In The News: October, 2007
Cable Vendors Could Face Lawsuits for P2P Blocking
Egan Orion, The Inquirer
WE'VE SEEN well informed speculation by industry insiders that Comcast is not the only cable broadband provider engaged in blocking Peer-to-Peer (P2P) uploads as a "network management" tactic to hold down its bandwidth costs and so increase profits.
If so, they might also end up facing possible future class-action lawsuits by customers or an organisation acting in the public interest, which was mentioned as a likely development at a Cnet bog yesterday.Fred von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorney, said " based on [our] own testing, as well as what has been reported, it seems clear that Comcast's techniques are bad for its customers and bad for innovation generally." ... While the EFF is still studying the matter for now, von Lohmann said it has "already been contacted by attorneys who are considering legal action against Comcast."
Comcast Admits Delaying Some Traffic
Peter Svensson, Associated Press, USA Today
NEW YORK — Comcast on Tuesday acknowledged "delaying" some subscriber Internet traffic, but said any roadblocks it puts up are temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed the AP's findings with its own tests — including spotting forged messages sent by Comcast's computers to shut down connections.
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"These are the kinds of software bugs you get when you have ISPs messing around with hacking techniques to get some applications running on their networks and not others," said EFF's Eckersley, who is himself a Comcast subscriber.
Comcast To Face Lawsuits Over BitTorrent Filtering
Chris Soghoian, CNET News.com
The blogosphere is abuzz over an Associated Press investigative article this past Friday on the subject of Comcast's BitTorrent filtering. Briefly, there were a number of articles in early September which alleged that Comcast was using some fairly sneaky techniques to throttle BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast, of course, denied any such behavior. It took a month and a half, but both a mainstream media news organization as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tested and confirmed the previously reported claims. It turns out that Comcast is not only throttling BitTorrent, but Gnutella and, strangely, Lotus Notes are also suffering.
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I discussed this issue with Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Von Lohmann stated that "based on (our) own testing, as well as what has been reported, it seems clear that Comcast's techniques are bad for its customers and bad for innovation generally. The fact that Comcast's efforts are reportedly interfering with BitTorrent, Gnutella and Lotus Notes communications makes it clear that they are not narrowly targeted at particular users or protocols."
GPS is Turning Cellphones into Social Mapping Devices
Laura M. Holson, International Herald Tribune
Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?
But such services point to a new truth of modern life: If GPS made it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder to hide.
"There are massive changes going on in society, particularly among young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco.
"We don't know what the implications are," he added. "We seem to be getting into a period where people are closely watching each other, and there are privacy risks we haven't begun to grapple with."
Nacchio Affects Spy Probe
Andy Vuong, The Denver Post
Recent revelations about former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio's classified-information defense, which went unheard during his insider-trading trial, are feeding the furor over the government's warrantless-wiretapping program.
Nacchio alleges the National Security Agency asked Qwest to participate in a program the phone company thought was illegal more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to court documents unsealed at the request of The Denver Post.Nacchio's claims could affect President Bush's controversial efforts to grant legal immunity to large telecommunications companies such as AT&T, which has been sued in connection with the surveillance program.
"The Nacchio materials suggesting that the NSA had sought telco cooperation even before 9/11 undermines the primary argument for letting the phone companies off the hook, which is the claim that they were simply acting in good faith to help the president fight the terrorists after 9/11," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group.
"The fact that these materials suggest that cooperation with the program was tied to the award of certain government contracts also contradicts their (phone companies') claims that they were simply acting in good faith to help fight the terrorists when it appears that they may have been motivated by financial concerns instead," Bankston said.
Studies Criticize Comcast For Upload Tampering
Wayne Freedman, ABC-7 San Francisco
Comcast is getting plenty of criticism after two separate studies found evidence the Internet giant is interfering with computers involved in peer-to-peer file sharing.
"The most common belief about this is they think file share users are using up too much of their network capacity," said Seth Shoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"You know when you're making a telephone call, the phone company doesn't pop up in the middle of the call and start advertising to you or say 'we think you made too many calls today, so we're going to start adding some noise to your conversation," said Shoen.
Piracy Fuels Brazil's Tecno Scene
Michael Astor, San Francisco Chronicle
This steamy city at the mouth of the Amazon river is a haven for pirates — the digital kind who copy CDs and DVDs by the thousands for illegal sidewalk sales. Belem is also home to one of Brazil's most thriving pop scenes: tecnobrega, a musical movement that's expanding exponentially thanks to musicians and producers who see copying as a marketing tool rather than intellectual property theft.
"It's this really gritty tacky, sleazy jungle music. It's just genius," said John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates protecting free speech in the digital age... "It's making it possible for every kid in Brazil to know their songs by the time they turn five," Barlow said. "It's actually good for a lot of money — you give it away and it will come back. That's literally true with information, not with property."
The Truth About Telecom Amnesty
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
Today I interviewed Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the lead counsel in the pending litigation against AT&T, alleging that AT&T violated multiple federal laws by providing (without warrants) unfettered access for the Bush administration to all telephone and Internet data concerning its customers...
I found this interview extremely illuminating, and it reveals just how much misinformation is being disseminated by amnesty advocates.I don't think it takes a lot of thought to wonder: "huh, the FISA law says that the exclusive means by which the Government can get information is either by a warrant or a short-term certification from the Attorney General in an emergency situation. Huh - do either of these two things justify ongoing wholesale surveillance of all of our customers for five years and counting?"
The answer to that has to be "no." I don't think you even need a law degree to figure that one out.
