July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Legal FAQs on NSA Wiretaps
by Peter Swire 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave: I have written ?Legal FAQs on NSA Wiretaps.? It just went up at www.americanprogress.org/FAQswiretaps and www.peterswire.net. There is a short executive summary, and also more detailed Q&As. The intent is to write for a smart lay audience, and not only for lawyers. The hope is to update over time. It reaches very different conclusions from the ?Myths and Realities about NSA Wiretaps? that the Justice Department posted today. Best, Peter Prof. Peter P. Swire C. William O'Neill Professor Moritz College of Law of the Ohio State University Visiting Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress (240) 994-4142, www.peterswire.net ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Legal FAQs on NSA Wiretaps
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[drone-list] intro, and some thoughts
by Cleve Higgins 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Heyo all, I have been reading a lot about the role of drone technology in military, surveillance, and law enforcement, and the thinking about the ways in which it is part of a larger blurring of these domains (especially in the US). I'm based in Montreal, a city in the business of aeronautics, and also computer simulation, and drones have become an important aspect of both of these industries in recent years. My research has focused on these local connections, especially when they're related to the universities. Finally, I'm intrigued by use of drones by social movements for counter-surveillance purposes (such as the occucopter), as well as emerging examples of hacking drone communications and control systems. I'm glad to hear that people other than security and military agencies have been finding positive uses for drones (such as the humanitarian uses that have been mentioned already). Though I have skeptical thoughts on increasing media attention on this side of the drone story. Does it risk having the role (intentional or not) of glossing over or mitigating the rapidly emerging new forms of war\repression being carried out by the US government? And specifically the brutal effects this is having in northern Pakistan? This is not to say that these problems are being completely ignored - the critical stories are being written, and that is good. Though I also suspect that an effect of the surge of these critical stories is that the US government is trying to come up with ways to defend and legitimize their actions, and one way to do that could be to emphasize (and even support) the "dual-use" aspects of drone technology. I see this in the context of the myth of inevitable, unilinear technological (and social) progress, and how it downplays the important role that military funding and direction has in technological developments in countries such as the US. Many technologies exist in the form they do because of their military applications. If not for this military support, it is very possible that the technologies would not exist at all, or at least not in the form that they do. Innumerable social choices are made that shape our world, including our technology, and it is always possible that different choices could have been made (about how much of our collective social effort we put into military and security areas, for example). An important aspect of this perspective is that technologies are very connected to the social relations and values of the contexts in which they emerge. I think the development of ARPANET by the US military as a means of better surviving nuclear attack is an example of this, but that's a whole other discussion. I haven't thought much yet about the context for the emergence of drones, and I don't want this email to get much longer than it already is by attempting to do so now, but for starters think it would be related to the "war on terror", asymmetrical warfare, and the contradictions of the (declining) US empire as the only military superpower (attempting military solutions to "policing" problems). I look forward to hearing anyone's thoughts on these topics. Thanks for creating this list! Sorry if this first email is somewhat long and tangential. Mostly I plan on using this list to share articles as I find them, with brief thoughts sometimes. More in-depth or contentious discussion is sometimes good though. adelante, Cleve _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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EDRI-gram newsletter - Number 6.11, 4 June 2008
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRI-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 6.11, 4 June 2008 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Hungarian Data Retention Law - challenged at the Constitutional Court 2. Social networking sites might be regulated in EU 3. Czech Parliament - close in implementing data retention directive 4. Deutsche Telekom under investigation for spying on its employees 5. ICO worried about a UK Government-owned traffic data database 6. Dutch Parliament lowers data retention term to 12 months 7. BitTorrent tracker sites threatened by draft ACTA agreement 8. Finish CSS decision overturned 9. Creative Commons Bulgaria Licence upheld in court 10. ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden? 11. Agenda 12. About ============================================================ 1. Hungarian Data Retention Law - challenged at the Constitutional Court ============================================================ The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) has filed its complaint with the Constitutional Court requesting an ex post examination for unconstitutionality and the annulment of the data retention provisions of Act C of 2003 on electronic communications. On 15 March 2008, the regulations implementing the 2006/24/EC Directive on data retention entered into force in Hungary. Act C of 2003 on electronic communications did not need much amendment since it already comprised numerous restrictive data retention provisions prior to the directive. The only changes of the amendments were the retention of Internet communications data and the elimination of the lax - but at least pre-defined - legal purposes of the data processing. Moreover the amendments totally disregarded the provision of the directive that data should be "available for the purpose of investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime". The HCLU's main concern in its complaint was the retention of personal data for "the stock" without previously defined purposes. A 1991 decision of the Constitutional Court prohibited such data processing and the Act on Protection of Personal Data adopted a year later, also contains this ban. HCLU has also stressed that data retention might be detrimental not only to privacy but also to other fundamental rights such as freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and freedom of petition. Constitutional complaint filed by HCLU against Hungarian telecom data retention regulations (2.06.2008) http://tasz.hu/en/node/826 (Contribution by Adam Foldes - Hungarian Civil Liberties Union) ============================================================ 2. Social networking sites might be regulated in EU ============================================================ On 27 May 2008, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) called for new legislation that would regulate social networking sites. ENISA, which was created in 2004 to oversee online security measures in the 27 EU countries, issued a preliminary report of its General Report in which it pointed out that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace need more regulation to protect their users against security risks. "Social networking sites are very useful social tools but we must make recommendations for how to better protect people from the risks these sites create," said Andreas Pirotti, executive director of ENISA and author of the report. He suggested the EU legislation should be expanded in order to "cover the taking of photos of people and posting them on the internet". In Pirotti's opinion, network security is under a permanent threat from spammers or criminals. "Internet security is extremely important, considering how much business takes place online now. We don't want infrastructures to be disrupted, we don't want a digital 9/11 to happen," he said. He also considers crucial to "raise awareness about how social networking sites work. Few people realize that they can be offered up as friends to people they don't know. Also, many people don't realize that it's almost impossible to erase material once it has appeared on the internet". Some of the threats related to social networking identified by ENISA are related to face recognition, digital dossiers, reputation damage, social engineering attacks on enterprises, phishing attacks, ID theft and others. The report of the organisation includes 19 recommendations to social networks on ways to improve their security practices. Among other things, ENISA calls for a regulatory review of social networking frameworks, an increased transparency of data handling practices, more education for users on security, and the discouragement or even banning of social networking in schools. A study conducted by enterprise IT management company CA and the National Cyber Security Alliance in 2006 found out that the majority of users of social networking sites were not very aware of the security issues involved. 83 percent of them admitted having downloaded unknown files from unknown users and 74 percent said that they were easily providing the personal data online. Also, a Symantec report issued in 2007 showed that social networking sites offer easy pickings for phishers. The security practices of the respective sites make it easier to invade and to spread attacks to more people. Top EU security agency calls for policing of social network (27.05.2008) http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/27/EU-security-agency-wants-social-n… EU may regulate social networking sites over security issues (27.08.2008) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080527-eu-may-regulate-social-networ… ENISA General Report 2007 - adopted, non designed version http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/publications/AGR_full_disclaim.pdf ============================================================ 3. Czech Parliament - close in implementing data retention directive ============================================================ Czech Parliament is close to approving the data retention implementation as an Act amending the Electronic Communications Act (127/2005 Coll.). Due to the early introduction of the data retention obligation in the text of the 2005 Act, the current amending draft law implementing the data retention directive is more specific. EDRi-member IuRe intended to take the opportunity to amend the Act in order to respect privacy. IuRe prepared a set of amendments aiming to shorten the retention period to 6 months (currently one year), to include data that are subject to retention into the text of the Act (currently the data are specified only in a Minister regulation, so it can be modified without parliamentary debates) and to prevent intelligence services from accessing the retained data. Risk of misusing the databases for other purposes than those specified in the directive is obvious: the intentions to allow the use of operational and localization data by the intelligence services leaked to the press in November 2007 and it was acknowledged recently by the Government. IuRe's proposals to abolish reimbursements of data retention costs to telecoms and ISP providers and the proposal to clearly entitle only the Police to use the data were adopted by the Committee for Security of the Chamber of Deputies. Unfortunately, the proposal of the Committee for Security of the Chamber of Deputies and other amendments proposed by individual MPs were not assumed by the plenum at the third reading. Following the current legislative procedure, the draft Amending Act is now pending in the Senate, but there is no real chance to change its text. The Czech Republic has thus implemented the data retention directive and obliges providers to store data for one year costing tax payers around 6.5 million euro per year. The draft Amending Act leaves a backdoor for intelligence services to use the databases. Also, the present form leaves to the Minister of Transportation the decision on the scope of the retained data. More information (Czech only) http://www.iure.org http://www.slidilove.cz/ EDRi-gram: Dispute over data retention costs in Czech Republic (15.02.