. "It is a right that should be protected and preserved and in fact, has been protected for generations by Congress."





Baby Seat with iPad Holder Stirs Controversy
Daniel Lovering

An advocacy group called on toy maker Fisher-Price to stop selling a baby seat designed to hold an iPad at the front, saying the product encourages parents to leave infants alone to watch screens that could be harmful.

The bouncy seat with an iPad holder is the "ultimate electronic babysitter" and blocks a baby's view of the world, undermining the child's interaction with caregivers, said the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, based in Boston, in a statement.

The group cited research by the American Academy of Pediatrics that suggested screen time for children under age 2 was linked to language delays, sleep disturbance and learning problems later in childhood. There was no evidence it was advantageous, the group said in the statement, which was issued on Tuesday.

Babies left alone with iPads also could be deprived of activities shown to be beneficial to brain development, such as hands-on creative play and positive interaction with adults, the group said.

"By manufacturing a device to restrain infants in front of a screen, even when they're too young to sit up, Fisher-Price actually discourages interactions that are crucial to learning and healthy development," Dr. Susan Linn, the group's director, said in the statement.

"Babies thrive when they're talked to, played with, and held — not when they're alone with a screen," Linn said.

Juliette Reashor, a spokeswoman for Fisher-Price, a brand owned by toy manufacturer Mattel, said in a statement on Wednesday that consumers who purchased the Newborn-to-Toddler Apptivity Seat for iPad gave it positive reviews "that show strong parent involvement and support."

The seat was never meant to be an educational product for children and is only available online, she said.

"We wanted to offer it as yet another option for those parents who want the added feature of engaging in age-appropriate content with their children," Reashor said in the statement.

The infant seat includes a mirror that can hold an iPad, providing "another way to stimulate and engage baby while protecting your device from baby's sticky fingers and preventing unintentional navigating to other apps," a product description on Fisher-Price's website said.

The company offers free apps to use with the seat that feature "soft, soothing sounds and nature scenes, black-and-white images and high-contrast patterns that help develop eye-tracking skills," it said. Other apps for older babies introduce letters and numbers through sing-along tunes, sounds and friendly characters.

The apps' visual content ends after 10-12 minutes to help parents keep track of their child's viewing time, the website said.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Gunna Dickson)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9BA0X220131211





Kim Dotcom Ratted Out Rival File-Sharing Sites, Court Documents Claim
David Kravets

Three months before federal authorities shuttered Megaupload and indicted its top seven executives, the file-sharing site’s founder, Kim Dotcom, urged PayPal not to do business with rival sites because of their “criminal activity,” according to a 200-page document Virginia federal prosecutors unveiled today.

If true, the revelation, one of countless the authorities noted in their filing, adds a touch of irony to a long-stalled criminal prosecution of what U.S. authorities have said is “among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States.”

The October 2011 e-mail from Dotcom to PayPal, the text of which was released today, came as Megaupload terminated a rewards program that provided monetary incentives to some of its 66 million users to upload content.

Our legal team in the US is currently preparing to sue some of our competitors and expose their criminal activity. We like to give you a heads up and advice [sic] you not to work with sites that are known to pay uploaders for pirated content. They are damaging the image and the existence of the file hosting industry (see whats happening with the Protect IP act). Look at Fileserve.com, Videobb.com, Filesonic.com, Wupload.com, Uploadstation.com. These sites pay everyone (no matter if the files are pirated or not) and have NO repeat infringer policy. And they are using PAYPAL to pay infringers.

It’s not the first time Dotcom, who is in New Zealand fighting extradition charges to the United States, has undermined his rivals.

Eighteen months before Megaupload’s operators were indicted in January 2012, the company complied with a secret U.S. search warrant targeting five of its users, who were running their own file-sharing service using Megaupload’s infrastructure, according to interviews and court documents.

The June 24, 2010 warrant to search the Megaupload servers in Virginia (.pdf) was part of a U.S. criminal investigation into NinjaVideo, which was piggy-backing on Megaupload’s “Megavideo” streaming service. Though the feds had already begun quietly investigating Megaupload months before, in this case the government treated Megaupload as NinjaVideo’s internet service provider, serving Megaupload with the warrant and asking them to keep it quiet.

Megaupload kept the warrant a secret and turned over information on the alleged NinjaVideo operators, as well as database information on the 39 pirated movies detailed in the warrant. The NinjaVideo probe led to the indictment of the five top NinjaVideo administrators, including founder Hana Beshara, on charges similar to those now faced by Dotcom and other Megaupload operators.

In today’s filing, the government blasted Dotcom’s e-mail to PayPal:

In direct contrast to DOTCOM’s statements in his e-mail, for over six years as part of the “Uploader Rewards” program, the Mega Conspiracy paid users who had uploaded “pirated” content, and as demonstrated in the sections entitled Willful Failure to Remove Copyright-Infringing Files and Misrepresentations to Copyright Owners, the Mega Conspiracy failed to terminate repeat infringers.

Megaupload says it’s innocent of the federal criminal copyright charges, was acting as an internet service provider and is immune to its customers’ activities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The government claims Megaupload does not enjoy the so-called DMCA “safe harbor” protection because it accuses Megaupload of failing to remove content at the request of rightsholders, an accusation and others that Megaupload disputes.

The government, in today’s filing, counters:

“The preliminary analysis of the database for Megavideo.com further reflects approximately 34.9 billion video streams, or views, of all files. Of these, at least approximately 15 billion streams, or roughly 43%, are of unique video files that had received at least one copyright take-down request.”

An extradition hearing for Dotcom is tentatively set for next summer. Dotcom is free in New Zealand, awaiting the hearing and challenging the charges against him and six of his colleagues.

The government’s indictment said the site facilitated copyright infringement of movies “often before their theatrical release, music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale.” The government said Megaupload’s “estimated harm” to copyright holders was “well in excess of $500 million.”

In addition to the indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Justice Department seized 18 domains connected to Megaupload. The agency said it executed more than 20 search warrants in the United States and eight countries, seizing $50 million in assets.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...estroy-rivals/





BitTorrent Unveils Secure Messaging Service to Counter 'NSA Dragnet Surveillance'
Jacob Kastrenakes

BitTorrent wants to build a secure chat service that will only ever let a message's sender and receiver take a look at what's being sent — encrypted or otherwise. It announced the service several months ago, and today it's detailing how BitTorrent Chat will work. In a blog post, BitTorrent explains that the service will use public key encryption, forward secrecy, and a distributed hash table — a jumble of technologies that mean chats will be individually encrypted and won't be stored on some company's server.

Traditional chat services are vulnerable "to hackers, to NSA dragnet surveillance."

The service is in part a response to the NSA's wide-reaching surveillance programs, among other privacy concerns. "It’s become increasingly clear that we need to devote hackathons, hours and resources to developing a messaging app that protects user privacy," Christian Averill, BitTorrent's director of communications, writes in a blog post. Because most current chat services rely on central servers to facilitate the exchange of messages, Averill writes, "they're vulnerable: to hackers, to NSA dragnet surveillance sweeps."

BitTorrent chat aims to avoid those vulnerabilities through its encryption methods and decentralized infrastructure. Rather than checking in with one specific server, users of BitTorrent chat will collectively help each other figure out where to route messages to. In order to get started chatting, you'll just need to give someone else your public key — effectively your identifier.

Exchanging public keys doesn't sound like the simplest way to begin a chat, but Averill tells The Verge that BitTorrent hopes to make it easy enough for anyone interested. "What we're going to do is to make sure there are options for how this is set up," Averill writes in an email. "This way it will appeal to the more privacy conscious consumer as well as the less technically inclined."

BitTorrent isn't quite ready to detail how that'll work or what it'll be like to actually use the service though. For now, it remains in a private testing phase that interested users can apply for access to. There's no word on when it'll be open to everyone, but with all of the recent surveillance revelations, it's easy to imagine that some people will be eager to get started.

Evan Rodgers contributed to this report.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5...saging-service





Suddenly, Messages Are Disappearing All Over—On Purpose

A handful of ephemeral messaging services offer sophisticated services that rival Snapchat.
Selena Larson

The idea that only sexters and teens find disappearing messages attractive has been debunked. More sophisticated messaging services are implementing self-destructive features that go beyond photo and doodle messaging.

Snapchat still owns the ephemeral messaging market, and although the company has yet to release any real user numbers, it claims its users are receiving 400 million snaps a day. The service reportedly turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook.

Snapchat, however, has its flaws. Snapchat’s messages aren’t actually deleted from the device’s memory once they "disappear," and the application, now over two years old, still has a confusing user interface. Of course, if you're less concerned with privacy and more interested in the novelty of temporary messages, then snap away.

Its rivals, however, take that whole privacy thing a little more seriously.

Government Strength Security

It's actually possible to send messages from a smartphone that even the government can’t access.

Wickr, a messaging service that completely erases your communication, uses military-grade encryption called CDH521 to safeguard your messages. The company uses a different key for every message generated on your mobile device, meaning you are protected from both hackers and law enforcement.

“Since this summer and [Edward] Snowden, we’re seeing a huge response; people want private communications,” Wickr co-founder Nico Sell said.

Wickr lets you send texts, picture, voice, video and PDF messages that have a self-destructing time limit of up to five days. When the message expires, a so-called shredder built into the application deletes it from the device’s memory. Wickr’s shredder works in the background of the device, rewriting all the data users trash—including emails, photos, and messages not stored in Wickr.

“It’s ironic because we would even make Snapchat more safe,” Sell said.

Snapchat admits it has passed over snaps to law enforcement, and Sell said the FBI has also asked Wickr for messages and a backdoor to the service. But because the encryption is so advanced, even if the company wanted to, it’s impossible to hand over the information.

The application currently has one million downloads, and although users are anonymous, anecdotal evidence suggests the app is used by human rights activists, lawyers, and journalists. Wickr is also HIPAA compliant, so some hospitals and medical staff use it to communicate.

In order to appeal to a mainstream audience and capitalize on the ephemeral messaging trend, Wickr redesigned its application and gave it what Sell calls, a lighter interface. It now boasts a revamped user interface that's easier to navigate and that lets users add things like doodles and explosions to messages. The new application is available for download today in the App Store and next week on Google Play.

Wickr has also found a way to connect to your phone’s address book without actually seeing the contact information. Unlike other messaging apps, Wickr keeps all users anonymous and never has access to your contacts.

A Messaging Trend

As the popularity of Snapchat grows, so does the number of private messaging apps that aim to improve the ephemeral experience.

One such app, Hash, lets users send text and messages that disappear after seven seconds. The user interface is clean and easy to navigate, and like Snapchat, you can send to individuals or a group. The best feature is that it’s screenshot-proof—the sender is never shown in the same screen as the message, so even if someone snaps a screenshot of a message, there's no way to tell who sent it.

Of course, some apps recognize that not all our communications are meant to go up in smoke. Users of the messaging application Ansa can go “off the record” and send messages that self-destruct in 60 seconds. The killer feature of Ansa is that you can also retroactively delete messages already sent; synced deletion removes the messages from both the sender’s and receiver’s device.
The Future of Ephemerality

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google are all angling to own our message traffic. None of the social giants have yet to implement messages that vanish, but it’s likely that we’ll see similar features come to social networks in the future.

For now, scrappy startups are capitalizing on our desire for privacy, and continuing to provide a safe and secure way for people to connect in a way that goes far beyond pictures.
http://readwrite.com/2013/12/20/snap...ls-competitors





Harvard Student Tried to Dodge Exam with Bomb Hoax, FBI Says
M. Alex Johnson and Tom Winter

A Harvard student was charged Tuesday with making a hoax bomb threat just so he could get out of a final exam.

