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Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion of Power to Read and Copy Travelers' ...
Recently obtained documents show that last year the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens. The documents were made public today by the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain policies governing the searches and questioning of travelers at the nation’s borders.
The documents show that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) loosened restrictions on the examination of travelers' documents and papers that had existed since 1986. While CBP agents could previously read travelers' documents only if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to "review and analyze" papers without any individualized suspicion. Furthermore, whereas CBP agents could previously copy materials only where they had "probable cause" to believe a law had been violated, in 2007 they were empowered to copy travelers' papers without suspicion of wrongdoing and keep them for a "reasonable period of time" to conduct a border search. The new rules applied to physical documents as well as files on laptop computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.
In July 2008, the Department of Homeland Security made public a new policy on examining travelers' papers and electronic devices that finalized many of the changes first implemented in 2007. The agency did not disclose, however, how much the new policy deviated from rules that had been in place since 1986. The FOIA documents from ALC's and EFF's suit included the original policy, which had been adopted after a group of U.S. citizens challenged the practices of the 1980s as violating First Amendment rights.
"For more than 20 years, the government implicitly recognized that reading and copying the letters, diaries, and personal papers of travelers without reason would chill Americans' rights to free speech and free expression," said Shirin Sinnar, ALC staff attorney. "But now customs officials can probe into the thoughts and lives of ordinary travelers without any suspicion at all."
In February 2008, ALC and EFF sued the Department of Homeland Security for failing to disclose its policies on searching and questioning travelers at U.S. borders. ALC, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, received more than two dozen complaints since last year from U.S. travelers, mostly of Muslim, South Asian, or Middle Eastern origin, who said they were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad. In addition, these individuals said that CBP agents examined their books, handwritten notes, personal photos, laptop computer files, and cell phone directories, and sometimes made copies of this information. The documents from the FOIA request show that CBP's wide latitude to collect this data attracted significant attention from other law enforcement agencies that sought to access it.
"Your laptop computer likely contains a massive amount of private information such as personal emails, financial data or confidential business records," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The Department of Homeland Security has given its agents increasingly broad authority to search, copy, and store that information. Congress needs to step in now to stop these invasive practices and protect travelers' privacy."
The newly released documents, which total 661 pages, also reveal that: Recently obtained documents show that last year the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a two-decades-old policy that res... more -
Cheney sued over wiretapping
In addition to its current wiretap lawsuit against AT&T (which the government is trying to dismiss), the EFF has filed suit against Cheney, Gonzales, and a host of others.
By suing the government directly, the EFF is attempting to undermine the government's plan to use a new power handed to it by Congress in July. The so-called telecom immunity provision nearly automatically forces a judge to dismiss lawsuits against companies accused of helping the government spy -- without court approval -- on the phone and internet communications of Americans.
Last week, the government told a federal court judge overseeing some 38 cases against the telecoms that it would file those papers on AT&T's behalf by Friday.
Thursday's potential class action suit against the government -- filed in federal district court in Northern California -- seeks a halt to the program, an accounting of who was spied on and damages for the five named plaintiffs.
It also names high government officials -– in their official and personal capacities -- putting them at risk of fines they would be personally liable for.
Among those listed – former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, along with current and former heads of intelligence agencies involved in the spying.
"In addition to suing AT&T, we've now opened a second front in the battle to stop the NSA's illegal surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and hold personally responsible those who authorized or participated in the spying program," said senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston.
The suit argues the spying violated federal wiretap law, the First Amendment's guarantee of anonymous speech and the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches.
Others have challenged the government program directly, but no one has succeeded so far. The EFF hopes the whistle-blower evidence it has used to keep the AT&T case alive will also work to prove it has a right to sue the feds as well.
The EFF plans to contest the legality of the so-called telecom immunity powers -- but wants to have another avenue to pursue its goal of having the program declared illegal.
