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Senators Ask FBI to Explain Flawed 'National Security Letter' to Internet Archive - Via Threat Level:
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is asking FBI head Robert Mueller to explain why the feds sought records from the Internet Archive, a digital library, using a controversial administrative subpoena known as a National Security Letter, which is intended for a communications service providers.
The Internet Archive, a digital library of the web and media, beat the November 26 NSL with the help of attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. In April, the FBI agreed to withdraw the request for records on a Internet Archive user and lift the gag order that typically attaches to such requests.
The six senators sent Mueller a letter Thursday, asking him to explain what happened and to find out if the FBI reported the incident to an oversight board as a possible violation of federal law. 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?
Clay Shirky to Deliver Closing Plenary - Via CFP: Technology Policy '08:
We are pleased to announce that Clay Shirky will deliver the closing plenary keynote at CFP Technology Policy '08.Since the 1990s, Shirky has written, taught, and consulted on the social, cultural, and economic effects of Internet technologies and social media. His most recent book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, evaluates the significant role being played by technological advances on the formation and experience of modern group dynamics, citing such examples as Wikipedia and MySpace to demonstrate the Internet's power in bridging geographical and cultural gaps.Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology -- how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.See more about Shirky at Wikipedia, BoingBoing, and on the Colbert Report.
Red Alert! Mandela Wants In! - Via ACLU Blog - Privacy & Technology:
Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing…"
Shocking that this has happened considering how well-organized and error-free the watchlist is otherwise. read more »
ACLU Urges Senate Committee to Pass Strong State Secrets Bill - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC – As the Senate Judiciary Committee meets today to mark up key legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union urged the body to pass a bill that would allow Americans to hold their government accountable. The bill, introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), would limit the scope of the state secrets privilege. The Bush administration, which has threatened to veto Senator Kennedy’s bill, has used the privilege to halt several important lawsuits against the government, including an ACLU case involving the extraordinary rendition of an innocent German citizen, Khaled El-Masri.
"The administration’s frequent and broad use of the state secrets privilege goes to the very root of its abuse of power," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The privilege has been misused and abused for long enough. Senator Kennedy’s legislation will allow for a court to review the government’s national security claims and will rightly reinstate the role of the judiciary." read more »
Online Reputation Management To Keep Your Nose Clean? - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
Techdirt is reporting that as a response to all the hoopla about people being able to Google for information on potential employees (or lovers) a new market has opened up in "online reputation management". This seems to be the ultimate realization of those dubious firms who promised to scrub your records clean from a few years back. "From the description in the article, it sounds like this involves a combination of search engine optimization, plus legal bullying of anyone who says something you don't like. read more »
Ashcroft's Bizarre Torture Comments - Via ACLU Blog:
Earlier this week, Think Progress reported on former Attorney General John Ashcroft's comment about torture in a speech he gave Monday at St. John's University. He said, "Going to a high school dance, having to listen to loud music, to me that's torture. I was on the Daily Show once. I was interviewed by Jon Stewart. That was torture."
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Now, we love a good laugh as much as the next person, but ThinkProgress's roundup got us thinking about the many, well, rather insensitive comments politicians have made of late. We think humor on the topic of torture is best left to the comics, not someone who authorized the real thing.
It turns out Ashcroft was on a roll. On Tuesday, he engaged in a rather testy exchange with an audience member at Knox College in Illinois. The audience member wrote a first-hand account of what went down on MyDD. read more »
Chertoff Disagrees with the Rest of His Agency, Again - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
Nine days ago, Sophia Cope blogged about how Homeland Secretary Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested that REAL IDs cannot be skimmed, in sharp contrast to DHS REAL ID Regs, which clearly say that the REAL ID is at risk of skimming. Today, CDT Fellow Peter Swire blogged on the Center for American Progress Web site about a new Chertoff statement where he said that “fingerprints aren’t ‘Personal Data.’” Swire shows that this comment lies in sharp contrast to DHS’ stated policy that fingerprints are “personally identifiable information.”
It is now time for DHS to make clear, is Chertoff purposely suggesting changes to existing policy or are these both misstatements?
(Read Original Article - Via CDT - PolicyBeta.)
FCC Gets an Earful From Open-Net Defenders at Stanford - Via Threat Level:
Stanford professor Larry Lessig brought down the house at a net neutrality hearing Thursday, calling for the Federal Communications Commission to finally move to make sure that the internet's architecture remain open and neutral, with the goal of having the internet become as uncomplicated as the electrical grid.