Eldo Kim, 20, of Cambridge, Mass., was scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court. He could face as long as five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine if convicted of communicating the bomb threat that cleared four large buildings Monday.

In an affidavit filed included with the criminal complaint, the FBI said Kim admitted sending the bogus threats out of "a desire to avoid a final exam." The exam he was trying to duck wasn't specified.

The affidavit said Kim emailed bomb threats to several Harvard offices, including the campus police and the student newspaper, about 8:30 a.m. ET Monday. He said he acted alone and picked the addresses at random from the university's website, according to the affidavit.

Under a subject line reading "bombs placed around campus," the messages read: "shrapnel bombs placed in science center, sever hall, emerson hall, thayer hall, 2/4. guess correctly. be quick for they will go off soon," according to the complaint.

He said he chose the word "shrapnel" because "it sounded more dangerous" and wrote "2/4. guess correctly" to slow the evacuation, according to the affidavit.

"Kim was scheduled to take a final exam in Emerson Hall, a building on the Harvard campus, at 9:00 a.m. on December 16, 2013. Kim stated that he was in Emerson Hall at 9:00 a.m. when the fire alarm sounded and the building was evacuated," it said, adding:

"According to Kim, upon hearing the alarm, he knew that his plan had worked."

Each of the buildings was evacuated, and investigators found no explosives, but all morning exams were postponed. Because the four buildings are clustered together near Harvard Yard, the historic center of campus was closed.

Kim took several steps to hide his identity, but in the end, it was the WiFi that got him, the FBI said.

Kim said he sent his messages using a temporary, anonymous email account routed through the worldwide anonymizing network Tor, according to the affidavit.

So far, so good. But to get to Tor, he had to go through Harvard's wireless network — and university technicians were able to detect that it was Kim who was trying to get to Tor, according to the affidavit.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...-fbi-says?lite





Boston Police Indefinitely Suspends License Plate Reader Program

BPD's scanners saw a stolen motorcycle 59 times over 5 months and police did nothing.
Cyrus Farivar

The Boston Police Department (BPD) has indefinitely halted its use of license plate readers (LPR) following an investigation published on Saturday into their use by the investigative journalism organization MuckRock and the Boston Globe.

David Estrada, a BPD spokesperson, confirmed to Ars that the department had stopped using its LPRs for now and asked that further questions be submitted in writing, which Ars has done.

This suspension likely makes Boston one of the largest cities in America to stop using this sort of technology, which for years has been in wide use by thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide. At present, BPD uses 14 individual LPRs, which enables them to scan “as many as 4 million vehicles a year,” the Globe noted.

As Ars has reported for more than a year, LPRs are in use in cities big and small across America. Typically, the specialized cameras scan a given plate using optical character recognition technology, checking that plate against a “hot list” of stolen or wanted vehicles. The device then also typically will record the date, time, and GPS location of any plates—hot or not—that it sees.

The cameras typically scan at an extremely high rate, usually around 60 plates per second. Law enforcement policies vary widely as to how long that information can be retained. Different agencies keep that data from anywhere from a few weeks to indefinitely. Some cities have even mounted such cameras at their city borders, monitoring who comes in and out.

In 2012, reporting by MuckRock showed that BPD could keep such data “indefinitely for investigatory purposes,” although otherwise data is routinely kept for 90 days. In April 2013, MuckRock further reported that just 32 percent of Massachusetts law enforcement agencies known to operate LPR deployments have formal standards governing the use of the scanners and duration of their data retention.

BPD scanning its own vehicles

The whole saga kicked off when MuckRock requested an LPR dataset from the BPD in January 2013. The request was initially denied, but then by April 2013, the BPD agreed to release a database of scans that triggered flags, without the actual plate numbers. But when the data was actually handed over, the BPD inadvertently included unredacted data on 68,000 vehicles across six months.

The two news agencies brought this disclosure to the attention of the BPD in September 2013, but it was not until November 2013 that they acknowledged the error and asked for the data to be returned. The Globe declined to do so, “but has no intention of publishing any individual plate information.”

The Globe’s own cursory analysis shows that some vehicles were scanned dozens of times despite being flagged for being stolen or having expired insurance. This data set also appears to raise even more questions about the use of the LPR infrastructure.

As the Globe reported:

One Harley Davidson motorcycle that had been reported stolen passed license plate scanners a total of 59 times between Oct. 19, 2012, and March 13, 2013. It was often recorded on sequential days or multiple times in a single day, all by the same scanner and almost always within the same half-hour span in the early evening.

Boston police chief technical officer John Daley indicated that each of these scans prompted an e-mail alert to the department’s Stolen Car Unit, but there is no indication that the motorcycle was ever apprehended or even stopped.

Some of the most frequent hits in the database were scanned in Boston police’s own employee parking lots. More than two hundred vehicles parked in the police substation lot in South Boston, a mix of official and personal vehicles, triggered scanner alerts over the six months. Police declined to discuss why they would be scanning the parking lot or why there would be so many potential violations.

Collect all the plates

Politicians and advocacy groups, chiefly the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, say that this new revelation is highly disturbing.

“The main thing here is that police were not following up about stolen cars,” Kade Crockford, the director of the Technology for Liberty Initiative at the ACLU Massachusetts, told Ars.

Anon officer: “No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?”
She noted that typically, police departments tout LPRs as a way to help vastly expand an agency’s ability to catch stolen vehicles. Crockford also underscored that her organization is not opposed to LPRs in principle, but called for tighter and more uniform regulations about how long LPR data is retained, and under what circumstances it can be used.

The national office of the ACLU also recently published an analysis showing that of the over 204 million plates that were scanned in Washington, DC during 2012, just 0.01 percent of them even registered as being on the “hot list,” which can range from a minor infraction to being wanted of a major crime.

“It’s clear that in fact the reason that police departments are using this technology might not actually be the reason that they say they’re using it for,” Crockford added. “We found that in this case that they’re not following up on the stolen car hits and to us that says: the only [reason] that it’s being used is to collect huge troves of people’s movements.”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...eader-program/





The New Armor That Lets You Sense Surveillance Cameras

Like a creepy digital tap on the shoulder
Robinson Meyer

We pass under surveillance cameras every day, appearing on perhaps hundreds of minutes of film. We rarely notice them. London-based artist James Bridle would like to remind us.

Bridle has created a wearable device he calls the “surveillance spaulder.” Inspired by the original spaulder—a piece of medieval plate armor that protected “the wearer from unexpected and unseen blows from above”—the surveillance spaulder alerts the wearer to similarly unseen, if electronic, attacks. Whenever its sensor detects the the type of infrared lighting commonly used with surveillance cameras, it sends an electric signal to two “transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation” pads, which causes the wearer to twitch.

That is: Whenever the spaulder detects a security camera, it makes your shoulder jump a little. You can see the spaulder in action in the video above.

The surveillance spaulder isn’t the only project that explains how hard-to-see surveillance might be countered. In October, a Dutch artist claimed to invent a shirt that confused facial-recognition algorithms; before that, the American designer Adam Harvey explored make-up, hair-dos and shawls that could confuse the facial- or body-recognition software used in drones. And many of these ideas hail back to science fiction writer William Gibson’s “ugly t-shirt,” a theoretical garment so hideous that surveillance cameras couldn’t stand to look at it.

But Bridle’s spaulder has a slightly different goal. Instead of obstructing cameras and algorithms, it merely alerts the wearer to their presence. It’s a technology—and an art project—of reminding. The surveillance spaulder provides a “a tap on the shoulder,” Bridle writes, “every time one comes under the gaze of power.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...ameras/282335/





State Police Acknowledge Use Of Cell Phone Tracking Device

A USA Today and IndyStar investigation found the Indiana State Police purchased a device called a Stringray that captures nearby cell phone data.
Taylor Killough

The Indiana State Police are responding to lawmakers’ and civil rights organizations’ concerns that it is overstepping its boundaries by using a device that can track cell phone calls, text messages and movements within a set radius.

Indiana State Police Captain Dave Bursten said in a statement the department is working well within the bounds of the law. He says protection of investigation methods is key to the success of building a case.

Bursten won’t say exactly how the technology is used, because he says it would be “like a football team giving up their playbook.”

A joint USA Today and IndyStar investigation found earlier this month that the state police spent $373,995 on a device called a Stingray.

Often installed in a surveillance vehicle, the suitcase-size Stingrays trick all cellphones in a set distance — sometimes exceeding a mile, depending on the terrain and antennas — into connecting to it as if it were a real cellphone tower. That allows police agencies to capture location data and numbers dialed for calls and text messages from thousands of people at a time.

State police officials initially refused to provide any records related to the purchase of the Stingray.

After the IndyStar appealed the denial to the Indiana Public Access Counselor, the Indiana State Police provided a one-page document confirming the purchase of the device but no information about how it is used.

USA Today and the IndyStar also sought records about what are known as “tower dumps,” in which police seek court orders requiring cell phone companies to provide investigators with massive amounts of phone data.

Network Indiana contributed to this report.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/s...-device-59918/





How Americans Were Deceived About Cell-Phone Location Data

Remember when multiple Obama Administration figures said the NSA doesn't collect it? That wasn't true.
Conor Friedersdorf

Shortly after the earliest articles sourced to Edward Snowden appeared, Americans newly aware of the cell phones in their pockets started wondering: Would the NSA ever collect the location data that all of us generate? The possibility proved worrisome to the public and privacy experts alike. A surveillance state that routinely tracked our movement would feel dystopian and enable abuse, as various TV, web, and print commentators noted.

Even Congress seemed to be concerned. A letter signed by 26 senators declared that NSA bulk collection of phone records has a significant impact on privacy.* "This is particularly true if these records are collected in a manner that includes cell phone locational data, effectively turning Americans' cell phones into tracking devices," it stated. "Has the NSA collected or made plans to collect Americans’ cell-site location data in bulk?"

Now we know that the answer is yes.

"The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world," the Washington Post reported on December 4, noting "a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices." Many Americans are affected by the tactic (emphasis added throughout):

The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.

One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said “we are getting vast volumes” of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year.

A subsequent Post article notes that the NSA is also "using commercially gathered information to help it locate mobile devices around the world, the documents show," explaining, "many smartphone apps running on iPhones and Android devices, and the Apple and Google operating systems themselves, track the location of each device, often without a clear warning to the phone's owner." Back in October, we also found out that the NSA had "once tested whether it could track Americans' cell phone locations," and that in doing so, the secretive agency even acquired some "samples" of location data, which it may still have.

Put simply, everyone who feared that the NSA collects location data on Americans was correct. But they didn't learn that back when they expressed those fears.

Quite the contrary. On multiple occasions, Obama Administration officials spoke about the collection of cell-phone location data in ways that were often technically accurate but wildly deceptive. In so doing, they succeeded in confusing the surveillance debate and creating the inaccurate impression that location data wasn't being collected.

This is a review of their deceptions.

Fooling the Wall Street Journal

One of the earliest successes at leading the public astray came in a June 16, 2013, Wall Street Journal article:

The National Security Agency sweeps up data on millions of cellphones and Internet communications under secret court orders. But as it mounts a rigorous defense of its surveillance, the agency has disclosed new details that portray its efforts as tightly controlled and limited in scope, while successful in thwarting potential plots. On Sunday, officials said that though the NSA is authorized to collect "geolocational" information that can pinpoint the location of callers, it chooses not to. A secret court order that was made public earlier this month directed Verizon Communications Inc. to turn over to the NSA "comprehensive communications routing information." Under this authority, NSA would have the ability to collect data on locations of calls placed or received, a U.S. official said Sunday.

