July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[IP] Cold Boot Attacks on Disk Encryption -- report on
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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<nettime> Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

How the net traps us all in our own little bubbles An invisible revolution has taken place is the way we use the net, but the increasing personalisation of information by search engines such as Google threatens to limit our access to information and enclose us in a self- reinforcing world view, writes Eli Pariser in an extract from The Filter Bubble Eli Pariser The Observer, Sunday 12 June 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/12/google-personalisation- internet-data-filtering Few people noticed the post that appeared on Google's corporate blog on 4 December 2009. It didn't beg attention b no sweeping pronouncements, no Silicon Valley hype, just a few paragraphs sandwiched between a round-up of top search terms and an update on Google's finance software. Not everyone missed it. Search-engine blogger Danny Sullivan pores over the items on Google's blog, looking for clues about where the monolith is headed next, and to him, the post was a big deal. In fact, he wrote later that day, it was "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines". For Danny, the headline said it all: "Personalised search for everyone". Starting that morning, Google would use 57 signals b everything from where you were logging in from to what browser you were using to what you had searched for before b to make guesses about who you were and what kinds of sites you'd like. Even if you were logged out, it would customise its results, showing you the pages it predicted you were most likely to click on. Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results b the ones that the company's famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular b and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google any more. It's not hard to see this difference in action. In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to search for the term "BP". They're pretty similar b educated white left-leaning women who live in the north-east. But the results they saw were quite different. One saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP. Even the number of results returned differed b 180 million for one friend and 139 million for the other. If the results were that different for these two progressive east-coast women, imagine how different they would be for my friends and, say, an elderly Republican in Texas (or, for that matter, a businessman in Japan). With Google personalised for everyone, the query "stem cells" might produce diametrically opposed results for scientists who support stem-cell research and activists who oppose it. "Proof of climate change" might turn up different results for an environmental activist and an oil-company executive. A huge majority of us assume search engines are unbiased. But that may be just because they're increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click. Google's announcement marked the turning point of an important but nearly invisible revolution in how we consume information. You could say that on 4 December 2009 the era of personalisation began. With little notice or fanfare, the digital world is fundamentally changing. What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone b where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you're a dog b is now a tool for soliciting and analysing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top 50 internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like "depression" on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other websites can target you with antidepressants. Open a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating, and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new internet doesn't just know you're a dog: it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium dog food. The race to know as much as possible about you has become the central battle of the era for internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. As Chris Palmer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained to me: "You're getting a free service, and the cost is information about you. And Google and Facebook translate that pretty directly into money." While Gmail and Facebook may be helpful, free tools, they are also extremely effective and voracious extraction engines into which we pour the most intimate details of our lives. Your smooth new iPhone knows exactly where you go, whom you call, what you read; with its built-in microphone, gyroscope and GPS, it can tell whether you're walking or in a car or at a party. While Google has (so far) promised to keep your personal data to itself, other popular websites and apps make no such guarantees. Behind the pages you visit, a massive new market for information about what you do online is growing, driven by low-profile but highly profitable personal data companies like BlueKai and Acxiom. Acxiom alone has accumulated an average of 1,500 pieces of data on each person on its database b which includes 96% of Americans b along with data about everything from their credit scores to whether they've bought medication for incontinence. And any website b not just the Googles and Facebooks of the world b can now participate in the fun. In the view of the "behaviour market" vendors, every "click signal" you create is a commodity, and every move of your mouse can be auctioned off within microseconds to the highest commercial bidder. As a business strategy, the internet giants' formula is simple: the more personally relevant their information offerings are, the more ads they can sell, and the more likely you are to buy the products they're offering. And the formula works. Amazon sells billions of dollars in merchandise by predicting what each customer is interested in and putting it in the front of the virtual store. Up to 60% of US film download and DVD-by-mail site Netflix's rentals come from the guesses it can make about each customer's preferences. In the next three to five years, says Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the idea of a website that isn't customised to a particular user will seem quaint. Yahoo vice president Tapan Bhat agrees: "The future of the web is about personalisationb& now the web is about 'me'. It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user." Google CEO Eric Schmidt enthuses that the "product I've always wanted to build" is Google code that will "guess what I'm trying to type". Google Instant, which guesses what you're searching for as you type, and was rolled out in the autumn of 2010, is just the start b Schmidt believes that what customers want is for Google to "tell them what they should be doing next". It would be one thing if all this customisation was just about targeted advertising. But personalisation isn't just shaping what we buy. For a quickly rising percentage of us, personalised news feeds like Facebook are becoming a primary news source b 36% of Americans aged under 30 get their news through social-networking sites. And Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing worldwide, with nearly a million more people joining each day. As founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to brag, Facebook may be the biggest source of news in the world (at least for some definitions of "news"). And personalisation is shaping how information flows far beyond Facebook, as websites from Yahoo News to the New York Times-funded startup News.me cater their headlines to our particular interests and desires. It's influencing what videos we watch on YouTube and what blog posts we see. It's affecting whose emails we get, which potential mates we run into on OkCupid, and which restaurants are recommended to us on Yelp b which means that personalisation could easily have a hand not only in who goes on a date with whom but in where they go and what they talk about. The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives. The basic code at the heart of the new internet is pretty simple. The new generation of internet filters looks at the things you seem to like b the actual things you've done, or the things people like you like b and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you'll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us b what I've come to call a filter bubble b which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. Of course, to some extent we've always consumed media that appealed to our interests and avocations and ignored much of the rest. But the filter bubble introduces three dynamics we've never dealt with before. First, you're alone in it. A cable channel that caters to a narrow interest (say, golf) has other viewers with whom you share a frame of reference. But you're the only person in your bubble. In an age when shared information is the bedrock of shared experience, the filter bubble is a centrifugal force, pulling us apart. Second, the filter bubble is invisible. Most viewers of conservative or liberal news sources know that they're going to a station curated to serve a particular political viewpoint. But Google's agenda is opaque. Google doesn't tell you who it thinks you are or why it's showing you the results you're seeing. You don't know if its assumptions about you are right or wrong b and you might not even know it's making assumptions about you in the first place. My friend who got more investment-oriented information about BP still has no idea why that was the case b she's not a stockbroker. Because you haven't chosen the criteria by which sites filter information in and out, it's easy to imagine that the information that comes through a filter bubble is unbiased, objective, true. But it's not. In fact, from within the bubble, it's nearly impossible to see how biased it is. Finally, you don't choose to enter the bubble. When you turn on Fox News or read The New Statesman, you're making a decision about what kind of filter to use to make sense of the world. It's an active process, and like putting on a pair of tinted glasses, you can guess how the editors' leaning shapes your perception. You don't make the same kind of choice with personalised filters. They come to you b and because they drive up profits for the websites that use them, they'll become harder and harder to avoid. Personalisation is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life b much of which you might not trust friends with. These companies are getting better at drawing on this data to make decisions every day. But the trust we place in them to handle it with care is not always warranted, and when decisions are made on the basis of this data that affect you negatively, they're usually not revealed. Ultimately, the filter bubble can affect your ability to choose how you want to live. To be the author of your life, professor Yochai Benkler argues, you have to be aware of a diverse array of options and lifestyles. When you enter a filter bubble, you're letting the companies that construct it choose which options you're aware of. You may think you're the captain of your own destiny, but personalisation can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next b a web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever- narrowing version of yourself b an endless you-loop. And there are broader consequences. In Bowling Alone, his book on the decline of civic life in America, Robert Putnam looked at the problem of the major decrease in "social capital" b the bonds of trust and allegiance that encourage people to do each other favours, work together to solve common problems, and collaborate. Putnam identified two kinds of social capital: there's the in-group-oriented "bonding" capital created when you attend a meeting of your college alumni, and then there's "bridging" capital, which is created at an event like a town meeting when people from lots of different backgrounds come together to meet each other. Bridging capital is potent: build more of it, and you're more likely to be able to find that next job or an investor for your small business, because it allows you to tap into lots of different networks for help. Everybody expected the internet to be a huge source of bridging capital. Writing at the height of the dotcom bubble, Tom Friedman declared that the internet would "make us all next-door neighbours". In fact, this idea was the core of his thesis in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: "The internet is going to be like a huge vice that takes the globalisation system b& and keeps tightening and tightening that system around everyone, in ways that will only make the world smaller and smaller and faster and faster with each passing day." Friedman seemed to have in mind a kind of global village in which kids in Africa and executives in New York would build a community together. But that's not what's happening: our virtual neighbours look more and more like our real-world neighbours, and our real-world neighbours look more and more like us. We're getting a lot of bonding but very little bridging. And this is important because it's bridging that creates our sense of the "public" b the space where we address the problems that transcend our narrow self- interests. We are predisposed to respond to a pretty narrow set of stimuli b if a piece of news is about sex, power, gossip, violence, celebrity or humour, we are likely to read it first. This is the content that most easily makes it into the filter bubble. It's easy to push "Like" and increase the visibility of a friend's post about finishing a marathon or an instructional article about how to make onion soup. It's harder to push the "Like" button on an article titled "Darfur sees bloodiest month in two years". In a personalised world, important but complex or unpleasant issues b the rising prison population, for example, or homelessness b are less likely to come to our attention at all. As a consumer, it's hard to argue with blotting out the irrelevant and unlikable. But what is good for consumers is not necessarily good for citizens. What I seem to like may not be what I actually want, let alone what I need to know to be an informed member of my community or country. "It's a civic virtue to be exposed to things that appear to be outside your interest," technology journalist Clive Thompson told me. Cultural critic Lee Siegel puts it a different way: "Customers are always right, but people aren't." The era of personalisation is here, and it's upending many of our predictions about what the internet would do. The creators of the internet envisioned something bigger and more important than a global system for sharing pictures of pets. The manifesto that helped launch the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s championed a "civilisation of Mind in cyberspace" b a kind of worldwide metabrain. But personalised filters sever the synapses in that brain. Without knowing it, we may be giving ourselves a kind of global lobotomy instead. Early internet enthusiasts like web creator Tim Berners-Lee hoped it would be a new platform for tackling global problems. I believe it still can be, but first we need to pull back the curtain b to understand the forces that are taking the internet in its current direction. We need to lay bare the bugs in the code b and the coders b that brought personalisation to us. If "code is law", as Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig declared, it's important to understand what the new lawmakers are trying to do. We need to understand what the programmers at Google and Facebook believe in. We need to understand the economic and social forces that are driving personalisation, some of which are inevitable and some of which are not. And we need to understand what all this means for our politics, our culture and our future. Adapted from The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- 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

1 0

<nettime> Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

