[silk] Fwd: Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian b Centre for Internet and Society

Udhay Shankar N udhay at pobox.com
Sat Aug 25 20:05:21 PDT 2012


For those in Bangalore, this sounds like fun.

Udhay

http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/role-of-us-tech-companies-in-govt-surveillance

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by
Christopher Soghoian

Christopher Soghoian will deliver a lecture on the role US tech
companies play in assisting government surveillance at the Centre for
Internet & Society office in Bangalore on August 27, 2012.

When Aug 27, 2012
from 05:00 PM to 07:00 PM
Where The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore


Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the
most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They
all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other
private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse,
firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to
assist the government. How many government requests does your ISP get
for its customers' communications each year? How many do they comply
with? How many do they fight? How much do they charge for the
surveillance assistance they provide? Who knows? Most companies have a
strict policy of not discussing such topics.

The differences in the privacy practices of the major players in the
telecommunications and internet applications market are significant.
Some firms retain identifying data for years, while others retain no
data at all; some voluntarily provide the government access to user
data, while other companies refuse to voluntarily disclose data
without a court order; some companies charge government agencies when
they request user data, while others disclose it for free. For an
individual, later investigated by the police or intelligence services,
the data retention practices adopted by their phone company or email
provider can significantly impact their freedom.

Unfortunately, although many companies claim to care about end-user
privacy, and some even that they compete on their privacy features,
none seem to be willing to compete on the extent to which they assist
or resist the government in its surveillance activities. Because
information about each firms' practices is not publicly known,
consumers cannot vote with their wallets, and pick service providers
that best protect their privacy.

This talk will pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding these practices.
Based upon a combination of Freedom of Information Act requests, off
the record conversations with industry lawyers, and investigative
journalism, the practices of many of these firms will be revealed.

________________________________

Christopher's Personal Experience

In the year 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided
Christopherbs home at 2.00 a.m. seizing his personal documents and
computers. Two attorneys, Stephen Braga and Jennifer Granick came to
his defence. With their expert assistance, Christopher was able to get
back his possessions within three weeks, and FBIbs criminal and TSAbs
civil investigations were closed without any charges being filed.

Jennifer Granick came to Christopherbs assistance once again (joined
by Steve Leckar) in 2010 after the Federal Trade Commissionbs
Inspector General investigated Christopher for using his government
badge to attend a closed-door surveillance industry conference. It was
at that event that Christopher recorded an executive from wireless
carrier bSprintb bragging about the eight million times his company
had obtained GPS data on its customers for law enforcement agencies in
the previous years.

To know more, read Christopher Soghoianbs dissertation titled "The
Spies We Trust: Third Party Service Providers and Law Enforcement
Surveillance". [PDF, 1056 Kb]

________________________________

About Christopher Soghoian

Christopher Soghoian is a privacy researcher and activist, working at
the intersection of technology, law and policy. He is a Principal
Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst at the American Civil Liberties
Union and is based in Washington, D.C.

Soghoian completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University in 2012, which
focused on the role that third party service providers play in
facilitating law enforcement surveillance of their customers. In order
to gather data, he has made extensive use of the Freedom of
Information Act, sued the Department of Justice pro se, and used
several other investigative research methods. His research has
appeared in publications including the Berkeley Technology Law Journal
and been cited by several federal courts, including the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals.

Between the years, 2009-2010, he was the first ever in-house
technologist at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and
Identity Protection, where he worked on investigations of Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace and Netflix. Prior to joining the FTC, he co-created
the Do Not Track privacy anti-tracking mechanism now adopted by all of
the major web browsers.

He is a TEDGlobal 2012 Fellow, was an Open Society Foundations Fellow
between the years, 2011-2012, and was a Student Fellow at the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University between 2008 and
2009.

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