Other major phone companies including AT&T and Sprint also operate under similar orders, former officials say.

As part of this program, however, the NSA chooses not to collect such data as the nearest cellphone tower used to place or receive a mobile call, U.S. officials said. In a statement released this weekend, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the NSA program doesn't collect "any cell phone locational information." Such information has been found to be of value to criminal investigators, who can use it to link suspects with crime scenes. However, the U.S. official said the data doesn't provide sufficient intelligence value to justify the resources that would be required to use it.

The U.S. officials were sufficiently misleading with their statements that the WSJ reporters led their readers astray in the lede, where they neglected to include the seemingly unimportant but actually crucial caveat, "as part of this program." That caveat made what their sources told them technically accurate. The NSA apparently wasn't collecting location data as part of its Section 215 bulk-metadata-collection program (the one revealed in that initial Glenn Greenwald story about the NSA getting phone records on all Verizon customers)—it was collecting location data under different programs that had yet to be revealed.

Had the reporters known the truth, they may not have contextualized the story with language about an NSA surveillance effort that is "tightly controlled or limited in scope," and they certainly wouldn't have included the highly misleading line from the official who implied that location data wasn't collected because the resources required didn't justify it. When he said that, massive resources were being expended to collect location data!
Misleading Americans on Capitol Hill

On June 18, General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, spoke publicly about the Snowden revelations for the first time. He complained that the debate about NSA surveillance was being fueled "by incomplete and inaccurate information, with little context provided on the purpose of these programs, their value to our national security and that of our allies, and the protections that are in place," implying that he would provide a much needed corrective. Addressing the purpose of his testimony before Congress that day, he said that "we will provide additional detail and context on these two programs to help inform that debate," and soon gave the floor to Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Said Cole:

Let me go through a few of the features of this. First of all, it's metadata. These are phone records. These—this is just like what you would get in your own phone bill. It is the number that was dialed from, the number that was dialed to, the date and the length of time. That's all we get under 215. We do not get the identity of any of the parties to this phone call. We don't get any cell site or location information as to where any of these phones were located. And, most importantly, and you're probably going to hear this about 100 times today, we don't get any content under this. We don't listen in on anybody's calls under this program at all.

Again, this is technically accurate. Cole limited his remarks to data collected under Section 215. At the same time, the context of his testimony was a nation and a legislature upset at revelations of sweeping NSA spying that they didn't know about—and a desire to clarify just how far the secret agency goes in its surveillance. In order to obscure those questions, Alexander and Cole proceed as if everyone is gathered because of an intense and narrow focus on Section 215, which just happened to be the first program that the Snowden leaks made public. The average American watching the hearing on television or hearing a soundbite on the news would understandably conclude from the words spoken that the NSA was not collecting Americans' cell-phone location data.

Misleading Words From the Department of Justice

On June 24, the Los Angeles Times headline seemed definitive enough: "NSA does not collect cellphone location data, officials say." Here's how it begins:

The U.S. Justice Department has told a court in Florida that the government does not secretly track the location of Americans' cellphones as part of its massive phone surveillance dragnet, but asking experts to believe that assertion has proved to be another matter. The basic privacy question raised in the recent revelations—has the government been tracking American phone users?—remains muddied by a vaguely worded, top-secret court order and an ensuing series of carefully worded denials. The Justice Department's response—declining to release secret tracking data on phone locations because it purportedly doesn't have it—almost immediately raised new questions.

DOJ was forced to address the question when a Florida attorney sought cell-phone location data for a client, arguing it would prove his innocence in a criminal case:

His client's phone company, MetroPCS, didn't keep phone location data dating back to 2010, so Louis, citing the leaked court order, said the NSA might be the only entity that still held the old records and thus had an obligation to turn them over. The government's response to Lewis' request, filed with the court last Wednesday, says the NSA does not have such a capability: The agency didn't collect location data under the phone surveillance program, so there were no records to turn over, the court filing said.

"The program described in the classified [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court] order cited by the defense did not acquire such data," the filing stated, adding that "the government has no reason to believe" location data were being held by the government that could be turned over for the criminal case.

Once again, the government statement was sufficiently misleading to cause the newspaper to inadvertently misrepresent the truth in its paraphrase: The government didn't state that location data wasn't being held, just that it wasn't being held under Section 215. DOJ was able to sidestep the request in court in part because the Florida lawyer cited the wrong program when asking for the records. And once again, Americans reading about the story and as yet unaware of programs beyond Section 215 thought, maybe our location date is secure after all.

James Clapper Misleads in a Letter

On July 26, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote a letter to Senator Ron Wyden in which he addressed the civil-libertarian's concerns, including questions about the NSA tracking Americans' location data.

The letter discusses the bulk collection of telephone metadata under Section 215 and what it includes. "As we have repeatedly and publicly said, we are not collecting cell site location information under this program," Clapper wrote. "On October 20, 2011 the Director of the National Security Agency committed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he would notify Congress if NSA intended in the future to obtain cell site location information prior to doing so. As you know, he reiterated this commitment before the Committee on 25 June 2013."

This is especially deceitful. Listening to Clapper, the non-paranoid American thinks, Okay, the NSA has promised to notify Congress if it intends to collect cell location data, and as of June 25 it hadn't done so. After all, the answer would make little sense if the NSA was already collecting location data through another program. Clapper's rhetoric implies that isn't happening yet in general.

On a previous occasion, Wyden, who is savvy enough to understand the NSA's rhetorical evasions, specifically asked the more general question: "Has the NSA collected or made any plans to collect Americans' cell-site location data in bulk?" And later in the letter, Clapper takes the question about collection beyond Section 215 and says, "As noted above, under this program NSA is not currently receiving cell site location data, and has no current plans to do so." Cleverly, misleadingly played.

General Alexander's Evasions

By September, Wyden was growing weary of all the evasions, and asked Alexander about collecting location data generally, not just under Section 215:

Alexander trots out the same misleading talking points, reading Clapper's prior response word-for-word. But he does something else too: He starts off by acting as if the surveillance community has already answered the question that Wyden is asking, when actually it has deliberately evaded it.

By this time, anyone who paid close attention to Wyden's hints about NSA overreach or the recurrence of the NSA's weasel language "under this program" knew damned well that, somehow, the NSA was collecting location data. (Keep in mind that Wyden sometimes knows more than he can publicly disclose.) But journalists couldn't report that as fact, and drawing the right conclusion required following the story at a level of detail that was well beyond the vast majority of normal news consumers and most journalists too, guaranteeing that Americans wouldn't know about the collection of location data, including location data on Americans. The blatant obfuscation was very effective at hiding the truth from the masses.

Alexander's Red Herring

On October 2, Alexander revealed a bit of information about location data:

Alexander told the committee that his agency once tested, in 2010 and 2011, whether it could track Americans' cellphone locations, but he says the NSA does not use that capability, leaving that to the FBI to build a criminal or foreign intelligence case against a suspect and track him.

"This may be something that is a future requirement for the country but it is not right now because when we identify a number, we give it to the FBI," Alexander said. "When they get their probable cause, they can get the locational data."

He said if the NSA thought it needed to track someone that way, it would go back to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—the secret court that authorizes its spying missions—for approval. He added that his agency reported the tests to both House and Senate intelligence committees, and that the data was never used for intelligence analysis.

Notice how the second and third paragraphs give the distinct impression that the NSA isn't collecting cell-phone location data right now, that the NSA has no need to collect it right now, and that it would "go back" to the FISA court if that changed. Yet all the while, location data, including data on Americans, was being collected in bulk.

Interestingly, the revelation of the 2010 and 2011 location-data tests—details of which Clapper declassified later that month—also served as a perfect red herring. Surveillance state watchers who'd heard Wyden's questions had long known the NSA was already doing something with location data. Once the test program was expounded in Clapper's document release, the experienced analysts at Lawfare wrote that "they appear to address questions that Senator Ron Wyden has addressed about the bulk collection of cell phone location data."

They thought the bygone tests were the thing! Actually, Wyden was hinting at far bigger things.

Conclusions

Obama Administration officials carried out all this deception even though they knew that Snowden's cache would likely reveal the truth about the collection of location data. Sure enough, the truth came out a few months later, but it wouldn't be correct to suggest that their efforts had no consequences. Their behavior on this matter perfectly illustrates why neither the press nor the public should ever take anything a surveillance-state official says at face value. Even if they usually (though not always) say things that are technically true, they are also masters of deception, willing to egregiously mislead with their rhetoric if doing so will help them maintain maximum secrecy a bit longer.

Their defenders say they have good reason to behave that way—that their foray into collecting cell-phone location data is a legitimate secret, and that by keeping it for months more, they helped keep America safer. Even if that were the case, however, it wouldn't change the fact that their words cannot be trusted, and that journalists should stop treating their pronouncements as if they come from honest individuals.

Need more proof?

On December 5, after the Washington Post revealed that location data, including data belonging to Americans, is being collected, here's what the White House press secretary said: "I’m not in a position to discuss the details of particular tools and methods of intelligence collection, although yesterday, ODNI stated for the record that no element of the intelligence community is intentionally collecting bulk cell-phone location information about cell phones in the United States."

Like so many that came before it, it is a statement exquisitely crafted to mislead.



__

*Surveillance-state apologists insist that Congress has always been fully briefed on the NSA and a meaningful check on its activities—yet large groups of senators are reduced to sending letters to learn the answers to questions as significant as location tracking.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...n-data/282239/





Exclusive: Secret Contract Tied NSA and Security Industry Pioneer
Joseph Menn

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

The earlier disclosures of RSA's entanglement with the NSA already had shocked some in the close-knit world of computer security experts. The company had a long history of championing privacy and security, and it played a leading role in blocking a 1990s effort by the NSA to require a special chip to enable spying on a wide range of computer and communications products.

RSA, now a subsidiary of computer storage giant EMC Corp, urged customers to stop using the NSA formula after the Snowden disclosures revealed its weakness.

RSA and EMC declined to answer questions for this story, but RSA said in a statement: "RSA always acts in the best interest of its customers and under no circumstances does RSA design or enable any back doors in our products. Decisions about the features and functionality of RSA products are our own."

The NSA declined to comment.

The RSA deal shows one way the NSA carried out what Snowden's documents describe as a key strategy for enhancing surveillance: the systematic erosion of security tools. NSA documents released in recent months called for using "commercial relationships" to advance that goal, but did not name any security companies as collaborators.

The NSA came under attack this week in a landmark report from a White House panel appointed to review U.S. surveillance policy. The panel noted that "encryption is an essential basis for trust on the Internet," and called for a halt to any NSA efforts to undermine it.

Most of the dozen current and former RSA employees interviewed said that the company erred in agreeing to such a contract, and many cited RSA's corporate evolution away from pure cryptography products as one of the reasons it occurred.

But several said that RSA also was misled by government officials, who portrayed the formula as a secure technological advance.

"They did not show their true hand," one person briefed on the deal said of the NSA, asserting that government officials did not let on that they knew how to break the encryption.

STORIED HISTORY

Started by MIT professors in the 1970s and led for years by ex-Marine Jim Bidzos, RSA and its core algorithm were both named for the last initials of the three founders, who revolutionized cryptography. Little known to the public, RSA's encryption tools have been licensed by most large technology companies, which in turn use them to protect computers used by hundreds of millions of people.

At the core of RSA's products was a technology known as public key cryptography. Instead of using the same key for encoding and then decoding a message, there are two keys related to each other mathematically. The first, publicly available key is used to encode a message for someone, who then uses a second, private key to reveal it.