How the net traps us all in our own little bubbles An invisible revolution has taken place is the way we use the net, but the increasing personalisation of information by search engines such as Google threatens to limit our access to information and enclose us in a self- reinforcing world view, writes Eli Pariser in an extract from The Filter Bubble Eli Pariser The Observer, Sunday 12 June 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/12/google-personalisation- internet-data-filtering Few people noticed the post that appeared on Google's corporate blog on 4 December 2009. It didn't beg attention b no sweeping pronouncements, no Silicon Valley hype, just a few paragraphs sandwiched between a round-up of top search terms and an update on Google's finance software. Not everyone missed it. Search-engine blogger Danny Sullivan pores over the items on Google's blog, looking for clues about where the monolith is headed next, and to him, the post was a big deal. In fact, he wrote later that day, it was "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines". For Danny, the headline said it all: "Personalised search for everyone". Starting that morning, Google would use 57 signals b everything from where you were logging in from to what browser you were using to what you had searched for before b to make guesses about who you were and what kinds of sites you'd like. Even if you were logged out, it would customise its results, showing you the pages it predicted you were most likely to click on. Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results b the ones that the company's famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular b and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google any more. It's not hard to see this difference in action. In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to search for the term "BP". They're pretty similar b educated white left-leaning women who live in the north-east. But the results they saw were quite different. One saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP. Even the number of results returned differed b 180 million for one friend and 139 million for the other. If the results were that different for these two progressive east-coast women, imagine how different they would be for my friends and, say, an elderly Republican in Texas (or, for that matter, a businessman in Japan). With Google personalised for everyone, the query "stem cells" might produce diametrically opposed results for scientists who support stem-cell research and activists who oppose it. "Proof of climate change" might turn up different results for an environmental activist and an oil-company executive. A huge majority of us assume search engines are unbiased. But that may be just because they're increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click. Google's announcement marked the turning point of an important but nearly invisible revolution in how we consume information. You could say that on 4 December 2009 the era of personalisation began. With little notice or fanfare, the digital world is fundamentally changing. What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone b where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you're a dog b is now a tool for soliciting and analysing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top 50 internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like "depression" on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other websites can target you with antidepressants. Open a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating, and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new internet doesn't just know you're a dog: it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium dog food. The race to know as much as possible about you has become the central battle of the era for internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. As Chris Palmer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained to me: "You're getting a free service, and the cost is information about you. And Google and Facebook translate that pretty directly into money." While Gmail and Facebook may be helpful, free tools, they are also extremely effective and voracious extraction engines into which we pour the most intimate details of our lives. Your smooth new iPhone knows exactly where you go, whom you call, what you read; with its built-in microphone, gyroscope and GPS, it can tell whether you're walking or in a car or at a party. While Google has (so far) promised to keep your personal data to itself, other popular websites and apps make no such guarantees. Behind the pages you visit, a massive new market for information about what you do online is growing, driven by low-profile but highly profitable personal data companies like BlueKai and Acxiom. Acxiom alone has accumulated an average of 1,500 pieces of data on each person on its database b which includes 96% of Americans b along with data about everything from their credit scores to whether they've bought medication for incontinence. And any website b not just the Googles and Facebooks of the world b can now participate in the fun. In the view of the "behaviour market" vendors, every "click signal" you create is a commodity, and every move of your mouse can be auctioned off within microseconds to the highest commercial bidder. As a business strategy, the internet giants' formula is simple: the more personally relevant their information offerings are, the more ads they can sell, and the more likely you are to buy the products they're offering. And the formula works. Amazon sells billions of dollars in merchandise by predicting what each customer is interested in and putting it in the front of the virtual store. Up to 60% of US film download and DVD-by-mail site Netflix's rentals come from the guesses it can make about each customer's preferences. In the next three to five years, says Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the idea of a website that isn't customised to a particular user will seem quaint. Yahoo vice president Tapan Bhat agrees: "The future of the web is about personalisationb& now the web is about 'me'. It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user." Google CEO Eric Schmidt enthuses that the "product I've always wanted to build" is Google code that will "guess what I'm trying to type". Google Instant, which guesses what you're searching for as you type, and was rolled out in the autumn of 2010, is just the start b Schmidt believes that what customers want is for Google to "tell them what they should be doing next". It would be one thing if all this customisation was just about targeted advertising. But personalisation isn't just shaping what we buy. For a quickly rising percentage of us, personalised news feeds like Facebook are becoming a primary news source b 36% of Americans aged under 30 get their news through social-networking sites. And Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing worldwide, with nearly a million more people joining each day. As founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to brag, Facebook may be the biggest source of news in the world (at least for some definitions of "news"). And personalisation is shaping how information flows far beyond Facebook, as websites from Yahoo News to the New York Times-funded startup News.me cater their headlines to our particular interests and desires. It's influencing what videos we watch on YouTube and what blog posts we see. It's affecting whose emails we get, which potential mates we run into on OkCupid, and which restaurants are recommended to us on Yelp b which means that personalisation could easily have a hand not only in who goes on a date with whom but in where they go and what they talk about. The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives. The basic code at the heart of the new internet is pretty simple. The new generation of internet filters looks at the things you seem to like b the actual things you've done, or the things people like you like b and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you'll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us b what I've come to call a filter bubble b which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. Of course, to some extent we've always consumed media that appealed to our interests and avocations and ignored much of the rest. But the filter bubble introduces three dynamics we've never dealt with before. First, you're alone in it. A cable channel that caters to a narrow interest (say, golf) has other viewers with whom you share a frame of reference. But you're the only person in your bubble. In an age when shared information is the bedrock of shared experience, the filter bubble is a centrifugal force, pulling us apart. Second, the filter bubble is invisible. Most viewers of conservative or liberal news sources know that they're going to a station curated to serve a particular political viewpoint. But Google's agenda is opaque. Google doesn't tell you who it thinks you are or why it's showing you the results you're seeing. You don't know if its assumptions about you are right or wrong b and you might not even know it's making assumptions about you in the first place. My friend who got more investment-oriented information about BP still has no idea why that was the case b she's not a stockbroker. Because you haven't chosen the criteria by which sites filter information in and out, it's easy to imagine that the information that comes through a filter bubble is unbiased, objective, true. But it's not. In fact, from within the bubble, it's nearly impossible to see how biased it is. Finally, you don't choose to enter the bubble. When you turn on Fox News or read The New Statesman, you're making a decision about what kind of filter to use to make sense of the world. It's an active process, and like putting on a pair of tinted glasses, you can guess how the editors' leaning shapes your perception. You don't make the same kind of choice with personalised filters. They come to you b and because they drive up profits for the websites that use them, they'll become harder and harder to avoid. Personalisation is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life b much of which you might not trust friends with. These companies are getting better at drawing on this data to make decisions every day. But the trust we place in them to handle it with care is not always warranted, and when decisions are made on the basis of this data that affect you negatively, they're usually not revealed. Ultimately, the filter bubble can affect your ability to choose how you want to live. To be the author of your life, professor Yochai Benkler argues, you have to be aware of a diverse array of options and lifestyles. When you enter a filter bubble, you're letting the companies that construct it choose which options you're aware of. You may think you're the captain of your own destiny, but personalisation can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next b a web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever- narrowing version of yourself b an endless you-loop. And there are broader consequences. In Bowling Alone, his book on the decline of civic life in America, Robert Putnam looked at the problem of the major decrease in "social capital" b the bonds of trust and allegiance that encourage people to do each other favours, work together to solve common problems, and collaborate. Putnam identified two kinds of social capital: there's the in-group-oriented "bonding" capital created when you attend a meeting of your college alumni, and then there's "bridging" capital, which is created at an event like a town meeting when people from lots of different backgrounds come together to meet each other. Bridging capital is potent: build more of it, and you're more likely to be able to find that next job or an investor for your small business, because it allows you to tap into lots of different networks for help. Everybody expected the internet to be a huge source of bridging capital. Writing at the height of the dotcom bubble, Tom Friedman declared that the internet would "make us all next-door neighbours". In fact, this idea was the core of his thesis in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: "The internet is going to be like a huge vice that takes the globalisation system b& and keeps tightening and tightening that system around everyone, in ways that will only make the world smaller and smaller and faster and faster with each passing day." Friedman seemed to have in mind a kind of global village in which kids in Africa and executives in New York would build a community together. But that's not what's happening: our virtual neighbours look more and more like our real-world neighbours, and our real-world neighbours look more and more like us. We're getting a lot of bonding but very little bridging. And this is important because it's bridging that creates our sense of the "public" b the space where we address the problems that transcend our narrow self- interests. We are predisposed to respond to a pretty narrow set of stimuli b if a piece of news is about sex, power, gossip, violence, celebrity or humour, we are likely to read it first. This is the content that most easily makes it into the filter bubble. It's easy to push "Like" and increase the visibility of a friend's post about finishing a marathon or an instructional article about how to make onion soup. It's harder to push the "Like" button on an article titled "Darfur sees bloodiest month in two years". In a personalised world, important but complex or unpleasant issues b the rising prison population, for example, or homelessness b are less likely to come to our attention at all. As a consumer, it's hard to argue with blotting out the irrelevant and unlikable. But what is good for consumers is not necessarily good for citizens. What I seem to like may not be what I actually want, let alone what I need to know to be an informed member of my community or country. "It's a civic virtue to be exposed to things that appear to be outside your interest," technology journalist Clive Thompson told me. Cultural critic Lee Siegel puts it a different way: "Customers are always right, but people aren't." The era of personalisation is here, and it's upending many of our predictions about what the internet would do. The creators of the internet envisioned something bigger and more important than a global system for sharing pictures of pets. The manifesto that helped launch the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s championed a "civilisation of Mind in cyberspace" b a kind of worldwide metabrain. But personalised filters sever the synapses in that brain. Without knowing it, we may be giving ourselves a kind of global lobotomy instead. Early internet enthusiasts like web creator Tim Berners-Lee hoped it would be a new platform for tackling global problems. I believe it still can be, but first we need to pull back the curtain b to understand the forces that are taking the internet in its current direction. We need to lay bare the bugs in the code b and the coders b that brought personalisation to us. If "code is law", as Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig declared, it's important to understand what the new lawmakers are trying to do. We need to understand what the programmers at Google and Facebook believe in. We need to understand the economic and social forces that are driving personalisation, some of which are inevitable and some of which are not. And we need to understand what all this means for our politics, our culture and our future. Adapted from The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- 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

1 0

EDRi-gram newsletter - Number 6.24, 17 December 2008
