Privacy Digest

Ominous Signs of a Forthcoming "Compromise" on Telco Immunity - Tell the House To Stand Firm - Via EFF: Deep Links:

This morning, CongressDaily reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller is now privately circulating a new "compromise" proposal on surveillance legislation, only a day after it was reported that the telecoms themselves have begun shopping their own "compromise" proposals around the Hill. You may remember Sen. Rockefeller as the force behind the surveillance bill passed by the Senate in February, which included blanket retroactive immunity for phone companies like AT&T that are alleged to have participated in the National Security Agency's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Although the details of the Rockefeller proposal are still unclear, indications are that the so-called "compromise" on telco immunity may well be nearly identical to the original Senate immunity provision, with only a few cosmetic changes.  read more »

Dear Potus 08 - Via CFP: Technology Policy '08:

From the in-progress page on the program wiki:

If the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy community wrote a letter to the next President of the United States about our priorities for technology policy, what would we say -- and how would we get him or her to read it?

There's only one way to find out.

At this year's conference dinner, we will launch a collaborative effort to write a short letter to the next President from the CFP '08 attendees. We'll get these initial results up on a wiki for comments and evolution, and refine them over the follwing 36 hours. By Friday morning, if we've managed to converge on something plausible, we'll start circulating the current draft for signatures. At the end of the conference, we'll mail the current draft to the presidential campaigns and invite their response.

We'll also put it all up on the web - with a Creative Commons "by" (attribution) license - and invite others to use it for whatever purposes they want as we revise our initial draft, get broader involvement and discussion, and try to get our voice heard amidst the din of the campaigns.

We'll be using this blog as a big part of the "Dear Potus 08" project, both to update the details -- currently described as "mostly TBD" -- and to discussparticular topics. The 9.5 theses thread is the best place to get involved with the technology policy discussion right now. In this thread, any questions or thoughts about "Dear Potus 08" -- or links to similar projects?

(Read Original Article - Via CFP: Technology Policy '08.)

A New Look at the Hub of AT&T's Spying Program - Via EFF: Deep Links:

Our class action lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the National Security Agency in the massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications includes powerful evidence of a secret room in San Francisco.

But the hub of the spying program may be just outside of St. Louis, in a Missouri town called Bridgeton. A special report from local station KMOV puts the pieces together in a comprehensive and disturbing story about this dragnet surveillance, with the help of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. Watch the video on the KMOV site for a fresh look at a key piece of this spying puzzle.

(Read Original Article - Via EFF: Deep Links.)

Chief RIAA Litigator Named Colorado Judge -- UPDATE - Via Threat Level:

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter is appointing the Recording Industry Association of America's top litigator to the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Richard Gabriel, who prosecuted the Jammie Thomas case, is a partner in the Colorado office of Holme Roberts & Owens. Gabriel, who assumes the $124,000 annual post July 1, was a convincing litigator in the Thomas case, the nation's first RIAA lawsuit against an individual for file-sharing that went to trial.  read more »

EFF Answers Your Questions About Border Searches - Via EFF: Deep Links:

Readers of my deeplink on safeguarding your laptop and digital devices from warrantless searches at the border responded with both questions and answers. Some readers wondered whether you have an obligation not to destroy information on your laptop. Others pointed out that U.S. citizens may be detained, but not turned away, at the U.S. border. Many technologists wrote to offer cryptographic solutions, or warnings about encryption schemes that are not as secure as they should be. In this post, I answer the question about destruction of information and reproduce or summarize, with permission, others' suggestions about protecting your laptop from arbitrary searches. I haven't done any independent analysis of these techniques or tools, so your mileage may vary.  read more »

FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge - Via EFF: Breaking News:

San Francisco - The FBI has withdrawn an unconstitutional national security letter (NSL) issued to the Internet Archive after a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As the result of a settlement agreement, the FBI withdrew the NSL and agreed to the unsealing of the case, finally allowing the Archive's founder to speak out for the first time about his battle against the record demand.