With his standard flair for stunning PowerPoint presentations, Lessig made the case that an open internet made possible the massive economic gains of the 1990s and that network operators who want to change the internet in order to create fast and slow lanes need to prove that such a 'smart' network would actually be better than an internet where the intelligence lies at the edges.
"We are facing these problems because of a failure of FCC policy," Lessig said, as the FCC's five commissioners sat behind him in a Stanford auditorium. "The FCC failed to make it clear to the network owners that if they are building the internet they need to build it neutrally." read more »
More Questions Swirl Around Mukasey's Emotional Plea for Warrantless Wiretapping - Via EFF: Deep Links:
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that lawmakers are still looking for answers about Attorney General Michael Mukasey's strange tale of an unmonitored terrorist phone call. Mukasey gave the account at a speech in San Francisco last month as part of an emotional plea to legalize warrantless wiretapping. But House Judiciary Committee members say this is the first they have heard of such a call. read more »
Chertoff’s Defense of REAL ID is “Dead Wrong” - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has a hard job. Among other things, it’s his responsibility to make sure that our country isn’t attacked by terrorists and that undocumented immigrants don’t cross our borders. So it’s understandable when he vociferously defends his Department’s efforts at “protecting the homeland.” But it’s inexcusable when the guy is simply factually (and vociferously) wrong on an important policy issue.
On April 2, Chertoff, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on DHS oversight, had the gall to say that public interests groups have been putting out “misinformation” and are “dead wrong” about the privacy and civil liberties risks of REAL ID. Yet it was the Secretary who put out misinformation and was dead wrong about the risk of the wrong people gaining access to personal information stored in the REAL ID card’s “machine-readable zone” (MRZ). read more »
Did Mukasey Lie About the 9/11 Call? - Via ACLU Blog:
Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been chasing down the story behind the comments Attorney General Michael Mukasey made in a speech in San Francisco last week. In the speech, Mukasey claimed that a pre-9/11 call from an "Afghan safe house" to a number somewhere in the U.S. wasn't intercepted because of the intelligence community's inadequate wiretapping capabilities under FISA. Mukasey implied that 9/11 could have been prevented if that call had been intercepted. Greenwald writes: read more »
U.S. Has Launched a Cyber Security 'Manhattan Project,' Homeland Security Chief Claims - Via Threat Level:
SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government has launched a cyber security "Manhattan Project," U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday, because online attacks can be a form of "devastating warfare", and equivalent in damage to "physical destruction of the worst kind."
Speaking to hundreds of security professionals at the RSA security conference, Chertoff cited last year's denial-of-service attacks against Estonia, and hypothetical hack attacks on financial networks and air traffic control systems, as proof that a federal strategy was needed.
"Imagine, if you will, a sophisticated attack on our financial systems that caused them to be paralyzed," Chertoff said. "It would shake the foundation of trust on which our financial system works." read more »
U.S. To Pitch 'Phase One' of Net Monitoring Plan at RSA - Via Threat Level:
Just how dangerous is the online world?
That question draws some 15,000 security professionals and IT bigwigs to San Francisco each year for the RSA Conference, taking place this week. There they learn about the newest threat to corporate networks, and are wooed by the makers of the newest flavor of corporate firewalls, intrusion detection devices and biometric doo-dads.
The answer they always get, not surprisingly, is that the online world is pretty darn dangerous, unless you use our products and services. What's new this year is that the U.S. government is joining the party with much the same pitch. The nation's intelligence and anti-terror agencies are newly determined to take a more active role in protecting the United States from cyberattack, and they're seeking new authority to monitor the internet in order to save it.
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is traveling Tuesday to the conference to pitch a program the Bush administration calls the Cyber Initiative. Slated for $154 million in funding this year, the plan would put the National Security Agency and DHS in charge of cybersecurity for all federal government agencies. read more »
CDT Corrects the Record About Security of Personal Data on REAL ID Cards - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
Today CDT sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee highlighting Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff’s recent testimony in which he wrongly asserted that the personal information stored on REAL ID cards will be safe from unauthorized access, and accused privacy advocates of spreading “misinformation.” In fact, the REAL ID Act and regulations mandate that Americans’ personal data be stored in an unsecured barcode, which can be easily scanned with widely available readers.
# CDT REAL ID Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee [PDF] April 08, 2008
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
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