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.3/czechdataretention (Contribution by Helena Svatosova, EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium - Czech Republic) ============================================================ 4. Deutsche Telekom under investigation for spying on its employees ============================================================ The giant German telecommunication company is under investigation by national prosecutors for a presumed breach of privacy, after having spied on the phone calls of its managers, journalists and even board members. According to Der Spiegel newspaper, the former monopoly incumbent operator - still 31.7% owned by the German government - illegally monitored the phone calls of parts of its staff during 2005-2006 when the company was laying off workers. It seems the company hired an outside agency to monitor contacts between members of its supervisory board and journalists. The company has partially admitted the allegations saying the monitoring was carried out to find out who was leaking information to the press. Rene Obermann, the chief executive of the group, stated the company had not been aware of the issue and that the illegal actions were taken by the security department of the company, which has been dissolved in the meantime. "I am shaken to the core by these allegations. We take the situation most seriously. We have called in the public prosecutor's office and will support them in their full investigation of these allegations" he said. The company also claimed that the calls were not listened to, and that the investigation was just trying to establish the date, the duration of the calls and what phone numbers board members had called. "The allegations made against the company do not relate to any unlawful use of the content of calls - in other words they do not concern the tapping of calls.(...) Call records are details of the time, duration and participants of calls" was the company's statement. Legal expert Thomas Hoeren said that in Germany there had been more and more cases of companies watching their employees, which is not an issue as actually this is allowed by the law. However, Deutsche Telekom broke more than privacy laws by collecting all the telephone data from their CEOs and the people supervising the company which is not only a violation of data protection or privacy regulations but also a violation of telecommunications secrecy, which is protected under criminal law. If a company allows its employees to use the telephones in their offices for private use, as was Deutsche Telekom's case, they are no longer considered as employees but also as private persons. So, the company was not allowed to monitor its employees' telephone connections. Hoeren also stated there was no justification for a company to violate telecommunications secrecy and he also considered there was an implicit violation of press freedom. "The interesting problem in this case is that state attorneys are now investigating what happened at Deutsche Telekom, but this can only lead to a punishment for individuals acting as representatives of Deutsche Telekom. The company as such is out of bounds. What people now want are increased sanctions against the company, not just against the individuals behind the company. In the current situation, Deutsche Telekom can only get a fine of perhaps 25,000 euros, which is nothing for them" said the expert. Prosecutors are examining now whether or not to open a case of violation of data protection laws against Deutsche Telekom. Prosecutors investigate Deutsche Telekom over data misuse (29.05.2008) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=9153 Prosecutors probe Deutsche Telekom on data misuse (29.05.2008) http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSWEA833920080529 Prosecutors probe Deutsche Telekom (29.05.2008) http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jjHggMdkSqAgBRq4C243Fj88zOQQD90V82IO1 Telekom Breaks More than Privacy Laws in Criminal Spy Case (27.05.2008) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3363041,00.html ============================================================ 5. ICO worried about a UK Government-owned traffic data database ============================================================ The new Communications Data Bill proposed by the Home Office has met the opposition of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) which has shown concerns related to the proposals of building one Government-owned database with records of phone calls, email and Internet use in the UK. In ICO's opinion, the action is not justified. "If the intention is to bring all mobile and internet records together under one system, this would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. (...) We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen" said Jonathan Bamford, assistant Information Commissioner. ICO is worried not only in connection to breaches of civil liberties but also about the amount of power the Government will get over the information. "Such a measure would require wider public discussion. Proper safeguards would be needed to ensure that the data is only used for the proper purpose of detecting crime" stated Bamford. There are also doubts that the Government is able to guaranty the safety of the system against internal as well as external misuse. The system might prove too massive to be properly managed by the Government, ending up in a huge loss of public money. The concerns are also related to the fact the UK Government has a bad history in keeping personal private data. As previously reported in the EDRI-gram, HM Revenue and Customs lost 25 million people's personal details in November, the Army lost a large amount of data with stolen laptops and a contractor to the DVLA lost three million drivers' personal details in December. Privacy watchdog opposes giant telecoms database (27.05.2008) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=9147 Home Office calls for a 'Big Brother' database (22.05.2008) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/108305 EDRI gram - UK Government will store all phone, Internet traffic data (21.05.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.10/uk-isp-traffic-data EDRi-gram: Personal sensitive data keep on being lost in UK (30.01.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.2/uk-losing-personal-data ============================================================ 6. Dutch Parliament lowers data retention term to 12 months ============================================================ The Dutch Parliament has lowered the data retention term in its implementation of the Data Retention directive to 12 months. The law has still to pass the Dutch Senate, which has been more critical of data retention in the last four years. A lot is still unclear about the law and many concerns, like the absence of evidence for the resulting interference with the right to private life and private communications, have not been adequately addressed yet. Still, the legislature will try to finalize the law before the summer break of the Parliament. Interestingly, the three-party coalition forming the present Government was split into three camps, arguing for 6, 12 and 18 months respectively. The government kept arguing for 18 months, but a majority voted for an amendment lowering the term to 12 months. This term traces back to a report of the Erasmus University about the usefulness and necessity of data retention for telecommunication traffic and location data. After failing to prove such usefulness and necessity for data older than 3 months, the researchers had talks with police representatives. Based exclusively on those talks, the report recommended a 12 month retention period. Later on, the Dutch Council of State referred to that research and the proposed reasonable term of 12 months when it advised the government to lower the term. Although the debate focused a lot on the retention term and the lack of evidence, there are many other issues that were debated. The Parliament also spoke about European developments, such as the procedure of Ireland before the European Court of Justice and the constitutional challenge in Germany. It also discussed the extent of parliamentary involvement with the contents of the decree which will contain more details about data retention in practice. The law now contains a list of data to be retained, after concerns were raised that this was the core of a data retention obligation and that the list would have to be agreed upon in Parliament. Unfortunately, the list is not very precise. It is as general as the list in the directive and seems to contain a mistake. Whereas the data retention directive does not require the retention of the destination for Internet use other than e-mail or telephony, the Dutch list does not make this distinction anymore. The costs of data retention for the sector and consumers were also an issue of debate, but the available cost estimates are still vague. One of the reasons is that the precise scope of the data retention obligation for Internet traffic is unclear. General costs of data retention will not be reimbursed. The question about storage of the data in centralized or decentralized facilities has been evaded. At first, the data will be stored by the providers but this could change in the future. An amendment that would have restricted the possibility of claiming complete data sets - to be used for data mining in the context of combating terrorism - didn't make it. If the law is passed, both national security and law enforcement agencies will have the possibility to claim complete parts of the collection of data to be retained. EDRi-gram: Dutch study fails to prove usefulness and necessity data retention (29.05.2005) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.13/retention EDRi-gram: Dutch DPA advises negatively on Dutch draft data retention (31.01.