Though the full extent of the secret spying is not known, media reports indicate the government collected phone calls and emails – with the help of American telecoms -- where one party was inside the U.S. and one was outside the country.
Until recently, wiretapping law required court orders to collect that information inside the U.S.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely legalized did not immunize the government or government officials. In addition to its current wiretap lawsuit against AT&T (which the government is trying to dismiss), the EFF has filed suit agains... more -
EFF to sue Bush, Cheney, NSA and others over telecom spying
The government has decreed that they can't sue the phone companies over illegal spying on Americans, so instead they're about sue the government.
From an Electronic Frontier Foundation press alert just received here:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will file a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.
The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance. The government has decreed that they can't sue the phone companies over illegal spying on Americans, so instead they're abou... more -
EFF Supports TorrentSpy in Electronic Privacy Case
After it was ruled that a hacker who obtained unauthorized emails from TorrentSpy on behalf of the MPAA did not technically intercept them under the WireTap Act, the EFF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief. EFF describes the recent decision as a “dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws,” and wants to see it overturned.
torrentspyThe case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, was brought against the MPAA by Justin Bunnell, the owner of TorrentSpy, who found out that the MPAA had intercepted his email communication.
In 2005, an associate of TorrentSpy, Robert Anderson, ‘changed sides’ after an internal dispute and decided to work with the MPAA instead, gathering evidence against the BitTorrent site.
The man configured the TorrentSpy mail server to copy and forward all of the site’s email to his own Gmail account. He later sold the 34 pages of information to the MPAA for around $15,000 but later relented and went back to work with the torrent site, telling them what he knew. The same man also spied on The Pirate Bay.
The EFF had filed a brief with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that federal wiretap laws protect emails from interception while they are stored on the mail servers that work to transmit them. However, the federal district court ruled that because the emails were momentarily stored on the server during the delivery process, under the Wiretap Act they were not technically intercepted. The ruling itself only applies to the 9th District, but could have relevance at other courts in the US.
In its friend-of-the-court brief, the EFF states this ruling is incorrect and must be reviewed, since it could allow the government to spy on other people’s emails in the future, without the need for a court order.
“The district court’s decision, if upheld, would have dangerous repercussions far beyond this single case,” Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the EFF said. “That court opinion — holding that the secret and unauthorized copying and forwarding of emails while they pass through an email server is not an illegal interception of those emails — threatens to wholly eviscerate federal privacy protections against Internet wiretapping and to authorize the government to conduct similar email surveillance without getting a wiretapping order from a judge.”
It appears that, as long as emails aren’t actually intercepted en-route, it could be legal for the government to request that an ISP copies an individual’s emails after they arrive on the mail server. This would not be classed as a breach of wiretap laws, which is a worryingly easy circumvention of vital privacy laws according to the EFF.
The EFF asks the Court to vacate the district court decision, and and rule that the MPAA hacker did “intercept” email communication from TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell. The full amicus brief can be viewed here. After it was ruled that a hacker who obtained unauthorized emails from TorrentSpy on behalf of the MPAA did not technically intercept ... more -
EFF Tool Hunts BitTorrent Throttling ISPs
Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywhere else. It has brought the issue of traffic shaping to the forefront of people’s minds, and into public discussion. Aiming to highlight ISP’s and their shaping, the EFF has released a new tool for users to test their connection’s integrity.
Switzerland logoIt’s been about a year since we first broke the story about Comcast and their torrent-throttling practices. Today, they were ordered (doc|pdf) to cease their practices by the end of the year, and disclose their practices by the end of August. Many expect Comcast to appeal, but others feel that Comcast has no grounds for it.
Regardless, Comcast is not the only ISP that is throttling. As was revealed in the stats from Project Glasnost, Cox is also throttling heavily. So, while some are popping the champagne corks over this victory, others are still working hard to keep our ISP’s honest, and ensure that their customers are getting what they paid for.