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRi-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 6.24, 17 December 2008 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. ECHR decided against the UK DNA Database 2. Wikipedia filtered by UK ISPs for cover album picture 3. ECHR rules on identifying serious privacy infringers 4. Romanian Authority asks ISPs to block 40 pornographic websites 5. Bulgarian Court annuls a vague article of the data retention law 6. Snooping law, "Lex Nokia", proceeding slowly but surely in Finland 7. German Federal Archives provides Wikipedia with 100 000 images 8. UK Government now in favour of the extension of the copyright term 9. Spanish collective society fined for making clandestine wedding video 10. ENDitorial: First FRA Conference on Fundamental Rights 11. Recommended Reading 12. Agenda 13. About ============================================================ 1. ECHR decided against the UK DNA Database ============================================================ On 4 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement in the Marper case related to the controversial National DNA Database used by the UK Police for criminal investigations, stating the retention of cellular samples, fingerprints and DNA profiles constitutes an infringement of the right for private life as per Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case was brought to court in 2004 by Michael Marper and a boy called "S" who, in separate, unrelated cases, had been taken their DNA after having been arrested. The charges were dropped in both cases but the UK police refused to destroy the DNA samples of the two individuals on the basis of the British law which allowed the retention of DNA and fingerprints. ECHR based its decision on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and decided that the indefinite retention by the UK Government and Police of innocent people's DNA and fingerprints was illegal. "In conclusion, the Court finds that the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the powers of retention of the fingerprints, cellular samples and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offences, as applied in the case of the present applicants, fails to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests and that the respondent State has overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard. Accordingly, the retention at issue constitutes disproportionate interference with the applicants' right to respect for private life and cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society." The court dismissed all arguments brought by the UK Government, stating that "England, Wales and Northern Ireland appear to be the only jurisdictions within the Council of Europe to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprint and DNA material of any person of any age suspected of any recordable offence". One of the main concerns expressed by the court was "the risk of stigmatisation, stemming from the fact that persons in the position of the applicants, who have not been convicted of any offence and are entitled to the presumption of innocence, are treated in the same way as convicted persons," the ruling adding that especially the retention of children's data following acquittal could be harmful, "given their special situation and the importance of their development and integration in society." Following this decision, the UK Government is expected to change its present legislation which allows the police to retain samples of people who are not convicted. According to reports, there are about 4.5 million samples presently stored in UK DNA database, out of which more than 850 000 are from people with no criminal record. The creation of a DNA database has been questioned by many people. The Information Commissioners Office made a statement last year on this issue warning on the dangers of such a database: "There are significant risks associated with creating a universal database: it would be highly intrusive, and the more information collected about us, the greater the risk of false matches and other mistakes. The potential for technical and human error leading to serious consequences cannot be under estimated." Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve also warned on the dangers brought by the fact that the database can be checked by EU member countries against sensitive personal information. "There is a real risk that a disproportionate number of innocent British citizens will be sucked into foreign criminal investigations." The House of Lords has passed an amendment to the Counter Terrorism Bill, proposed on 4 November by Baroness Hanham that would force the Government to show to people how they can have their samples removed from the database. "This amendment would require the Secretary of State to draft and lay before Parliament regulations governing the procedures by which people can discover what information is held about them and under what circumstances a request can be made by them to have samples taken during an investigation by the police destroyed," said Baroness Hanham. One possible approach of the UK Government, which would be accepted by ECHR, could be that of Scotland police. According to the Scottish Criminal Procedure Act, an individual's DNA samples and resulting profile must be destroyed if the individual is not convicted or is granted an absolute discharge. Biological samples and profiles may, however, be retained for three years in case the respective person is suspected of certain sexual or violent offences even if not convicted. European Court of Human Rights - Grand Chamber Judgement - Case of S. and Marper v. The United Kingdom (4.12.2008) http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=843941&po… Innocent Britons 'may be branded criminals abroad' after Big Brother databases agreement (15.12.2008) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3761189/Innocent-Britons-m… S. and Michael Marper v. The United Kingdom (DNA Retention) (28.05.2008) http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/s-and-michael-marper-v-the-un… DNA retention policy breaches human rights, rules ECHR (4.12.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9639 Lords demand amendment to help the innocent get DNA off database (6.11.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9564 EDRi-gram: UK DNA database errors raise concerns (5.07.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.23/uk-dna-database-error ============================================================ 2. Wikipedia filtered by UK ISPs for cover album picture ============================================================ Wikipedia administrators found on 5 December 2008 that six British ISPs were filtering the access to their site, after Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) had put the online encyclopedia on a child-pornography blacklist for its article on Virgin Killer, the record album of the German band the Scorpions. The action was taken following a report occurred on 4 December through IWF's online reporting mechanism on the article which presents the album and its original cover depicting a naked prepubescent girl. The cover was banned in many countries and replaced by another cover when the album was issued in 1976. IWF stated that "As with all potentially illegal online child sexual abuse reports we receive, the image was assessed according to current UK legislation and in accordance with the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council (page 109). The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, hosted outside the UK. As such, in accordance with IWF procedures, the specific webpage was added to the IWF list. This list is provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to help protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to potentially illegal indecent images of children." David Gerard, unofficial spokesman for Wikipedia UK, argued that ISPs were blocking not only the image but the associated text of the article. "Part of the problem lies in the fact that the IWF have not just blocked the offending image, but have blocked the accompanying text as well. We cannot be certain, but we suspect that had they stuck to their remit of focussing on pictures, the problem might not have arisen." In some cases, UK users could not edit Wikipedia pages, in others it seems they could not view it at all. Moreover, because the six ISPs are routing Wikipedia traffic through transparent proxies, an enormous amount of what would appear to be Wikipedia editors seem to come from the same IP range. A single IP may identify all Virgin Media users, which means that if Wikipedia admins decided to ban one Virgin Media customer for inappropriate edits, they might ban all Virgin Media customers. One of the messages received by UK users read: "Wikipedia has been added to an Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well." Although legally correct in classifying the cover album image as illegal in UK under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, as the image does not link to sites with similar material and is not hosted on such a site, IWF, which compiles its blacklist manually, could have applied the Notice and Take-down procedure in order not to disrupt other legitimate uses of Wikimedia. On the other hand, Wikipedia's editors, although not contacted or notified by IWF or the ISPs, have considered the issue of taking the image down but decided against it, considering this measure a form of censorship. On 9 December, IWF Board announced that after considering the context of the case and the fact that the image had existed for some time already and it was also widely available, it had decided to remove this webpage from its blacklist. Moreover: "Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures." The blacklist has also had results outside UK. In Finland, Teliasonera, a large ISP, also censored the Wikipedia article. The reason given out was a configuration error causing the ISP to use the IWF censorship list in addition to the police provided list. Richard Clayton from EDRi-member FIPR-UK looked in depth on the technical aspects of the censoring of Wikipedia to underline the fact that the IWF chose to filter text pages on Wikipedia rather than just the images they were concerned or that different capitalisations of URLs, the different blocking technologies, and the different implementation timescales led to considerable confusion as to who blocked what and when. "Some of these matters could be described as "human error" and might be done better in any re-run of these events with any of the other questionable images hosted on Wikipedia (and many other mainstream sites). However, most of the differences in the effectiveness of the attempted censorship stem directly from diverse blocking system designs - and we can expect to see them recur in future incidents. The bottom line is that these blocking systems are fragile, easy to evade (even unintentionally), and little more than a fig leaf to save the IWF's blushes in being so ineffective at getting child abuse image websites removed in a timely manner" concludes Richard. Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover (7.12.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/07/brit_isps_censor_wikipedia/ IWF statement regarding Wikipedia webpage (9.12.2008) http://iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm UK ISPS lock out Wikipedia in filtering error (7.12.2008) http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=219&Item… Finnish internet censorship expanding: Wikipedia article censored (7.12.2008) http://blog.fealdia.org/2008/12/07/finnish-internet-censorship-expanding-wi… Technical aspects of the censoring of Wikipedia (11.12.2008) http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/12/11/technical-aspects-of-the-cens… ============================================================ 3. ECHR rules on identifying serious privacy infringers ============================================================ On 2 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement on the case K.U. v. Finland, considering that Article 8 of the Convention asks for national laws that will protect people from serious privacy infringements on the Internet, but at the same time demands a legal framwork that permits the identification and prosecution of offenders, respecting digital rights. In this case brought to the ECHR an unknown person or persons placed an advertisement on a dating site on the Internet in the name of the applicant, who was 12 years old at the time, without his knowledge. The advertisement mentioned his age and year of birth, gave a detailed description of his physical characteristics, a link to the web page he had at the time which showed his picture, as well as his telephone number, which was accurate save for one digit. In the advertisement, it was claimed that he was looking for an intimate relationship with a boy of his age or older "to show him the way". The applicant became aware of the announcement on the Internet when he received an e-mail from a man, offering to meet him and "then to see what you want". The applicant's father requested the police to identify the person who had placed the advertisement in order to bring that person to court. The service provider, however, refused to reveal the identity of the holder of the IP address in question, considering itself bound by the confidentiality of telecommunications as defined by law. The Finnish courts could not help the father, considering that the law in force at that time provided for this information to be revealed only in respect of the criminal offences. Therefore the applicant asked the ECHR to judge if the fake ad did not consitute a violation of his right to a private life under Art. 8 of the ECHR and if he had not been denied an effective remedy for that violation under Art. 13 ECHR. The court held that Finland was in breach of its obligations under Article 8, because it didn't provide an effective criminal sanction for the violation of the applicant's rights. Consequently the court did not continue to consider the issue under Article 13. The court considers that serious privacy infringements need to be considered by the legal framework of the states: "While the choice of the means to secure compliance with Article 8 in the sphere of protection against acts of individuals is, in principle, within the State's margin of appreciation, effective deterrence against grave acts, where fundamental values and essential aspects of private life are at stake, requires efficient criminal-law provisions ." ECHR concludes by explaining that Article 8 should be interpreted in order to provide the legal framework to identify wrongdoers and bring them to justice, respecting the human rights on the Internet (freedom of expression and confidentiality of communications): "The Court considers that practical and effective protection of the applicant required that effective steps be taken to identify and prosecute the perpetrator, that is, the person who placed the advertisement. In the instant case such protection was not afforded. An effective investigation could never be launched because of an overriding requirement of confidentiality. Although freedom of expression and confidentiality of communications are primary considerations and users of telecommunications and Internet services must have a guarantee that their own privacy and freedom of expression will be respected, such guarantee cannot be absolute and must yield on occasion to other legitimate imperatives, such as the prevention of disorder or crime or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. " TJ McIntyre from EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland is commenting on the text that raises a number of questions on the practical implications of the case: "The court points out that it is dealing with a "grave" criminal offence, which leaves open the question of whether the reasoning would apply to less serious offences or to civil matters only. It also limits itself to requiring a national balancing framework between the rights of an alleged victim and the general rights of privacy in communications and freedom of expression - presumably within that framework states will enjoy a significant margin of appreciation. On the other hand, it rejects the argument that other systems (such as notice and takedown or intermediary liability) can suffice, insisting instead on requiring identification of users. It also focuses on the "ability of the victim to obtain financial reparation", which seems to extend the reasoning to civil matters also." Judgement Case of K.U. v. FINLAND (2.12.2008) http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=843777&po… Identifying Individuals in Internet Iniquity: ECHR rules on naming wrongdoers (2.12.2008) http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2008/12/identifying-individuals-in-internet.html K.U. v. Finland: No Data Retention Obligation (15.12.2008) http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=236 ============================================================ 4. Romanian Authority asks ISPs to block 40 pornographic websites ============================================================ The Romanian Authority for Communication (ANC) requested ISPs last week to block the access to 40 websites hosted in Romania, considering they don't meet the criteria imposed by article 7 of Law no.196/2003 on preventing and fighting pornography. Article 7 of the law states that "the natural and legal persons creating pornographic sites are obliged to password them, and the access to these will be allowed only after paying a fee per using minute, established by the creator of the site and declared at the fiscal bodies." However, five years later after the law was adopted, no specific fee is foreseen in any normative act. According to the ANC press release, its investigation revealed that "these websites, hosted in Romania, did not observe the legal requirements on access granted by a password (in most cases, even the minimum warning on the age of persons allowed to access them was absent) and did not request the payment of a fee per minute of use." ANC President Liviu Nistoran declared that the list would not be made public, "to avoid encouraging their accessing in the following period; however, we will ensure that the access to such websites is blocked." Internet providers are obliged to block users' access to the respective websites within 48 hours. Failure to block users' access is punishable by fines applied by the Police ranging from 10 000 to 50 000 RON (approx. 