In The News: November, 2007
U.S. Judge Orders Bush to Release Records of Telecom Firm Contacts
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on a federal court's decision that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence must release records to EFF detailing contacts with telecommunications companies related to a lobbying campaign to immunize the carriers from lawsuits over their role in unlawful government surveillance of millions of Americans.
Souder Says Biometrics The Solution, But Others Curse The Cure
Matthew M. Johnson, Congressional Quarterly
Rep. Mark Souder has become a crusader for biometrics ID cards, but admits the political environment is not yet ripe for making them a part of Americans’ everyday life.
IDs encrypted with images of their holders’ fingerprints and irises would not only be the best tool to identify terrorists, says the Indiana Republican, but would go a long way toward helping people avoid the inconveniences associated with many homeland security initiatives.
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“There are lots and lots of ways that biometrics are not as reliable and infallible as people tend to think they are,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I would argue that the burden of proof is on the proponents of biometrics to show that it is actually going to be workable as security.”
EFF, Others Ask Supreme Court To Reinstate "Patent Exhaustion Doctrine"
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge have joined forces and filed an amicus brief (PDF) in a pending Supreme Court case that could help set limits on the number of times in a single supply chain that a patent holder can profit from its patents.
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The public interest groups that have now filed a brief in the case see this as part of a larger issue: when you buy a product, do you own it? Can you control it? Can you repair it? The EFF, in particular, has fought for consumer ownership in several recent cases, including Lexmark's attempt to restrict the market for refilling its pricey inkjet cartridges.
Internet Subdomain Patent Reexamination
Technology News
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) of a bogus patent on Internet subdomains -- the fourth successful reexamination request from EFF's Patent Busting Project.
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"The hard work of open source developers should not be taken out of the public domain and used to threaten other legitimate innovators," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jason Schultz, who heads EFF's Patent Busting Project. "Fortunately, the open source approach to development helped protect Apache and other web projects by creating the evidence needed to challenge this illegitimate patent."
What To Do When Goliaths Roar?
Randal Stross, New York Times
AS shoppers arm themselves for post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting later this week, they’ll also indulge in another, newer annual tradition: surfing the Web for advance information about Black Friday retail sales. By organizing sale prices from scattered newspaper circulars into a single database, the Internet has made it easy to search for particular items and compare prices — too easy, at least in the eyes of many major retailers.
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Ms. Seltzer oversees the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a Web site that publicizes what it calls corporate misuse of cease-and-desist letters to curb legally protected speech on the Internet. The clearinghouse, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the clinics of seven law schools, posts copies of cease-and-desist letters that Wal-Mart, Macy’s and others send to Web publishers. One aim of the project is to publicly shame companies that casually dash off the letters.
Ruling Blocks Challenge To Wiretapping
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — A federal appeals court said today that secrecy laws forced it to exclude critical evidence about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program from being used by an Islamic charity in a lawsuit even though the mere existence of the program could no longer be considered a “state secret.”
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A lawyer for the group leading that part of the lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in an interview that he was heartened by the appeals court’s clear rejection of the government’s claim everything involved in the eavesdropping program should be considered a state secret. That could bode well for the remaining piece of the case, said the lawyer, Kevin Bankston.
Senate Judiciary Poised To Pass Total Information Awareness Bill
Elliot D. Cohen, BuzzFlash
Amid public outcry, in 2003, Congress defunded the Bush Administration's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, a massive Orwellian technology-driven surveillance and data mining initiative. Now, it is attempting to pass through the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 (S. 2248), a bill that would effectively give legal standing and retroactive legal immunity to a major component of this project.
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According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization based in San Francisco that has filed a class action suit against AT&T, the company had installed a fiber-optic splitter at its San Francisco office that copies all e-mails and other Internet traffic passing through the system and deposits these copies into a separate government computer network. The EFF alleges that the secret NSA rooms, to which the copies are sent, contain "powerful computer equipment connected to separate networks. This equipment is designed to analyze communications at high speed, and can be programmed to review and select out the contents and traffic patterns of communications according to user-defined rules" (emphasis added).
DHS May Be Lessening DHS Regulations
Renee Boucher Ferguson, eWeek
Media reports indicate that the agency is cutting back on some technology requirements and deadlines.
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is among only a few of his peers to come out in support of the Bush administration's push for strict guidelines for state drivers' licenses, and is facing strong opposition in his plan to implement Real ID in the Empire State.
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"There are a lot of issues of how [states] are supposed to do anything. How do you really verify a birth certificate? What does verification mean?" said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
AT&T To Get Tough On Piracy
Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
It wants to incorporate antipiracy technology to protect video content and attract advertisers, but runs the risk of enraging privacy advocates and others.
AT&T (T) may soon beef up its antipiracy arsenal. The biggest U.S. telephone company is considering technology that could give it a heads-up when customers are watching partners' copyrighted video, BusinessWeek has learned. AT&T is in talks with NBC Universal and Walt Disney (DIS) about using the knowhow to guard against illegal distribution of their shows and films.
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AT&T's approach is likely to raise the hackles of privacy advocates, who have already slammed the phone company for its role in helping the Bush Administration tap citizens' phone lines. "They better be very careful," warns Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is serious, serious stuff, to basically invade the privacy of all of your subscribers."
Yahoo May Be A Moral Pygmy, But Congress Is Hardly Better
Vindu Goel, San Jose Mercury News
Tuesday’s congressional hearing about Yahoo turning over information about two dissidents to the Chinese government got me all riled up — and not at Yahoo.
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But Congress should think hard about how it’s undermining civil rights here at home before getting all holier-than-thou on U.S. companies trying to figure out how to do business in China, a place where the government’s power can be both murky and threatening.
“I wish Congress would put the practices domestically under the same magnifying glass,” said Danny O’Brien, international outreach coordinator at Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that has advocated for privacy rights around the globe. “This is an inconsistent position.”
The Advertiser Over Your Shoulder
Brock Read, The Chronicle
When they warn students about the perils of social networking, college officials often point out that prospective employers pore over profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And the sites themselves aren’t shy about doing the same.
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The social networks are going public with their microtargeting strategies just a week after the Federal Trade Commission held a hearing to consider whether it should regulate online advertising more aggressively. Privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology had asked the commission to create a “Do Not Track” registry that would prohibit companies from logging people’s Web usage for advertising purposes. (Facebook officials showed up at the hearing to discuss their privacy policies.)
Privacy Advos Demand 'Do Not Track' List For Websites
Joe Fay, The Register
A coalition of US privacy organisations has demanded the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set up a "do not track" list to allow consumers to surf the web without having their behaviour monitored, warehoused, and mined by marketeers.
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The coalition, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Centre for Democracy and Technology, has demanded customers be able to opt out of being tracked by advertisers, just as US consumers can sign up to a do not call list to escape telemarketers.