The latest of these, is a project called Switzerland by the EFF. Still in very early alpha, it’s an attempt to not just detect sandvineing by an ISP, but other forms of throttling as well. Unlike Glasnost, which uses a central server and known torrent streams to detect activities from the ISP interfering, this will use a more decentralised method, where peers running Switzerland swap information about the packets they send to other Switzerland users, in encrypted data packets sent via a central server. In effect, it’s a checksum of torrent activity sent via a 3rd party. As Peter Eckersley, staff technologist for the EFF, and developer of Switzerland puts it “Alice and Bob are exchanging packets, they connect to a neutral server (Switzerland) to arbitrate between their different views of the packets”.
When asked why the EFF started this project, and why they believe a neutral network is important, he told TorrentFreak: “There were several reasons why we started the Test Your ISP project, and designed and built Switzerland. One reason was pragmatic: we were trying to run systematic tests of the interference that Comcast was deploying against P2P networks, and we decided that the only sensible way to do that was to build an automated sensor network. So we set about doing that.”
“The bigger picture, of course, is that without transparency the Internet won’t remain the amazing open and innovative thing that it has been,” Eckersley says. “And EFF’s mission is to make sure that the Internet stays open and innovative. We need to shine lights into the dark corners of the network, and make sure that ISPs aren’t setting themselves up in some control room and saying “protocol A okay, but protocol B doesn’t fit with our business plans, so let’s give it second-class treatment or stop it from working entirely.”
Some might worry that the client might open up people to being monitored by anti-p2p companies or other undesirables, using the system as another method of verification, but there is really no way around it. The simplest method to avoid that is, in Peters words, “avoid exchanging copyrighted files between Switzerland clients. The copyright risks are probably lower if you run your own Switzerland server, but it’s still going to keep logs.”
The question of what the FCC will do about these other ISPs and their traffic management is one to ponder. Our inquiries on this matter have been acknowledged, but not replied to at the time of publication. Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywh... more -
Judge's ruling in FISA lawsuit suggests Bush is a felon
Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees' stances on the congressional bill regarding FISA regulations, the media appears to have forgotten the central issue, of the actual lawsuit itself, and possible consequences for the defendant, George W. Bush.
Late last week, a federal judge ruled against the legality of Bush's secret wiretapping campaign, rejecting certain aspects of his lawyers' argument that "the president has exclusive authority over matters of national security and may disregard laws like FISA that impose checks on presidential power." If successful, the lawsuit would hold Bush personally accountable for violating these laws, constituting a series of felonies.
"On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker… ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon."
Much of the story is still shrouded in secrecy, but due to the inventiveness of the plaintiff's legal team, who managed to argue against arguments they couldn't see, using documents they could only construct in secret (and shred immediately), flirting with treason simply by remembering certain aspects of the case, some of the proceedings are finally bubbling up from the gutter of 'national security' into the public eye.
Amazingly, the defendant's legal team seems to have made several key blunders, effectively invalidating some of the national security laws hampering other such lawsuits from establishing proof and cause. "Of the four dozen lawsuits challenging various aspects of Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program, the Al-Haramain case is unique because… we can show they were victims of the unlawful conduct for which they are suing. Nobody else has been able to produce such proof. Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain's lawyers in August of 2004."
In the protracted, seven year process of constructing a legal defense, "We [the plaintiffs' lawyers] went forward, drafting our secret appellate brief in a DOJ office, on a DOJ computer, under the watch of a DOJ security officer -- that is, under the auspices and control of our adversary in the legal case. We could print out drafts but couldn't take them from the room; instead, we were to leave the drafts on the table to be shredded by Hogarty [the government's defense lawyer] later… We would not be allowed to keep a copy of what we had written; the brief in Hogarty's safe was 'our' copy.
Hogarty explained that anything we wrote down that contained classified information, then or later, would instantly become 'derivatively classified' and thus unlawful for us to possess. I wondered whether this meant that the portion of my brain that remembers the Document is also 'derivatively classified,' making its presence in my skull unlawful."