2500 - 12500 Euro). As revealed by online newspaper Hotnews, the list was copied from a complaint submitted by a phisical person on 28 November that contained 46 websites. Until 2008 only nine complaints were received on this law and just one website was blocked for a short period in 2005 (newspaper Atac). A scanned version list sent to the ISPs became available online at the end of last week on several blogs. The list contained a well-known User Generated video-sharing website (220.ro) , another domain name was just a redirect to a .com website and a lot of websites hosted on some free hosting accounts based in Romania. The owners of some blocked websites complained about the decision and stated that they would take ANC to court since they were not informed by the Authority about any problems related to their websites which comply to the law. Since the blockage was made on the IP addresses, some websites just changed their IP in order to become available again. It is also unclear how a website could get off the list, since ANC claims there is no such procedure in place. But the blocking system caused other legal websites to be blocked as well, with no official information on why this was happening. It is clear that only part of the over 1000 ISPs in the country implemented the measure requested by ANC, according the various reports from users from all over the country. The measure to block access to websites via the ISPs was characterised by EDRi-member APTI Romania and other national civil liberties groups and ISP associations as a very dangerous measure and a direct attack to the freedom of expression. They have asked in a public letter to ANC the immediate revocation of the list, as an illegal and useless measure. The civil society representatives explained to ANC there was a possibility, under the e-commerce law, to ask the owners of the respective web pages to comply with the law requirements by giving them an appropriate period of time to do so or even to fine them directly, without appealing to the ISPs for a illusory measure. They concluded that the present measure is just a censorship act, without providing any benefits to the a Safer Internet for children. ANC Demands Blocking the Access to 40 Pornographic Websites (11.12.2008) http://www.anrcti.ro/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=3483 Telecom Referee asks blocking 40 pornographic websites. Only nine complaints in the past 2 years (only in Romanian, 13.12.2008) http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-telecom-5244280-update-arbitrul-telecom-ce… 220.ro on the ANC blacklist (only in Romanian, 13.12.2008) http://legi-internet.ro/blogs/index.php?title=220_ro_pe_lista_neagra_a_anc_… Number of visitors for 220.ro in the past days http://stat.trafic.ro/stat/220/vizitatori/zi/#stat Public letter to ANC - Blocking 40 websites for your safety ?! (17.12.2008) http://www.apti.ro/webfm_send/37 Law on fighting and combatting pornography 196/2003 http://www.legi-internet.ro/index.php?id=89&L=2 ============================================================ 5. Bulgarian Court annuls a vague article of the data retention law ============================================================ On 11 December 2008, the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) annulled article 5 of the national legislation that implements the Data retention Directive, following a lawsuit initiated by Access to Information Program(AIP). Article 5 of the Bulgarian Regulation # 40 that was issued by the State Agency on Information Technologies and Communication and the Ministry of Interior provided for a "passive access through a computer terminal" by the Ministry of Interior, as well as access without court permission by security services and other law enforcement bodies, to all retained data by Internet and mobile communication providers. A five-member panel of the SAC annulled the article, considering that the provision did not set any limitations with regard to the data access by a computer terminal and did not provide for any guarantees for the protection of the right to privacy stipulated by Art. 32, Para. 1 of the Bulgarian Constitution. No mechanism was established for the respect of the constitutionally granted right of protection against unlawful interference in one's private or family affairs and against encroachments on one's honour, dignity and reputation. The court also found that the text of Art. 5 of the Regulation providing that the investigative bodies, prosecutor's office and the court shall be granted access to retained data "for the needs of the criminal process," the security services - "for the needs of the national security", does not provide limits against violations of constitutionally granted rights of the citizens. Reference to specialized laws - such as Penal Procedure Code, Special Surveillance Means Act, Personal Data Protection Act, which specify conditions under which access to personal data shall be granted, was not provided either. Furthermore, according to the court, Art. 5 of the Regulation contradicts the provision of Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court emphasises that national legal norms shall comply with the established principle and shall introduce comprehensible and well formulated grounds for both access to the personal data of citizens and the procedures for their retention. Article 5 of the Regulation lacks clarity in terms of protection of the right to private and family life which contradicts the provision of Art. 8 of the ECHR, the texts of the Directive 2006/24/EC, and Art. 32 and 34 of the Bulgarian Constitution. The decision or this court comes after an initial rejection of the demand by a first court panel on 17 July 2008. This is final and can't be appealled to higher competent courts of justice. The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) repealed a provision of the Data Retention in the Internet Regulation (11.12.2008) http://www.aip-bg.org/documents/data_retention_campaign_11122008eng.htm Data Retention on the Internet - Legal Action by Access to Information Programme in Bulgaria - 2008 http://www.aip-bg.org/documents/data_retention_campaign_eng.htm Supreme Administrative Court issues a good decision for the Bulgarian Internet (11.12.2008) http://blog.veni.com/?p=990 (Thanks to Veni Markovski - EDRi-member ISOC Bulgaria) ============================================================ 6. Snooping law, "Lex Nokia", proceeding slowly but surely in Finland ============================================================ Earlier this year, in April, the Government of Finland presented a bill to the Parliament for an amendment to the Act on Data Protection of Electronic Communications. Raison d'jtre for the bill officially is that it would allow employers to investigate the log data of employees' e-mails, if the company has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the employer's communication networks are being misused. The employer would not be allowed to read the content of the messages themselves, however. The bill has been dubbed "Lex Nokia" because it was sparked in 2006 by an announcement by prosecutor Jukka Haavisto that Nokia had been illegally monitoring contact information of its employees' e-mail in 2000 to 2001. The public discussion about the proposed legislation has largely focused on the official need for the law. However, the bill in itself does not contain limitations restricting the snooping only to email logs, nor only to employers. The law is vague, and can be interpreted to cover nearly any IP-based telecommunication and in addition to companies, it also covers some "corporate subscribers", for example universities. In spite of legal expert statements that the government's proposal violates the Finnish constitution, Constitutional Law Committee stated that the bill is not unconstitutional and that it can be passed as a regular law. Unlike many other countries, Finland does not have a Constitutional Court, instead a parliamentary committee investigates . The right to confidential communication is a fundamental right guaranteed under the Finnish constitution, as well as by the European treaty on human rights. The Chancellor of Justice and several law professors have expressed concerns that Lex Nokia unnecessarily weakens these fundamental rights, while giving corporations excessive leeway. In effect, companies would have a higher authority to snoop on employees than the police have, and they would be able to do so without obtaining a warrant. The measure was originally expected to come before the full Parliament for a vote in mid-December, but it did not pass through the Transport and Communications Committee as quickly as expected. The committee proposed some minor changes to the law, and three dissenting minority opinions were included in the statement. However, passage of the bill is nearly certain, as the government parties have agreed on the matter. The Constitution of Finland (31.07.1999) http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1999/en19990731.pdf "Lex Nokia" gets blessing from Constitutional Law Committee (14.11.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/%E2%80%9DLex+Nokia%E2%80%9D+gets+blessing+… Legal experts say "Lex Nokia" violates constitution (20.11.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Legal+experts+say+%E2%80%9CLex+Nokia%E2%80… Chancellor of Justice criticises controversial proposal for "Lex Nokia" (2.12.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Chancellor+of+Justice+criticises+controver… (Contribution by Leena Romppainen - EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Finland ) ============================================================ 7. German Federal Archives provides Wikipedia with 100 000 images ============================================================ The German Federal Archives has donated almost 100 000 images to the Wikimedia Commons, as part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the Weimar Republic, the German colonial era, the Third Reich and Germany after reunification). All the images are licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License (CC-BY-SA). Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive have signed a cooperation agreement that, among other things, asserts that the Federal Archive owns sufficient rights to be able to grant this kind of license. This is estimated to be the largest donation ever received by Wikimedia Commons, that is today a database of over 3 million media files. The other part of the cooperation is a tool for linking people from a list compiled by the Federal Archive to the German Wikipedia Persondata and to the person authority file of the German National Library (something German Wikipedia has already been doing since 2005). Angelika Menne-Haritz, vice-president of the Federal Archives in Berlin said that the public had a right to access the photos and the deal with Wikipedia would facilitate public access to the material. Commons:Bundesarchiv (4.12.2008) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv Interview: Cooperation between BundesArchive and Wikimedia (only in German, 4.12.2008) http://netzpolitik.org/2008/interview-kooperation-von-bundesarchiv-und-wiki… Wikipedia Receives German Pictorial History (6.12.2008) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3851534,00.html ============================================================ 8. UK Government now in favour of the extension of the copyright term ============================================================ At UK Music's Creators' Conference on 1 December 2008, Culture Minister Andy Burnham announced the backing of the UK Government to extending the copyright term for sound recordings to 70 years. The decision goes against the recommendations of Andrew Gowers, whose 2006 review of copyright is in favour of keeping copyright at 50 years. It is however more in line with the proposals made in February 2008 by EC Internal Markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy to increase the term of protection to 95 years. Presently, the revenues from a sound recording goes to the musicians who performed on the recording and to the owners of the recording. Burnham clearly supports the former and called on the music business to make sure the measure benefits musicians and not the industry big companies. "We want the industry to come back with good, workable ideas as to how a proposal on copyright extension might be framed that directly and predominantly benefits performers - both session and featured musicians," he declared. The EC proposition adopted on 16 July 2008 introduces the extension of the term not only for the performers but also for the producers. The proposal has been largely opposed, many arguing that the copyright extension will be detrimental to innovation and creativity and that other measures would be more appropriate and efficient to support aging performers. The extension of the copyright term was also discussed on 2-3 December 2008 in the Competitiveness Council that backed the Progress report adopted at the end of November. The report states that the extension of the term to 95 years is considered by some Member States as too long, doubting the capacity of the proposal to reach its objective in a satisfactory and balanced way. However, some of these Member States might accept a more moderate extension. As a response to concerns expressed by some of the Member States that the measure might be discriminatory if only applied to the music sector, the presidency of the Council proposed that the extended term should cover audiovisual performers as well. Concerning the right of session musicians to claim additional annual remuneration and the performers' option to recuperate their rights in the absence of exploitation by the phonogram producer, the presidency has proposed that such rights might not be waived and the "use it or lose it" clause for copyright - where the ownership of forgotten recordings reverts to the performer - cannot be renounced by performers. Discussion on the topic should continue. As to the question of the harmonisation of the method of calculating the term of protection of musical compositions with words, the Presidency suggested the limitation of the scope to musical compositions and lyrics specifically created to constitute a musical composition with words. The question of the period of application is still to be settled. The draft Directive is also considered within the European Parliament. The non-leading Committee for Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) adopted the Emmanouil Angelakas' (EPP-ED - Greece) draft opinion on 2 December 2008. Just a few amendments were adopted, among them the application of the extended term of protection (95 years) not only to music performers but also to audiovisual performers. On 19 January 2009, the Legal Affairs Committee is expected to adopt its report and the Parliament will vote on the proposal in plenary on 18 February 2009. Government signals extension to copyright term (11.12.2008) http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1036431&c=1 Music copyright extension - strings attached (12.12.