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.2/dpa-dutch Data Retention 12 Months (only in Dutch, 22 May 2008) http://webwereld.nl/articles/51188/wet-bewaarplicht-toch-12-maanden.html The data retention implementation law as sent to the Dutch Senate (only in Dutch, 22 May 2008) http://www.eerstekamer.nl/9324000/1/j9vvgh5ihkk7kof/vhv5hp6u4zyt/f=y.pdf (Contribution by Joris van Hoboken - EDRi-member Bits of Freedom - Netherlands) ============================================================ 7. BitTorrent tracker sites threatened by draft ACTA agreement ============================================================ A new international trade agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is now under discussion might strengthen criminal sanctions against BitTorrent tracker sites for exploiting copyright material online. The tracker sites state they do not profit from Internet users sharing music, movies and software, saying that the server and bandwidth costs are supported by donations and advertising revenues. However, rights holder organisations claim that BitTorrent administrators exploit copyright material online and make a nice profit out of it. A discussion paper that has been leaked online by Sunshine Media, the company that runs the Wikileaks.org website, is under circulation now among the US, EU, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and Switzerland, on the proposed ACTA. The paper includes "the types of provisions that could be included in the agreement" and suggests "criminal sanctions to be applied to (Intellectual Property Rights) infringements on a commercial scale (where there are) significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright owner (e.g. internet piracy)". The discussion paper states "deterrent-level" penalties should be applied by the Governments against criminal copyright infringement, and it also proposes powers to seize and destroy equipment. The ACTA proposal in the case of simple filesharers accused of civil infringement is the possibility of the rights holder of asking compensations "including measures to overcome the problem of rights holders not being able to get sufficient compensation due to difficulty in assessing the full extent of the damage". ISPs might face new sanctions as the ACTA will force them to hand over personal information pertaining to "claimed infringement" or "alleged infringers". ACTA might also attempt to introduce "remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficking of circumvention devices". What the discussion paper also proposes is that ACTA create its own governing body to be overseen by a committee made up of representatives from member nations. According to a European Commission official, formal negotiations on ACTA are expected to start this week in Geneva. NGOs, such as IP Justice, heavily criticised the new negotiations: "After the multilateral treaty's scope and priorities are negotiated by the few countries invited to participate in the early discussions, ACTA's text will be 'locked' and other countries who are later 'invited' to sign on to the pact will not be able to re-negotiate its one-sided terms." Meanwhile, in UK, the Police has arrested six people for allegedly sharing music files via the defunct BitTorrent tracker OiNK.cd. Apparently the 6 persons were detained in "in relation to uploading pre-release music". OiNK.cd was shutdown seven months ago in a Police raid at the Middlesbrough home of its administrator. International copyright talks seek BitTorrent-killer laws (27.05.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/27/acta_leak/ Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers (26.05.2008) http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=ae997868-220b… BitTorrent tracker Mininova faces legal action (19.05.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/mininova_faces_legal_action/ Embattled ACTA Negotiations Next Week In Geneva; US Sees Signing This Year (30.05.2008) http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1071 UK cops arrest six alleged BitTorrent music uploaders (2.06.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/02/onk_further_arrests/ ============================================================ 8. Finish CSS decision overturned ============================================================ The Helsinki Court of Appeal overturned the initial decision taken by the Helsinki District Court ruling that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is "ineffective". The decision of the Court of Appeal was taken a year after the first ruling concluded that "CSS protection can no longer be held 'effective' as defined in law." The defendant's counsel Mikko Vdlimdki explains on his blog that the Appeal Court said that circumventing an access control would have been lawful. But the court considered that the defendants circumvented a full copy protection system (CSS), not just an access control, which is actually wrong. Also Vdlimdki points out that the court considered that "it is ok to circumvent if the circumvention happens without installing additional software. The court claimed that you always need to install some kind of "hack" software for Linux systems in order see DVDs. Again, the court erred. In fact, you only need a (legal) player software like VLC or Mplayer, and with some Linux distros player cabale of showing DVDs comes standard. In the district court the technical witness from the Finnish criminal police answered as questioned that with his Ubuntu installed fresh on the system you just throw the DVD in and it shows the movie's icon on the destop, there you just double-click and voila. You don't need *any* additional software in that case." The counsel announced that the decision would be appealed to the Supreme Court in Finland, because the Appeal Court decided on the case and made these errors because it took the decision only based on the case documentation. Usually, it takes between 3-5 months for the Supreme Court to decide whether they take the case. Court of Appeal overturned the CSS decision (26.05.2008) http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156 Finnish Appeals Court Overturns Decision That Said It Was Okay To Circumvent Ineffective DRM (28.05.2008) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080527/1606231237.shtml EDRi-gram: CSS protection used in DVDs is "ineffective" (6.06.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.11/css-dvd-finland ============================================================ 9. Creative Commons Bulgaria Licence upheld in court ============================================================ Veni Markovski from EDRi-member ISOC Bulgaria reports on his blog on the first case when the CreativeCommons Licence was upheld in court in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian blogger Elenko Elenkov filed a lawsuit against the newspaper "24 hours" for having used one of his photos, licenced under the CreativeCommons BY-SA, in one of their edition on 20 September 2007 on the cover page and on page 3. The picture did not mention the author or the licence used, but rather attributed the photo on page 3 to "The Internet". The correction printed four days later by the newspaper was under the headline and said that "pictures from the Internet forums also have an author", and that the picture was published "in one of the Internet forums", and acknowledged that the author was Elenko Elenkov. Elenko claimed that the correction published by the newspaper is impairing his image rather than admitting him as the author and claimed more than the 50 euros offered by the "24 hours" newspaper as compensation, even though the newspapers is the second biggest in Bulgaria. On the first hearing in this case at the Sofia Court on 27 May 2008, the newspaper admitted that they had breached Elenko's copyright, but the trial will continue to determine the right compensation. Creative Commons License Recognized in Bulgarian Court (28.05.2008) http://blog.veni.com/?p=494 Elenko vs. "24 hours", Episode 7: "24 hours" acknowledged its mistake (only in Bulgarian, 27.05.2008) http://www.eenk.com/?p=1778 ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden? ============================================================ Lex Orwell, a law proposal for total surveillance, is urgently being pushed to a vote on 17 June 2008 by national security hawks in the peaceful Kingdom of Sweden. It will mandate the "NSA franchise", the FRA, to turn its forest of parabola ears and world's 5th largest super computer to listen to you - or rather what you do, say and share on the Internet - would an information package pass the Swedish borders. FRA is the Swedish shorthand for The National Defence Radio Establishment. An institution very active during the cold war but without a clear task or purpose today since material from satellite traffic from military activities the Baltics isn't particularly a la mode any more. To stay in business, FRA has therefore for years pursued a long term strategy to "improve raw material supply through partnerships" and to provide "on demand" intelligence to "support government authorities and state owned companies regarding current IT threats". That does not make FRA into an "NSA franchise", does it? Well, a retired FRA Intelligence Officer was recently quoted in a report to the Swedish Journalist Fund for Education saying "Maybe FRA is a Swedish organisation, which in limited ways cooperate with foreign intelligence services. Or FRA is a part of an international surveillance group which to a limited extent cooperate with the Swedish authorities. The problem is that it is only FRA who knows." While national security and "state secret privileges" are complex matters of parliamentary checks and balances, the question is if Lex Orwell got it right. Nobody in the public sphere seems to think so. In answers from eight heavyweight institutions to the government's hearing on Lex Orwell it is said it is "in breach of ECHR", "like wire-tapping without a court order", "general surveillance (...) of the content of telephone calls and messages", "lacking in understanding (...) of privacy", "massive wire-tapping", "seriously flawed" and that "the State is acquiring the telecommunications traffic". If this critique was not enough, former director of the FRA himself says FRA activity is in breach of European law. To the layman the set-up seems indistinguishable from what allegedly is happening in the USA where AT&T is accused of "violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications". Why should you care what is happening in Sweden? Well, it turns out that Sweden is one of the countries that has actively blocked the Commission's third pillar proposal from 2005 for protection of personal data processed in the framework of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Professor Elspeth Guild writes in 2007: "A battery of measures have been announced in the First and Third Pillars (...) which are aimed at a substantial increase in surveillance of the citizen, his or her movements, statements, actions and activities. At the same time, the protection of the citizen from wrongful use of his or her personal