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Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Join the Battle for Net Neutrality - 0 views

www.battleforthenet.com/?call_tool=1&t=dXNlcmlkPTUxNzA2MjIyLGVtYWlsaWQ9MTAwOTA=

join battle Net Neutrality Congress US sneak language FCC undermine freedom Internet communications social what '#They' do one all @ll international

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 25 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 25 Nov 15
     
    "Congress is trying to sneak language into a budget bill that would take away the FCC's ability to enforce the net neutrality rules we worked hard to pass, undermining everything we did to protect the open Internet. Thousands of calls and emails will nip this in the bud - contact Congress now! "
Paul Merrell

Amazon's Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress With Mugshots | Americ... - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...recognition-falsely-matched-28

facial-recognition Amazon Rekognition ACLU Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • Amazon’s face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime.  The members of Congress who were falsely matched with the mugshot database we used in the test include Republicans and Democrats, men and women, and legislators of all ages, from all across the country.
  • The false matches were disproportionately of people of color, including six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, among them civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). These results demonstrate why Congress should join the ACLU in calling for a moratorium on law enforcement use of face surveillance.
Paul Merrell

Notes from the Fight Against Surveillance and Censorship: 2014 in Review | Electronic F... - 1 views

www.eff.org/...2014-year-review

EFF-year-in-review-articles must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • 2014 in Review Series Net Neutrality Takes a Wild Ride 8 Stellar Surveillance Scoops Web Encryption Gets Stronger and More Widespread Big Patent Reform Wins in Court, Defeat (For Now) in Congress International Copyright Law More Time in the Spotlight for NSLs The State of Free Expression Online What We Learned About NSA Spying in 2014—And What We're Fighting to Expose in 2015 "Fair Use Is Working!" Email Encryption Grew Tremendously, but Still Needs Work Spies Vs. Spied, Worldwide The Fight in Congress to End the NSA's Mass Spying Open Access Movement Broadens, Moves Forward Stingrays Go Mainstream Three Vulnerabilities That Rocked the Online Security World Mobile Privacy and Security Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back It Was a Pivotal Year in TPP Activism but the Biggest Fight Is Still to Come The Government Spent a Lot of Time in Court Defending NSA Spying Last Year Let's Encrypt (the Entire Web)
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15
     
    The Electronic Freedom Foundation just dropped an incredible bunch of articles on the world in the form of their "2014 Year In Review" series. These are major contributions that place an awful lot of information in context. I thought I had been keeping a close eye on the same subject matter, but I'm only part way through the articles and am learning time after time that I had missed really important news having to do with digital freedom. I can't recommend these articles enough. So far, they are all must-read.  
Paul Merrell

Legislative Cyber Threats: CISA's Not The Only One | Just Security - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...egislative-cyber-threats-cisas

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • If anyone in the United States Senate had any doubts that the proposed Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) was universally hated by a range of civil society groups, a literal blizzard of faxes should’ve cleared up the issue by now. What’s not getting attention is a CISA “alternative” introduced last week by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va) and Susan Collins (R-Me). Dubbed the “FISMA Reform Act,” the authors make the following claims about the bill:  This legislation would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to operate intrusion detection and prevention capabilities on all federal agencies on the .gov domain. The bipartisan bill would also direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct risk assessments of any network within the government domain. The bill would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to operate defensive countermeasures on these networks once a cyber threat has been detected. The legislation would strengthen and streamline the authority Congress gave to DHS last year to issue binding operational directives to federal agencies, especially to respond to substantial cyber security threats in emergency circumstances.
  • The bill would require the Office of Management and Budget to report to Congress annually on the extent to which OMB has exercised its existing authority to enforce government wide cyber security standards. On the surface, it actually sounds like a rational response to the disastrous OPM hack. Unfortunately, the Warner-Collins bill has some vague or problematic language and non-existent definitions that make it potentially just as dangerous for data security and privacy as CISA. The bill would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to carry out cyber security activities “in conjunction with other agencies and the private sector” [for] “assessing and fostering the development of information security technologies and capabilities for use across multiple agencies.” While the phrase “information sharing” is not present in this subsection, “security technologies and capabilities” is more than broad — and vague — enough to allow it.
  • The bill would also allow the secretary to “acquire, intercept, retain, use, and disclose communications and other system traffic that are transiting to or from or stored on agency information systems and deploy countermeasures with regard to the communications and system traffic.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The bill also allows the head of a federal agency or department “to disclose to the Secretary or a private entity providing assistance to the Secretary…information traveling to or from or stored on an agency information system, notwithstanding any other law that would otherwise restrict or prevent agency heads from disclosing such information to the Secretary.” (Emphasis added.) So confidential, proprietary or other information otherwise precluded from disclosure under laws like HIPAA or the Privacy Act get waived if the Secretary of DHS or an agency head feel that your email needs to be shared with a government contracted outfit like the Hacking Team for analysis. And the bill explicitly provides for just this kind of cyber threat analysis outsourcing:
  • (3) PRIVATE ENTITIES. — The Secretary may enter into contracts or other agreements, or otherwise request and obtain the assistance of, private entities that provide electronic communication or information security services to acquire, intercept, retain, use, and disclose communications and other system traffic in accordance with this subsection. The bill further states that the content of your communications, will be retained only if the communication is associated with a known or reasonably suspected information security threat, and communications and system traffic will not be subject to the operation of a countermeasure unless associated with the threats. (Emphasis added.) “Reasonably suspected” is about as squishy a definition as one can find.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Jul 15
     