From RSA's earliest days, the U.S. intelligence establishment worried it would not be able to crack well-engineered public key cryptography. Martin Hellman, a former Stanford researcher who led the team that first invented the technique, said NSA experts tried to talk him and others into believing that the keys did not have to be as large as they planned.

The stakes rose when more technology companies adopted RSA's methods and Internet use began to soar. The Clinton administration embraced the Clipper Chip, envisioned as a mandatory component in phones and computers to enable officials to overcome encryption with a warrant.

RSA led a fierce public campaign against the effort, distributing posters with a foundering sailing ship and the words "Sink Clipper!"

A key argument against the chip was that overseas buyers would shun U.S. technology products if they were ready-made for spying. Some companies say that is just what has happened in the wake of the Snowden disclosures.

The White House abandoned the Clipper Chip and instead relied on export controls to prevent the best cryptography from crossing U.S. borders. RSA once again rallied the industry, and it set up an Australian division that could ship what it wanted.

"We became the tip of the spear, so to speak, in this fight against government efforts," Bidzos recalled in an oral history.

RSA EVOLVES

RSA and others claimed victory when export restrictions relaxed.

But the NSA was determined to read what it wanted, and the quest gained urgency after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

RSA, meanwhile, was changing. Bidzos stepped down as CEO in 1999 to concentrate on VeriSign, a security certificate company that had been spun out of RSA. The elite lab Bidzos had founded in Silicon Valley moved east to Massachusetts, and many top engineers left the company, several former employees said.

And the BSafe toolkit was becoming a much smaller part of the company. By 2005, BSafe and other tools for developers brought in just $27.5 million of RSA's revenue, less than 9% of the $310 million total.

"When I joined there were 10 people in the labs, and we were fighting the NSA," said Victor Chan, who rose to lead engineering and the Australian operation before he left in 2005. "It became a very different company later on."

By the first half of 2006, RSA was among the many technology companies seeing the U.S. government as a partner against overseas hackers.

New RSA Chief Executive Art Coviello and his team still wanted to be seen as part of the technological vanguard, former employees say, and the NSA had just the right pitch. Coviello declined an interview request.

An algorithm called Dual Elliptic Curve, developed inside the agency, was on the road to approval by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology as one of four acceptable methods for generating random numbers. NIST's blessing is required for many products sold to the government and often sets a broader de facto standard.

RSA adopted the algorithm even before NIST approved it. The NSA then cited the early use of Dual Elliptic Curve inside the government to argue successfully for NIST approval, according to an official familiar with the proceedings.

RSA's contract made Dual Elliptic Curve the default option for producing random numbers in the RSA toolkit. No alarms were raised, former employees said, because the deal was handled by business leaders rather than pure technologists.

"The labs group had played a very intricate role at BSafe, and they were basically gone," said labs veteran Michael Wenocur, who left in 1999.

Within a year, major questions were raised about Dual Elliptic Curve. Cryptography authority Bruce Schneier wrote that the weaknesses in the formula "can only be described as a back door."

After reports of the back door in September, RSA urged its customers to stop using the Dual Elliptic Curve number generator.

But unlike the Clipper Chip fight two decades ago, the company is saying little in public, and it declined to discuss how the NSA entanglements have affected its relationships with customers.

The White House, meanwhile, says it will consider this week's panel recommendation that any efforts to subvert cryptography be abandoned.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9BJ1C220131221





The Sad Decline of ‘60 Minutes’ Continues With This Week’s NSA Whitewash
Greg Mitchell

The sad decline and fall of 60 Minutes has been a long time coming, but now it is nearly complete. Just in recent months: the horrid hit on Americans with disabilities, the Lara Logan affair, and now tonight’s whitewash of NSA (and bonus slam vs. Edward Snowden), hosted by longtime FBI/police/NSA propagandist John Miller. Good night and good luck!

Here’s the complete transcript of tonight’s show. It’s got something to offend everyone. All that’s missing is an Amazon drone delivering a package of listening devices to an NSA agent in the field. Good review at The Atlantic’s Wire highlights the NSA "minders" preventing any tough questions that might have been asked. And in this interview, Miller explains his motivation: "Because this is really the side of the story that has been mined only in the most superficial ways./ We've heard plenty [emphasis his] from critics" of NSA.

The response on Twitter and elsewhere on the Web was swift and savagely negative. Glenn Greenwald tweets: “60 Minutes forgot to ask about how James Clapper & Keith Alexander routinely lied to Congress & FISA courts—just ran out of time.” And: “60 Minutes producer gushing about his NSA access: ‘It was like Star Trek…. My favorite room was the Black Chamber!’ ” Later he called it and "access-for-uncritical-reverence NSA propaganda piece" that "was a new low for US journalism."

From other key media observers. Dave Itzkoff of the NYT: “NSA Doing Great Job, NSA Says—60 Minutes.” Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker: “Wow, the 60 Minutes piece about the NSA was just embarrassing. Kudos to the NSA communications staff. You guys should get a raise.” Jeff Jarvis: “For shame, #60Minutes, for shame…. CBS just *bragged* that John Miller is ‘the ultimate insider.’ Yes, he just demonstrated that!”

The great Amy Davidson at The New Yorker: "Quick pivot on @60minutes from Snowden character-trashing to how NSA will save us all from cyber attacks...Oy, @60minutes--still waiting for a tough question, follow-up for General Alexander..." Will Bunch posted a photo of Edward R. Murrow with this comment: "Next on @60Minutes -- a special report on a man who's actually spinning in his grave."

Marcy Wheeler: “60 Minutes: From terrible journalism to National Security State stenography, in just a few weeks.” Carne Ross: “Hadn’t realized @60Minutes now does infomercials…. Where the hell is Lowell Bergman when u need him? Oh yes, he quit at the end of the movie.” Jay Rosen: “This ‘60 Minutes’ report on the NSA is… TV. That’s not a compliment.”

Andy Greenberg: “This 60 Minutes episode has been a pretty good infomercial for the NSA so far. Did anyone catch that 1-800 number so I can order?” Xeni Jardin: “Remember when 60 Minutes was where people looked for quality journalism?” The official WikiLeaks feed: “60 minutes and NSA pair up to strike back on #NSA leaks; character assassinate #Snowden.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/177598...nsa-whitewash#





AT&T to Join Verizon in Government Data-Request Disclosures

AT&T Inc will join rival Verizon Communications in disclosing details on government requests for customer data starting in 2014, after investors called on the two largest U.S. carriers to reveal more about controversial spying operations.

New York-based Verizon, the second-largest U.S. telephone company by revenue, unveiled its move on Thursday following pressure from activist investors concerned about the extent of network operators' roles in systematic government surveillance.

"Like Verizon recently announced, we intend to publish a semi-annual online report that will provide information on the number of law enforcement requests for customer information that our company receives in the countries in which we do business," AT&T said in a statement on Friday.

Investors, including Boston's Trillium Asset Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, publicly pushed Verizon and AT&T last month to disclose details on their sharing of customer information with government agencies.

The carriers' moves come days after a White House-appointed panel proposed curbs on various U.S. National Security Agency operations, including a halt to bulk collection of phone call records.

The shift by carriers toward greater disclosure followed similar initiatives from tech companies such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, in the wake of revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that highlighted close ties between spy agencies and technology firms.

Silicon Valley, worried about a customer backlash, has called for greater transparency around U.S. government requests for user information. Until now, telephone companies like Verizon had been much less outspoken than their technology and Internet counterparts.

AT&T said it intends to start next year by disclosing the total number of requests received in 2013 in criminal cases, the number of customers affected and details about legal demands.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Jan Paschal)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9BJ1BV20131220





Judge Questions Legality of N.S.A. Phone Records
Charlie Savage

A federal district judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, describing its technology as “almost Orwellian” and suggesting that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way.

The judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the government to stop collecting data on the personal calls of the two plaintiffs in the case and to destroy the records of their calling history. But Judge Leon, appointed to the bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal it, which he said could take at least six months.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in a 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Andrew Ames, a Justice Department spokesman, said government lawyers were studying the decision, but he added: “We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found.”

The case is the first in which a federal judge who is not on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized the once-secret program, has examined the bulk data collection on behalf of someone who is not a criminal defendant. The Justice Department has said that 15 separate judges on the surveillance court have held on 35 occasions that the calling data program is legal.

It also marks the first successful legal challenge brought against the program since it was revealed in June after leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.

In a statement from Moscow, where he has obtained temporary asylum, Mr. Snowden praised the ruling.

“I acted on my belief that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts,” Mr. Snowden said in his statement. It was distributed by Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who received leaked documents from Mr. Snowden and wrote the first article about the bulk data collection. “Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights,” the statement said. “It is the first of many.”

The case was brought by several plaintiffs led by Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. Mr. Klayman, who represented himself and the other plaintiffs, said in an interview on Monday that he was seeking to turn the case into a class action on behalf of all Americans. “I’m extremely gratified that Judge Leon had the courage to make this ruling,” he said. “He is an American hero.”

Mr. Klayman argued that he had legal standing to challenge the program in part because, he contended, the government had sent inexplicable text messages to his clients on his behalf; at a hearing, he told the judge, “I think they are messing with me.”

The judge portrayed that claim as “unusual” but looked past it, saying Mr. Klayman and his co-plaintiff instead had standing because it was highly likely, based on the government’s own description of the program as a “comprehensive metadata database,” that the N.S.A. collected data about their phone calls along with everyone else’s.

Similar legal challenges to the N.S.A. program, including by the American Civil Liberties Union and the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, are at earlier stages in the courts. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear an unusual challenge to the program by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which had sought to bypass lower courts.

The ruling on Monday comes as several government panels are developing recommendations on whether to keep, restructure or scrap the bulk data collection program, and as Congress debates competing bills over the program’s future.

Though long and detailed, Judge Leon’s ruling is not a final judgment on the program, but rather a preliminary injunction to stop the collection of data about the plaintiffs while they pursued their case.

He also wrote that he had “serious doubts about the efficacy” of the program, saying that the government had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”

Judge Leon rejected the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, had established there are no Fourth Amendment protections for call metadata — information like the numbers dialed and the date, time and duration of calls, but not their content. The 1979 case, which involved collecting information about a criminal defendant’s calls, helped establish the principle that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy for information they have exposed to a third party, like the phone company, which knows about their calls.

The surveillance court, which issues secret rulings after hearing arguments from only the Justice Department and without opposing lawyers, has maintained that the 1979 decision is a controlling precedent that shields the N.S.A. call data program from Fourth Amendment review. But Judge Leon, citing the scope of the program and the evolving role of phones and technology, distinguished the bulk collection from the 34-year-old case.

Last month, a federal judge declined to grant a new trial to several San Diego men convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Government officials have since acknowledged that investigators became interested in them because of the call records program. Citing Smith v. Maryland, the judge said the defendants had “no legitimate expectation of privacy” over their call data.

David Rivkin, a White House lawyer in the administration of the elder President George Bush, criticized Judge Leon’s reasoning.

“Smith v. Maryland is the law of the land,” Mr. Rivkin said. “It is not for a District Court judge to question the continuing validity of a Supreme Court precedent that is exactly on point.”

Judge Leon also pointed to a landmark privacy case decided by the Supreme Court in 2012 that held it was unconstitutional for the police to use a GPS tracking device to monitor a suspect’s public movements without a warrant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/us...a-program.html





GOP Requests Criminal Probe of Intel Czar
Brendan Sasso

Seven House Republicans are calling for the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, GOP Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.), James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Blake Farenthold (Texas), Trey Gowdy (S.C.), Raúl Labrador (Idaho) and Ted Poe (Texas) said Clapper's "willful lie under oath" fuels distrust in the government and undermines the ability of Congress to do its job.