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/burnham_mccreevy_sound_recording_te… The Council of Europe Presidency PROGRESS REPORT - Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council Directive amending Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the term of protection of copyright and related rights (26.11.2008) http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/08/st16/st16005.en08.pdf Press release - 2910th meeting of the Council - Competitiveness (internal market, industry and research) (1-2.12.2008) http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/intm/10449… EDRigram - Extension of the copyright term for performers and record producers (30.07.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.15/extension-copyright-performers ============================================================ 9. Spanish collective society fined for making clandestine wedding video ============================================================ The Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) has been fined for having placed a private detective in a restaurant in Seville, in 2005, to film a wedding in order to prove that the restaurant was using music for which it had paid no royalties. The court in Seville where the action was heard found that the video presented by SGAE as proof against the restaurant was inadmissible because it was "a clear violation of the constitutional rights to a person's own image" and it was in breach of the privacy of the couple because it had been taken clandestinely. The law requires the "unequivocal consent of the affected person" in the treatment of his (her) personal data. The society was given a 60 101 euro fine, imposed by the Spanish Data Protection Agency. The case has brought up the fact that using private detectives to clandestinely check weddings in search of copyright infringements is a common practice for SGAE. "Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it" said Pedro Farre, SGAE Director. Concerning the fact that its detectives acted clandestinely he stated: "There are times when in order to protect the legal good such type of proofs are necessary". The court also decided that the detective had breached the law of private safety which forbids this type of professionals to use in their investigations "technical means that may infringe the right to honour, intimacy and the right to one's own image". Although SGAE argued that it did not specify to the detective what means to use in his investigation and that filming does not imply the generation of a personal data file, the court decision considered the video as belonging to the personal data category. According to the law, personal data is "all numerical, alphabetical, graphic, photographic, acoustic or any other type of information susceptible of being collected, processed or transmitted referring to an identified or identifiable natural person" as was the case of the wedded couple. The restaurant was however fined 43 179 euro for having used music without paying copyright fees on the basis of other proofs. Farri declared that the Society was going to consider whether to appeal the decision. Secret wedding video ruling is music to ears of privacy groups (15.12.2008) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5342297.ece SGAE will have to pay 60.101 for recording a wedding without authorization(only in Spanish, 8.12.2008) http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/12/08/cultura/1228709280.html SGAE will have to pay a 60.000 euros fine for recording a wedding without permission (only in Spanish, 7.12.2008) http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/12/07/cultura/1228662714.html ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: First FRA Conference on Fundamental Rights ============================================================ On 8 and 9 December 2008, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) held its first Fundamental Rights Conference in Paris. The event examined key issues and challenges related to the freedom of expression. The conference coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was co-organised by the French Ministry of Justice. In his welcoming speech, Jacques Barrot, the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, stressed out the fact that pluralism was a condition sine qua non for freedom of expression, but that there had to be limits in cases when the right to live was affected. Hatred, racism and xenophobia cannot be accepted therefore, a balance of competing rights has to be found. During his speech, Mr. Barrot also announced that a Europol unit for tracking "dangerous websites" would be set up in 2009. Janez Lenarcic, the Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OECD, pointed out the differences in the legal systems of the OECD member states. What in some countries is considered to be part of the freedom of expression in other countries it can be considered to be a hate crime. Furthermore, in some countries ofthe OECD area, that he described as Potjomkin democracies,there are Human Rights problems. Also, the representatives of the Council of Europe, Margaret Killerby, representing the Secretary General, and Ulrika Sundberg, representing the Commissioner for Human rights, stated that anti-terror legislation had a negative impact on the freedom of expression and that these measures on one side and human rights on the other had to be carefully balanced. In the area of the Council of Europe, journalists still face violence for practising their right to freedom of expression. Also their right to receive information anonymously from anyone is often challenged and has to be ensured. In her Keynote speech, the French journalist Florence Aubenas stressed the fact that freedom of expression is not only challenged in distant countries of the CoE and OECD but that this is as well an issue in France. In a recent ranking of countries regarding freedom of expression that was published by Reporters without Borders, France was only ranked 45. A clear sign that the influence of the state over the media is present today in France. During the rest of the conference, five working groups were established, covering some important aspects of the freedom of expression. The working group on challenges to freedom of expression very much focussed on the challenges media and journalists face today. Problems with influences from states and commerce were discussed as well as challenges emerging from the discussion fora of online media and the increased publishing possibilities for the average citizen on the Internet. FRA Fundamental Rights Conference http://fra.europa.eu/fra/index.php?fuseaction=content.dsp_cat_content&catid… (contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi) ============================================================ 11. Recommended Reading ============================================================ A new ENISA report explains the risks of Web 2.0 - photo sharing, wikis, social bookmarking and social networking - and "malware 2.0", a new breed of web-borne infections you can catch just by visiting a web page and gives advice to tackle them. http://www.enisa.europa.eu/pages/02_01_press_2008_12_10_web2.html ============================================================ 12. Agenda ============================================================ 27-30 December 2008 Berlin, Germany 25C3: Nothing to hide The 25th Chaos Communication Congress http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/ 16-17 January 2009, Brussels, Belgium Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference CPDP 2009: Data Protection in A Profiled World? http://www.cpdpconferences.org/ 28 January 2009, Europe-wide 3rd Data Protection Day http://www.coe.int/t/e/legal_affairs/legal_co-operation/data_protection/Dat… 7-8 February 2009, Brussels, Belgium Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) http://www.fosdem.org/2009/ 18-20 March 2009, Athens, Greece WebSci'09: Society On-Line http://www.websci09.org/ 27-29 March 2009, Manchaster, UK Oekonux Conference: Free Software and Beyond The World of Peer Production http://www.oekonux-conference.org/ 29-31 March 2009, Edinburgh, UK Governance Of New Technologies: The Transformation Of Medicine, Information Technology And Intellectual Property" An International Interdisciplinary Conference http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/conference09/ 1-4 June 2009, Washington, DC, USA Computers Freedom and Privacy 2009 Proposal Submissions by 9 January 2009 http://www.cfp2009.org/ 2-3 July 2009, Padova, Italy 3rd FLOSS International Workshop on Free/Libre Open Source Software Paper submission by 31 March 2009 http://www.decon.unipd.it/personale/curri/manenti/floss/floss09.html 13-16 August 2009, Vierhouten, The Netherlands Hacking at Random http://www.har2009.org/ 23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Council: "Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage" Call for papers by 15 January 2009 http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla75/index.htm 10-12 September 2009, Potsdam, Germany 5th ECPR General Conference, Potsdam Section: Protest Politics Panel: The Contentious Politics of Intellectual Property First proposals to be submitted by 1 February 2009 http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/default.asp 16-18 September 2009, Crete, Greece World Summit on the Knowledge Society WSKS 2009 http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/ October 2009, Istanbul, Turkey eChallenges 2009 Call for papers by 27 February 2009 http://www.echallenges.org/e2009/default.asp?page=c4p ============================================================ 13. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 29 members based or with offices in 18 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 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 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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EDRi-gram newsletter - Number 6.24, 17 December 2008
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRi-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 6.24, 17 December 2008 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. ECHR decided against the UK DNA Database 2. Wikipedia filtered by UK ISPs for cover album picture 3. ECHR rules on identifying serious privacy infringers 4. Romanian Authority asks ISPs to block 40 pornographic websites 5. Bulgarian Court annuls a vague article of the data retention law 6. Snooping law, "Lex Nokia", proceeding slowly but surely in Finland 7. German Federal Archives provides Wikipedia with 100 000 images 8. UK Government now in favour of the extension of the copyright term 9. Spanish collective society fined for making clandestine wedding video 10. ENDitorial: First FRA Conference on Fundamental Rights 11. Recommended Reading 12. Agenda 13. About ============================================================ 1. ECHR decided against the UK DNA Database ============================================================ On 4 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement in the Marper case related to the controversial National DNA Database used by the UK Police for criminal investigations, stating the retention of cellular samples, fingerprints and DNA profiles constitutes an infringement of the right for private life as per Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case was brought to court in 2004 by Michael Marper and a boy called "S" who, in separate, unrelated cases, had been taken their DNA after having been arrested. The charges were dropped in both cases but the UK police refused to destroy the DNA samples of the two individuals on the basis of the British law which allowed the retention of DNA and fingerprints. ECHR based its decision on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and decided that the indefinite retention by the UK Government and Police of innocent people's DNA and fingerprints was illegal. "In conclusion, the Court finds that the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the powers of retention of the fingerprints, cellular samples and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offences, as applied in the case of the present applicants, fails to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests and that the respondent State has overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation in this regard. Accordingly, the retention at issue constitutes disproportionate interference with the applicants' right to respect for private life and cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society." The court dismissed all arguments brought by the UK Government, stating that "England, Wales and Northern Ireland appear to be the only jurisdictions within the Council of Europe to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprint and DNA material of any person of any age suspected of any recordable offence". One of the main concerns expressed by the court was "the risk of stigmatisation, stemming from the fact that persons in the position of the applicants, who have not been convicted of any offence and are entitled to the presumption of innocence, are treated in the same way as convicted persons," the ruling adding that especially the retention of children's data following acquittal could be harmful, "given their special situation and the importance of their development and integration in society." Following this decision, the UK Government is expected to change its present legislation which allows the police to retain samples of people who are not convicted. According to reports, there are about 4.5 million samples presently stored in UK DNA database, out of which more than 850 000 are from people with no criminal record. The creation of a DNA database has been questioned by many people. The Information Commissioners Office made a statement last year on this issue warning on the dangers of such a database: "There are significant risks associated with creating a universal database: it would be highly intrusive, and the more information collected about us, the greater the risk of false matches and other mistakes. The potential for technical and human error leading to serious consequences cannot be under estimated." Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve also warned on the dangers brought by the fact that the database can be checked by EU member countries against sensitive personal information. "There is a real risk that a disproportionate number of innocent British citizens will be sucked into foreign criminal investigations." The House of Lords has passed an amendment to the Counter Terrorism Bill, proposed on 4 November by Baroness Hanham that would force the Government to show to people how they can have their samples removed from the database. "This amendment would require the Secretary of State to draft and lay before Parliament regulations governing the procedures by which people can discover what information is held about them and under what circumstances a request can be made by them to have samples taken during an investigation by the police destroyed," said Baroness Hanham. One possible approach of the UK Government, which would be accepted by ECHR, could be that of Scotland police. According to the Scottish Criminal Procedure Act, an individual's DNA samples and resulting profile must be destroyed if the individual is not convicted or is granted an absolute discharge. Biological samples and profiles may, however, be retained for three years in case the respective person is suspected of certain sexual or violent offences even if not convicted. European Court of Human Rights - Grand Chamber Judgement - Case of S. and Marper v. The United Kingdom (4.12.2008) http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=843941&po… Innocent Britons 'may be branded criminals abroad' after Big Brother databases agreement (15.12.2008) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3761189/Innocent-Britons-m… S. and Michael Marper v. The United Kingdom (DNA Retention) (28.05.2008) http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/s-and-michael-marper-v-the-un… DNA retention policy breaches human rights, rules ECHR (4.12.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9639 Lords demand amendment to help the innocent get DNA off database (6.11.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9564 EDRi-gram: UK DNA database errors raise concerns (5.07.2007) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.23/uk-dna-database-error ============================================================ 2. Wikipedia filtered by UK ISPs for cover album picture ============================================================ Wikipedia administrators found on 5 December 2008 that six British ISPs were filtering the access to their site, after Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) had put the online encyclopedia on a child-pornography blacklist for its article on Virgin Killer, the record album of the German band the Scorpions. The action was taken following a report occurred on 4 December through IWF's online reporting mechanism on the article which presents the album and its original cover depicting a naked prepubescent girl. The cover was banned in many countries and replaced by another cover when the album was issued in 1976. IWF stated that "As with all potentially illegal online child sexual abuse reports we receive, the image was assessed according to current UK legislation and in accordance with the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council (page 109). The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, hosted outside the UK. As such, in accordance with IWF procedures, the specific webpage was added to the IWF list. This list is provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to help protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to potentially illegal indecent images of children." David Gerard, unofficial spokesman for Wikipedia UK, argued that ISPs were blocking not only the image but the associated text of the article. "Part of the problem lies in the fact that the IWF have not just blocked the offending image, but have blocked the accompanying text as well. We cannot be certain, but we suspect that had they stuck to their remit of focussing on pictures, the problem might not have arisen." In some cases, UK users could not edit Wikipedia pages, in others it seems they could not view it at all. Moreover, because the six ISPs are routing Wikipedia traffic through transparent proxies, an enormous amount of what would appear to be Wikipedia editors seem to come from the same IP range. A single IP may identify all Virgin Media users, which means that if Wikipedia admins decided to ban one Virgin Media customer for inappropriate edits, they might ban all Virgin Media customers. One of the messages received by UK users read: "Wikipedia has been added to an Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well." Although legally correct in classifying the cover album image as illegal in UK under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, as the image does not link to sites with similar material and is not hosted on such a site, IWF, which compiles its blacklist manually, could have applied the Notice and Take-down procedure in order not to disrupt other legitimate uses of Wikimedia. On the other hand, Wikipedia's editors, although not contacted or notified by IWF or the ISPs, have considered the issue of taking the image down but decided against it, considering this measure a form of censorship. On 9 December, IWF Board announced that after considering the context of the case and the fact that the image had existed for some time already and it was also widely available, it had decided to remove this webpage from its blacklist. Moreover: "Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures." The blacklist has also had results outside UK. In Finland, Teliasonera, a large ISP, also censored the Wikipedia article. The reason given out was a configuration error causing the ISP to use the IWF censorship list in addition to the police provided list. Richard Clayton from EDRi-member FIPR-UK looked in depth on the technical aspects of the censoring of Wikipedia to underline the fact that the IWF chose to filter text pages on Wikipedia rather than just the images they were concerned or that different capitalisations of URLs, the different blocking technologies, and the different implementation timescales led to considerable confusion as to who blocked what and when. "Some of these matters could be described as "human error" and might be done better in any re-run of these events with any of the other questionable images hosted on Wikipedia (and many other mainstream sites). However, most of the differences in the effectiveness of the attempted censorship stem directly from diverse blocking system designs - and we can expect to see them recur in future incidents. The bottom line is that these blocking systems are fragile, easy to evade (even unintentionally), and little more than a fig leaf to save the IWF's blushes in being so ineffective at getting child abuse image websites removed in a timely manner" concludes Richard. Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover (7.12.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/07/brit_isps_censor_wikipedia/ IWF statement regarding Wikipedia webpage (9.12.2008) http://iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm UK ISPS lock out Wikipedia in filtering error (7.12.2008) http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=219&Item… Finnish internet censorship expanding: Wikipedia article censored (7.12.2008) http://blog.fealdia.org/2008/12/07/finnish-internet-censorship-expanding-wi… Technical aspects of the censoring of Wikipedia (11.12.2008) http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/12/11/technical-aspects-of-the-cens… ============================================================ 3. ECHR rules on identifying serious privacy infringers ============================================================ On 2 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement on the case K.U. v. Finland, considering that Article 8 of the Convention asks for national laws that will protect people from serious privacy infringements on the Internet, but at the same time demands a legal framwork that permits the identification and prosecution of offenders, respecting digital rights. In this case brought to the ECHR an unknown person or persons placed an advertisement on a dating site on the Internet in the name of the applicant, who was 12 years old at the time, without his knowledge. The advertisement mentioned his age and year of birth, gave a detailed description of his physical characteristics, a link to the web page he had at the time which showed his picture, as well as his telephone number, which was accurate save for one digit. In the advertisement, it was claimed that he was looking for an intimate relationship with a boy of his age or older "to show him the way". The applicant became aware of the announcement on the Internet when he received an e-mail from a man, offering to meet him and "then to see what you want". The applicant's father requested the police to identify the person who had placed the advertisement in order to bring that person to court. The service provider, however, refused to reveal the identity of the holder of the IP address in question, considering itself bound by the confidentiality of telecommunications as defined by law. The Finnish courts could not help the father, considering that the law in force at that time provided for this information to be revealed only in respect of the criminal offences. Therefore the applicant asked the ECHR to judge if the fake ad did not consitute a violation of his right to a private life under Art. 8 of the ECHR and if he had not been denied an effective remedy for that violation under Art. 13 ECHR. The court held that Finland was in breach of its obligations under Article 8, because it didn't provide an effective criminal sanction for the violation of the applicant's rights. Consequently the court did not continue to consider the issue under Article 13. The court considers that serious privacy infringements need to be considered by the legal framework of the states: "While the choice of the means to secure compliance with Article 8 in the sphere of protection against acts of individuals is, in principle, within the State's margin of appreciation, effective deterrence against grave acts, where fundamental values and essential aspects of private life are at stake, requires efficient criminal-law provisions ." ECHR concludes by explaining that Article 8 should be interpreted in order to provide the legal framework to identify wrongdoers and bring them to justice, respecting the human rights on the Internet (freedom of expression and confidentiality of communications): "The Court considers that practical and effective protection of the applicant required that effective steps be taken to identify and prosecute the perpetrator, that is, the person who placed the advertisement. In the instant case such protection was not afforded. An effective investigation could never be launched because of an overriding requirement of confidentiality. Although freedom of expression and confidentiality of communications are primary considerations and users of telecommunications and Internet services must have a guarantee that their own privacy and freedom of expression will be respected, such guarantee cannot be absolute and must yield on occasion to other legitimate imperatives, such as the prevention of disorder or crime or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. " TJ McIntyre from EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland is commenting on the text that raises a number of questions on the practical implications of the case: "The court points out that it is dealing with a "grave" criminal offence, which leaves open the question of whether the reasoning would apply to less serious offences or to civil matters only. It also limits itself to requiring a national balancing framework between the rights of an alleged victim and the general rights of privacy in communications and freedom of expression - presumably within that framework states will enjoy a significant margin of appreciation. On the other hand, it rejects the argument that other systems (such as notice and takedown or intermediary liability) can suffice, insisting instead on requiring identification of users. It also focuses on the "ability of the victim to obtain financial reparation", which seems to extend the reasoning to civil matters also." Judgement Case of K.U. v. FINLAND (2.12.2008) http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=843777&po… Identifying Individuals in Internet Iniquity: ECHR rules on naming wrongdoers (2.12.2008) http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2008/12/identifying-individuals-in-internet.html K.U. v. Finland: No Data Retention Obligation (15.12.2008) http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=236 ============================================================ 4. Romanian Authority asks ISPs to block 40 pornographic websites ============================================================ The Romanian Authority for Communication (ANC) requested ISPs last week to block the access to 40 websites hosted in Romania, considering they don't meet the criteria imposed by article 7 of Law no.196/2003 on preventing and fighting pornography. Article 7 of the law states that "the natural and legal persons creating pornographic sites are obliged to password them, and the access to these will be allowed only after paying a fee per using minute, established by the creator of the site and declared at the fiscal bodies." However, five years later after the law was adopted, no specific fee is foreseen in any normative act. According to the ANC press release, its investigation revealed that "these websites, hosted in Romania, did not observe the legal requirements on access granted by a password (in most cases, even the minimum warning on the age of persons allowed to access them was absent) and did not request the payment of a fee per minute of use." ANC President Liviu Nistoran declared that the list would not be made public, "to avoid encouraging their accessing in the following period; however, we will ensure that the access to such websites is blocked." Internet providers are obliged to block users' access to the respective websites within 48 hours. Failure to block users' access is punishable by fines applied by the Police ranging from 10 000 to 50 000 RON (approx. 2500 - 12500 Euro). As revealed by online newspaper Hotnews, the list was copied from a complaint submitted by a phisical person on 28 November that contained 46 websites. Until 2008 only nine complaints were received on this law and just one website was blocked for a short period in 2005 (newspaper Atac). A scanned version list sent to the ISPs became available online at the end of last week on several blogs. The list contained a well-known User Generated video-sharing website (220.ro) , another domain name was just a redirect to a .com website and a lot of websites hosted on some free hosting accounts based in Romania. The owners of some blocked websites complained about the decision and stated that they would take ANC to court since they were not informed by the Authority about any problems related to their websites which comply to the law. Since the blockage was made on the IP addresses, some websites just changed their IP in order to become available again. It is also unclear how a website could get off the list, since ANC claims there is no such procedure in place. But the blocking system caused other legal websites to be blocked as well, with no official information on why this was happening. It is clear that only part of the over 1000 ISPs in the country implemented the measure requested by ANC, according the various reports from users from all over the country. The measure to block access to websites via the ISPs was characterised by EDRi-member APTI Romania and other national civil liberties groups and ISP associations as a very dangerous measure and a direct attack to the freedom of expression. They have asked in a public letter to ANC the immediate revocation of the list, as an illegal and useless measure. The civil society representatives explained to ANC there was a possibility, under the e-commerce law, to ask the owners of the respective web pages to comply with the law requirements by giving them an appropriate period of time to do so or even to fine them directly, without appealing to the ISPs for a illusory measure. They concluded that the present measure is just a censorship act, without providing any benefits to the a Safer Internet for children. ANC Demands Blocking the Access to 40 Pornographic Websites (11.12.2008) http://www.anrcti.ro/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=3483 Telecom Referee asks blocking 40 pornographic websites. Only nine complaints in the past 2 years (only in Romanian, 13.12.2008) http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-telecom-5244280-update-arbitrul-telecom-ce… 220.ro on the ANC blacklist (only