    "The bill also allows the head of a federal agency or department "to disclose to the Secretary or a private entity providing assistance to the Secretary…information traveling to or from or stored on an agency information system, notwithstanding any other law that would otherwise restrict or prevent agency heads from disclosing such information to the Secretary."" Let's see: if your information is intercepted by the NSA and stored on its "information system" in Bluffdale, Utah, then it can be disclosed to the Secretary of DHS or any private entity providing him/her with assistance, "notwithstanding any other law that would otherwise restrict or prevent agency heads from disclosing such information to the Secretary." And if NSA just happens to be intercepting every digital bit of data generated or received in the entire world, including the U.S., then it's all in play, "notwithstanding any other law that would otherwise restrict or prevent agency heads from disclosing such information to the Secretary.". Sheesh! Our government voyeurs never stop trying to get more nude pix and videos to view.  
Paul Merrell

Wiretap Numbers Don't Add Up | Just Security - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...wiretap-numbers-add

surveillance state wiretaps report U.S. underreporting

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Last week, the Administrative Office (AO) of the US Courts published the 2014 Wiretap Report, an annual report to Congress concerning intercepted wire, oral, or electronic communications as required by Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. News headlines touted that the number of federal and state wiretaps for 2014 was down 1% for a total of 3,554. Of these, there were few involving encrypted communications; and for those, law enforcement agencies were in most cases able to overcome the encryption. But there is a bigger story that calls into question the accuracy of the all of the prior reports submitted to the AO and the overall data provided to Congress and the public in the Wiretap Reports. Since the Snowden revelations, more and more companies have started publishing “transparency reports” about the number and nature of government demands to access their users’ data. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint published data for 2014 earlier this year and T-Mobile published its first transparency report on the same day the AO released the Wiretap Report. In aggregate, the four companies state that they implemented 10,712 wiretaps, a threefold difference over the total number reported by the AO. Note that the 10,712 number is only for the four companies listed above and does not reflect wiretap orders received by other telephone carriers or online providers, so the discrepancy actually is larger.
  • So what accounts for the huge gap in reporting? That is a question Congress and the AO should be asking prosecutors and judges who are required by law to make complete and accurate reports of the number of wiretaps conducted each year. Are wiretaps being consistently under­reported to Congress and the public? Based on the data reported by the four major carriers for 2013 and 2014, it certainly would appear to be the case.
Paul Merrell

Data Transfer Pact Between U.S. and Europe Is Ruled Invalid - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-union-us-data-collection.html