"There are differences of opinion about the propriety of the NSA’s data collection programs," they wrote. "There can be no disagreement, however, on the basic premise that congressional witnesses must answer truthfully.”

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does "not wittingly" — collect any information on Americans in bulk.

After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the false comment.

The intelligence director said he tried to give the "least untruthful" answer he could without revealing classified information.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Clapper, said the intelligence director mistakenly understood Wyden's question to be referring to the contents of communications, instead of "metadata" such as phone numbers, call times and call durations.

"DNI Clapper has been testifying before members of Congress for more than two decades and he enjoys a well-earned reputation as a doggedly honest and honorable public servant," Turner said. "He apologized for the confusion caused by his response and is focused on working with the intelligence committees to increase transparency while protecting critical intelligence sources and methods. “

The Republican lawmakers noted that national security adviser John Poindexter was convicted in 1990 for lying to Congress about the Iran Contra affair. Scooter Libby, who was former Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, and Martha Stewart also went to jail over perjury convictions, the lawmakers wrote.

"One of the hallmarks of American democracy is that no one is above the law," the GOP lawmakers wrote.

They said Clapper could have declined to answer the question, offered to answer in a classified setting or even corrected himself immediately following the hearing.

"He did none of these things despite advance warning that the question was coming," they wrote.

They said that given that the matter is of the "highest priority," Holder should respond by Jan. 10.
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-va...czar-for-lying





Tech Firms Push Back Against White House Efforts to Divert NSA Meeting

• Administration said meeting would focus on healthcare website
• 'We are here to talk about the NSA,' says one tech executive
• Yahoo and others have already demanded sweeping reforms

Dominic Rushe and Paul Lewis

Obama meets with tech leaders including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The top leaders from the world’s biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations at a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities.

Senior executives from the companies whose bosses were present at the meeting said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA, despite the White House declaring in advance that it would focus on ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, among other matters.

“That is not going to happen,” said an executive at one of the major tech companies represented at the meeting. “We are there to talk about the NSA,” said the executive, who was briefed on the company’s agenda before the event.

An executive at another company present at the White House on Tuesday described any other issues as “peripheral”. The executive, who also declined to be named in order to discuss his company’s strategy, said: “There’s only one subject that people really want to discuss right now.”

After meeting Obama and vice president Joe Biden for two-and-a-half hours, the companies issued a one-line statement. "We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform," they said.

Many of the senior tech leaders had already made public their demand for sweeping surveillance reforms in an open letter that specifically called for a ban on the kind of bulk data collection that a federal judge ruled on Monday was probably unlawful.

Judge Richard Leon’s ruling, which will now be subject to an appeal, is the most significant legal setback for the NSA since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and it comes at a pivotal moment for the future of the agency.

The president and his advisers were already considering the recommendations of an NSA review panel set up in the wake of Snowden’s revelations. They are also considering the future leadership of the agency, whose director and deputy director are stepping down.

They must now grapple with the fallout from a damning court ruling that concluded the mass collection of phone records probably violates the fourth amendment – which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures – and is “almost Orwellian” in its scope. Leon said James Madison, who played a key role in drafting the US constitution, would be “aghast” at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data, were he alive today.

The decision by the tech giants to press their case in such a public and unified way poses another problem for the White House. The industry is an increasingly influential voice in Washington, a vital part of the US economy and many of its most successful leaders are prominent Democratic political donors.

In recent months, the technology companies have become increasingly vocal in their demands for NSA reform, and more revelations have emerged from documents leaked by Snowden.

Among those meeting Obama at the White House were Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, and Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. Senior representatives from Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Netflix were also there. So too was Randall Stephenson, the chairman and CEO of AT&T, one of the telecom providers routinely required to provide the NSA with metadata about its US customers.

On 9 December, many of those in the meeting wrote to Obama calling for major reforms of the NSA. “This summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide,” the companies wrote in their statement.

The revelations had “shaken the trust of our users”, Mayer said in the joint statement. “And it is time for the US government to act to restore the confidence of citizens around the world.”

Among their specific demands where:

• A limit to the government’s authority to collect users’ information.
• More independent and public oversight of the intelligence agencies.
• Transparency about government demands for information from tech firms – now subject to reporting restrictions.

With legislation to reform the NSA currently stalled on Capitol Hill, and unlikely to resurface until January, privacy advocates are focused on the White House, which could enact its own changes if the president is persuaded of the need. An intense lobbying effort has gone on for months, with senior figures in the intelligence community warning that any significant dilution of its powers will risk another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11.

The NSA review panel, which handed its findings to Obama on Friday, has reportedly proposed only limited reforms, saying the NSA’s surveillance tools should be amended in light of Snowden’s disclosures but essentially remain intact. One decisive factor in the president's considerations could be the White House’s recent appointment of John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff.

Podesta, whose role as éminence grise to the president begins next month, has gone on the record saying Obama should establish a “national commission” to respond to the legitimate concerns raised by Snowden’s disclosures. Podesta added in an interview with Der Spiegel in July: “Surely we can meet our national security needs without sacrificing the respect for personal privacy that has long been a hallmark of American life?”

Specifically, Podesta expressed concern about the relevance of legal precedents being used to justify massive data collection on the digital era, a view apparently in sync with Monday’s court ruling. “In the United States, court decisions from the pre-internet days suggest that the information we give away voluntarily to these companies can be obtained fairly easily by the government,” he said.

“That legal rule may have made sense in an age before Facebook and iPhones, but we need a serious examination of whether it still makes sense today.”

Hours before Tuesday's meeting, Snowden released an open letter to Brazil, offering to shed light on US spying in return for political asylum. Snowden currently has temporary asylum in Russia. The White House has rejected the suggestion that administration might offer him amnesty.

The idea of an amnesty in return for Snowden securing data was floated by Richard Ledgett, the senior NSA official tasked managing the fallout from Snowden’s leaks – and a potential candidate to become the new director of the spy agency.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...a-surveillance





Obama Is Urged to Sharply Curb N.S.A. Data Mining
David E. Sanger and Charlie Savage

A panel of outside advisers urged President Obama on Wednesday to impose major oversight and some restrictions on the National Security Agency, arguing that in the past dozen years its powers had been enhanced at the expense of personal privacy.

The panel recommended changes in the way the agency collects the telephone data of Americans, spies on foreign leaders and prepares for cyberattacks abroad.

But the most significant recommendation of the panel of five intelligence and legal experts was that Mr. Obama restructure a program in which the N.S.A. systematically collects logs of all American phone calls — so-called metadata — and a small group of agency officials have the power to authorize the search of an individual’s telephone contacts. Instead, the panel said, the data should remain in the hands of telecommunications companies or a private consortium, and a court order should be necessary each time analysts want to access the information of any individual “for queries and data mining.”

The experts briefed Mr. Obama on Wednesday on their 46 recommendations, and a senior administration official said Mr. Obama was “open to many” of the changes, though he has already rejected one that called for separate leaders for the N.S.A. and its Pentagon cousin, the United States Cyber Command.

If Mr. Obama adopts the majority of the recommendations, it would mark the first major restrictions on the unilateral powers that the N.S.A. has acquired since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They would require far more specific approvals from the courts, far more oversight from the Congress and specific presidential approval for spying on national leaders, especially allies. The agency would also have to give up one of its most potent weapons in cyberconflicts: the ability to insert “back doors” in American hardware or software, a secret way into them to manipulate computers, or to purchase previously unknown flaws in software that it can use to conduct cyberattacks.

“We have identified a series of reforms that are designed to safeguard the privacy and dignity of American citizens, and to promote public trust, while also allowing the intelligence community to do what must be done to respond to genuine threats,” says the report, which Mr. Obama commissioned in August in response to the mounting furor over revelations by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, of the agency’s surveillance practices.

It adds, “Free nations must protect themselves, and nations that protect themselves must remain free.”

White House officials said they expected significant resistance to some of the report’s conclusions from the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, which have argued that imposing rules that could slow the search for terror suspects could pave the way for another attack. But those intelligence leaders were not present in the Situation Room on Wednesday when Mr. Obama met the authors of the report.

The report’s authors made clear that they were weighing the N.S.A.’s surveillance requirements against other priorities like constitutional protections for privacy and economic considerations for American businesses. The report came just three days after a federal judge in Washington ruled that the bulk collection of telephone data by the government was “almost Orwellian” and a day after Silicon Valley executives complained to Mr. Obama that the N.S.A. programs were undermining American competitiveness in offering cloud services or selling American-made hardware, which is now viewed as tainted.

The report was praised by privacy advocates in Congress and civil-liberties groups as a surprisingly aggressive call for reform.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has been an outspoken critic of N.S.A. surveillance, said it echoed the arguments of the N.S.A.’s skeptics in significant ways, noting that it flatly declared that the phone-logging program had not been necessary in stopping terrorist attacks.

“This has been a big week for the cause of intelligence reform,” he said.

Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology called the report “remarkably strong,” and singled out its call to sharply limit the F.B.I.’s power to obtain business records about someone through a so-called national security letter, which does not involve court oversight.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, while praising the report’s recommendations, questioned “whether the president will have the courage to implement the changes.”

Members of the advisory group said some of the recommendations were intended to provide greater public reassurances about privacy protections rather than to result in any wholesale dismantling of the N.S.A.’s surveillance powers. Richard A. Clarke, a cyberexpert and former national security official under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said the report would give “more reason for the skeptics in the public to believe their civil liberties are being protected.”

Other members included Michael J. Morell, a former deputy director of the C.I.A.; Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who ran the office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama White House; Peter Swire, a privacy law specialist at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Geoffrey R. Stone, a constitutional law specialist at the University of Chicago Law School, where Mr. Obama once taught.

Mr. Obama is expected to take the report to Hawaii on his vacation that starts this week and announce decisions when he returns in early January. Some of the report’s proposals could be ordered by Mr. Obama alone, while others would require legislation from Congress, including changes to how judges are appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said he was skeptical that any changes passed by Congress would go far enough. “It gives me optimism that it won’t be completely brushed under the rug,” he said. “However, I’ve been here long enough to know that in all likelihood when there’s a problem, you get window dressing.”

The FISA court, which oversees national security surveillance inside the United States, has been criticized because it hears arguments only from the Justice Department without adversarial lawyers to raise opposing views, and because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has unilateral power to select its members. Echoing proposals already floated in congressional hearings and elsewhere, the advisory group backs the view that there should be a “public interest advocate to represent the interests of privacy and civil liberties” in classified arguments before the court. It also says the power to select judges for the surveillance court should be distributed among all the Supreme Court justices.

In backing a restructuring of the N.S.A.’s program that is systematically collecting and storing logs of all Americans’ phone calls, the advisers went further than some of the agency’s backers in Congress, who would make only cosmetic changes to it, but stopped short of calling for the program to be shut down, as its critics have urged. The N.S.A. uses the telephone data to search for links between people in an effort to identify hidden associates of terrorism suspects, but the report says it “was not essential to preventing attacks.”

Currently, the government obtains orders from the surveillance court every 90 days that require all the phone companies to give their customers’ data to the N.S.A., which commingles the records from every company and stores it for five years. A small group of analysts may query the database — examining records of everyone who is linked by up to three degrees of separation from a suspect — if the analyst has “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the original person being examined is linked to terrorism.

Under the new system proposed by the review group, such records would stay in private hands — either scattered among the phone companies or pooled into some kind of private consortium. The N.S.A. would need to make the case to the surveillance court that it has met the standard of suspicion — and get a judge’s order — every time it wanted to perform such “link analysis.”