This is but one moment in a baffling, twisted tale of modern constitutional law colliding with Congressional regulation and post-9/11 Bush administration fear tactics. Follow the jump to read the lawyer's actual first-person account, Involving impossibly Byzantine legal semantics, a 'who's on first' style courtroom scene, a banana peel which may (or may not) have been shredded for its implication in state secrets, and a pervasive, Orwellian level of privelaged secrecy. It is an intricate network of checks and balances, almost beyond belief.
Although this ruling will not end the case,
"Judge Walker's decision last week was a major victory for us. Walker concluded that FISA does indeed preempt the state secrets privilege. More broadly, he addressed the key issue raised by our lawsuit -- the validity of the 'unitary executive' theory -- and said what we've been long awaiting: that the president does not have unbridled power to disregard federal statutory law in the name of national security."
With this ruling, handed down on the day before Independence Day, the federal judge's decision suggests that freedom may still reign in America. Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees' stances on the congressional bill regarding FISA regu... more -
US v. Arnold - EFF Demands Investigation for Suspicionless Digital Searches at B...
On April 21st, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Arnold that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports. Customs and Border Patrol are likely to use the opinion to argue that almost every property search at the border is constitutionally acceptable.
EFF filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that laptop searches are so revealing and invasive that the Fourth Amendment requires agents to have some reasonable suspicion to justify the intrusion. Not only are laptops capable of storing vast amounts of information, the information tends to be of the most personal sort, including letters, finances, diaries, photos, and web surfing histories. Prior border search cases distinguished between "routine" suspicionless searches and invasive "non-routine" searches that require reasonable suspicion. Our amicus brief and the lower court opinion relied on these cases to say that the government must also have some cause to search laptops. The Ninth Circuit panel rejected our argument that the privacy invasion resulting from searching computers is qualitatively different from, and requires higher suspicion than, searching luggage or other physical items.
The opinion is almost certainly wrong to classify laptop searches as no different from other property searches. Fourth Amendment law constrains police from conducting arbitrary searches, implements respect for social privacy norms, and seeks to maintain traditional privacy rights in the face of technological changes. This Arnold opinion fails to protect travelers in these traditional Fourth Amendment ways.
The defendant has time to petition the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, and the Court might agree to do so. The panel included a District Court judge sitting by designation. Additionally, the opinion sets up Arnold's reliance on cases protecting highly private areas like the home from suspicionless searches as a straw man and then knocks the argument down by pointing out "the simple fact that one cannot live in a laptop". This strained and strange argument suggests that Arnold is not the last word on border searches of laptops. In the meantime, travelers carrying their corporation's trade secrets, personal emails, or health and financial information are at risk of arbitrary and capricious fishing expeditions at the border. On April 21st, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Arnold that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to have ... more -
FBI backs off, who could have guessed?
Archive.org in SF won its case against the FBI and can now share its story.
It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence.
The NSL is a really scary concept. I thought Herbert Hoover had been dead for years. Archive.org in SF won its case against the FBI and can now share its story. ... more -
Student bloggers need to know their rights
Been reprimanded for your site? Are schools allowed to punish you for what is not on there website, property and has no affiliation with the at all?
Pew Internet and American Life Project's studies tell that 38 percent of online teens read a blog and 19 percent of teens, approximately four million students, keep one. A separate Pew study said 68 percent of teenagers have used the Internet at school.
Schools usually have jurisdiction over school-hosted or school-sponsored publications, such as school newspapers or school blogs. Students have more protection and can express themselves more openly on a personal blog.
Personal blogs allow students to inform others of their opinions about fellow students, teachers and school district as a whole. Although schools do not have jurisdiction on personal blogs, schools may still challenge them.
In Emmett v. Kent School District, the court ruled that the public Kent School District's officials had violated a student's First Amendment rights by punishing the student for his personal Web site. The court held that "the speech was entirely outside of the school's supervision or control."