in Romanian, 13.12.2008) http://legi-internet.ro/blogs/index.php?title=220_ro_pe_lista_neagra_a_anc_… Number of visitors for 220.ro in the past days http://stat.trafic.ro/stat/220/vizitatori/zi/#stat Public letter to ANC - Blocking 40 websites for your safety ?! (17.12.2008) http://www.apti.ro/webfm_send/37 Law on fighting and combatting pornography 196/2003 http://www.legi-internet.ro/index.php?id=89&L=2 ============================================================ 5. Bulgarian Court annuls a vague article of the data retention law ============================================================ On 11 December 2008, the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) annulled article 5 of the national legislation that implements the Data retention Directive, following a lawsuit initiated by Access to Information Program(AIP). Article 5 of the Bulgarian Regulation # 40 that was issued by the State Agency on Information Technologies and Communication and the Ministry of Interior provided for a "passive access through a computer terminal" by the Ministry of Interior, as well as access without court permission by security services and other law enforcement bodies, to all retained data by Internet and mobile communication providers. A five-member panel of the SAC annulled the article, considering that the provision did not set any limitations with regard to the data access by a computer terminal and did not provide for any guarantees for the protection of the right to privacy stipulated by Art. 32, Para. 1 of the Bulgarian Constitution. No mechanism was established for the respect of the constitutionally granted right of protection against unlawful interference in one's private or family affairs and against encroachments on one's honour, dignity and reputation. The court also found that the text of Art. 5 of the Regulation providing that the investigative bodies, prosecutor's office and the court shall be granted access to retained data "for the needs of the criminal process," the security services - "for the needs of the national security", does not provide limits against violations of constitutionally granted rights of the citizens. Reference to specialized laws - such as Penal Procedure Code, Special Surveillance Means Act, Personal Data Protection Act, which specify conditions under which access to personal data shall be granted, was not provided either. Furthermore, according to the court, Art. 5 of the Regulation contradicts the provision of Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court emphasises that national legal norms shall comply with the established principle and shall introduce comprehensible and well formulated grounds for both access to the personal data of citizens and the procedures for their retention. Article 5 of the Regulation lacks clarity in terms of protection of the right to private and family life which contradicts the provision of Art. 8 of the ECHR, the texts of the Directive 2006/24/EC, and Art. 32 and 34 of the Bulgarian Constitution. The decision or this court comes after an initial rejection of the demand by a first court panel on 17 July 2008. This is final and can't be appealled to higher competent courts of justice. The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) repealed a provision of the Data Retention in the Internet Regulation (11.12.2008) http://www.aip-bg.org/documents/data_retention_campaign_11122008eng.htm Data Retention on the Internet - Legal Action by Access to Information Programme in Bulgaria - 2008 http://www.aip-bg.org/documents/data_retention_campaign_eng.htm Supreme Administrative Court issues a good decision for the Bulgarian Internet (11.12.2008) http://blog.veni.com/?p=990 (Thanks to Veni Markovski - EDRi-member ISOC Bulgaria) ============================================================ 6. Snooping law, "Lex Nokia", proceeding slowly but surely in Finland ============================================================ Earlier this year, in April, the Government of Finland presented a bill to the Parliament for an amendment to the Act on Data Protection of Electronic Communications. Raison d'jtre for the bill officially is that it would allow employers to investigate the log data of employees' e-mails, if the company has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the employer's communication networks are being misused. The employer would not be allowed to read the content of the messages themselves, however. The bill has been dubbed "Lex Nokia" because it was sparked in 2006 by an announcement by prosecutor Jukka Haavisto that Nokia had been illegally monitoring contact information of its employees' e-mail in 2000 to 2001. The public discussion about the proposed legislation has largely focused on the official need for the law. However, the bill in itself does not contain limitations restricting the snooping only to email logs, nor only to employers. The law is vague, and can be interpreted to cover nearly any IP-based telecommunication and in addition to companies, it also covers some "corporate subscribers", for example universities. In spite of legal expert statements that the government's proposal violates the Finnish constitution, Constitutional Law Committee stated that the bill is not unconstitutional and that it can be passed as a regular law. Unlike many other countries, Finland does not have a Constitutional Court, instead a parliamentary committee investigates . The right to confidential communication is a fundamental right guaranteed under the Finnish constitution, as well as by the European treaty on human rights. The Chancellor of Justice and several law professors have expressed concerns that Lex Nokia unnecessarily weakens these fundamental rights, while giving corporations excessive leeway. In effect, companies would have a higher authority to snoop on employees than the police have, and they would be able to do so without obtaining a warrant. The measure was originally expected to come before the full Parliament for a vote in mid-December, but it did not pass through the Transport and Communications Committee as quickly as expected. The committee proposed some minor changes to the law, and three dissenting minority opinions were included in the statement. However, passage of the bill is nearly certain, as the government parties have agreed on the matter. The Constitution of Finland (31.07.1999) http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1999/en19990731.pdf "Lex Nokia" gets blessing from Constitutional Law Committee (14.11.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/%E2%80%9DLex+Nokia%E2%80%9D+gets+blessing+… Legal experts say "Lex Nokia" violates constitution (20.11.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Legal+experts+say+%E2%80%9CLex+Nokia%E2%80… Chancellor of Justice criticises controversial proposal for "Lex Nokia" (2.12.2008) http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Chancellor+of+Justice+criticises+controver… (Contribution by Leena Romppainen - EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Finland ) ============================================================ 7. German Federal Archives provides Wikipedia with 100 000 images ============================================================ The German Federal Archives has donated almost 100 000 images to the Wikimedia Commons, as part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the Weimar Republic, the German colonial era, the Third Reich and Germany after reunification). All the images are licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License (CC-BY-SA). Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive have signed a cooperation agreement that, among other things, asserts that the Federal Archive owns sufficient rights to be able to grant this kind of license. This is estimated to be the largest donation ever received by Wikimedia Commons, that is today a database of over 3 million media files. The other part of the cooperation is a tool for linking people from a list compiled by the Federal Archive to the German Wikipedia Persondata and to the person authority file of the German National Library (something German Wikipedia has already been doing since 2005). Angelika Menne-Haritz, vice-president of the Federal Archives in Berlin said that the public had a right to access the photos and the deal with Wikipedia would facilitate public access to the material. Commons:Bundesarchiv (4.12.2008) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv Interview: Cooperation between BundesArchive and Wikimedia (only in German, 4.12.2008) http://netzpolitik.org/2008/interview-kooperation-von-bundesarchiv-und-wiki… Wikipedia Receives German Pictorial History (6.12.2008) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3851534,00.html ============================================================ 8. UK Government now in favour of the extension of the copyright term ============================================================ At UK Music's Creators' Conference on 1 December 2008, Culture Minister Andy Burnham announced the backing of the UK Government to extending the copyright term for sound recordings to 70 years. The decision goes against the recommendations of Andrew Gowers, whose 2006 review of copyright is in favour of keeping copyright at 50 years. It is however more in line with the proposals made in February 2008 by EC Internal Markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy to increase the term of protection to 95 years. Presently, the revenues from a sound recording goes to the musicians who performed on the recording and to the owners of the recording. Burnham clearly supports the former and called on the music business to make sure the measure benefits musicians and not the industry big companies. "We want the industry to come back with good, workable ideas as to how a proposal on copyright extension might be framed that directly and predominantly benefits performers - both session and featured musicians," he declared. The EC proposition adopted on 16 July 2008 introduces the extension of the term not only for the performers but also for the producers. The proposal has been largely opposed, many arguing that the copyright extension will be detrimental to innovation and creativity and that other measures would be more appropriate and efficient to support aging performers. The extension of the copyright term was also discussed on 2-3 December 2008 in the Competitiveness Council that backed the Progress report adopted at the end of November. The report states that the extension of the term to 95 years is considered by some Member States as too long, doubting the capacity of the proposal to reach its objective in a satisfactory and balanced way. However, some of these Member States might accept a more moderate extension. As a response to concerns expressed by some of the Member States that the measure might be discriminatory if only applied to the music sector, the presidency of the Council proposed that the extended term should cover audiovisual performers as well. Concerning the right of session musicians to claim additional annual remuneration and the performers' option to recuperate their rights in the absence of exploitation by the phonogram producer, the presidency has proposed that such rights might not be waived and the "use it or lose it" clause for copyright - where the ownership of forgotten recordings reverts to the performer - cannot be renounced by performers. Discussion on the topic should continue. As to the question of the harmonisation of the method of calculating the term of protection of musical compositions with words, the Presidency suggested the limitation of the scope to musical compositions and lyrics specifically created to constitute a musical composition with words. The question of the period of application is still to be settled. The draft Directive is also considered within the European Parliament. The non-leading Committee for Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) adopted the Emmanouil Angelakas' (EPP-ED - Greece) draft opinion on 2 December 2008. Just a few amendments were adopted, among them the application of the extended term of protection (95 years) not only to music performers but also to audiovisual performers. On 19 January 2009, the Legal Affairs Committee is expected to adopt its report and the Parliament will vote on the proposal in plenary on 18 February 2009. Government signals extension to copyright term (11.12.2008) http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1036431&c=1 Music copyright extension - strings attached (12.12.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/burnham_mccreevy_sound_recording_te… The Council of Europe Presidency PROGRESS REPORT - Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council Directive amending Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the term of protection of copyright and related rights (26.11.2008) http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/08/st16/st16005.en08.pdf Press release - 2910th meeting of the Council - Competitiveness (internal market, industry and research) (1-2.12.2008) http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/intm/10449… EDRigram - Extension of the copyright term for performers and record producers (30.07.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.15/extension-copyright-performers ============================================================ 9. Spanish collective society fined for making clandestine wedding video ============================================================ The Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) has been fined for having placed a private detective in a restaurant in Seville, in 2005, to film a wedding in order to prove that the restaurant was using music for which it had paid no royalties. The court in Seville where the action was heard found that the video presented by SGAE as proof against the restaurant was inadmissible because it was "a clear violation of the constitutional rights to a person's own image" and it was in breach of the privacy of the couple because it had been taken clandestinely. The law requires the "unequivocal consent of the affected person" in the treatment of his (her) personal data. The society was given a 60 101 euro fine, imposed by the Spanish Data Protection Agency. The case has brought up the fact that using private detectives to clandestinely check weddings in search of copyright infringements is a common practice for SGAE. "Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it" said Pedro Farre, SGAE Director. Concerning the fact that its detectives acted clandestinely he stated: "There are times when in order to protect the legal good such type of proofs are necessary". The court also decided that the detective had breached the law of private safety which forbids this type of professionals to use in their investigations "technical means that may infringe the right to honour, intimacy and the right to one's own image". Although SGAE argued that it did not specify to the detective what means to use in his investigation and that filming does not imply the generation of a personal data file, the court decision considered the video as belonging to the personal data category. According to the law, personal data is "all numerical, alphabetical, graphic, photographic, acoustic or any other type of information susceptible of being collected, processed or transmitted referring to an identified or identifiable natural person" as was the case of the wedded couple. The restaurant was however fined 43 179 euro for having used music without paying copyright fees on the basis of other proofs. Farri declared that the Society was going to consider whether to appeal the decision. Secret wedding video ruling is music to ears of privacy groups (15.12.2008) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5342297.ece SGAE will have to pay 60.101 for recording a wedding without authorization(only in Spanish, 8.12.2008) http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/12/08/cultura/1228709280.html SGAE will have to pay a 60.000 euros fine for recording a wedding without permission (only in Spanish, 