surveillance state NSA-reform EUCJ litigation safe-harbor

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Europe’s highest court on Tuesday struck down an international agreement that allowed companies to move digital information like people’s web search histories and social media updates between the European Union and the United States. The decision left the international operations of companies like Google and Facebook in a sort of legal limbo even as their services continued working as usual.The ruling, by the European Court of Justice, said the so-called safe harbor agreement was flawed because it allowed American government authorities to gain routine access to Europeans’ online information. The court said leaks from Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency, made it clear that American intelligence agencies had almost unfettered access to the data, infringing on Europeans’ rights to privacy. The court said data protection regulators in each of the European Union’s 28 countries should have oversight over how companies collect and use online information of their countries’ citizens. European countries have widely varying stances towards privacy.
  • Data protection advocates hailed the ruling. Industry executives and trade groups, though, said the decision left a huge amount of uncertainty for big companies, many of which rely on the easy flow of data for lucrative businesses like online advertising. They called on the European Commission to complete a new safe harbor agreement with the United States, a deal that has been negotiated for more than two years and could limit the fallout from the court’s decision.
  • Some European officials and many of the big technology companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, tried to play down the impact of the ruling. The companies kept their services running, saying that other agreements with the European Union should provide an adequate legal foundation.But those other agreements are now expected to be examined and questioned by some of Europe’s national privacy watchdogs. The potential inquiries could make it hard for companies to transfer Europeans’ information overseas under the current data arrangements. And the ruling appeared to leave smaller companies with fewer legal resources vulnerable to potential privacy violations.
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  • “We can’t assume that anything is now safe,” Brian Hengesbaugh, a privacy lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Chicago who helped to negotiate the original safe harbor agreement. “The ruling is so sweepingly broad that any mechanism used to transfer data from Europe could be under threat.”At issue is the sort of personal data that people create when they post something on Facebook or other social media; when they do web searches on Google; or when they order products or buy movies from Amazon or Apple. Such data is hugely valuable to companies, which use it in a broad range of ways, including tailoring advertisements to individuals and promoting products or services based on users’ online activities.The data-transfer ruling does not apply solely to tech companies. It also affects any organization with international operations, such as when a company has employees in more than one region and needs to transfer payroll information or allow workers to manage their employee benefits online.
  • But it was unclear how bulletproof those treaties would be under the new ruling, which cannot be appealed and went into effect immediately. Europe’s privacy watchdogs, for example, remain divided over how to police American tech companies.France and Germany, where companies like Facebook and Google have huge numbers of users and have already been subject to other privacy rulings, are among the countries that have sought more aggressive protections for their citizens’ personal data. Britain and Ireland, among others, have been supportive of Safe Harbor, and many large American tech companies have set up overseas headquarters in Ireland.
  • “For those who are willing to take on big companies, this ruling will have empowered them to act,” said Ot van Daalen, a Dutch privacy lawyer at Project Moore, who has been a vocal advocate for stricter data protection rules. The safe harbor agreement has been in place since 2000, enabling American tech companies to compile data generated by their European clients in web searches, social media posts and other online activities.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 15
     
    Another take on it from EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/europes-court-justice-nsa-surveilance Expected since the Court's Advocate General released an opinion last week, presaging today's opinion.  Very big bucks involved behind the scenes because removing U.S.-based internet companies from the scene in the E.U. would pave the way for growth of E.U.-based companies.  The way forward for the U.S. companies is even more dicey because of a case now pending in the U.S.  The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is about to decide a related case in which Microsoft was ordered by the lower court to produce email records stored on a server in Ireland. . Should the Second Circuit uphold the order and the Supreme Court deny review, then under the principles announced today by the Court in the E.U., no U.S.-based company could ever be allowed to have "possession, custody, or control" of the data of E.U. citizens. You can bet that the E.U. case will weigh heavily in the Second Circuit's deliberations.  The E.U. decision is by far and away the largest legal event yet flowing out of the Edward Snowden disclosures, tectonic in scale. Up to now, Congress has succeeded in confining all NSA reforms to apply only to U.S. citizens. But now the large U.S. internet companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc., face the loss of all Europe as a market. Congress *will* be forced by their lobbying power to extend privacy protections to "non-U.S. persons."  Thank you again, Edward Snowden.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Avaaz - US Congress: Stop the TPP - 0 views

secure.avaaz.org/...tpp_2015_eu

Avaaz tell US Congress stop TPP solidarity international response Europe TAFTA TTIP next act now save world people

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 12 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 12 Oct 15
     
    "sign the petition To US Congress and all legislators voting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement: As concerned global citizens, we call on you to vote no on the the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to reject any plans that limit our governments' power to regulate in the public interest. The TPP is a threat to democracy, undermining national sovereignty, workers' rights, environmental protections and Internet freedom. We urge you to reject this corporate takeover. "
Gary Edwards

MWC 2010: The Year of the Android | Gadget Lab | Wired.com - 2 views

www.wired.com/...c-2010-the-year-of-the-android

android world-mobility-conference-barcelona

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Forget about the iPhone. Microsoft is in a death-match with Google and its free OS.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 10
     
    ARCELONA - This year at the Mobile World Congress is the year of Android. Google's operating system debuted here two years ago. Last year we expected a slew of handsets, and saw just a trickle. This year, Android is everywhere, on handsets from HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and even Garmin-Asus. If this were the world of computers, Android would be in a similar position to Windows: Pretty much every manufacturer puts it on its machines. This is great news for us, the consumer. Android is stable, powerful and now it even runs Flash (I got a sneak peek of Flash running on a Motorola handset here at the show. It crashed). It's even better for the manufacturers, as - unlike Windows Mobile - Android is free. It's also open, so the phone makers can tweak it and trick it out as much as they like. And they do like. Most of the Android phones here at Mobile World Congress are running custom versions of Android, which differentiates them and, in theory at least, makes them easier to use, hiding the complexities of a proper multitasking OS from the user.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

gainst all odds, the FCC voted for the Internet, but.. - 0 views

www.battleforthenet.com/?from=bottomBar

protect Title II passed Net Neutrality against cable lobbying paticipate

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 01 Mar 15
     
    [... cable companies are strong in Congress. Cable giants have been lobbying Congress for years. Now they're asking for big favors. We have to stop them. Find out if your leaders work for you, or your cable company. ...]
Paul Merrell