"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work. That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries," said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. "While it's never easy standing up to the government -- particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone -- I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong. I'm grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands."  read more »

FBI Lifts Gag Order on Internet Archive - Via ACLU Blog - Government Spying:

It’s official: the FBI withdrew its national security letter (NSL) demand that it had issued to the Internet Archive last November. NSLs demand personal records like Web site visits and e-mail addresses without prior court approval, and NSL recipients are forbidden, or "gagged," from telling anyone about the demand. So now that the NSL has been withdrawn, the gag has been lifted, and Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, can speak freely about his battle to protect Internet Archive users' privacy rights.  read more »

FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses - Via Threat Level:

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter on the Internet Archive, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint (.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco.  read more »

Court Ruling on Voter ID Law May Encourage Tighter State Regulation - Via NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS:

The Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 Monday to uphold an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification at polling stations. The National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle examines the impact of the Supreme Court decisions on voters and state regulations.

(Read Original Article - Via NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS.)

National Intelligence Agency Breaks Out RSS Feed - Via Threat Level:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which controls 16 federal agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, is engaged in a technological revolution of sorts.

On at least one technological front, the office on Tuesday broke out an RSS feed on its flashy, newly designed public web site.

The site is complete with a new scary message from Director Mike McConnell. The message scrolls along the top of the page like the text at the beginning of a "Star Wars" flick.  read more »

Daily Kos: Another victory for the anti-Real ID rebels - Via ACLU's diary in Daily Kos:

By Larry Frankel, State Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

The anti-Real ID movement just took a big step forward, with the Arizona Senate’s 21-7 vote to bar implementation of Real ID in Arizona. The bill (H.B. 2677) still has to go back to the Arizona House for another vote and then on to Governor Janet Napolitano for her signature. But as of this writing, Arizona is poised to join the growing number of states who have recognized that Real ID is an expensive and unworkable invasion of our privacy.

The good work of a bipartisan group of Arizona legislators contrasts with what happened last week in Minnesota. Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed a transportation bill that passed the Minnesota legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support because the members of the Minnesota legislature had the audacity to say no to the federal Real ID Act. The governor’s veto message reads like a set of talking points from the Department of Homeland Security.  read more »

No-go on GOFA - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:

Today, CDT posted an updated memorandum on the most recent version of the Global Online Freedom Act (”GOFA”). GOFA was first introduced by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) several years ago in response to troubling reports of company complicity in Internet censorship and cooperation in prosecutions of dissidents who posted political material online. The late Rep. Tom P. Lantos, (D-Ca) took up the cause last year and the bill was reported out of the Committee on Foreign Affairs late last year. Industry opposition to the bill has been fierce and efforts to bring the bill to the floor on suspension have thus far been thwarted.

CDT strongly believes that technology companies doing business in countries that broadly surveil and censor the Internet must take serious steps to identify and minimize the human rights risks associated with providing services and technology solutions in those countries. For several years, we have been co-facilitating a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at developing global principles to guide ICT companies facing free expression and privacy challenges.  We remain hopefully that these principles will grow into a global industry standard that will give the industry a road map for collective action in this area.

We also believe that companies must not hide from these challenges. They should advocate for changes in public policy that protect the rights of their users, challenge laws where possible and collaborate with human rights groups and other stakeholders to build support for an open Internet that supports human rights.  read more »

ACLU Commends Net Neutrality Hearing - Via American Civil Liberties Union:

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union commends Chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet for holding a hearing today on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353), legislation designed to keep the Internet free for open discourse.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative office said, "This legislation is a good first step in protecting the Internet from blocking, censorship and discrimination by powerful phone and cable companies." Frederickson said the hearing and the legislation are "important measures to bring net neutrality the attention it needs." She added that the ACLU, which has been fighting for First Amendment freedoms for 87 years, encourages members of Congress and the FCC to take immediate action to safeguard free speech and innovation online.  read more »

NZ cops get 'COFEE' to capture PC evidence - New Zealand's source for technology news on - Via Stuff.co.nz :

New Zealand police have been given a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a prototype of a USB "thumb drive" that Microsoft has quietly distributed to a few law-enforcement agencies around the world.

A spokesman at police national headquarters said today: "Police have been issued with the COFEE tool by Microsoft and the E-Crime Lab's digital forensic analysts have been trained in the use of it".

New Zealand police had an excellent relationship with the software company, which had provided specialist training to digital forensic analysts and investigators, he said.  read more »

Backroom FISA Deal in the Making? - Via ACLU Blog - Government Spying:

There was chatter on the blogs last week that FISA compromise was in the works, but it wasn't until late Friday night that our lobbyists confirmed that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is working on a compromise bill with Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) — yes, the same senator known for taking thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from the telecom companies he's angling to protect with immunity. Hoyer and Rockefeller may try to lock in a deal within the next few days.  read more »