In Flaherty v. Keystone Oaks School District, a federal court found a public school's policy, which prohibited "inappropriate, harassing, offensive or abusive" behavior, was unconstitutional because "the policy could be read by school officials to cover speech that occurs off school premises and that is not related to any school activity in an arbitrary manner."
When schools win from suing students for what they say on the Internet, it is usually because of the Tinker Test, or "material disruption."
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the "material disruption" standard says that your free-speech rights can be limited when the speech "materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of rights of others." Therefore, if you blog about how you hate a teacher, the school may claim that it is materially disrupting classwork.
If you have been punished for your personal Web site or your school has ordered students to stop blogging about school, the EFF advises that you contact them and a lawyer. The EFF says a "blanket ban" would violate your First Amendment rights.
What can you do on your personal blog? There is a lot you can do, such as write an online fiction like an anonymous person. However, it does not mean your school would be happy with it. Your First, Fourth, and Eighth amendment rights will be helpful. If you insult your school teachers and administrators, be wary of how you do it.
The common saying "think before you act" can be great advice because not only do schools visit your Web site, colleges and universities may look at it.
Here's some advice:
Do not create nor visit your site on school property, the school's Internet connection, nor during school time. Also, if you bring a copy of the site onto the school campus or event you may be permitting the school to have jurisdiction.
On your Web site, when applies, say all of the following: "This site is not affiliated with any school and/or organization." "Warning Advice: [insert Web site] is not responsible for you visiting this site. Please do not visit it at [insert your school district]. Do not permit this site to disrupt classwork and/or cause substantial disorder." Been reprimanded for your site? Are schools allowed to punish you for what is not on there website, property and has no affiliation wi... more -
Sexual Privacy on the Web-- panel at SXSW Interactive
A clip of a super interesting panel at SXSW, moderated by Violet Blue with the following panelists:
Zoe Margolis Writer, Girl With a One-Track Mind
Jonathan Moore Security Expert and Developer, various social netowrks
Jason Schultz Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
John D'Addario Editor, Gawker Media (Fleshbot, link is NSFW) A clip of a super interesting panel at SXSW, moderated by Violet Blue with the following panelists: ... more -
URGENT: Oppose Telecom Immunity and Tell Your Senator to Vote "No on Cloture&...
The EFF would like to thank everyone for standing with EFF in opposing telecom immunity in the past. It's time to contact your Senators once again. As early as next Monday, the Administration and its allies are trying to end Senate debate on FISA and telecom immunity and force a vote on the Senate Intelligence Committee's bill -- a bill that would broadly expand the executive branch's spying powers while granting immunity to telecoms that broke the law and assisted in the NSA's illegal domestic spying.
Now is the time to urge your Senators to vote no on "cloture" in order to keep the debate going!
http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=357
Every time you've taken action to fight against immunity, it's made a huge difference. In November, your calls helped to ensure that the Senate Judiciary Committee did not include telecom amnesty in its surveillance bill, and in December your calls helped convince Harry Reid to delay the vote until January. Both times, the pundits assumed we didn't stand a chance, and both times we proved them wrong.
It's time to beat the odds again. Visit the EFF Action Center now. The EFF would like to thank everyone for standing with EFF in opposing telecom immunity in the past. It's time to contact your Se... more -
Steal This Film II
Finally, it's released!
Steal This Film Part 2 is now out and it's very important to see this film!
You can download it directly from the STF2 site or download it from TPB using this link where you can also find the first part which features The Pirate Bay quite a bit.
Please support the STF2-crew by at least helping out with seeding this movie (or even donate some cash towards the next part...). Thanks!
Steal This Film 1, which was downloaded nearly 3 million times, has now been succeeded officially (as the sequel premiered and was ironically leaked last month) by none other than Steal This Film 2. By producing this video, the League of Noble Peers, which features many prominent individuals from the BitTorrent community, has the goal of bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think 'after intellectual property', think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity. For those still confused, Steal This Film is a series documenting the movement against intellectual property. The films discuss piracy culture as well as raids against file sharing websites. In the spirit of piracy, the movie is completely free for download.