Tech firms and privacy groups press for curbs on NSA surveillance powers - The Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-ab77-9646eea6a4c7_story.html

surveillance state Patriot-Act 215-sunset NSA-reform legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The nation’s top technology firms and a coalition of privacy groups are urging Congress to place curbs on government surveillance in the face of a fast-approaching deadline for legislative action. A set of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities expire June 1, but the effective date is May 21 — the last day before Congress breaks for a Memorial Day recess. In a letter to be sent Wednesday to the Obama administration and senior lawmakers, the coalition vowed to oppose any legislation that, among other things, does not ban the “bulk collection” of Americans’ phone records and other data.
  • We know that there are some in Congress who think that they can get away with reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without any reforms at all,” said Kevin Bankston, policy director of New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, a privacy group that organized the effort. “This letter draws a line in the sand that makes clear that the privacy community and the Internet industry do not intend to let that happen without a fight.” At issue is the bulk collection of Americans’ data by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency. The NSA’s daily gathering of millions of records logging phone call times, lengths and other “metadata” stirred controversy when it was revealed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The records are placed in a database that can, with a judge’s permission, be searched for links to foreign terrorists.They do not include the content of conversations.
  • That program, placed under federal surveillance court oversight in 2006, was authorized by the court in secret under Section 215 of the Patriot Act — one of the expiring provisions. The public outcry that ensued after the program was disclosed forced President Obama in January 2014 to call for an end to the NSA’s storage of the data. He also appealed to Congress to find a way to preserve the agency’s access to the data for counterterrorism information.
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  • Despite growing opposition in some quarters to ending the NSA’s program, a “clean” authorization — one that would enable its continuation without any changes — is unlikely, lawmakers from both parties say. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a leading opponent of the NSA’s program in its current format, said he would be “surprised if there are 60 votes” in the Senate for that. In the House, where there is bipartisan support for reining in surveillance, it’s a longer shot still. “It’s a toxic vote back in your district to reauthorize the Patriot Act, if you don’t get some reforms” with it, said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The House last fall passed the USA Freedom Act, which would have ended the NSA program, but the Senate failed to advance its own version.The House and Senate judiciary committees are working to come up with new bipartisan legislation to be introduced soon.
  • The tech firms and privacy groups’ demands are a baseline, they say. Besides ending bulk collection, they want companies to have the right to be more transparent in reporting on national security requests and greater declassification of opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • Some legal experts have pointed to a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act that would appear to allow bulk collection to continue even if the authority is not renewed. Administration officials have conceded privately that a legal case probably could be made for that, but politically it would be a tough sell. On Tuesday, a White House spokesman indicated the administration would not seek to exploit that clause. “If Section 215 sunsets, we will not continue the bulk telephony metadata program,” National Security Council spokesman Edward Price said in a statement first reported by Reuters. Price added that allowing Section 215 to expire would result in the loss of a “critical national security tool” used in investigations that do not involve the bulk collection of data. “That is why we have underscored the imperative of Congressional action in the coming weeks, and we welcome the opportunity to work with lawmakers on such legislation,” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    I omitted some stuff about opposition to sunsetting the provisions. They  seem to forget, as does Obama, that the proponents of the FISA Court's expansive reading of section 215 have not yet come up with a single instance where 215-derived data caught a single terrorist or prevented a single act of terrorism. Which means that if that data is of some use, it ain't in fighting terrorism, the purpose of the section.  Patriot Act § 215 is codified as 50 USCS § 1861, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 That section authorizes the FBI to obtain an iorder from the FISA Court "requiring the production of *any tangible things* (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)."  Specific examples (a non-exclusive list) include: the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return records, educational records, or medical records containing information that would identify a person." The Court can order that the recipient of the order tell no one of its receipt of the order or its response to it.   In other words, this is about way more than your telephone metadata. Do you trust the NSA with your medical records? 
Paul Merrell

White House, Intel Chiefs Want To Make Digital Spying Law Permanent | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...nt_us_59387c8ee4b0b13f2c66cf78

surveillance state NSA 702 legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • The White House and U.S. intelligence chiefs Wednesday backed making permanent a law that allows for the collection of digital communications of foreigners overseas, escalating a fight in Congress over privacy and security. The law, enshrined in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is due to expire on December 31 unless Congress votes to reauthorize it, but is considered vital by U.S. intelligence agencies. Privacy advocates have criticized the law though for allowing the incidental collection of data belonging to millions of Americans without a search warrant. The push to make the law permanent may lead to a contentious debate over renewal of Section 702 in Congress, where lawmakers in both parties are deeply divided over whether to adopt transparency and oversight reforms
  • Reuters reported in March that the Trump administration supported renewal of Section 702 without any changes, citing an unnamed White House official, but it was not clear at the time whether it wanted the law made permanent.
Paul Merrell

