Archive
The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom
Corbis
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.
If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and Read more…
Mass Surveillance and No Privacy Bill is ‘For the Children’
By Ms. Smith
What happens when stupid non-geeks write bills like SOPA and HR 1981? Rep. Lamar Smith says it’s for the children, of course, and if you object to being spied upon online then you are some kind of guilty pro-child-porn lowlife pond scum sucker. Where does the stupidity stop?
It’s for the children, of course, and if you object to online spying then you are some kind of guilty lowlife pond scum sucker. No wonder so many of us hate stupid people. Rep. Lamar Smith, infamous to geeks as the author of SOPA, is sponsoring the bill H.R. 1981 which is better known as “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act.” H.R. 1981 isn’t exactly as easy to spit out as SOPA and is closer to something out of Orwell’s 1984. The EFF summed it up like this, “This sweeping new ‘mandatory data retention’ proposal treats every Internet user like a potential criminal and represents a clear and present danger to the online free speech and privacy rights of millions of innocent Americans.”
More or less, much like the just-in-case your data trail eventually reveals you are a terrorist, this bill presumes you are guilty until proven innocent of being a child porn dog as it would require ISPs to store your data for
Bill Would Allow Total Surveillance of all Canadians
JASON MAGDER
THE MONTREAL GAZETTE
February 14, 2012
Police will get much easier access to the web-surfing habits and personal information of all Canadians if a new law – expected to be introduced in the House of Commons next week – passes.
Privacy watchdogs caution if the so-called Lawful Access law is passed, it would give police access to webbrowsing history and sensitive personal information, and would grant greater permission to track the cellular phones of suspects – much of it without the requirement of a warrant.
The bill, which is on the order paper for this week, would require Internet service providers and cellular phone companies to install equipment that would monitor users’ activities so that the information could be turned over to police when requested.
It would also grant greater permission to law enforcement authorities to activate tracking mechanisms within cellphones so they can follow the whereabouts of suspected criminals. If there is a suspicion of terrorist activity, the law would allow such tracking to go on for a year, rather than the current 60-day limit.
This isn’t the first time this law has been introduced. The most recent incarnation of the Lawful Access bill died on the order paper when the federal election was called last year.
Democrats to continue Internet coup with new cyber bill
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.
Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Read more…
‘Deleted’ Facebook photos still viewable THREE YEARS later
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook: Site users claim that 'deleted' photographs persist on the site for up to three years, accessible by anyone with a link to them
Deleted Facebook photos don’t disappear but can still be accessed by anyone with a link to the images themselves.
The company admits that its systems ‘do not always delete images in a reasonable period of time.’
The news is liable to be a shock to users who’ve relied on the delete function to remove embarrassing photos from office parties or nights out.
Deleted images vanish from ‘normal’ views of the site – ie if you log in to Facebook and look on somebody’s photo page, they won’t be visible – but remain visible to anyone with a direct URL link to the picture.
That means that if, for instance, a picture has been circulated by email, the image will still be there for anyone who clicks the link.
Facebook has repeatedly promised to ‘fix’ problems with the systems it uses to remove photographs, after users pointed out that images tended to persist after deletion.
Not all deleted pictures are affected, but a significant percentage.
Technology site Ars Technica reports that a picture of a naked toddler supposedly ‘removed’ in 2008 was still visible as of February 2012.
Site readers reported campaigns of harassment using Read more…
No opt-out rule for airport body scanners
Generic outline: a screen displays an image of a man walking through the scanner.Civil libertarians are worried by proposed legislation meaning passengers will not be able to opt out of undergoing full body scans at Australian airports.
The Federal Government will introduce legislation this week so the technology can be rolled out in all of Australia’s international airports.
The move follows a trial in Sydney and Melbourne.
Except for travellers with serious medical conditions, all passengers will have to go through the scanners if asked by airport staff.
Civil Liberties Australia director Tim Vines says the scanners will amount to an unnecessary digital strip search of citizens who want to travel.
He says passengers should be allowed to request a pat-down.
“In the European Union, where they do allow these types of scanners, they have issued a directive that says governments must Read more…
Digital Privacy and the Fifth Amendment
The Internet has vastly changed society. It’s one of those things that we can’t imagine living without, and we can’t imagine how we got by without the Internet just a few decades ago. However, something that changes society as drastically as the Internet has also alters legal boundaries, laws, and interpretations. The 5th Amendment, which protects American citizens’ right to due process and against self-incrimination, among other things, is no exception.
A federal judge in Colorado recently ruled that your computer is not granted those protections under the 5th Amendment. Even encrypted data that’s stored on your computer or an external hard drive would be subject to investigation, and giving up that information is equivalent to complying with a search warrant. The question of the 5th Amendment, privacy, and the law has always been a muddy one. How much digital privacy do people actually have? Is handing over our digital information, such as Read more…
ACLU warns bill would gut video privacy law
The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday expressed its concern with proposed changes to the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which would allow companies to gain perpetual consent to sharing their customers’ video rental records.
At a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law hearing on Tuesday lawmakers debated changes to the law, which requires companies to ask for consent every time they disclose records.
Netflix and other Internet-based companies would like to see the law changed so that they could share their customers’ rental history with social media sites and other third-parties.
But the ACLU said in a letter (PDF) that changing the law would Read more…
Privacy rights battle just beginning
THE ISSUE: Ruling on GPS attachment
OUR VIEW: Technology forcing need for clarification on privacy rights
The U.S. Supreme Court rightly ruled n United States vs. Jones that secretly tracking people’s movements by attaching GPS devices to their cars violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches unless police first get a warrant from a judge.
While the justices came down firmly on the side of privacy in this case, the battle is just beginning to protect privacy rights in this age of technology when more eyes are watching us than ever before.
The court’s ruling validates the belief that people have a reasonable expectation that they will not be subject to constant monitoring by the government, and that escalating secretive technological surveillance violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
“We have entered a new and frightening age when advancing technology is erasing the Fourth Amendment,” says John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute.
“Thankfully, in recognizing that the placement of a GPS device on Antoine Jones’s Jeep violated the Read more…
New Mobile-Phone Privacy Law Proposed
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) unveiled draft legislation Monday requiring mobile-phone carriers to reveal if they are employing tracking software such as Carrier IQ.
“Consumers have the right to know and to say ‘no’ to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said in The Hill.
Under the Mobile Device Privacy Act (.pdf), consumers would have to consent that data from their phones would be sent to third parties, like Carrier IQ in Mountain View, California.
Carrier IQ has said that its software was secretly installed on some 150 million phones. It conceded that it Read more…
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