data has lagged very substantially behind for instance, the continuing blockage of the Third Pillar Framework Decision on data protection.". Statewatch told us already in 2006 that a "number of delegations (CH, CZ, DK, IE, SE and UK) has expressed doubts against the inclusion of data processed in a purely domestic context.". Why? At about the same time the Commission answers the parliamentary question E-1300/2007 whether Sweden has the right to conclude an exclusive agreement with the USA on research into terrorism and civilian security issues, saying would such research transfer personal data to third countries, it would be regulated by European law: "It is important to underline that exchange on either security research projects or on threat assessment does not necessarily imply exchange of personal data which are subject to the EU data protection rules. However, any such activities must fully respect the fundamental rights, privacy and civil liberties of individuals.". Now, what about "raw material supply through partnerships"? It is said that only four (4) Swedish libertarians in the ruling coalition is needed to postpone Lex Orwell. Grab your phone and call them. International calls are still free, as in free speech. FRA's "Open Budget" for 2009-2011 (only in Swedish, 17.03.2008) http://www.fra.se/bilagor/0319-bul2009-2011.pdf FRA, brief presentation in English http://www.fra.se/english.shtml "Fvrsvarets Radioanstalt - 2003-2004" by Martin Jvnsson a report to "Journalistfonden fvr vidareutbildning" (only in Swedish, 27.02.2005) http://periodista.se/FRA03_04.pdf Video recording from San Francisco Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Hepting v. AT&T (23.01.2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppRKfXiXBLM Collection of some Swedish institution's opinions of Lex Orwell (only in Swedish, 3.06.2008) http://www.digitalidag.se/index.php?title=Sammanfattning_av_remissvaren&old… Interview with Anders Wik, former FRA director (only in Swedish, 31.05.2008) http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.165280 General information related to EFF's class action lawsuit against AT&T http://www.eff.org/nsa/hepting European parliament's legislative observatory page on DPFD http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5279032 "Making the EU Citizens' Agenda Work" by Elspeth Guild (9.02.2007) http://shop.ceps.be/BookDetail.php?item_id=1460 Council document 13918/06 (13.10.2006) http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/oct/eu-dp-issues-13918-06.pdf Parliamentary question E-1300/2007 (1.06.2007) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?reference=E-2007-1300&… Article referred to in question E-1300/2007 (only in Swedish, 28.02.2007) http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/innovation/forskning_utveckling/article42632… (Contribution by Erik Josefsson) ============================================================ 11. Agenda ============================================================ 6-7 June 2008, Bremen, Germany IdentityCamp - a barcamp around identity 2.0 and privacy 2.0 http://barcamp.org/IdentityCampBremen 17-18 June 2008, Seoul, Korea The Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Ministerial Meeting http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet 23 June 2008, Paris, France GigaNet is organizing an international academic workshop on "Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction" http://tinyurl.com/2nww9t 26-27 June 2008, London, UK International Conference on Digital Evidence http://www.mistieurope.com/default.asp?Page=65&Return=70&ProductID=8914&LS=… 30 June-1 July 2008, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium First COMMUNIA Conference - Assessment of economic and social impact of digital public domain throughout Europe http://www.communia-project.eu/conf2008 7-8 July 2008, London, UK Developing New Models Of Content Delivery Online & Innovative Strategies For Effectively Tackling Copyright Infringement http://www.isp-content-regulation.com/conference.agenda.asp 7-9 July 2008, Cambridge, UK Privacy Laws & Business 21st Annual International Conference http://www.privacylaws.com/templates/AnnualConferences.aspx?id=641 19-20 July 2008, Stockholm, Sweden International Association for Media and Communication Research pre-conference - Civil Rights in Mediatized Societies: Which data privacy against whom and how ? http://www.iamcr.org/content/view/301/1/ 23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008) http://petsymposium.org/2008/ 8-10 September 2008, Geneva, Switzerland The third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3) http://isp.law.yale.edu/ 22 September 2008, Istanbul, Turkey Workshop on Applications of Private and Anonymous Communications http://www.alpaca-workshop.org/ 24-28 September 2008, Athens, Greece World Summit on the Knowledge Society http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/summit.htm ============================================================ 12. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 28 members based or with offices in 17 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRI-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and visibly on the EDRI website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram(a)edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edrigram-mk.php - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram(a)edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[IP] FCC readies rule to block Internet piracy
by Dave Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>Delivered-To: dfarber+(a)ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu >Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 08:10:34 -0700 >From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne(a)warpspeed.com> >= > >FCC readies rule to block Internet piracy > >By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post, 10/19/2003 ><http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/19/fcc_readies_rule_t o_block_internet_piracy/> > >WASHINGTON -- The federal government is preparing for the first time to >require that personal computers and other consumer electronics devices >contain technology to help block Internet piracy of digital entertainment. >A rule being considered by the Federal Communications Commission is one of >a series of proposals pushed by the entertainment industry to help thwart >copying and online trading of movies and television shows that >increasingly are being broadcast in digital form with high-quality picture >and sound. > >But the new rule also would force consumers to purchase new equipment if >they wanted to record enhanced digital-quality television programs and >replay them on other machines. > >Opponents of the proposed rule, including many technology companies and >consumer groups, say it won't work. They are especially concerned that the >plan might lead to government regulation of how personal computers and >other devices are built, particularly if hackers crack the system and >further changes are deemed necessary. > >FCC officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they expect >the agency to settle on details of the "broadcast flag" rule by the end of >the month. The broadcast flag takes its name from the computer code that >would be embedded in digital television signals and would be read by >"compliant" devices such as a television or a digital video recorder. > >The rule would not affect consumers who record shows with VCRs. Nor would >it affect programming received on a cable or satellite system, in part >because consumers pay for that content. > >But the entertainment industry does not want digitally enhanced >"high-value" entertainment sent free over the air to be easily copied and >distributed on the Internet. > >FCC officials said they expect the final rule to enable competition among >different means of deploying the flag system to protect broadcasts, rather >than the government anointing one in particular. > >Unlike with recent FCC decisions on high-speed Internet access and media >consolidation that have deeply split the five-member commission, none of >the three Republicans and two Democrats has led a public campaign against >the broadcast flag. > >"I'm optimistic we'll have a clean majority," said one senior agency >official. "The commission has acted in the area of digital television in a >very bipartisan fashion." ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[Politech] A criticism of Gmail and a call for encryption everywhere [priv]
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Opposing view of Gmail issues (Cypherpunk tie in) Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 13:11:53 -0500 (CDT) From: J.A. Terranson <measl(a)mfn.org> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> References: <4087CD30.5020800(a)well.com> Good Afternoon Declan, As with much of the online community, I have been discussing this topic since it was announced by Google, and until recently, I was also of the opinion that this was a simple contractual choice between the user of Gmail and Google. My opinion was altered by a gentleman in England, who used the following story to illustrate his point: When Google released their toolbar, he, like most of us, installed it. What was different was that he installed it with all of the advanced features (including the tracking options, which Google goes out of their way to make crystal clear *is* tracking software). He reasoning was similar to the thoughts you expressed below: he had nothing to hide, he believed Google really was stripping identity data from their observations of his browsing habits, and he did not mind having them "watch". One day he had a firewall issue when trying to retrieve a file, and the person who was hosting it offered to put it on a "private" (i.e., unlinked) page for him to grab over HTTP. He accepted, downloaded the document, and promptly forgot about it - until this document, which had extremely personal information on it (personal to the person *hosting* it, not the person retrieving it) showed up on Google a short time later. You see, the toolbar had seen him go to a web page that Google did not have, and so they indexed it right away. Without meaning to, the user of the toolbar had helped Google to violate the privacy of the person who went out of his way to keep this document private. This person knew nothing of the toolbar, and had no agreement with Google, yet he became the unwilling participant in Google's web cache. The senders of email to users of Gmail are in the very same position as our friend above: they know nothing of the agreement, they are not participants in the Gmail program - they have never agreed to allow a third party to access *their* private thoughts and utterances, yet they too are caught in the middle. As much as it goes against my gut reaction, I must admit that Gmail has some very serious privacy implications, some of which almost definitely fall under EU privacy laws. The ultimate solution to the problem is close to what was suggested in the essay below: encryption. But not by Google. Encryption by the senders. The Cypherpunk cries of "Encryption Everywhere" lands smack dab in the middle of the plate here - email stays private, regardless of Google indexing, government snooping, or end user negligence. Pity that people will spend thousands of hours, and millions of dollars arguing over the best way to protect us from ourselves, but that we won't spend five minutes learning to use a simple encryption system that could completely erase these very issues. Yours, Alif Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Declan McCullagh wrote: > [It seems to me that Brad is being kind here by not denouncing the > privacy fundamentalists for trying to ban Google's Gmail in its current > form. It is true that there are potential costs of using Gmail for email > storage (just as there are costs of using your own laptop for that > purpose). The question is whether consumers should have the right to > make that choice and balance the tradeoffs, or whether it will be > preemptively denied to them by privacy fundamentalists out to deny > consumers that choice. --Declan] > _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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EDRI-gram newsletter - Number 6.11, 4 June 2008