TikTok 'Ban' Bill Passes in the House - 0 views

gizmodo.com/passes-in-the-house-1851330061

Tik-Tok Internet-censorship ByteDance legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 24 - No Cached
  • A bill forcing the China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok, or face an outright ban, passed the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday in a vote of 352 to 65. The bill will now head to the Senate, where it is expected to face tough opposition before it can reach President Biden, who indicated he would sign it into law.
Paul Merrell

Shaking My Head - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...shaking-my-head-5c1b60db9086

surveillance state NSA 702 FISA legislation backdoor-serches stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Last month, at the request of the Department of Justice, the Courts approved changes to the obscure Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs search and seizure. By the nature of this obscure bureaucratic process, these rules become law unless Congress rejects the changes before December 1, 2016.Today I, along with my colleagues Senators Paul from Kentucky, Baldwin from Wisconsin, and Daines and Tester from Montana, am introducing the Stopping Mass Hacking (SMH) Act (bill, summary), a bill to protect millions of law-abiding Americans from a massive expansion of government hacking and surveillance. Join the conversation with #SMHact.
  • For law enforcement to conduct a remote electronic search, they generally need to plant malware in — i.e. hack — a device. These rule changes will allow the government to search millions of computers with the warrant of a single judge. To me, that’s clearly a policy change that’s outside the scope of an “administrative change,” and it is something that Congress should consider. An agency with the record of the Justice Department shouldn’t be able to wave its arms and grant itself entirely new powers.
  • These changes say that if law enforcement doesn’t know where an electronic device is located, a magistrate judge will now have the the authority to issue a warrant to remotely search the device, anywhere in the world. While it may be appropriate to address the issue of allowing a remote electronic search for a device at an unknown location, Congress needs to consider what protections must be in place to protect Americans’ digital security and privacy. This is a new and uncertain area of law, so there needs to be full and careful debate. The ACLU has a thorough discussion of the Fourth Amendment ramifications and the technological questions at issue with these kinds of searches.The second part of the change to Rule 41 would give a magistrate judge the authority to issue a single warrant that would authorize the search of an unlimited number — potentially thousands or millions — of devices, located anywhere in the world. These changes would dramatically expand the government’s hacking and surveillance authority. The American public should understand that these changes won’t just affect criminals: computer security experts and civil liberties advocates say the amendments would also dramatically expand the government’s ability to hack the electronic devices of law-abiding Americans if their devices were affected by a computer attack. Devices will be subject to search if their owners were victims of a botnet attack — so the government will be treating victims of hacking the same way they treat the perpetrators.
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  • As the Center on Democracy and Technology has noted, there are approximately 500 million computers that fall under this rule. The public doesn’t know nearly enough about how law enforcement executes these hacks, and what risks these types of searches will pose. By compromising the computer’s system, the search might leave it open to other attackers or damage the computer they are searching.Don’t take it from me that this will impact your security, read more from security researchers Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze and Susan Landau.Finally, these changes to Rule 41 would also give some types of electronic searches different, weaker notification requirements than physical searches. Under this new Rule, they are only required to make “reasonable efforts” to notify people that their computers were searched. This raises the possibility of the FBI hacking into a cyber attack victim’s computer and not telling them about it until afterward, if at all.
Paul Merrell

Wyden Amendments to House's JOBS Act Would Halt ACTA, Force TPP Transparency | Bloomber... - 0 views

www.bna.com/amendments-houses-n12884908487

ACTA trade agreeements copyright law

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • An amendment to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, H.R. 3606, submitted by Sen. Ronald L. Wyden (D-Ore.) March 19 was aimed at preventing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement from going into force in the United States without first getting formal approval from Congress.Another amendment would require the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to disclose its position regarding to the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations.The amendments were introduced a day before the Senate was scheduled to take a procedural vote on whether it would consider the House's controversial JOBS bill.
  • As a condition to the United States putting forward any official instrument that accepts ACTA, Wyden asked in his earlier letter that Obama “formally declare that ACTA does not create any international obligations for the U.S.—that ACTA is not binding.” If Obama declined to make such a statement, then Wyden requested a “legal rationale for why ACTA should not be considered by Congress.”
  • Wyden's first March 19 amendment JOBS Act amendment, S.A. 1868, would prevent the president from accepting, and the United States from entering into, any “legally binding trade agreement that imposes obligations on the United States … including the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, without the formal and express approval of Congress.”
Paul Merrell

» Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA Alex Jones' Infowars: Th... - 2 views

www.infowars.com/nternet-treaty-worse-than-sopa

ACTA Obama OpenWeb SOPA constitutional law law

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.
  • The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.
  • In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden. “That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”
Paul Merrell

Court gave NSA broad leeway in surveillance, documents show - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

surveillance-state foreign-intelligence NSA-targets NSA-backdoors

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents. The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but any communications about its targets as well.
  • The certification — approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — lists 193 countries that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about entities including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organizations identified in the certification, the affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given authority to do so. Still, the privacy implications are far-reaching, civil liberties advocates say, because of the wide spectrum of people who might be engaged in communication about foreign governments and entities and whose communications might be of interest to the United States.
  • That language could allow for surveillance of academics, journalists and human rights researchers. A Swiss academic who has information on the German government’s position in the run-up to an international trade negotiation, for instance, could be targeted if the government has determined there is a foreign-intelligence need for that information. If a U.S. college professor e-mails the Swiss professor’s e-mail address or phone number to a colleague, the American’s e-mail could be collected as well, under the program’s court-approved rules
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a transparency report stating that in 2013 the government targeted nearly 90,000 foreign individuals or organizations for foreign surveillance under the program. Some tech-industry lawyers say the number is relatively low, considering that several billion people use U.S. e-mail services.
  • Still, some lawmakers are concerned that the potential for intrusions on Americans’ privacy has grown under the 2008 law because the government is intercepting not just communications of its targets but communications about its targets as well. The expansiveness of the foreign-powers certification increases that concern.
  • In a 2011 FISA court opinion, a judge using an NSA-provided sample estimated that the agency could be collecting as many as 46,000 wholly domestic e-mails a year that mentioned a particular target’s e-mail address or phone number, in what is referred to as “about” collection. “When Congress passed Section 702 back in 2008, most members of Congress had no idea that the government was collecting Americans’ communications simply because they contained a particular individual’s contact information,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has co-sponsored ­legislation to narrow “about” collection authority, said in an e-mail to The Washington Post. “If ‘about the target’ collection were limited to genuine national security threats, there would be very little privacy impact. In fact, this collection is much broader than that, and it is scooping up huge amounts of Americans’ wholly domestic communications.”
  • The only reason the court has oversight of the NSA program is that Congress in 2008 gave the government a new authority to gather intelligence from U.S. companies that own the Internet cables running through the United States, former officials noted. Edgar, the former privacy officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said ultimately he believes the authority should be narrowed. “There are valid privacy concerns with leaving these collection decisions entirely in the executive branch,” he said. “There shouldn’t be broad collection, using this authority, of foreign government information without any meaningful judicial role that defines the limits of what can be collected.”
Gary Edwards

The True Story of How the Patent Bar Captured a Court and Shrank the Intellectual Commo... - 1 views

