Tag Archives: Internet

How to break democracy

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Here is yet another example of the IP industry seeking to protect itself via secret agreements behind closed doors, thereby avoiding public input.

This time it involves a trade agreement called the Trans Pacific Partnership.  Apparently a secret meeting between industry and government participants is being held from January 31 to February 4 at a hotel in West Hollywood.

More details from Ars Technica here and from TechDirt here.

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The Megaupload case (updated)

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I am sure you heard that late this week the United States Department of Justice, with the cooperation of New Zealand authorities, shut down a very popular site called Megaupload. Megaupload was a “file locker” site, a category of cloud based service providers that allow users to upload files to the site for easy Internet access on multiple devices later. This type of site is not rare and includes sites like box.net, DropBox, Facebook and YouTube.

The DOJ claims that the operators of Megaupload paid users to upload copyrighted media for distribution to other Megaupload users, and that such uploads cost the media industry damages in excess of $500 Million.

But there are at least two important questions raised by the DOJ action. First, if the government is able to shut down a site unilaterally and without a prior judicial hearing why in the world is either SOPA or POPA necessary.  The law enforcement shutdown provided no opportunities for due process whatsoever, and immediately rendered inaccessible presumably thousands or hundreds of thousands of files uploaded by innocent users and stored on Megaupload that contained no intellectual property whatsoever. Were those users not entitled to a hearing before their data was seized?

Second, what stops government seizures of any sites that store user uploaded content?  Keep in mind that this type of situation is purely financial in that there were no claims of injury or possible injury to individuals. No violence was involved. If there is a claim that Party A stole and sold the property of Party B, isn’t that claim heard in court?

This action demonstrates quite clearly the dangers of legislation like SOPA. But it also shows that law enforcement acts precipitously in commercial disputes if they occur on the Internet. If I were YouTube, Dropbox or the others, I would be very concerned.

Robert Bennett has been hired to represent Megaupload, so it is likely that a strong defense will be mounted.

Update: Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, has much more on this point. Worth a full read.

… the U.S. Justice Department not only indicted the owners of one of the world’s largest websites, the file-sharing site Megaupload, but also seized and shut down that site, and also seized or froze millions of dollars of its assets — all based on the unproved accusations, set forth in an indictment, that the site deliberately aided copyright infringement.

In other words, many SOPA opponents were confused and even shocked when they learned that the very power they feared the most in that bill — the power of the U.S. Government to seize and shut down websites based solely on accusations, with no trial — is a power the U.S. Government already possesses and, obviously, is willing and able to exercise even against the world’s largest sites (they have this power thanks to the the 2008  PRO-IP Act pushed by the same industry servants in Congress behind SOPA as well as by forfeiture laws used to seize the property of accused-but-not-convicted drug dealers).

* * *

The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole. Supporters of both political parties endorse, or at least tolerate, all manner of government punishment without so much as the pretense of a trial, based solely on government accusation: imprisonment for life, renditions to other countries, even assassinations of their fellow citizens. Simply uttering the word Terrorist, without proving it, is sufficient. And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.

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SOPA/ProtectIP risk operation of the Internet (updated)

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A group of 83 technology inventors and engineers, who collectively built the technology for the Internet, have warned that SOPA/ProtectIP are threats to the Internet’s continued operation. The number one signatory is Vint Cert, the co-inventor of TCP/IP, the underlying networking technology that is at the base of the Internet.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

Update: And there is this highly appropriate take by Alexandra Petri in today’s Washington Post:

As long as there have been new technologies, the entertainment industry has been trying to get them shut down as filthy, thieving pirates. Video cassettes? Will anyone tune into TV again? MP3 players? Why even bother making a record? Digital video recorder that lets you skip ads? That’s a form of theft!

But SOPA is threatening to touch something far more precious than that — the glorious sprawl of the Internet.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that, in the name of preventing online piracy of copyrighted work, creates a horrifyingly large censorship authority for the Internet. Among other things, it requires service providers (which have come out opposing the bill) to block access to entire sites if a user on the site is accused of copyright infringement.