“In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk metadata creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty,” the report said.

The report recommended new privacy protections for the disclosure of personal information about non-Americans among agencies or to the public. The change would extend to foreigners essentially the same protections that citizens have under the Privacy Act of 1974 — a way of assuring foreign countries that their own citizens, if targeted for surveillance, will enjoy at least some protections under American law.

It also said the United States should get out of the business of secretly buying or searching for flaws in common computer programs and using them for mounting cyberattacks. That technique, using what are called zero-day flaws, so named because they are used with zero days of warning that the flaw exists, were crucial to the cyberattacks that the United States and Israel launched on Iran in an effort to slow its nuclear program. The advisers said that the information should be turned over to software manufacturers to have the mistakes fixed, rather than exploited.

Regarding spying on foreign leaders, the report urged that the issue be taken out the hands of the intelligence agencies and put into the hands of policy makers.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/us...e-tactics.html





An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'A Genius Among Geniuses'
Andy Greenberg

Perhaps Edward Snowden’s hoodie should have raised suspicions.

The black sweatshirt sold by the civil libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation featured a parody of the National Security Agency’s logo, with the traditional key in an eagle’s claws replaced by a collection of AT&T cables, and eavesdropping headphones covering the menacing bird’s ears. Snowden wore it regularly to stay warm in the air-conditioned underground NSA Hawaii Kunia facility known as “the tunnel.”

His coworkers assumed it was meant ironically. And a geek as gifted as Snowden could get away with a few irregularities.

Months after Snowden leaked tens of thousands of the NSA’s most highly classified documents to the media, the former intelligence contractor has stayed out of the limelight, rarely granting interviews or sharing personal details. A 60 Minutes episode Sunday night, meanwhile, aired NSA’s officials descriptions of Snowden as a malicious hacker who cheated on an NSA entrance exam and whose work computers had to be destroyed after his departure for fear he had infected them with malware.

But an NSA staffer who contacted me last month and asked not to be identified–and whose claims we checked with Snowden himself via his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner—offered me a very different, firsthand portrait of how Snowden was seen by his colleagues in the agency’s Hawaii office: A principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and one who earned the access used to pull off his leak by impressing superiors with sheer talent.

The anonymous NSA staffer’s priority in contacting me, in fact, was to refute stories that have surfaced as the NSA and the media attempt to explain how a contractor was able to obtain and leak the tens of thousands of highly classified documents that have become the biggest public disclosure of NSA secrets in history. According to the source, Snowden didn’t dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords, as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he or she says.

Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him.

“That kid was a genius among geniuses,” says the NSA staffer. “NSA is full of smart people, but anybody who sat in a meeting with Ed will tell you he was in a class of his own…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When I reached out to the NSA’s public affairs office, a spokesperson declined to comment, citing the agency’s ongoing investigation into Snowden’s leaks.

But over the course of my communications with the NSA staffer, Snowden’s former colleague offered details that shed light on both how Snowden was able to obtain the NSA’s most secret files, as well as the elusive 30-year old’s character:

• Before coming to NSA Hawaii, Snowden had impressed NSA officials by developing a backup system that the NSA had widely implemented in its codebreaking operations.

• He also frequently reported security vulnerabilities in NSA software. Many of the bugs were never patched.

• Snowden had been brought to Hawaii as a cybersecurity expert working for Dell’s services division but due to a problem with the contract was reassigned to become an administrator for the Microsoft intranet management system known as Sharepoint. Impressed with his technical abilities, Snowden’s managers decided that he was the most qualified candidate to build a new web front-end for one of its projects, despite his contractor status. As his coworker tells it, he was given full administrator privileges, with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. “Big mistake in hindsight,” says Snowden’s former colleague. “But if you had a guy who could do things nobody else could, and the only problem was that his badge was green instead of blue, what would you do?”

• As further evidence that Snowden didn’t hijack his colleagues’ accounts for his leak, the NSA staffer points to an occasion when Snowden was given a manager’s password so that he could cover for him while he was on vacation. Even then, investigators found no evidence Snowden had misused that staffer’s privileges, and the source says nothing he could have uniquely accessed from the account has shown up in news reports.

• Snowden’s superiors were so impressed with his skills that he was at one point offered a position on the elite team of NSA hackers known as Tailored Access Operations. He unexpectedly turned it down and instead joined Booz Allen to work at NSA’s Threat Operation Center.

• Another hint of his whistleblower conscience, aside from the telltale hoodie: Snowden kept a copy of the constitution on his desk to cite when arguing against NSA activities he thought might violate it.

• The source tells me Snowden also once nearly lost his job standing up for a coworker who was being disciplined by a superior.

• Snowden often left small, gifts anonymously at colleagues’ desks.

• He frequently walked NSA’s halls carrying a Rubik’s cube–the same object he held to identify himself on a Hong Kong street to the journalists who first met with him to publish his leaks.

• Snowden’s former colleague says that he or she has slowly come to understand Snowden’s decision to leak the NSA’s files. “I was shocked and betrayed when I first learned the news, but as more time passes I’m inclined to believe he really is trying to do the right thing and it’s not out of character for him. I don’t agree with his methods, but I understand why he did it,” he or she says. “I won’t call him a hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygree...mong-geniuses/





'Pardon Snowden,' One Tech Exec Tells Obama, Report Says

At a meeting between Obama and the leaders of major technology companies, Zynga founder Mark Pincus is said to have asked the president to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Seth Rosenblatt

It's a refrain that President Obama has heard from critics of the NSA's surreptitious surveillance of the American public: Pardon Edward Snowden.

And now you can add at least one executive from a major tech company to that list.

Zynga founder Mark Pincus has asked Obama about pardoning Snowden, CNN reports.

Obama met Tuesday with 15 tech executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, with the official purpose of discussing how his administration can improve its Healthcare.gov Web site. Just this week, Obama hired Microsoft veteran Kurt DelBene to lead the revamp of the site.

But in addition to discussing the challenges in improving a complex site fraught with failure like the one brought into being by the Affordable Care Act, the Silicon Valley elite apparently didn't mince words when talking to the president about the National Security Agency and the massive, detailed leaks by former NSA contractor and now Russian exile Edward Snowden.

Tech and telephony companies have been heavily criticized for turning their customers' data over to the government as a whole and to the NSA specifically, and reports indicate that they're losing business abroad with each new leaked revelation.

To the suggestion that he pardon Snowden of the felony charges against him for leaking classified information, Obama said he could not, according to an unnamed "industry official" cited by the Washington Post. The Obama administration has stated that if Snowden were to return to the United States, he would receive protection under due process laws.

Snowden has been charged with three felonies, two under the 1917 Espionage Act. He's the seventh person to be charged by the Obama administration with Espionage Act violations, more than all previous Espionage Act-related charges combined.

Senior Obama administration officials told the Post that the meeting was "constructive, not at all contentious." The executives also discussed the economic impact of the surveillance revelations on their bottom line, and the White House said in a statement that the president believes in an "open, free, and innovative Internet" and that he took the group's concerns seriously.

Many of the attendees had raised significant amounts of money for Obama's re-election campaign in 2012.

The meeting followed news on Monday that a judge had ruled the NSA's bulk collection of data unconstitutional, and details of the meeting's conversations came amid reports Wednesday that a White House surveillance review board recommended that the NSA abandon its phone record collection program.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57...a-report-says/





The Mission to Decentralize the Internet
Joshua Kopstein

In the nineteen-seventies, the Internet was a small, decentralized collective of computers. The personal-computer revolution that followed built upon that foundation, stoking optimism encapsulated by John Perry Barlow’s 1996 manifesto “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” Barlow described a chaotic digital utopia, where “netizens” self-govern and the institutions of old hold no sway. “On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone,” he writes. “You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

This is not the Internet we know today. Nearly two decades later, a staggering percentage of communications flow through a small set of corporations—and thus, under the profound influence of those companies and other institutions. Google, for instance, now comprises twenty-five per cent of all North American Internet traffic; an outage last August caused worldwide traffic to plummet by around forty per cent.

Engineers anticipated this convergence. As early as 1967, one of the key architects of the system for exchanging small packets of data that gave birth to the Internet, Paul Baran, predicted the rise of a centralized “computer utility” that would offer computing much the same way that power companies provide electricity. Today, that model is largely embodied by the information empires of Amazon, Google, and other cloud-computing companies. Like Baran anticipated, they offer us convenience at the expense of privacy.

Internet users now regularly submit to terms-of-service agreements that give companies license to share their personal data with other institutions, from advertisers to governments. In the U.S., the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a law that predates the Web, allows law enforcement to obtain without a warrant private data that citizens entrust to third parties—including location data passively gathered from cell phones and the contents of e-mails that have either been opened or left unattended for a hundred and eighty days. As Edward Snowden’s leaks have shown, these vast troves of information allow intelligence agencies to focus on just a few key targets in order to monitor large portions of the world’s population.

One of those leaks, reported by the Washington Post in late October, revealed that the National Security Agency secretly wiretapped the connections between data centers owned by Google and Yahoo, allowing the agency to collect users’ data as it flowed across the companies’ networks. Google engineers bristled at the news, and responded by encrypting those connections to prevent future intrusions; Yahoo has said it plans to do so by next year. More recently, Microsoft announced it would do the same, as well as open “transparency centers” that will allow some of its software’s source code to be inspected for hidden back doors. (However, that privilege appears to only extend to “government customers.”) On Monday, eight major tech firms, many of them competitors, united to demand an overhaul of government transparency and surveillance laws.

Still, an air of distrust surrounds the U.S. cloud industry. The N.S.A. collects data through formal arrangements with tech companies; ingests Web traffic as it enters and leaves the U.S.; and deliberately weakens cryptographic standards. A recently revealed document detailing the agency’s strategy specifically notes its mission to “influence the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships” with companies developing and deploying security products.

One solution, espoused by some programmers, is to make the Internet more like it used to be—less centralized and more distributed. Jacob Cook, a twenty-three-year-old student, is the brains behind ArkOS, a lightweight version of the free Linux operating system. It runs on the credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi, a thirty-five dollar microcomputer adored by teachers and tinkerers. It’s designed so that average users can create personal clouds to store data that they can access anywhere, without relying on a distant data center owned by Dropbox or Amazon. It’s sort of like buying and maintaining your own car to get around, rather than relying on privately owned taxis. Cook’s mission is to “make hosting a server as easy as using a desktop P.C. or a smartphone,” he said.

Like other privacy advocates, Cook’s goal isn’t to end surveillance, but to make it harder to do en masse. “When you couple a secure, self-hosted platform with properly implemented cryptography, you can make N.S.A.-style spying and network intrusion extremely difficult and expensive,” he told me in an e-mail.

Persuading consumers to ditch the convenience of the cloud has never been an easy sell, however. In 2010, a team of young programmers announced Diaspora, a privacy-centric social network, to challenge Facebook’s centralized dominance. A year later, Eben Moglen, a law professor and champion of the Free Software movement, proposed a similar solution called the Freedom Box. The device he envisioned was to be a small computer that plugs into your home network, hosting files, enabling secure communication, and connecting to other boxes when needed. It was considered a call to arms—you alone would control your data.

But, while both projects met their fund-raising goals and drummed up a good deal of hype, neither came to fruition. Diaspora’s team fell into disarray after a disappointing beta launch, personal drama, and the appearance of new competitors such as Google+; apart from some privacy software released last year, Moglen’s Freedom Box has yet to materialize at all.