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRI-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 6.11, 4 June 2008 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Hungarian Data Retention Law - challenged at the Constitutional Court 2. Social networking sites might be regulated in EU 3. Czech Parliament - close in implementing data retention directive 4. Deutsche Telekom under investigation for spying on its employees 5. ICO worried about a UK Government-owned traffic data database 6. Dutch Parliament lowers data retention term to 12 months 7. BitTorrent tracker sites threatened by draft ACTA agreement 8. Finish CSS decision overturned 9. Creative Commons Bulgaria Licence upheld in court 10. ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden? 11. Agenda 12. About ============================================================ 1. Hungarian Data Retention Law - challenged at the Constitutional Court ============================================================ The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) has filed its complaint with the Constitutional Court requesting an ex post examination for unconstitutionality and the annulment of the data retention provisions of Act C of 2003 on electronic communications. On 15 March 2008, the regulations implementing the 2006/24/EC Directive on data retention entered into force in Hungary. Act C of 2003 on electronic communications did not need much amendment since it already comprised numerous restrictive data retention provisions prior to the directive. The only changes of the amendments were the retention of Internet communications data and the elimination of the lax - but at least pre-defined - legal purposes of the data processing. Moreover the amendments totally disregarded the provision of the directive that data should be "available for the purpose of investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime". The HCLU's main concern in its complaint was the retention of personal data for "the stock" without previously defined purposes. A 1991 decision of the Constitutional Court prohibited such data processing and the Act on Protection of Personal Data adopted a year later, also contains this ban. HCLU has also stressed that data retention might be detrimental not only to privacy but also to other fundamental rights such as freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and freedom of petition. Constitutional complaint filed by HCLU against Hungarian telecom data retention regulations (2.06.2008) http://tasz.hu/en/node/826 (Contribution by Adam Foldes - Hungarian Civil Liberties Union) ============================================================ 2. Social networking sites might be regulated in EU ============================================================ On 27 May 2008, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) called for new legislation that would regulate social networking sites. ENISA, which was created in 2004 to oversee online security measures in the 27 EU countries, issued a preliminary report of its General Report in which it pointed out that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace need more regulation to protect their users against security risks. "Social networking sites are very useful social tools but we must make recommendations for how to better protect people from the risks these sites create," said Andreas Pirotti, executive director of ENISA and author of the report. He suggested the EU legislation should be expanded in order to "cover the taking of photos of people and posting them on the internet". In Pirotti's opinion, network security is under a permanent threat from spammers or criminals. "Internet security is extremely important, considering how much business takes place online now. We don't want infrastructures to be disrupted, we don't want a digital 9/11 to happen," he said. He also considers crucial to "raise awareness about how social networking sites work. Few people realize that they can be offered up as friends to people they don't know. Also, many people don't realize that it's almost impossible to erase material once it has appeared on the internet". Some of the threats related to social networking identified by ENISA are related to face recognition, digital dossiers, reputation damage, social engineering attacks on enterprises, phishing attacks, ID theft and others. The report of the organisation includes 19 recommendations to social networks on ways to improve their security practices. Among other things, ENISA calls for a regulatory review of social networking frameworks, an increased transparency of data handling practices, more education for users on security, and the discouragement or even banning of social networking in schools. A study conducted by enterprise IT management company CA and the National Cyber Security Alliance in 2006 found out that the majority of users of social networking sites were not very aware of the security issues involved. 83 percent of them admitted having downloaded unknown files from unknown users and 74 percent said that they were easily providing the personal data online. Also, a Symantec report issued in 2007 showed that social networking sites offer easy pickings for phishers. The security practices of the respective sites make it easier to invade and to spread attacks to more people. Top EU security agency calls for policing of social network (27.05.2008) http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/27/EU-security-agency-wants-social-n… EU may regulate social networking sites over security issues (27.08.2008) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080527-eu-may-regulate-social-networ… ENISA General Report 2007 - adopted, non designed version http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/publications/AGR_full_disclaim.pdf ============================================================ 3. Czech Parliament - close in implementing data retention directive ============================================================ Czech Parliament is close to approving the data retention implementation as an Act amending the Electronic Communications Act (127/2005 Coll.). Due to the early introduction of the data retention obligation in the text of the 2005 Act, the current amending draft law implementing the data retention directive is more specific. EDRi-member IuRe intended to take the opportunity to amend the Act in order to respect privacy. IuRe prepared a set of amendments aiming to shorten the retention period to 6 months (currently one year), to include data that are subject to retention into the text of the Act (currently the data are specified only in a Minister regulation, so it can be modified without parliamentary debates) and to prevent intelligence services from accessing the retained data. Risk of misusing the databases for other purposes than those specified in the directive is obvious: the intentions to allow the use of operational and localization data by the intelligence services leaked to the press in November 2007 and it was acknowledged recently by the Government. IuRe's proposals to abolish reimbursements of data retention costs to telecoms and ISP providers and the proposal to clearly entitle only the Police to use the data were adopted by the Committee for Security of the Chamber of Deputies. Unfortunately, the proposal of the Committee for Security of the Chamber of Deputies and other amendments proposed by individual MPs were not assumed by the plenum at the third reading. Following the current legislative procedure, the draft Amending Act is now pending in the Senate, but there is no real chance to change its text. The Czech Republic has thus implemented the data retention directive and obliges providers to store data for one year costing tax payers around 6.5 million euro per year. The draft Amending Act leaves a backdoor for intelligence services to use the databases. Also, the present form leaves to the Minister of Transportation the decision on the scope of the retained data. More information (Czech only) http://www.iure.org http://www.slidilove.cz/ EDRi-gram: Dispute over data retention costs in Czech Republic (15.02.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.3/czechdataretention (Contribution by Helena Svatosova, EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium - Czech Republic) ============================================================ 4. Deutsche Telekom under investigation for spying on its employees ============================================================ The giant German telecommunication company is under investigation by national prosecutors for a presumed breach of privacy, after having spied on the phone calls of its managers, journalists and even board members. According to Der Spiegel newspaper, the former monopoly incumbent operator - still 31.7% owned by the German government - illegally monitored the phone calls of parts of its staff during 2005-2006 when the company was laying off workers. It seems the company hired an outside agency to monitor contacts between members of its supervisory board and journalists. The company has partially admitted the allegations saying the monitoring was carried out to find out who was leaking information to the press. Rene Obermann, the chief executive of the group, stated the company had not been aware of the issue and that the illegal actions were taken by the security department of the company, which has been dissolved in the meantime. "I am shaken to the core by these allegations. We take the situation most seriously. We have called in the public prosecutor's office and will support them in their full investigation of these allegations" he said. The company also claimed that the calls were not listened to, and that the investigation was just trying to establish the date, the duration of the calls and what phone numbers board members had called. "The allegations made against the company do not relate to any unlawful use of the content of calls - in other words they do not concern the tapping of calls.