There are dozens of reasons this is wrong. The biggest and most pressing is that not only does the bill not do what it sets out to do, it also creates a horrifyingly blunt instrument to censor the Internet.

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An Internet for the 1%

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Lauren Weinstein, in a post to the Privacy Forum mailing list, details the means, methods and goals of a complete extra-judicial regulation of the heretofore free operation of the Internet. His post is a warning and points to real danger. Read the full post, but here is an excerpt:

… with the fullness of time, the phone companies, cable companies, governments, and politicians galore came to most intensely pay attention to the Internet, as did the entertainment industry behemoths and a broad range of other “intellectual property” interests.

Their individual concerns actually vary widely at the detailed level, but in a broader context their goals are very much singular in focus.

They want to control the Internet.  They want to control it utterly, completely, in every technologically possible detail (and it seems in various technically impossible ways as well).

The freedom of communications with which the Internet has empowered ordinary people — especially one-to-many communications that historically have been limited to governments and media empires themselves — is viewed as an existential threat to order, control, and profits — that is, to historical centers of power.

Outside of the “traditional” aspects of government control over their citizenries, another key element of the new attempts to control the Net are desperate longings by some parties to turn back the technological clock to a time when music, movies, and other works could not so easily be duplicated and disseminated in “authorized” fashions. …

In their efforts to control people and protect profits, governments and associated industries (often in league with powerful Internet Service Providers — ISPs — who in some respects are admittedly caught in the middle), seem willing to impose draconian, ultimately fascist censorship, identification, and other controls on the Internet and its users, even extending into the basic hardware in our homes and offices.

I’ve invoked fascism in this analysis , and I do not do so lightly.

If you care about free speech, free access to data, and the ability of individuals to speak broadly about any topics they wish, you should read his essay and take action now.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

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H.R. 1981: here we go again (updated)

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The House Judiciary has passed a bill that is yet another assault on privacy. And, consistent with past practice, such bills are always named so as to produce a compliant public response.

Proponents of the H.R. 1981 bill have titled it the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. It’s believed by some that the legislation will help lift law enforcement out of the “dark ages”.   Agents will be able to subpoena IP information instead of needing a court-ordered warrant. Investigators will have a further leg up when identifying child porn distributors and users since the bill ensures that the “footprints of predators are not erased,” according to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan believes the bill is mislabeled. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes,” he says.

This is so typical. There is a massive invasion of privacy by the Federal government and one of the scary “3Ps” is trotted as the primary purpose of the bill. The three Ps, as all Americans should know by now are pedophilia, pornography and piracy.

Besides civil libertarians, who else is opposed to the bill? The Electronic Frontier Foundation,  the ACLU, EPIC, and others.

Update: More from LifeHacker, including what to do to protect yourself, here.

Your best bet is to find yourself a good VPN provider and hook it up to a good VPN tool to encrypt and route all your internet traffic through a third-party that isn’t your ISP. Virtual Private Networks creates secure, encrypted connections between your computer and a server on the internet, then routes all your internet activity through that server. Your ISP would only really be logging the IP address of your VPN server, which doesn’t give them much of your private info.

Tor is one of the easiest ways to browse anonymously online (even if it isn’t perfect). If you’re a Chrome user, you can even create a simple Tor toggle button to use it only when you really need it. By anonymizing your browsing, your ISPs won’t have a record of what you’ve been doing. They’ll know you were online, but the details won’t be available to them or the police. Of course, there’s no assurance that any anonymous browsing tool will provide full protection but it’s definitely better than nothing at all. If setting up Tor seems a little daunting, Vidalia can help simplify the process. You’ll also want to read our guide on protecting your privacy when downloading for more suggestions.

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Six strikes

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The major ISPs have agreed with media companies to implement a “six strikes” program. Under the agreement, when content companies report to an ISP that they believe an ISP customer is accessing illegal content, the ISPs will implement a series of notices intended to get the customer to stop. Ultimately, the customer could be terminated by the ISP if they cease the activity.