“There is a bigger problem with why so many of these efforts have failed” to achieve mass adoption, said Brennan Novak, a user-interface designer who works on privacy tools. The challenge, Novak said, is to make decentralized alternatives that are as secure, convenient, and seductive as a Google account. “It’s a tricky thing to pin down,” he told me in an encrypted online chat. “But I believe the problem exists somewhere between the barrier to entry (user-interface design, technical difficulty to set up, and over-all user experience) versus the perceived value of the tool, as seen by Joe Public and Joe Amateur Techie.”

One of Novak’s projects, Mailpile, is a crowd-funded e-mail application with built-in security tools that are normally too onerous for average people to set up and use—namely, Phil Zimmermann’s revolutionary but never widely adopted Pretty Good Privacy. “It’s a hard thing to explain…. A lot of peoples’ eyes glaze over,” he said. Instead, Mailpile is being designed in a way that gives users a sense of their level of privacy, without knowing about encryption keys or other complicated technology. Just as important, the app will allow users to self-host their e-mail accounts on a machine they control, so it can run on platforms like ArkOS.

“There already exist deep and geeky communities in cryptology or self-hosting or free software, but the message is rarely aimed at non-technical people,” said Irina Bolychevsky, an organizer for Redecentralize.org, an advocacy group that provides support for projects that aim to make the Web less centralized.

Several of those projects have been inspired by Bitcoin, the math-based e-money created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. While the peer-to-peer technology that Bitcoin employs isn’t novel, many engineers consider its implementation an enormous technical achievement. The network’s “nodes”—users running the Bitcoin software on their computers—collectively check the integrity of other nodes to ensure that no one spends the same coins twice. All transactions are published on a shared public ledger, called the “block chain,” and verified by “miners,” users whose powerful computers solve difficult math problems in exchange for freshly minted bitcoins. The system’s elegance has led some to wonder: if money can be decentralized and, to some extent, anonymized, can’t the same model be applied to other things, like e-mail?

Bitmessage is an e-mail replacement proposed last year that has been called the “the Bitcoin of online communication.” Instead of talking to a central mail server, Bitmessage distributes messages across a network of peers running the Bitmessage software. Unlike both Bitcoin and e-mail, Bitmessage “addresses” are cryptographically derived sequences that help encrypt a message’s contents automatically. That means that many parties help store and deliver the message, but only the intended recipient can read it. Another option obscures the sender’s identity; an alternate address sends the message on her behalf, similar to the anonymous “re-mailers” that arose from the cypherpunk movement of the nineteen-nineties.

Another ambitious project, Namecoin, is a P2P system almost identical to Bitcoin. But instead of currency, it functions as a decentralized replacement for the Internet’s Domain Name System. The D.N.S. is the essential “phone book” that translates a Web site’s typed address (www.newyorker.com) to the corresponding computer’s numerical I.P. address (192.168.1.1). The directory is decentralized by design, but it still has central points of authority: domain registrars, which buy and lease Web addresses to site owners, and the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or I.C.A.N.N., which controls the distribution of domains.

The infrastructure does allow for large-scale takedowns, like in 2010, when the Department of Justice tried to seize ten domains it believed to be hosting child pornography, but accidentally took down eighty-four thousand innocent Web sites in the process. Instead of centralized registrars, Namecoin uses cryptographic tokens similar to bitcoins to authenticate ownership of “.bit” domains. In theory, these domain names can’t be hijacked by criminals or blocked by governments; no one except the owner can surrender them.

Solutions like these follow a path different from Mailpile and ArkOS. Their peer-to-peer architecture holds the potential for greatly improved privacy and security on the Internet. But existing apart from commonly used protocols and standards can also preclude any possibility of widespread adoption. Still, Novak said, the transition to an Internet that relies more extensively on decentralized, P2P technology is “an absolutely essential development,” since it would make many attacks by malicious actors—criminals and intelligence agencies alike—impractical.

Though Snowden has raised the profile of privacy technology, it will be up to engineers and their allies to make that technology viable for the masses. “Decentralization must become a viable alternative,” said Cook, the ArkOS developer, “not just to give options to users that can self-host, but also to put pressure on the political and corporate institutions.”

“Discussions about innovation, resilience, open protocols, data ownership and the numerous surrounding issues,” said Redecentralize’s Bolychevsky, “need to become mainstream if we want the Internet to stay free, democratic, and engaging.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...-internet.html





New Data Cable to Make Finland's One of the World's Most Attractive ICT Regions
Ville Hulkkonen

The state intends to build a fast, high-quality and cyber-secure connection to European and global networks from Finland to Germany via an underwater fibre optic cable. The cable is to ensure international telecommunications between East and West and support the growth of Finland's digital economy and the industrial internet. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy discussed the data cable project in its meeting today, 11 December.

The cable will travel from Germany to Finland under the Baltic Sea and join the Finnish fibre optic cable network which runs along the railway lines. This will make high-speed data connections available throughout Finland which, in turn, will improve the country's competitiveness in ICT technologies and digital services.

Governia, a state-owned company with special assignment, has acquired Corenet Oy which will act as the data cable management company. Coronet owns a 7,100-kilometre long network of fibre optic cables in Finland. The company is well suited for the task as it offers services to a wide range of businesses and corporations.

- So far, all data transmission to Finland has taken place via the Öresund Bridge, that is through Denmark and Sweden. With the new cable , Finland has the opportunity of becoming a unique global data hub. This will enhance Finland's position in global competition and create new growth opportunities for our ICT technology, says Pekka Haavisto, minister responsible for state ownership steering.

The new data transmission cable will raise the protection of Finland's international connections and data security to a new level and create preconditions for data centre investments and establishment of information-intensive industry in Finland.

- The sub-sea cable was included in the Government's structural policy programme this autumn. To develop basic ICT infrastructure and the operating conditions for information-intensive industry, Finland will now invest in improving high-speed international connections, says Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen.

Both national and international operators and other stakeholders have expressed their interest in the project. A number of significant international ICT and Big Data businesses have signalled their willingness to invest after the opening of the new connection.

- Globalisation is not only about the movement of people, goods and capital – today, the movement of information has become all the more important. By joining our extensive terrestrial cable network with the sub-sea cable, we will provide access to the world's fastest data connections throughout the country. One day, a cable running under the North-East Passage could be linked to the Finnish and the Baltic Sea cable. This would make Finland a decisive link in the network of global data transmission, says Minister Haavisto.
http://government.fi/ajankohtaista/t...jsp?oid=402176





Saab Wins Brazil Jet Deal After NSA Spying Sours Boeing Bid
Alonso Soto and Brian Winter

Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal.

The contract, negotiated over the course of three presidencies, will supply Brazil's air force with 36 new Gripen NG fighters by 2020. Aside from the cost of the jets themselves, the agreement is expected to generate billions of additional dollars in future supply and service contracts.

Saab did not immediately comment on the purchase. In addition to Chicago-based Boeing Co, France's Dassault Aviation SA was a contender for the contract.

The timing of the announcement, after more than a decade of off-and-on negotiations, appeared to catch the companies involved by surprise. Even Juniti Saito, Brazil's top air force commander, said on Wednesday that he only heard of the decision a day earlier in a meeting with President Dilma Rousseff.

Brazilian officials said the deal, one of the most coveted emerging-market defense contracts, went to Saab because it provided the most affordable option for the new jets, as well as the best conditions for technology transfer to local partners.

The choice, Defense Minister Celso Amorim said, "took into account performance, the effective transfer of technology and costs - not just of acquisition but of maintenance."

Until earlier this year, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet had been considered the front runner. But revelations of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency in Brazil, including personal communication by Rousseff, led Brazil to believe it could not trust a U.S. company.

"The NSA problem ruined it for the Americans," a Brazilian government source said on condition of anonymity.

A U.S. source close to the negotiations said that whatever intelligence the spying had delivered for the American government was unlikely to outweigh the commercial cost of the revelations.

"Was that worth 4 billion dollars?" the source asked.

The lament echo's recent complaints by Cisco Systems Inc , which said in November that a backlash against U.S. government spying contributed to lower demand for its products in China.

In a statement, Boeing called Brazil's decision a "disappointment," but added that it would continue to work with Brazil to meet its defense requirements.

Dassault, for its part, said it regrets Brazil's decision and called Saab's fighter an aircraft that was inferior to its Rafale jet.

"The Gripen is a lighter, single engine aircraft that does not match the Rafale in terms of performance and therefore does not carry the same price tag," it said.

Saab says the Gripen NG has the lowest logistical and operational costs of all fighters currently in service.

Brazil coexists peacefully with all of its South American neighbors and has no enemies elsewhere. The country, however, is eager to fortify its military as it considers the long-term defense of its vast borders and abundant natural resources, including the Amazon rainforest and offshore oil discoveries.

"We are a peaceful country, but we won't be defenseless," Rousseff said on Wednesday at a lunch with senior officials from Brazil's military, where she said the announcement was forthcoming. "A country the size of Brazil must always be ready to protect its citizens, patrimony and sovereignty."

Sweden's defense minister, Karin Enstrom, said in an interview that the contract, "is a sign that the Gripen is a well-functioning system which is cost efficient."

Under the terms of their agreement, Brazil and Saab will now finalize contract details within a year. The first jet is expected to be delivered two years later, with about 12 of the aircraft expected annually after that.

Brazil's decision unexpectedly wraps up a tortuous and prolonged decision-making process that had made the negotiations the object of ridicule in some defense circles.

However, the deal was taken very seriously by the competitors.

French President François Hollande personally lobbied for Dassault last week during a state visit. Boeing, for its part, was so committed to winning the contract that it opened a big corporate office in Brazil and named Donna Hrinak, a former U.S. ambassador to the country, as its top executive there.

The timing of the announcement surprised many analysts, who believed that the slowdown in Latin America's biggest economy, coupled with Rousseff's expected bid for re-election next year, would delay the purchase until 2015.

Indeed, the decision coincides with pressure on Rousseff from economists, the private sector and political opponents to curb public spending. Having initially increased government spending in efforts to spur growth, the president now faces growing criticism because of stubborn inflation and a worsening outlook for the country's budgetary targets.

Still, the country's current fleet of Mirage fighters, which the new jets will replace, is so old that the air force this week is taking them out of service. And Brazil's government said the money to pay for the jets would not come out of the budget until 2015, after the contract is finalized.

Analysts said the Gripen's cost advantage stems from its relative simplicity compared with the other jets.

"The Gripen is more accessible in terms of technology," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group, a Virginia-based research company for aerospace and defense. "It's something Brazil could conceivable build itself."

At the briefing in which they announced their decision, government officials said Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer SA would be Saab's principal partner. The transfer of technology is crucial to help Brazil develop future generations of fighter aircraft.

"There isn't necessarily a need to produce all the parts in Brazil," Amorim, the defense minister said. "What's important is that specific aviation technology is transferred to Brazil so we can develop it."

The delta-winged Gripen, Swedish for Griffin, was first introduced into service in the late 90's and is currently flown by the Swedish, Hungarian, South African, Thai and Czech air forces, according to the company's website.

Saab shares rose 1.84 percent to 133 krona on Wednesday, their highest close in 10 days. Earlier in the day, they rose as much as 5.7 percent to 138 krona, the highest in five months.

Boeing shares fell 0.13 percent to $135.70 in New York, while Dassault Aviation shares fell 0.4 percent to 920 euros in Paris.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...0JX17W20131218





EFF's Reading List: Books of 2013
Parker Higgins

At the end of each year, EFF puts together a list of some of the interesting and noteworthy books that have been published in the past 12 months or so. We don't endorse all of their arguments, but we find they've added some valuable insight to the conversation around the areas and issues on which we work.

Some notes about this list: it's presented in alphabetical order by author's last name, and the links contain our Amazon affiliate code, which means EFF will receive a portion of purchases made through this page.