It's very fascinating look at where we've come and where we are going in the world of information. Finally, it's released! Steal This Film Part 2 is now out and it's very important to see this film! ... more -
Key Open Government Reform Legislation Becomes Law
In one his last official acts of 2007, President Bush signed into law the first major overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in more than a decade. The Open Government Act of 2007 makes much-needed changes to the FOIA process that will give Americans better access to information about their government at work, such as:
* Ensuring that freelance and alternative journalists are considered representatives of the media, making it less expensive for them to get information from the government.
* Providing for attorney fees when a requester's lawsuit prompts an agency to change its position on a request, even if a court doesn't order it.
* Creating a tracking system to help make sure that FOIA requests don't become hopelessly tangled in red tape.
* Establishing the Office of Government Information Services, which will be tasked with helping to resolve conflicts between agencies and requesters.
* Penalizing agencies that don't process FOIA requests on time.
* Making it clear that requesters can get government records maintained by private contractors, not just the agencies themselves.
* Imposing greater reporting requirements to let Congress and the public know more about how agencies handle requests.
The changes made by the OPEN Government Act are a hard-fought victory that will help EFF and other requesters make better use of the FOIA and keep the government accountable to the people.
In the past few months, EFF's FOIA requests have uncovered illegal government demands for phone customers' "communities of interest" and revealed details about the FBI's misuse of National Security Letters. Our work was also cited in a congressional call for an investigation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. To learn more about EFF's FOIA efforts, visit our FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project page. In one his last official acts of 2007, President Bush signed into law the first major overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA... more -
Between Friends: The Perils of Centralized Blogging
One of the paradoxes of current social software is how many of your closely-guarded secrets you are obliged to entrust to a third party. Take the social blogging site LiveJournal: its centralized server allows you to set blog posts to "friends only" or "private". To use this feature, you post these semi-confidential journal entries to LiveJournal's server, and rely on it to hide your thoughts from the most of the world using its centrally-maintained list of friends to control access. LiveJournal holds your secret data in trust, as much as you trust it to keep your public data available.
We give these companies a great deal of control over our privacy and our speech - and even if we trust that company with those responsibilities now, there are no guarantees that the pressures upon and motivations of that company will stay constant over time.
The news that LiveJournal has been sold to SUP, a Moscow-based company, is the latest vivid indication of this danger. Now, LiveJournal journal entries are under the control of not only a young new company, but a new jurisdiction: Russia. What does that mean for the privacy of LiveJournal posts, and the free expression of LiveJournal users?
Despite strong protections in the Constitution and the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, United States law is by no means a perfect guarantor of privacy. It surprises many people to learn that U.S. courts have in the past decided that the simple act of handing data over to a company removes many of your constitutional protections over that data (though statutory protections remain).And, despite the United State's long tradition of being a free speech-friendly country, Six Apart, in an apparent attempt to fend off external domestic pressure, has removed content and cancelled accounts in an arbitrary manner that could easily chill speech among its users.
Countries like Russia have, legally and culturally, weaker protections over privacy and free speech than many users might have come to expect. Legal considerations aside, LiveJournal may come under far more intense pressure when run from Moscow than from the United States. The site is very popular among Russian-speakers (the common word for blog in Russian is taken from the site's name), and is used by opposition politicians there as much as by enthusiastic fan-fiction authors. The political status of free expression in Russia is on shakier ground, with journalists, online and off, assaulted and threatened by the authorities.
LiveJournallers, already disturbed by acts of control by Six Apart, could well find themselves caught up in far nastier fights over the public and private content held by SUP's servers. That's of particular concern for Russian users, or the many Russia-speaking LJers in the former-Soviet republics that surround Russia, who do not necessarily trust the political or business culture of Moscow.
Fortunately, for those concerned by the implications, LiveJournal's legacy in the world of open source and open standards means that extracting data from the service is not as painful as it might otherwise be.