The problem with this approach is that it is based merely on claims made by private companies, with no judicial oversight whatsoever. In effect, the ISPs become cops for the media industry and the media industry has the unilateral power to block (or severely degrade) service for those accused.  Imagine if a private company could go to the phone company and accuse a customer of using his phone to commit a crime and demand that the phone company take action, including disconnecting the phone. Would we agree to that approach? Since when do private companies engage in law enforcement?

The Center for Democracy & Technology, along with Public Knowledge, said in a joint statement they were concerned about the accord. “We believe it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court,” the groups said.

Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also had concerns. She added, in a telephone interview, that the EFF was “pretty disappointed that ISPs have agreed to serve as a propaganda agent for big media.”

If a media company believes that a person has illegally stolen their content, the law provides existing remedies.

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Amazon’s cloud service

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Amazon has launched a new cloud service allowing 5 gigabytes of storage free. It also comes with a music player that allows you to stream your music to any Internet-connected computer or Android device. Looks like a nice product.

But, as usual, before uploading your music or other data, you may want to read the Terms of Service.  Among the interesting items are these:

  • You must ensure that you have all the necessary rights in Your Files that permit you to use the Service without infringing the rights of any copyright owners, violating any applicable laws or violating the terms of any license or agreement to which you are bound.
  • You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.
  • We do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You’re responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files.

One of the major benefits of a system like this is that you do not need to manage your own backup of your files stored online. However, the terms above seem to indicate that (i) there is and will be no way to encrypt the files you store in this cloud and (ii) Amazon could turn over all your files to anyone they want to examine them for wrongful behaviour.

Consider yourself warned.

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Wiretaps built-in

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The Federal government is pushing for new laws that, in essence, would require that all communications technology would have to include functionality making wiretapping easily available to the government. The Feds have been working on this plan, called “Going Dark”. Some of the details were outlined in documents secured by the EFF pursuant to a FOIA request.

The FBI states the Going Dark program is a “five-prong strategic approach to address the lawful ‘Intercept capability gap’” (GD3, p. 10). These five prongs are:

  1. modernization /amendment of existing laws,
  2. enhancing authorities to protect industry proprietary and [law enforcement] sensitive lawful intercept information, equipment and techniques,
  3. enhancing [law enforcement] agencies’ coordination leveraging technical expertise of FBI with other [law enforcement] entities,
  4. enhancing lawful intercept cooperation between the communications industry and [law enforcement agencies] with a “One Voice” approach, and
  5. seeking new federal funding to bolster lawful intercept capabilities.

And yesterday, a hearing on the matter was held in Congress.

Ms. Caproni [FBI General Counsel] emphasized that the F.B.I. was not seeking new surveillance powers, but rather a way to keep its existing powers from eroding. She also said the F.B.I. was not seeking a decryption key that would allow the government to directly intercept and unscramble secure communications.

Rather, she said, the bureau hoped to require communication service providers to deploy, within their own systems, a wiretapping capability. The provider would have to be able to isolate, intercept and deliver to the government a particular user’s communications in response to a wiretap order.

This is a bad idea on several levels. First, there is no constitutional basis for requiring any business or citizen to create a path for wiretaps. Could the Congress require that microphones be placed into homes and business so that law enforcement could simply switch them on when desired? Despite claims to the contrary, this is an effort to secure additional, new wiretap powers.

Second, such back door access technologies are subject to a risk of hacker takeover.

Finally, American technology with such required back doors would be rejected by most the rest of the world, thereby crippling our business competitiveness.

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Tech quote of the day

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This is actually a civil liberties quote and a hypocrisy quote, as well as a tech quote.

The United States continues to help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online

– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pledging support for free speech on the Internet.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State fails to note that these rules apparently do not apply within the United States, where the Federal government tries to shut off Internet information it does not like.  The United States government has sought every means available to block information from Wikileaks, including pressuring those private businesses that provided services to Wikileaks. And civil liberties are under continuing attack in the States.

Clinton’s speech came a day after the House voted to extend to December 8 three controversial domestic spy provisions of the Patriot Act. And Customs officials seized 18 more internet domainswithout giving the pirate website owners a chance to challenge the forfeiture.