The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed, by Nate Anderson

Nate Anderson is a writer for Ars Technica and has had occasion to report on many stories of crime—and investigation—online. In The Internet Police, he gets a chance to re-tell the most interesting, using those anecdotes to make points about how law enforcement reacts to technology. The opinions Anderson presents don't always match up with EFF's, but his take is always readable and informative.

On Internet Freedom, by Marvin Ammori

In this short volume, available as a DRM-free ebook, the established First Amendment scholar and longtime digital rights advocate Marvin Ammori takes on the question of why everybody should care about keeping the Internet free. Along the way, he explains how online battles like the SOPA protests have helped shape our understanding—and the reality—of our online rights. It's also available at a name-your-own-price through Techdirt.

Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society, edited by Benedetta Brevini, Arne Hintz, and Patrick McCurdy

This collection of essays looks toward the broader implications and consequences of WikiLeaks and similar ventures on politics, media, and transparency activism. It includes writing from Yochai Benkler, Gabriella Coleman, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and EFF's Jillian C. York.

Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess, edited by Jerry Brito

This collection of essays starts from the premise that the U.S. Constitution requires a balancing act in copyright policy, but our laws no longer reflect that. Many of the contributors are prominent libertarian writers and thinkers, and where the essays take a political stance, it's a conservative one. But deeper than that, it's a pragmatic look at the problems with a half-century of an unbalanced copyright debate.

Coding Freedom, by Gabriella Coleman

Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist, so her book on hackers and free software communities was sure to be more rigorous than a pop science or even journalistic take. Coding Freedom delivers spectacularly, with a readable and hugely informative ethnography of the hacker, focusing on the Debian project in particular. In true hacker spirit, the book is also CC-licensed and available for free download.

Captive Audience, by Susan Crawford

Using the Comcast-NBC Universal merger as a case study, Susan Crawford explores consolidation in the telecommunications industry. Accessibly written, "Captive Audience" is one of the fullest accounts to date of why telecom monopolies result in slower connection speeds at higher prices.

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, by Ronald J. Deibert

Ronald Deibert runs the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a group EFF regularly works with on computer security issues and malware analysis; his take on these issues and the problems we collectively face is highly informed and incredibly important. Better yet, he gives real suggestions on what we must do to make the networked world safer for all of us.

Homeland, by Cory Doctorow

In this highly-anticipated sequel to the young-adult bestseller "Little Brother," EFF Fellow Cory Doctorow takes our protagonist Marcus to the next level, weaving together straight-from-the-news plotlines that include a cache of 800,000 top secret government documents and a cutting-edge local political campaign. The relevance of the novel is underscored by the poignant afterword written by Aaron Swartz just months before his death. This book is also available for free download.

This Machine Kills Secrets, by Andy Greenberg

Andy Greenberg's taken the action-packed history of the Crypto Wars, the rise of cypherpunks, and the tremendous global impact of publishers like WikiLeaks and weaved it all together into a highly enjoyable narrative. Greenberg has covered these issues for Forbes for years, and this book serves as a great background for the stories in the headlines today. As with any telling of recent history, there are bound to be disagreements about both the players and events, but This Machine Kills Secrets also serves as a great starting point for somebody who wants to dig deeper.

The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America by Thomas Healy

Ask folks about the limitations of the First Amendment and odds are you'll get the Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's "shouting fire in a crowded theater" trope as your answer. But Justice Holmes abandoned that unhelpful and insufficiently rigorous analogy a mere six months after he wrote it. Why he changed his mind so quickly has been one of the great judicial mysteries of our times. The Great Dissent solves the mystery—but we're not spoiling it for you here.

A Copyright Masquerade, by Monica Horten

From our longer review of this book: "Dr. Monica Horten goes deep into those details to detail how the entertainment industries gain political sway, and how policymakers respond to the industry's advances. ... For those interested in the structures that influence copyright policy around the world, Horten's book will prove a valuable resource."

Exploding the Phone, by Phil Lapsley

EFF may have been working with hackers for a long time, but long before we ever came onto the scene there was a whole community of "phone phreakers," a ragtag group of folks who took the global phone network as the target of their hacking. Exploding the Phone is among the most comprehensive and engaging histories of that community ever published.

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, by Evgeny Morozov

Evgeny Morozov must be among the most prolific critics of technological utopianism, and his latest book covers more ground than even his 30,000-word magazine pieces manage. Per usual, he is provocative and at times antagonistic, but his criticisms of the tech industry's "solutionism"—and arguments for why our conversation about the moral consequences of technology need more depth—are sorely needed.

Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power, by Seth Rosenfeld

Investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld spent over 30 years researching this examination of the FBI's extensive spying on legal activities of the Free Speech Movement, practices which presaged today's NSA mass surveillance regime. He also details Ronald Reagan's work as an informant for the FBI and how the agency reciprocated by furthering his political career. Much of the documentation upon which the book is based were obtained by Rosenfeld through Freedom of Information Act requests that were vehemently opposed by the government resulting in rulings in Rosenfeld's favor by nine different federal judges.

Carry On: Sound Advice from Schneier on Security, by Bruce Schneier

EFF board member and security expert Bruce Schneier is both extremely prolific and deeply insightful about how to view questions of security, trust, and power in society. This collection is all previously published material from the past five years; in case you've missed something, this book is a great way to catch up.

The Human Face of Big Data, by Rick Smolan

The Human Face of Big Data translates the often convoluted discussion over massive data sets into a visually dazzling coffee table book. From large scale government surveillance to interconnected household appliances, from the Zoological Society of London's crowdsourcing app to the Internet Archive's digitization efforts, author and documentarian Rick Smolan captures in pictures how technology is changing human society on a global scale. EFF Media Relations Coordinator Dave Maass wrote a longer review in San Diego City Beat.

Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, by Ethan Zuckerman

If Ethan Zuckerman's contributions to Internet scholarship had stopped at the cute cat theory of digital activism, we would have already owed him a debt of gratitude. But we're fortunate that he's provided so much more. In Rewire, Zuckerman provides a valuable perspective on where the Internet succeeds in bringing people closer together, where it does not, and what we can (and should) do about it.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/1...ist-books-2013





Shia LaBeouf Plagiarizes Daniel Clowes Comic for His Film, Responds with Plagiarized Apology
Sean O'Neal

Yesterday the Internet got its first look at HowardCantour.com, a short film that marked the directorial deBeout of Shia LaBeouf, which had previously made the rounds, to some acclaim, at Cannes last year. HowardCantour.com stars Jim Gaffigan as an online film critic, whose interactions at a press junket for a director he used to admire form the backdrop for a bleakly funny rumination on the nature of criticism. It was hailed as a surprisingly sharp, empathetic look at a profession that has not always been kind to LaBeouf—and all in all, an impressive first effort. Naturally, it turned out that LaBeouf stole it.

Shortly after HowardCantour.com was first posted to Short Of The Week (which has since taken it down), BuzzFeed noted the striking similarities between it and Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic by Daniel Clowes—a cartoonist of whom LaBeouf is a documented “huge fan.”

Those similarities were so egregious, you could reasonably call Justin a storyboard for Howard: Both comic and film open with the exact same, very specific monologue. The very next scene, in both comic and film, find the critic interacting with a naïve young freelancer—played in LaBeouf’s movie by Portia Doubleday—with lines that are, again, identical. And it just goes on from there, with LaBeouf’s film continuing to lift its dialogue and even visuals verbatim from Clowes’ comic. In fact, just about the only original line in Howard is in the credits, which deems the work “A Film By Shia LaBeouf.” In retrospect, that line is also the funniest.

Not long after these similarities were brought to light, Clowes’ publisher at Fantagraphics, Eric Reynolds, branded the film a “shameless theft.” Elaborating to Wired, Reynolds said:

My first reaction, before I even watched it, was basically that as much as the plot sounded like the Justin M. Damiano, I presumed that LaBeouf would be smart enough to change everything just enough to make it his own thing and shield himself from any legal liability, even if it didn’t excuse him from being a weasel. Which is why, when I actually started watching it, I almost spit out my coffee when I realized he lifted the script, word for word.

Eventually, Clowes himself responded, in a statement to BuzzFeed:

The first I ever heard of the film was this morning when someone sent me a link. I’ve never spoken to or met Mr. LaBeouf. I’ve never even seen one of his films that I can recall — and I was shocked, to say the least, when I saw that he took the script and even many of the visuals from a very personal story I did six or seven years ago and passed it off as his own work. I actually can’t imagine what was going through his mind.

And while Reynolds charitably allows that LaBeouf at least “subconsciously knew what he was doing”—with HowardCantour.com never officially crediting a screenwriter, but just implicitly claiming ownership of the story (“which makes it even more egregiously shameless,” Reynolds says)—the interview LaBeouf gave Short Of The Week doesn’t exactly bear that out. He describes the film’s development thusly:

I know something about the gulf between critical acclaim and blockbuster business. I have been crushed by critics (especially during my Transformers run), and in trying to come to terms with my feelings about critics, I needed to understand them. As I tried to empathize with the sort of man who might earn a living taking potshots at me and the people I’ve worked with, a small script developed.

Of course, when LaBeouf tried to “empathize” with those who implicitly leech off someone else’s work, he ended up doing so with a film that leeches off someone else’s work—something he might have contextualized as intentionally ironic, had LaBeouf not gone out of his way to make it sound organic. There’s also the fact that LaBeouf is already a well-known plagiarist, having lifted his recent, semi-apology to Alec Baldwin whole cloth from an old Esquire article. Unfortunately for LaBeouf, this sort of thing just makes it all the easier for critics to continue taking “potshots” at him, such as pointing out that he’s a lying thief by using a critic’s cheap tricks, like “evidence.”

Unlike the Esquire incident, the backlash against HowardCantour.com was so swift and widespread that LaBeouf himself felt compelled to respond in a series of tweets:

Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work. In my excitement and naïveté as an amateur filmmaker, I got lost in the creative process and neglected to follow proper accreditation. Im embarrassed that I failed to credit @danielclowes for his original graphic novella Justin M. Damiano, which served as my inspiration. I was truly moved by his piece of work & I knew that it would make a poignant & relevant short. I apologize to all who assumed I wrote it. I deeply regret the manner in which these events have unfolded and want @danielclowes to know that I have a great respect for his work.

Naturally, there’s room to quibble with LaBeouf’s explanation that he simply “neglected” to credit Clowes, given that he’s been promoting this film for more than a year as his own original work—and only recently realized, after it was publicly pointed out, that in his year-plus of “excitement,” he just forgot that he may have committed intellectual property theft.

But it turns out there may be a deeper artistic intention and/or psychological problem behind this whole thing, seeing as LaBeouf also seems to have plagiarized his apology, again: His first tweet is incredibly similar to a Yahoo! Answers comment from four years ago, written in reply to a question about plagiarism. Which, again, is either deeply ironic, or deeply pathological.

So the question becomes: Is LaBeouf’s entire public persona—including the affected self-comparisons to Warren Beatty, and the clichéd bad-boy bar fights—some sort of living-art, Warholian commentary on the thin line separating plagiarism and creativity within the Hollywood factory, whose scope also encompasses the repetitiveness of celebrity scandal? Or is Shia LaBeouf just a fucking asshat?

“I fucked up,” LaBeouf most recently tweeted—either by way of admission of guilt, or by way of putting a knowingly arch title on this, his grand unifying thesis on the laughably empty pretension of modern-day stardom. It’s unknown as yet whom he stole it from.
http://www.avclub.com/article/shia-l...c-for-h-106565
















Until next week,

- js.



















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