Verizon Freely Gave Phone Data to Feds Without Court Orders
Ellen Nakashima, Dallas News
Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.
The company said it does not determine the emergency requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations.
Last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group in San Francisco, obtained records through a FOIA lawsuit showing that the FBI sought data from telecom companies about the calling habits of suspects and their associates, The New York Times reported.
Pentagon Review Faults Bank Record Demands
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times
Documents obtained by EFF through the Freedom of Information Act provided a glimpse into the Defense Department's use of National Security Letters to collect bank and credit information in certain Pentagon investigations. The documents revealed that the Defense Department has made systematic errors in its use of NSLs, much like those that the FBI has committed over the past few years.
FCC Takes a Pass on NSA Privacy Probe
Roy Mark, eWeek.com
The Federal Communications Commission will not pursue an investigation of telecoms cooperation with the National Security Agencys wiretapping activities. According to Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, in Washington, such a probe would "pose an unnecessary risk of damage to national security."
In a related action involving the controversy, the Electric Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, announced on Oct. 5 it had hired two veteran Washington lobbyists to try to block amnesty for telecoms collaborating with the NSAs warrantless spying activities. The EFF is lead counsel in Hepting v. AT&T, one of many lawsuits aiming to hold telecommunications companies accountable for allegedly violating their customers privacy rights.
On Sept. 27, the EFF filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, demanding any records of a telecom industry lobbying campaign to block lawsuits over their compliance with illegal electronic surveillance.
"The White House is publicly calling for immunity for the telecoms, while a recent Newsweek article detailed a secretive lobbying campaign to block the lawsuits," Marcia Hofmann, an EFF attorney, said in a statement. "If there are back room deals going on at the Department of Justice, then Americans need to know about them now, before Congress passes any law that gets the telecom companies off the hook."
For a Song
Chin Wong, Manila Standard Today
“FOR a song” is a phrase that means “cheaply”—but don’t tell that to Jammie Thomas. Last week, the 30-year-old unwed mother from Duluth, Minnesota, was found guilty of violating music industry copyrights and ordered to pay a total of $222,000 to six record companies for songs she had shared on her computer using Kazaa, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network.
“Despite today’s verdict, tens of millions of Americans will continue sharing billions of songs, just as they have since Napster let the P2P genie out of the bottle nearly eight years ago,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said after the Thomas decision. “Every lawsuit makes the recording industry look more and more like King Canute, vainly trying to hold back the tide.”
EFF to Weigh in on First RIAA Downloading Trial Appeal
David Kravets, Wired News
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is litigating the government's secret wiretap program, said Monday it will lend a legal hand to Jammie Thomas, the nation's first pirate to lose a federal jury trial in a case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Fred von Lohmann, an EFF attorney, tells THREAT LEVEL that the San Francisco-based advocacy group will file a friend-of-the-court brief with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief might argue two points, surrounding Jury Instruction No. 15, which says: "The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from he copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown."
Amazon's Unlocked Music Still Might Get You Sued
Brier Dudley, Seattle Times
When Amazon.com launched its MP3 store last week, I thought the Seattle company had found the perfect formula for selling digital music.
Does that mean it's time to say goodbye to the neighborhood record store?
I'd say no, after reading the fine print in Amazon's user agreement. That's when I decided to keep buying CDs, maybe forever.
Concerned that I was being paranoid, I floated this past Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, a public-interest advocacy group.
He was surprised by the language and said it appears to enable record companies to pursue a breach of contract if, for instance, you loaned your mother an iPod containing MP3s bought from Amazon.
I Won’t Surrender to Download Bullies, Says Mother Fighting the Music Giants
Chris Ayres, Times Online
A single mother has made legal history by forcing America’s biggest record companies into a costly and potentially embarrassing trial after she refused to pay an out-of-court settlement for alleged music piracy...
Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer who specialises in intellectual property at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, said that the RIAA’s legal campaign was having little effect. “I think by most any metric you choose, it’s been a failure,” he said.
Darpa Hatches Plan for Insect Cyborgs to Fly Reconnaissance
R. Colin Johnson, EE Times
Cyborg insects with embedded microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) will run remotely controlled reconnaissance missions for the military, if its '"HI-MEMS" program succeeds... In a HI-MEMS world, cyborg bugs would patrol, gather intelligence, penetrate secret meetings, track targets, retrieve samples and more--all predicted by Easton's 1990 book.
However, also founded in 1990 was the watch-dog group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, San Francisco), which has more than a little trepidation about Darpa realizing Easton's dreams of cyborg bugs conducting ubiquitous surveillance.
"Anyone who is just a little bit creative can imagine both useful and non-productive applications of remote-controlled animals--especially if ordinary people will mistake them for normal animals," said Peter Eckersley, staff technologist at the EFF.
New Fingerprint Tech Could Mean Never Losing Your Keys Again
By Alexis Madrigal, Wired News
Scientists in Great Britain hope you may never have to worry about losing your keys or forgetting your password again.
University of Warwick researchers have unveiled a new fingerprint recognition technology, which allows them to "unwarp" distorted prints...
No story about biometrics is complete without mentioning privacy concerns. As they say in business, if you can measure it, you can manage it. And not everyone wants to be managed, especially if the government or a big corporation has the calipers. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation summed it up, "Biometric technology is inherently individuating and interfaces easily to database technology, making privacy violations easier and more damaging."
FBI Surveillance Capability More Extensive Than Once Thought
JBS Staff, John Birch Society
Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation have provided disturbing details about the extent of the FBI’s ability to monitor the communications of American citizens.