(...) Call records are details of the time, duration and participants of calls" was the company's statement. Legal expert Thomas Hoeren said that in Germany there had been more and more cases of companies watching their employees, which is not an issue as actually this is allowed by the law. However, Deutsche Telekom broke more than privacy laws by collecting all the telephone data from their CEOs and the people supervising the company which is not only a violation of data protection or privacy regulations but also a violation of telecommunications secrecy, which is protected under criminal law. If a company allows its employees to use the telephones in their offices for private use, as was Deutsche Telekom's case, they are no longer considered as employees but also as private persons. So, the company was not allowed to monitor its employees' telephone connections. Hoeren also stated there was no justification for a company to violate telecommunications secrecy and he also considered there was an implicit violation of press freedom. "The interesting problem in this case is that state attorneys are now investigating what happened at Deutsche Telekom, but this can only lead to a punishment for individuals acting as representatives of Deutsche Telekom. The company as such is out of bounds. What people now want are increased sanctions against the company, not just against the individuals behind the company. In the current situation, Deutsche Telekom can only get a fine of perhaps 25,000 euros, which is nothing for them" said the expert. Prosecutors are examining now whether or not to open a case of violation of data protection laws against Deutsche Telekom. Prosecutors investigate Deutsche Telekom over data misuse (29.05.2008) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=9153 Prosecutors probe Deutsche Telekom on data misuse (29.05.2008) http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSWEA833920080529 Prosecutors probe Deutsche Telekom (29.05.2008) http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jjHggMdkSqAgBRq4C243Fj88zOQQD90V82IO1 Telekom Breaks More than Privacy Laws in Criminal Spy Case (27.05.2008) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3363041,00.html ============================================================ 5. ICO worried about a UK Government-owned traffic data database ============================================================ The new Communications Data Bill proposed by the Home Office has met the opposition of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) which has shown concerns related to the proposals of building one Government-owned database with records of phone calls, email and Internet use in the UK. In ICO's opinion, the action is not justified. "If the intention is to bring all mobile and internet records together under one system, this would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. (...) We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen" said Jonathan Bamford, assistant Information Commissioner. ICO is worried not only in connection to breaches of civil liberties but also about the amount of power the Government will get over the information. "Such a measure would require wider public discussion. Proper safeguards would be needed to ensure that the data is only used for the proper purpose of detecting crime" stated Bamford. There are also doubts that the Government is able to guaranty the safety of the system against internal as well as external misuse. The system might prove too massive to be properly managed by the Government, ending up in a huge loss of public money. The concerns are also related to the fact the UK Government has a bad history in keeping personal private data. As previously reported in the EDRI-gram, HM Revenue and Customs lost 25 million people's personal details in November, the Army lost a large amount of data with stolen laptops and a contractor to the DVLA lost three million drivers' personal details in December. Privacy watchdog opposes giant telecoms database (27.05.2008) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=9147 Home Office calls for a 'Big Brother' database (22.05.2008) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/108305 EDRI gram - UK Government will store all phone, Internet traffic data (21.05.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.10/uk-isp-traffic-data EDRi-gram: Personal sensitive data keep on being lost in UK (30.01.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.2/uk-losing-personal-data ============================================================ 6. Dutch Parliament lowers data retention term to 12 months ============================================================ The Dutch Parliament has lowered the data retention term in its implementation of the Data Retention directive to 12 months. The law has still to pass the Dutch Senate, which has been more critical of data retention in the last four years. A lot is still unclear about the law and many concerns, like the absence of evidence for the resulting interference with the right to private life and private communications, have not been adequately addressed yet. Still, the legislature will try to finalize the law before the summer break of the Parliament. Interestingly, the three-party coalition forming the present Government was split into three camps, arguing for 6, 12 and 18 months respectively. The government kept arguing for 18 months, but a majority voted for an amendment lowering the term to 12 months. This term traces back to a report of the Erasmus University about the usefulness and necessity of data retention for telecommunication traffic and location data. After failing to prove such usefulness and necessity for data older than 3 months, the researchers had talks with police representatives. Based exclusively on those talks, the report recommended a 12 month retention period. Later on, the Dutch Council of State referred to that research and the proposed reasonable term of 12 months when it advised the government to lower the term. Although the debate focused a lot on the retention term and the lack of evidence, there are many other issues that were debated. The Parliament also spoke about European developments, such as the procedure of Ireland before the European Court of Justice and the constitutional challenge in Germany. It also discussed the extent of parliamentary involvement with the contents of the decree which will contain more details about data retention in practice. The law now contains a list of data to be retained, after concerns were raised that this was the core of a data retention obligation and that the list would have to be agreed upon in Parliament. Unfortunately, the list is not very precise. It is as general as the list in the directive and seems to contain a mistake. Whereas the data retention directive does not require the retention of the destination for Internet use other than e-mail or telephony, the Dutch list does not make this distinction anymore. The costs of data retention for the sector and consumers were also an issue of debate, but the available cost estimates are still vague. One of the reasons is that the precise scope of the data retention obligation for Internet traffic is unclear. General costs of data retention will not be reimbursed. The question about storage of the data in centralized or decentralized facilities has been evaded. At first, the data will be stored by the providers but this could change in the future. An amendment that would have restricted the possibility of claiming complete data sets - to be used for data mining in the context of combating terrorism - didn't make it. If the law is passed, both national security and law enforcement agencies will have the possibility to claim complete parts of the collection of data to be retained. EDRi-gram: Dutch study fails to prove usefulness and necessity data retention (29.05.2005) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.13/retention EDRi-gram: Dutch DPA advises negatively on Dutch draft data retention (31.01.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.2/dpa-dutch Data Retention 12 Months (only in Dutch, 22 May 2008) http://webwereld.nl/articles/51188/wet-bewaarplicht-toch-12-maanden.html The data retention implementation law as sent to the Dutch Senate (only in Dutch, 22 May 2008) http://www.eerstekamer.nl/9324000/1/j9vvgh5ihkk7kof/vhv5hp6u4zyt/f=y.pdf (Contribution by Joris van Hoboken - EDRi-member Bits of Freedom - Netherlands) ============================================================ 7. BitTorrent tracker sites threatened by draft ACTA agreement ============================================================ A new international trade agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is now under discussion might strengthen criminal sanctions against BitTorrent tracker sites for exploiting copyright material online. The tracker sites state they do not profit from Internet users sharing music, movies and software, saying that the server and bandwidth costs are supported by donations and advertising revenues. However, rights holder organisations claim that BitTorrent administrators exploit copyright material online and make a nice profit out of it. A discussion paper that has been leaked online by Sunshine Media, the company that runs the Wikileaks.org website, is under circulation now among the US, EU, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and Switzerland, on the proposed ACTA. The paper includes "the types of provisions that could be included in the agreement" and suggests "criminal sanctions to be applied to (Intellectual Property Rights) infringements on a commercial scale (where there are) significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright owner (e.g. internet piracy)". The discussion paper states "deterrent-level" penalties should be applied by the Governments against criminal copyright infringement, and it also proposes powers to seize and destroy equipment. The ACTA proposal in the case of simple filesharers accused of civil infringement is the possibility of the rights holder of asking compensations "including measures to overcome the problem of rights holders not being able to get sufficient compensation due to difficulty in assessing the full extent of the damage". ISPs might face new sanctions as the ACTA will force them to hand over personal information pertaining to "claimed infringement" or "alleged infringers". ACTA might also attempt to introduce "remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficking of circumvention devices". What the discussion paper also proposes is that ACTA create its own governing body to be overseen by a committee made up of representatives from member nations. According to a European Commission official, formal negotiations on ACTA are expected to start this week in Geneva. NGOs, such as IP Justice, heavily criticised the new negotiations: "After the multilateral treaty's scope and priorities are negotiated by the few countries invited to participate in the early discussions, ACTA's text will be 'locked' and other countries who are later 'invited' to sign on to the pact will not be able to re-negotiate its one-sided terms." Meanwhile, in UK, the Police has arrested six people for allegedly sharing music files via the defunct BitTorrent tracker OiNK.cd. Apparently the 6 persons were detained in "in relation to uploading pre-release music". OiNK.cd was shutdown seven months ago in a Police raid at the Middlesbrough home of its administrator. International copyright talks seek BitTorrent-killer laws (27.05.