www.cato-unbound.org/...rt-shrank-intellectual-commons

patents software-patents

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The change in the law wrought by the Federal Circuit can also be viewed substantively through the controversy over software patents. Throughout the 1960s, the USPTO refused to award patents for software innovations. However, several of the USPTO’s decisions were overruled by the patent-friendly U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, which ordered that software patents be granted. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) and Parker v. Flook (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, holding that mathematical algorithms (and therefore software) were not patentable subject matter. In 1981, in Diamond v. Diehr, the Supreme Court upheld a software patent on the grounds that the patent in question involved a physical process—the patent was issued for software used in the molding of rubber. While affirming their prior ruling that mathematical formulas are not patentable in the abstract, the Court held that an otherwise patentable invention did not become unpatentable simply because it utilized a computer.
  • In the hands of the newly established Federal Circuit, however, this small scope for software patents in precedent was sufficient to open the floodgates. In a series of decisions culminating in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998), the Federal Circuit broadened the criteria for patentability of software and business methods substantially, allowing protection as long as the innovation “produces a useful, concrete and tangible result.” That broadened criteria led to an explosion of low-quality software patents, from Amazon’s 1-Click checkout system to Twitter’s pull-to-refresh feature on smartphones. The GAO estimates that more than half of all patents granted in recent years are software-related. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to hold, as in Parker v. Flook, that computer software algorithms are not patentable, and has begun to push back against the Federal Circuit. In Bilski v. Kappos (2010), the Supreme Court once again held that abstract ideas are not patentable, and in Alice v. CLS (2014), it ruled that simply applying an abstract idea on a computer does not suffice to make the idea patent-eligible. It still is not clear what portion of existing software patents Alice invalidates, but it could be a significant one.
  • Supreme Court justices also recognize the Federal Circuit’s insubordination. In oral arguments in Carlsbad Technology v. HIF Bio (2009), Chief Justice John Roberts joked openly about it:
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The Opportunity of the Commons
  • As a result of the Federal Circuit’s pro-patent jurisprudence, our economy has been flooded with patents that would otherwise not have been granted. If more patents meant more innovation, then we would now be witnessing a spectacular economic boom. Instead, we have been living through what Tyler Cowen has called a Great Stagnation. The fact that patents have increased while growth has not is known in the literature as the “patent puzzle.” As Michele Boldrin and David Levine put it, “there is no empirical evidence that [patents] serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity.”
  • While more patents have not resulted in faster economic growth, they have resulted in more patent lawsuits.
  • Software patents have characteristics that make them particularly susceptible to litigation. Unlike, say, chemical patents, software patents are plagued by a problem of description. How does one describe a software innovation in such a way that anyone searching for it will easily find it? As Christina Mulligan and Tim Lee demonstrate, chemical formulas are indexable, meaning that as the number of chemical patents grow, it will still be easy to determine if a molecule has been patented. Since software innovations are not indexable, they estimate that “patent clearance by all firms would require many times more hours of legal research than all patent lawyers in the United States can bill in a year. The result has been an explosion of patent litigation.” Software and business method patents, estimate James Bessen and Michael Meurer, are 2 and 7 times more likely to be litigated than other patents, respectively (4 and 13 times more likely than chemical patents).
  • Software patents make excellent material for predatory litigation brought by what are often called “patent trolls.”
  • Trolls use asymmetries in the rules of litigation to legally extort millions of dollars from innocent parties. For example, one patent troll, Innovatio IP Ventures, LLP, acquired patents that implicated Wi-Fi. In 2011, it started sending demand letters to coffee shops and hotels that offered wireless Internet access, offering to settle for $2,500 per location. This amount was far in excess of the 9.56 cents per device that Innovatio was entitled to under the “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” licensing promises attached to their portfolio, but it was also much less than the cost of trial, and therefore it was rational for firms to pay. Cisco stepped in and spent $13 million in legal fees on the case, and settled on behalf of their customers for 3.2 cents per device. Other manufacturers had already licensed Innovatio’s portfolio, but that didn’t stop their customers from being targeted by demand letters.
  • Litigation cost asymmetries are magnified by the fact that most patent trolls are nonpracticing entities. This means that when patent infringement trials get to the discovery phase, they will cost the troll very little—a firm that does not operate a business has very few records to produce.
  • But discovery can cost a medium or large company millions of dollars. Using an event study methodology, James Bessen and coauthors find that infringement lawsuits by nonpracticing entities cost publicly traded companies $83 billion per year in stock market capitalization, while plaintiffs gain less than 10 percent of that amount.
  • Software patents also reduce innovation in virtue of their cumulative nature and the fact that many of them are frequently inputs into a single product. Law professor Michael Heller coined the phrase “tragedy of the anticommons” to refer to a situation that mirrors the well-understood “tragedy of the commons.” Whereas in a commons, multiple parties have the right to use a resource but not to exclude others, in an anticommons, multiple parties have the right to exclude others, and no one is therefore able to make effective use of the resource. The tragedy of the commons results in overuse of the resource; the tragedy of the anticommons results in underuse.
  • In order to cope with the tragedy of the anticommons, we should carefully investigate the opportunity of  the commons. The late Nobelist Elinor Ostrom made a career of studying how communities manage shared resources without property rights. With appropriate self-governance institutions, Ostrom found again and again that a commons does not inevitably lead to tragedy—indeed, open access to shared resources can provide collective benefits that are not available under other forms of property management.
  • This suggests that—litigation costs aside—patent law could be reducing the stock of ideas rather than expanding it at current margins.
  • Advocates of extensive patent protection frequently treat the commons as a kind of wasteland. But considering the problems in our patent system, it is worth looking again at the role of well-tailored limits to property rights in some contexts. Just as we all benefit from real property rights that no longer extend to the highest heavens, we would also benefit if the scope of patent protection were more narrowly drawn.
  • Reforming the Patent System
  • This analysis raises some obvious possibilities for reforming the patent system. Diane Wood, Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit, has proposed ending the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—instead, the Federal Circuit could share jurisdiction with the other circuit courts. While this is a constructive suggestion, it still leaves the door open to the Federal Circuit playing “a leading role in shaping patent law,” which is the reason for its capture by patent interests. It would be better instead simply to abolish the Federal Circuit and return to the pre-1982 system, in which patents received no special treatment in appeals. This leaves open the possibility of circuit splits, which the creation of the Federal Circuit was designed to mitigate, but there are worse problems than circuit splits, and we now have them.
  • Another helpful reform would be for Congress to limit the scope of patentable subject matter via statute. New Zealand has done just that, declaring that software is “not an invention” to get around WTO obligations to respect intellectual property. Congress should do the same with respect to both software and business methods.
  • Finally, even if the above reforms were adopted, there would still be a need to address the asymmetries in patent litigation that result in predatory “troll” lawsuits. While the holding in Alice v. CLS arguably makes a wide swath of patents invalid, those patents could still be used in troll lawsuits because a ruling of invalidity for each individual patent might not occur until late in a trial. Current legislation in Congress addresses this class of problem by mandating disclosures, shifting fees in the case of spurious lawsuits, and enabling a review of the patent’s validity before a trial commences.
  • What matters for prosperity is not just property rights in the abstract, but good property-defining institutions. Without reform, our patent system will continue to favor special interests and forestall economic growth.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14
     