What’s more, the Obama administration on Thursday is expected to testify before a House subcommittee about the need to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which already requires telcos and internet access providers to have wiretapping capabilities. The FBI wants Congress to demand that same requirement for encrypted e-mail services like Blackberry, and also wants that for social networks and peer-to-peer messaging networks like Skype.

The secretary, meanwhile, was quick to point out that the United States government’s vocal and legal campaign against WikiLeaks is premised on a “theft” of government material.

“The fact that WikiLeaks used the internet is not the reason we criticized its actions,” Clinton said.

Hours after the speech, the Justice Department was in federal court trying to get Twitter to cough up records related to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others.

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The day the Internet died (updated x2)

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The Internet died in one country yesterday. Facing a huge and violent uprising, the government of Egypt substantially shut down the Internet through the country.

After blocking Twitter on Tuesday and, intermittently, Facebook and Google on Wednesday, the Egyptian government has upped the ante, throwing a complete Internet access block across the whole of the country. Additionally blocked are Blackberry service and SMS.

Reports are pouring in, many to Twitterers via landline, that the country has been “cut off” and is now a “black hole.”

Reports from Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere in the country indicate the block is wholesale and countrywide.

The extent of this shutdown may be a first.

Update: This attack on civil liberties in Egypt highlights a risk here in the United States. A proposal is currently under consideration in the Senate that would give the President a “kill switch” to such down the Internet during a crisis. Giving this kind of control over the free flow of information to the government would be a serious mistake.

Update 2:

This is what Egypt's cutoff from the Net looks like: http://j.mp/egypt_arbor (HT @labovit - it's from a global set of traffic points)
January 28, 2011 1:03 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@danny_at_cpj
Danny O'Brien
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Drunk blogging

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Tonight is probably one of the busiest drunk blogging nights of the year. My warning: don’t do it.

If you do, a blog like this one can turn out like this.  Follow the link and turn up the slider near the bottom of the screen.

Happy New Year!

Bruce Sterling on Wikileaks

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Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling via Wikipedia

Bruce Sterling is a terrific thinker and writer covering the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Here he sets out his thoughts about the impact of Wikileaks and its impact on the world. Worth a full read, but here is an excerpt:

Unfortunately for the US State Department, they clearly shouldn’t have been messing with computers, either. In setting up their SIPRnet, they were trying to grab the advantages of rapid, silo-free, networked communication while preserving the hierarchical proprieties of official confidentiality. That’s the real issue, that’s the big modern problem; national governments and global computer networks don’t mix any more. It’s like trying to eat a very private birthday cake while also distributing it. That scheme is just not working. And that failure has a face now, and that’s Julian Assange.

Assange didn’t liberate the dreadful secrets of North Korea, not because the North Koreans lack computers, but because that isn’t a cheap and easy thing that half-a-dozen zealots can do. But the principle of it, the logic of doing it, is the same. Everybody wants everybody else’s national government to leak. Every state wants to see the diplomatic cables of every other state. It will bend heaven and earth to get them. It’s just, that sacred activity is not supposed to be privatized, or, worse yet, made into the no-profit, shareable, have-at-it fodder for a network society, as if global diplomacy were so many mp3s. Now the US State Department has walked down the thorny road to hell that was first paved by the music industry. Rock and roll, baby.

Now, in strict point of fact, Assange didn’t blandly pirate the massive hoard of cables from the US State Department. Instead, he was busily “redacting” and minutely obeying the proprieties of his political cover in the major surviving paper dailies. Kind of a nifty feat of social-engineering there; but he’s like a poacher who machine-gunned a herd of wise old elephants and then went to the temple to assume the robes of a kosher butcher. That is a world-class hoax.

Assange is no more a “journalist” than he is a crypto mathematician. He’s a darkside hacker who is a self-appointed, self-anointed, self-educated global dissident. He’s a one-man Polish Solidarity, waiting for the population to accrete around his stirring propaganda of the deed. And they are accreting; not all of ‘em, but, well, it doesn’t take all of them.

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