7.12.2008) http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/12/07/cultura/1228662714.html ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: First FRA Conference on Fundamental Rights ============================================================ On 8 and 9 December 2008, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) held its first Fundamental Rights Conference in Paris. The event examined key issues and challenges related to the freedom of expression. The conference coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was co-organised by the French Ministry of Justice. In his welcoming speech, Jacques Barrot, the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, stressed out the fact that pluralism was a condition sine qua non for freedom of expression, but that there had to be limits in cases when the right to live was affected. Hatred, racism and xenophobia cannot be accepted therefore, a balance of competing rights has to be found. During his speech, Mr. Barrot also announced that a Europol unit for tracking "dangerous websites" would be set up in 2009. Janez Lenarcic, the Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OECD, pointed out the differences in the legal systems of the OECD member states. What in some countries is considered to be part of the freedom of expression in other countries it can be considered to be a hate crime. Furthermore, in some countries ofthe OECD area, that he described as Potjomkin democracies,there are Human Rights problems. Also, the representatives of the Council of Europe, Margaret Killerby, representing the Secretary General, and Ulrika Sundberg, representing the Commissioner for Human rights, stated that anti-terror legislation had a negative impact on the freedom of expression and that these measures on one side and human rights on the other had to be carefully balanced. In the area of the Council of Europe, journalists still face violence for practising their right to freedom of expression. Also their right to receive information anonymously from anyone is often challenged and has to be ensured. In her Keynote speech, the French journalist Florence Aubenas stressed the fact that freedom of expression is not only challenged in distant countries of the CoE and OECD but that this is as well an issue in France. In a recent ranking of countries regarding freedom of expression that was published by Reporters without Borders, France was only ranked 45. A clear sign that the influence of the state over the media is present today in France. During the rest of the conference, five working groups were established, covering some important aspects of the freedom of expression. The working group on challenges to freedom of expression very much focussed on the challenges media and journalists face today. Problems with influences from states and commerce were discussed as well as challenges emerging from the discussion fora of online media and the increased publishing possibilities for the average citizen on the Internet. FRA Fundamental Rights Conference http://fra.europa.eu/fra/index.php?fuseaction=content.dsp_cat_content&catid… (contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi) ============================================================ 11. Recommended Reading ============================================================ A new ENISA report explains the risks of Web 2.0 - photo sharing, wikis, social bookmarking and social networking - and "malware 2.0", a new breed of web-borne infections you can catch just by visiting a web page and gives advice to tackle them. http://www.enisa.europa.eu/pages/02_01_press_2008_12_10_web2.html ============================================================ 12. Agenda ============================================================ 27-30 December 2008 Berlin, Germany 25C3: Nothing to hide The 25th Chaos Communication Congress http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/ 16-17 January 2009, Brussels, Belgium Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference CPDP 2009: Data Protection in A Profiled World? http://www.cpdpconferences.org/ 28 January 2009, Europe-wide 3rd Data Protection Day http://www.coe.int/t/e/legal_affairs/legal_co-operation/data_protection/Dat… 7-8 February 2009, Brussels, Belgium Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) http://www.fosdem.org/2009/ 18-20 March 2009, Athens, Greece WebSci'09: Society On-Line http://www.websci09.org/ 27-29 March 2009, Manchaster, UK Oekonux Conference: Free Software and Beyond The World of Peer Production http://www.oekonux-conference.org/ 29-31 March 2009, Edinburgh, UK Governance Of New Technologies: The Transformation Of Medicine, Information Technology And Intellectual Property" An International Interdisciplinary Conference http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/conference09/ 1-4 June 2009, Washington, DC, USA Computers Freedom and Privacy 2009 Proposal Submissions by 9 January 2009 http://www.cfp2009.org/ 2-3 July 2009, Padova, Italy 3rd FLOSS International Workshop on Free/Libre Open Source Software Paper submission by 31 March 2009 http://www.decon.unipd.it/personale/curri/manenti/floss/floss09.html 13-16 August 2009, Vierhouten, The Netherlands Hacking at Random http://www.har2009.org/ 23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Council: "Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage" Call for papers by 15 January 2009 http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla75/index.htm 10-12 September 2009, Potsdam, Germany 5th ECPR General Conference, Potsdam Section: Protest Politics Panel: The Contentious Politics of Intellectual Property First proposals to be submitted by 1 February 2009 http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/default.asp 16-18 September 2009, Crete, Greece World Summit on the Knowledge Society WSKS 2009 http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/ October 2009, Istanbul, Turkey eChallenges 2009 Call for papers by 27 February 2009 http://www.echallenges.org/e2009/default.asp?page=c4p ============================================================ 13. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 29 members based or with offices in 18 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 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 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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Conference: A Review of Censorship Circumvention Tools
by Poor Richard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

*This event will be webcast. See the link at the bottom to rsvp for the webcast info.*-- PR Leaping over the Firewall: A Review of Censorship Circumvention Tools Time: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 12:00pm- 2:00pm Location: Freedom House 1301 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, USA 20036 Lunch will be provided As the recent shift in political landscape within the Middle East has shown, the Internet is increasingly influencing the way that citizens around the world gather and distribute information. While these changes occur, it is vital that people are aware of how to protect themselves online and how to access information, news, and facts, when the Internet is censored. While there are sites that recognize the effectiveness of circumvention tools, there are none that assess the effectiveness of circumvention tools systematically. Freedom House has used its expertise and relationships with leading academic experts on information technology security, censorship, and software development to conduct a systematic assessment of how censorship circumvention tools perform in practice inside the countries they are designed to serve. Freedom House's Internet Freedom Project Director, Robert Guerra, will join major report contributors Cormac Callanan, director of Ireland-based Aconite Internet Solutions with experience in international computer networks and cybercrime, and Hein Dries-Ziekenheimer, the CEO of VIGILO consult, a Netherlands based consultancy specializing in Internet enforcement, cybercrime, and IT law, to discuss the findings of the report and its implications in the world of Internet privacy and censorship circumvention. The event will be broadcast live over the Internet. A link to the broadcast will be sent out prior to the beginning of the event. Details here : http://goo.gl/VKjLw ----- 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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Conference: A Review of Censorship Circumvention Tools
by Poor Richard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

*This event will be webcast. See the link at the bottom to rsvp for the webcast info.*-- PR Leaping over the Firewall: A Review of Censorship Circumvention Tools Time: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 12:00pm- 2:00pm Location: Freedom House 1301 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, USA 20036 Lunch will be provided As the recent shift in political landscape within the Middle East has shown, the Internet is increasingly influencing the way that citizens around the world gather and distribute information. While these changes occur, it is vital that people are aware of how to protect themselves online and how to access information, news, and facts, when the Internet is censored. While there are sites that recognize the effectiveness of circumvention tools, there are none that assess the effectiveness of circumvention tools systematically. Freedom House has used its expertise and relationships with leading academic experts on information technology security, censorship, and software development to conduct a systematic assessment of how censorship circumvention tools perform in practice inside the countries they are designed to serve. Freedom House's Internet Freedom Project Director, Robert Guerra, will join major report contributors Cormac Callanan, director of Ireland-based Aconite Internet Solutions with experience in international computer networks and cybercrime, and Hein Dries-Ziekenheimer, the CEO of VIGILO consult, a Netherlands based consultancy specializing in Internet enforcement, cybercrime, and IT law, to discuss the findings of the report and its implications in the world of Internet privacy and censorship circumvention. The event will be broadcast live over the Internet. A link to the broadcast will be sent out prior to the beginning of the event. Details here : http://goo.gl/VKjLw ----- 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: [liberationtech] Thoughts on decentralized DNS, and OpenNIC particularly?
by danimoth 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Il giorno gio, 15/03/2012 alle 11.36 -0700, Rohan Dixit ha scritto: > I looked at both namecoin and CJDNS. Looks like namecoin has attracted > most of the developers from the initial project, with CJDNS still > limping along (I'm guessing based on activity here.) > > > Links to the code: > namecoin: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/graphs/impact > > CJDNS: https://github.com/vinced/namecoin/graphs/impact > > > > Could you speak to the structure of namecoin a bit more? Looks like it > uses the "proof-of-work" trick from bitcoin to validate DNS records > (and arbitrary key-value pairs), unless my skimming was totally off. > That's pretty ingenious, for those who are interested I found a great > blog post that serves both as an introduction to Bitcoin and explains > how it could be used to make a distributed DNS. > > > http://paulbohm.com/2011/06/17/bitcoins-value-is-decentralization Namecoin is another currency, based from bitcoin code. But like many crypto things, when you take a "black box" and little modify it, the conseguences could be a complete disaster. Namecoin is flawed and *NOBODY* should consider it anymore. From [1]: 0. Coins are destroyed 1. NetworkFee descreasing for 50 to zero and will be zero in ~80000 block and has no feedback with network activity like difficulty has. 2. Namecoin was designed for free domains and this is its future 3. Developers have to do system intrusion from time to time to avoid collapse or spam hell DIANNA try to use existing bitcoin chain's (as satoshi explained) to do the same thing, but they are designing it carefully. Help them if you can. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62017.0 _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech 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. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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: [liberationtech] Thoughts on decentralized DNS, and OpenNIC particularly?
by danimoth 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Il giorno gio, 15/03/2012 alle 11.36 -0700, Rohan Dixit ha scritto: > I looked at both namecoin and CJDNS. Looks like namecoin has attracted > most of the developers from the initial project, with CJDNS still > limping along (I'm guessing based on activity here.) > > > Links to the code: > namecoin: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/graphs/impact > > CJDNS: https://github.com/vinced/namecoin/graphs/impact > > > > Could you speak to the structure of namecoin a bit more? Looks like it > uses the "proof-of-work" trick from bitcoin to validate DNS records > (and arbitrary key-value pairs), unless my skimming was totally off. > That's pretty ingenious, for those who are interested I found a great > blog post that serves both as an introduction to Bitcoin and explains > how it could be used to make a distributed DNS. > > > http://paulbohm.com/2011/06/17/bitcoins-value-is-decentralization Namecoin is another currency, based from bitcoin code. But like many crypto things, when you take a "black box" and little modify it, the conseguences could be a complete disaster. Namecoin is flawed and *NOBODY* should consider it anymore. From [1]: 0. Coins are destroyed 1. NetworkFee descreasing for 50 to zero and will be zero in ~80000 block and has no feedback with network activity like difficulty has. 2. Namecoin was designed for free domains and this is its future 3. Developers have to do system intrusion from time to time to avoid collapse or spam hell DIANNA try to use existing bitcoin chain's (as satoshi explained) to do the same thing, but they are designing it carefully. Help them if you can. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62017.0 _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech 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. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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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[liberationtech] US National Counterterrorism Center database
by Gregory Foster 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

WSJ (Dec 12) - "U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens" by @JuliaAngwin: [1]http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB100014241278873244783045781716 23040640006-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMzExNDMyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email [2]https://twitter.com/JuliaAngwin Apparently NCTC now has the authority to aggregate databases of information on US citizens and keep it for five years. In the event of reasonable suspicion NCTC can keep the data forever. Even better, they can share aggregated information with foreign governments. HT @csoghoian [3]https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/279264546487672832 ...who also mentioned the ex-NCTC Director now works at Palantir. [4]https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/279089350719967232 gf -- Gregory Foster || [5]gfoster(a)entersection.org @gregoryfoster <> [6]http://entersection.com/ References 1. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142412788732447830457817162304064… 2. https://twitter.com/JuliaAngwin 3. https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/279264546487672832 4. https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/279089350719967232 5. mailto:gfoster@entersection.org 6. http://entersection.com/ -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- 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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