But for now, the most important lesson for Americans and Russians alike, is to be cautious about with who and where you share your secrets. The Internet has given us the opportunity to make public and secure our own data; hopefully the next generation of social software will give us the tools to use these capabilities for ourselves, rather than entrust the responsibility to others. One of the paradoxes of current social software is how many of your closely-guarded secrets you are obliged to entrust to a third part... more -
Setback for wiretapping plaintiffs bodes well for EFF class action
A federal appeals court has dealt a setback to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, ruling that the state secrets privilege precludes the use of evidence gleaned from a classified document inadvertently given to a Muslim charity accused of terrorist ties. But in a hopeful sign for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's pending class action lawsuit against AT&T, the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit took a dim view of the government's broader claim that the very existence of the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program was a state secret. A federal appeals court has dealt a setback to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, ruling... more
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You Bought It, You Own It: Quanta v. LG Electronics
Earlier this week, EFF filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Quanta v. LG Electronics, a case that asks whether patent owners can impose restrictions on what you can do with a product after you buy it. The brief, filed on behalf of EFF, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge, makes a simple point: when a consumer buys a patented product from an authorized seller, the patent owner is not entitled to use patent law to restrict the purchaser's subsequent ability to use, repair, or resell the product.
In other words, you bought it, you own it. Earlier this week, EFF filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Quanta v. LG Electronics, a case that asks whether patent ... more -
Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Surveillance Bill Without Telecom Amnesty
With your help, EFF scored a victory today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a surveillance bill without giving legal amnesty to telecoms that participated in warrantless spying programs. Telecom amnesty is aimed at derailing dozens of lawsuits against the telecoms for participating in a massive warrantless domestic surveillance program -- including EFF's class-action suit against AT&T.
The committee's vote on surveillance legislation came amidst continuing public opposition to telecom amnesty. Last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California made a statement in support of telecom amnesty, prompting outcry from her constituents in California -- this week, both the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle joined the chorus of editorials opposing telecom immunity.
We're heartened by this development and send big thanks to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that stood strong. But we're not out of the woods yet. Additional skirmishes over telecom amnesty are guaranteed when the surveillance bill reaches the Senate floor. Staunch allies of the administration are likely to continue pushing for amnesty, and others may be considering dangerous proposals that ultimately function as "trojan horses" for telecom amnesty.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is currently considering the RESTORE Act, the House surveillance bill similarly designed to update to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The RESTORE Act does not provide amnesty for telecoms and is supported by key leaders in the Democrat-controlled House. With your help, EFF scored a victory today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a surveillance bill without giving legal amnest... more -
Judge Orders Telecommunications Companies to Preserve Evidence in Government Surve...
Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T
San Francisco - A federal judge today ruled on a preservation motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ordering that telecommunications companies must preserve any evidence of collaborating with the government in illegal spying on ordinary Americans.
In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ordered the telecommunications companies to halt any routine destruction of documents or to arrange for the preservation of accurate copies. On December 14, each party must provide the court with confirmation that the court's order has been carried out. The court order did not require the government or the carriers to reveal whether or not they had any relevant evidence.
The government and the carriers had opposed the preservation motion, claiming that the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege made it impossible to proceed with a preservation order. In litigation, parties are typically required to preserve all relevant evidence.
For the judge's order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/393%20order.pdf
For more on the class-action lawsuit against AT&T:
http://www.eff.org/cases/att Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T ... more -
Why DRM on Video Will Persist: DVD-CCA Targets Kaleidescape (Again)
As we've said many times before, DRM is not about preventing piracy, it's about giving entertainment companies control over disruptive innovation. Here's the latest example: tomorrow DVD-CCA (the entity that controls the CSS encryption standard for DVDs) will be voting on an amendment to the CSS license that is designed to put a disruptive innovator, Kaleidescape, out of business. As we've said many times before, DRM is not about preventing piracy, it's about giving entertainment companies control over ... more
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