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/27/acta_leak/ Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers (26.05.2008) http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=ae997868-220b… BitTorrent tracker Mininova faces legal action (19.05.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/mininova_faces_legal_action/ Embattled ACTA Negotiations Next Week In Geneva; US Sees Signing This Year (30.05.2008) http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1071 UK cops arrest six alleged BitTorrent music uploaders (2.06.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/02/onk_further_arrests/ ============================================================ 8. Finish CSS decision overturned ============================================================ The Helsinki Court of Appeal overturned the initial decision taken by the Helsinki District Court ruling that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is "ineffective". The decision of the Court of Appeal was taken a year after the first ruling concluded that "CSS protection can no longer be held 'effective' as defined in law." The defendant's counsel Mikko Vdlimdki explains on his blog that the Appeal Court said that circumventing an access control would have been lawful. But the court considered that the defendants circumvented a full copy protection system (CSS), not just an access control, which is actually wrong. Also Vdlimdki points out that the court considered that "it is ok to circumvent if the circumvention happens without installing additional software. The court claimed that you always need to install some kind of "hack" software for Linux systems in order see DVDs. Again, the court erred. In fact, you only need a (legal) player software like VLC or Mplayer, and with some Linux distros player cabale of showing DVDs comes standard. In the district court the technical witness from the Finnish criminal police answered as questioned that with his Ubuntu installed fresh on the system you just throw the DVD in and it shows the movie's icon on the destop, there you just double-click and voila. You don't need *any* additional software in that case." The counsel announced that the decision would be appealed to the Supreme Court in Finland, because the Appeal Court decided on the case and made these errors because it took the decision only based on the case documentation. Usually, it takes between 3-5 months for the Supreme Court to decide whether they take the case. Court of Appeal overturned the CSS decision (26.05.2008) http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156 Finnish Appeals Court Overturns Decision That Said It Was Okay To Circumvent Ineffective DRM (28.05.2008) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080527/1606231237.shtml EDRi-gram: CSS protection used in DVDs is "ineffective" (6.06.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.11/css-dvd-finland ============================================================ 9. Creative Commons Bulgaria Licence upheld in court ============================================================ Veni Markovski from EDRi-member ISOC Bulgaria reports on his blog on the first case when the CreativeCommons Licence was upheld in court in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian blogger Elenko Elenkov filed a lawsuit against the newspaper "24 hours" for having used one of his photos, licenced under the CreativeCommons BY-SA, in one of their edition on 20 September 2007 on the cover page and on page 3. The picture did not mention the author or the licence used, but rather attributed the photo on page 3 to "The Internet". The correction printed four days later by the newspaper was under the headline and said that "pictures from the Internet forums also have an author", and that the picture was published "in one of the Internet forums", and acknowledged that the author was Elenko Elenkov. Elenko claimed that the correction published by the newspaper is impairing his image rather than admitting him as the author and claimed more than the 50 euros offered by the "24 hours" newspaper as compensation, even though the newspapers is the second biggest in Bulgaria. On the first hearing in this case at the Sofia Court on 27 May 2008, the newspaper admitted that they had breached Elenko's copyright, but the trial will continue to determine the right compensation. Creative Commons License Recognized in Bulgarian Court (28.05.2008) http://blog.veni.com/?p=494 Elenko vs. "24 hours", Episode 7: "24 hours" acknowledged its mistake (only in Bulgarian, 27.05.2008) http://www.eenk.com/?p=1778 ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden? ============================================================ Lex Orwell, a law proposal for total surveillance, is urgently being pushed to a vote on 17 June 2008 by national security hawks in the peaceful Kingdom of Sweden. It will mandate the "NSA franchise", the FRA, to turn its forest of parabola ears and world's 5th largest super computer to listen to you - or rather what you do, say and share on the Internet - would an information package pass the Swedish borders. FRA is the Swedish shorthand for The National Defence Radio Establishment. An institution very active during the cold war but without a clear task or purpose today since material from satellite traffic from military activities the Baltics isn't particularly a la mode any more. To stay in business, FRA has therefore for years pursued a long term strategy to "improve raw material supply through partnerships" and to provide "on demand" intelligence to "support government authorities and state owned companies regarding current IT threats". That does not make FRA into an "NSA franchise", does it? Well, a retired FRA Intelligence Officer was recently quoted in a report to the Swedish Journalist Fund for Education saying "Maybe FRA is a Swedish organisation, which in limited ways cooperate with foreign intelligence services. Or FRA is a part of an international surveillance group which to a limited extent cooperate with the Swedish authorities. The problem is that it is only FRA who knows." While national security and "state secret privileges" are complex matters of parliamentary checks and balances, the question is if Lex Orwell got it right. Nobody in the public sphere seems to think so. In answers from eight heavyweight institutions to the government's hearing on Lex Orwell it is said it is "in breach of ECHR", "like wire-tapping without a court order", "general surveillance (...) of the content of telephone calls and messages", "lacking in understanding (...) of privacy", "massive wire-tapping", "seriously flawed" and that "the State is acquiring the telecommunications traffic". If this critique was not enough, former director of the FRA himself says FRA activity is in breach of European law. To the layman the set-up seems indistinguishable from what allegedly is happening in the USA where AT&T is accused of "violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications". Why should you care what is happening in Sweden? Well, it turns out that Sweden is one of the countries that has actively blocked the Commission's third pillar proposal from 2005 for protection of personal data processed in the framework of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Professor Elspeth Guild writes in 2007: "A battery of measures have been announced in the First and Third Pillars (...) which are aimed at a substantial increase in surveillance of the citizen, his or her movements, statements, actions and activities. At the same time, the protection of the citizen from wrongful use of his or her personal data has lagged very substantially behind for instance, the continuing blockage of the Third Pillar Framework Decision on data protection.". Statewatch told us already in 2006 that a "number of delegations (CH, CZ, DK, IE, SE and UK) has expressed doubts against the inclusion of data processed in a purely domestic context.". Why? At about the same time the Commission answers the parliamentary question E-1300/2007 whether Sweden has the right to conclude an exclusive agreement with the USA on research into terrorism and civilian security issues, saying would such research transfer personal data to third countries, it would be regulated by European law: "It is important to underline that exchange on either security research projects or on threat assessment does not necessarily imply exchange of personal data which are subject to the EU data protection rules. However, any such activities must fully respect the fundamental rights, privacy and civil liberties of individuals.". Now, what about "raw material supply through partnerships"? It is said that only four (4) Swedish libertarians in the ruling coalition is needed to postpone Lex Orwell. Grab your phone and call them. International calls are still free, as in free speech. FRA's "Open Budget" for 2009-2011 (only in Swedish, 17.03.2008) http://www.fra.se/bilagor/0319-bul2009-2011.pdf FRA, brief presentation in English http://www.fra.se/english.shtml "Fvrsvarets Radioanstalt - 2003-2004" by Martin Jvnsson a report to "Journalistfonden fvr vidareutbildning" (only in Swedish, 27.02.2005) http://periodista.se/FRA03_04.pdf Video recording from San Francisco Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Hepting v. AT&T (23.01.2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppRKfXiXBLM Collection of some Swedish institution's opinions of Lex Orwell (only in Swedish, 3.06.2008) http://www.digitalidag.se/index.php?title=Sammanfattning_av_remissvaren&old… Interview with Anders Wik, former FRA director (only in Swedish, 31.05.2008) http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.165280 General information related to EFF's class action lawsuit against AT&T http://www.eff.org/nsa/hepting European parliament's legislative observatory page on DPFD http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5279032 "Making the EU Citizens' Agenda Work" by Elspeth Guild (9.02.2007) http://shop.ceps.be/BookDetail.php?item_id=1460 Council document 13918/06 (13.10.2006) http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/oct/eu-dp-issues-13918-06.pdf Parliamentary question E-1300/2007 (1.06.2007) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?reference=E-2007-1300&… Article referred to in question E-1300/2007 (only in Swedish, 28.02.2007) http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/innovation/forskning_utveckling/article42632… (Contribution by Erik Josefsson) ============================================================ 11. Agenda ============================================================ 6-7 June 2008, Bremen, Germany IdentityCamp - a barcamp around identity 2.0 and privacy 2.0 http://barcamp.org/IdentityCampBremen 17-18 June 2008, Seoul, Korea The Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Ministerial Meeting http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet 23 June 2008, Paris, France GigaNet is organizing an international academic workshop on "Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction" http://tinyurl.com/2nww9t 26-27 June 2008, London, UK International Conference on Digital Evidence http://www.mistieurope.com/default.asp?Page=65&Return=70&ProductID=8914&LS=… 30 June-1 July 2008, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium First COMMUNIA Conference - Assessment of economic and social impact of digital public domain throughout Europe http://www.communia-project.eu/conf2008 7-8 July 2008, London, UK Developing New Models Of Content Delivery Online & Innovative Strategies For Effectively Tackling Copyright Infringement http://www.isp-content-regulation.com/conference.agenda.asp 7-9 July 2008, Cambridge, UK Privacy Laws & Business 21st Annual International Conference http://www.privacylaws.com/templates/AnnualConferences.aspx?id=641 19-20 July 2008, Stockholm, Sweden International Association for Media and Communication Research pre-conference - Civil Rights in Mediatized Societies: Which data privacy against whom and how ? http://www.iamcr.org/content/view/301/1/ 23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008) http://petsymposium.org/2008/ 8-10 September 2008, Geneva, Switzerland The third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3) http://isp.law.yale.edu/ 22 September 2008, Istanbul, Turkey Workshop on Applications of Private and Anonymous Communications http://www.alpaca-workshop.org/ 24-28 September 2008, Athens, Greece World Summit on the Knowledge Society http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/summit.htm ============================================================ 12. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 28 members based or with offices in 17 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRI-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and visibly on the EDRI website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram(a)edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edrigram-mk.php - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram(a)edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [tor-talk] remailers
by Karsten N. 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Am 30.12.2011 23:48, schrieb cmeclax-sazri: > I used to run a remailer and would like to again. There is a Mixminion > package, so I installed it and tried to join the group. What's going on these > days with remailers? Should we design a remailer that uses Tor in some way? Mixminion is dead. Only less than 10 Mixminion remailers are running: http://www.noreply.org/mixminion-nodes/ For Mixmaster up to 20 remailers are running. http://pinger.mixmin.net/mlist2.html Best regards Karsten N. _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: PeerPoint Discussion - please don't use for other topics
by Poor Richard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I'm disappointed but not surprised that the PeerPoint project is viewed with scorn by old-guard digital libertarians and anarchists. I am accused of being naive--they've seen everything and done everything and they have a superior, smug outlook. They argue that what works is more of what they are accustomed to. But it is exactly that approach that resulted in the present state of affairs in which the internet is colonized and dominated by large corporate actors. Anarchists and libertarians are the unwitting pawns of the powerful actors they mean to resist. I've been around IT since long before the internet, since it was called data processing. Since before email and electronic bulletin boards and USENET. And I've been involved in every aspect of it since we operated mainframes with teletype terminals and punched tape right through until today. I was old guard once, very old guard. I've also been a political, social, and environmental activist since the sixties, witnessing the horrifying failure of almost all our movements from the inside. But recently I woke up to the fact that it was on our watch--MY watch--that the world went to hell in a handbasket. My confederates and I all screwed up. We all get a big-assed #FAIL. Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that definition anybody who thinks that libertarian and anarchist business-as-usual is going to pull us through the crises and threats we now face is not just naive--they are burried inside a mystery wrapped in a conundrum, locked within an enigma. They are lost in space. The threats to privacy, liberty, democracy, and equality have steadily grown despite all our BRILLIANT efforts up to now, so only a new strategy can be expected to reverse that trend. That strategy is not a continued, exclusive reliance on slef-organizing, emergent systems. That by itself has not worked. We need to try something else. That something else might even be something that was tried in the past and discredited because it was impractical then. It might be large-scale collective organization and design. In the past large-scale collective design failed because it was forced to adopt centralized, top-down planning and organization. Now we can do it in a much more distributed, horizontal, and agile manner. It failed because it adopted organizational structures and created designs that were monolithic. Now we can do organizations and designs that are modular and composable. *Wikipedia: Composability* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composability> is a system design <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_design> principle that deals with the inter-relationships of components. A highly composable system provides recombinant components that can be selected and assembled in various combinations to satisfy specific user requirements. In information systems, the essential features that make a component composable are that it be: - self-contained (modular<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_programming>): it can be deployed independently - note that it may cooperate with other components, but dependent components are replaceable - stateless <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_server>: it treats each request as an independent transaction, unrelated to any previous request. *Stateless* is just one technique; *managed state* and * transactional* systems can also be composable, but with greater difficulty. Finally, many past revolutions have failed or succeeded upon their access to technology. Somehow ignoring the story of "guns, germs, and steel" the old guard now wants to say that revolutions are not about tools or technology, they are just about people and social relations. They pontificate that technology doesn't make revolutions, people make revolutions. Tell that to an Afghan tribesman and see if he will discard his AK-47 or his satellite phone. As I wrote in PeerPoint, I thought quite plainly and clearly, PeerPoint is a non-violent weapon of revolution. Let those who don't think we need a revolution shut the hell up and get out of the way. Poor Richard On Monday, June 18, 2012 9:14:27 AM UTC-5, Poor Richard wrote: > > *Welcome to the PeerPoint Discussion Thread* > > PeerPoint Design Specifications<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_…> > > PeerPoint is an evolving crowdsourced design specification for a suite of > integrated peer-to-peer applications to include (but not limited to) social > networking, real-time project collaboration, content management, database > management, voting, trust/reputation metrics, complementary currency, crowd > funding, etc. This specification overlaps with several existing p2p > infrastructure and social networking projects but also goes substantially > beyond anything yet existing. > > Members of p2p projects, interested programmers and designers, power > users, and others are encouraged to participate in the collaborative > development of the open PeerPoint specs and to adopt any part of the specs > they can use in their own work. To participate, please read the PeerPoint > Design Specifications<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_…>. > If you then wish to edit the PeerPoint document you will need to join this > Next Net Group. > > In the near future we will have a PeerPoint repository and wiki at GitHub. > > Poor Richard > > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/building-a-distributed-decentralized-intern…> > > ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[IP] FCC readies rule to block Internet piracy
by Dave Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>Delivered-To: dfarber+(a)ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu >Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 08:10:34 -0700 >From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne(a)warpspeed.com> >= > >FCC readies rule to block Internet piracy > >By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post, 10/19/2003 ><http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/19/fcc_readies_rule_t o_block_internet_piracy/> > >WASHINGTON -- The federal government is preparing for the first time to >require that personal computers and other consumer electronics devices >contain technology to help block Internet piracy of digital entertainment. >A rule being considered by the Federal Communications Commission is one of >a series of proposals pushed by the entertainment industry to help thwart >copying and online trading of movies and television shows that >increasingly are being broadcast in digital form with high-quality picture >and sound. > >But the new rule also would force consumers to purchase new equipment if >they wanted to record enhanced digital-quality television programs and >replay them on other machines. > >Opponents of the proposed rule, including many technology companies and >consumer groups, say it won't work. They are especially concerned that the >plan might lead to government regulation of how personal computers and >other devices are built, particularly if hackers crack the system and >further changes are deemed necessary. > >FCC officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they expect >the agency to settle on details of the "broadcast flag" rule by the end of >the month. The broadcast flag takes its name from the computer code that >would be embedded in digital television signals and would be read by >"compliant" devices such as a television or a digital video recorder. > >The rule would not affect consumers who record shows with VCRs. Nor would >it affect programming received on a cable or satellite system, in part >because consumers pay for that content. > >But the entertainment industry does not want digitally enhanced >"high-value" entertainment sent free over the air to be easily copied and >distributed on the Internet. > >FCC officials said they expect the final rule to enable competition among >different means of deploying the flag system to protect broadcasts, rather >than the government anointing one in particular. > >Unlike with recent FCC decisions on high-speed Internet access and media >consolidation that have deeply split the five-member commission, none of >the three Republicans and two Democrats has led a public campaign against >the broadcast flag. > >"I'm optimistic we'll have a clean majority," said one senior agency >official. "The commission has acted in the area of digital television in a >very bipartisan fashion." ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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