    "Libertarians intuitively understand the case for patents: just as other property rights internalize the social benefits of improvements to land, automobile maintenance, or business investment, patents incentivize the creation of new inventions, which might otherwise be undersupplied. So far, so good. But it is important to recognize that the laws that govern property, intellectual or otherwise, do not arise out of thin air. Rather, our political institutions, with all their virtues and foibles, determine the contours of property-the exact bundle of rights that property holders possess, their extent, and their limitations. Outlining efficient property laws is not a trivial problem. The optimal contours of property are neither immutable nor knowable a priori. For example, in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the age-old common law doctrine that extended real property rights to the heavens without limit. The advent of air travel made such extensive property rights no longer practicable-airlines would have had to cobble together a patchwork of easements, acre by acre, for every corridor through which they flew, and they would have opened themselves up to lawsuits every time their planes deviated from the expected path. The Court rightly abridged property rights in light of these empirical realities. In defining the limits of patent rights, our political institutions have gotten an analogous question badly wrong. A single, politically captured circuit court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals has consistently expanded the scope of patentable subject matter. This expansion has resulted in an explosion of both patents and patent litigation, with destructive consequences. "
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 14
     
    I added a comment to the page's article. Patents are antithetical to the precepts of Libertarianism and do not involve Natural Law rights. But I agree with the author that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should be abolished. It's a failed experiment.
Paul Merrell

POGO Adds its Voice to Calls for Secret Law Oversight - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...-for-secret-law-oversight.html

surveillance state mass-surveillance legislation NSA-reform must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • April 21, 2015 Dear Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, Chairman Grassley, and Ranking Member Leahy: We urge you to end mass surveillance of Americans. Among us are civil liberties organizations from across the political spectrum that speak for millions of people, businesses, whistleblowers, and experts. The impending expiration of three USA PATRIOT Act provisions on June 1 is a golden opportunity to end mass surveillance and enact additional reforms. Current surveillance practices are virtually limitless. They are unnecessary, counterproductive, and costly. They undermine our economy and the public’s trust in government. And they undercut the proper functioning of government. Meaningful surveillance reform entails congressional repeal of laws and protocols the Executive secretly interprets to permit current mass surveillance practices. Additionally, it requires Congress to appreciably increase transparency, oversight, and accountability of intelligence agencies, especially those that have acted unconstitutionally.
  • A majority of the House of Representatives already has voted against mass surveillance. The Massie-Lofgren amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act [i] garnered 293 votes in support of defunding “backdoor searches.” Unfortunately, that amendment was not included in the “CRomnibus"[ii] despite overwhelming support.  We urge you to act once again to vindicate our fundamental liberties.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Apr 15
     
    Finally! A proposal for mass-surveillance reform that goes far beyond prior overly-modest proposals backed by ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, etc., that were based on negotiation with members of Congress. This proposal is backed by a wide range of other organizations. A must-read.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Congress is voting this week on dangerous legislation to "Fast Track" secret trade agre... - 0 views

www.battleforthenet.com/internetvote

internet vote TPP TISA freedom at risk

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 11 Jun 15
     
    "Congress is voting this week on dangerous legislation to "Fast Track" secret trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) that threaten free speech, innovation, and online privacy. Decisions that impact the future of the Internet should NEVER be made in secret. Contact your Representatives before it's too late! "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

'Fast-Track' Trade Bill Derailed in House in Blow to Obama | Fox Business - 0 views

www.foxbusiness.com/...iled-in-house-in-blow-to-obama

TPP fast-track derailed people's power democracy warning shadow authorities won't like it

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jun 15
     
    "The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday blocked legislation to "fast-track" trade deals through Congress as lawmakers defeated a related measure on aid to workers hurt by trade, dealing a big blow to President Barack Obama."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jun 15
     
    "The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday blocked legislation to "fast-track" trade deals through Congress as lawmakers defeated a related measure on aid to workers hurt by trade, dealing a big blow to President Barack Obama."
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