December 29, 2006
NetworkWorld
Hacker: Blu-ray, HD DVD copy protection cracked
By Robert McMillan
A computer hacker claims to have broken the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) encryption specification used to control unauthorized copying on HD-DVD and Blu-ray video players...
By cracking AACS, Muslix64 may have violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits users from circumventing copy-protection tools without the permission of the copyright holder, said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Still, the software seems to have been written out of a legitimate sense of frustration with onerous copy-protection mechanisms, von Lohmann said. "He went out and bought a fancy new product that he thought would improve his experience and despite the fact that he's a legitimate buyer, it didn't work."
December 29, 2006
TechWeb
Microsoft Says No Favorable Coverage Expected In Laptop Giveaway
By Antone Gonsalves
Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices sent expensive laptops as gifts to select bloggers who review technology as part of an effort to solicit "valuable feedback" from the influential writers in the blogosphere, not to encourage favorable coverage, Microsoft says...
Because of the controversy, San Francisco blogger Scott Beale said he would sell the laptop on eBay and donate the proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group focusing on privacy and free speech on the Internet.
December 28, 2006
SFGate.com
Top 10 Sex Stories of 2006
By Violet Blue
9. XXX Goes Down
In March 2005, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) proposed a bill that would require all commercial Web sites with material "harmful to minors" (in other words, sexually explicit content) to move to a .xxx domain within six months of their bill becoming law. Anyone with a vaguely sex-related Web site instantly felt the first frost of the chilling effects that would come from such an Internet red light district. In a Boing Boing post, San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jason Schultz said, "Talk about a misguided attempt at Internet zoning ... also has severe implications for filtering as I'd imagine every .xxx domain would be on the universal black list." But by May 2006 the Register reported .xxx dead in the water, and all the sex writers in Blogistan heaved a collective sigh of relief.
December 28, 2006
Wired News
Hacker Con Submits to Spychips
By Quinn Norton
This year's Chaos Communication Congress opens with a unique opportunity -- your chance to track the movements of a Wired News' reporter on the scene, as well as nearly a thousand other visitors to the annual hacker convention...
Electronic civil liberties pioneer John Perry Barlow opened Wednesday's sessions by relating encounters with law enforcement and '90s-era hackers that led to founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Calling for greater ethics in the hacker community, he says a shift is occurring from the exploratory days of the early net to a present day where hacking looks more and more like organized crime.
December 27, 2006
ArsTechnica
Government may not need warrant to search your e-mail
By Nate Anderson
If you've ever watched late-night TV in the US, odds are good that you've come across Bob, the suburban everyman who goes from zero to hero after taking a product called Enzyte "for natural male enhancement." Steven Warshak, the man behind Enzyte and other dubious concoctions like Avlimil (for women), made a killing hawking the product, but he hasn't been smiling like Bob for some time. That's because the US government thinks his business is illegitimate and has gone after Warshak and his company in court. In the course of the legal battle, the Feds got access to much of Warshak's e-mail without a search warrant, and Warshak complained. Suddenly, the EFF and ACLU found themselves on the side of the Enzyte kingpin, arguing a case that could have major ramifications for every e-mail user in the country.
December 27, 2006
Christian Science Monitor
US creates terrorist fingerprint database
By Warren Richey
The US government is building a massive database designed to identify individual terror suspects from fingerprints on objects such as a tea glass in an Iraqi apartment or a shell casing in an abandoned Al Qaeda training camp...
"It makes it sound as though this will have a limited purpose - terrorism, and a limited scope - non-Americans, but the reality is that the system is not going to be so limited," says Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco. "They will be using it for every kind of law enforcement there is. They will be collecting fingerprints on Americans, and it will be used for every general purpose."
December 21, 2006
Wired News
AT&T and Media Showdown Over Sealed Spy Docs
By Ryan Singel
A federal judge in San Francisco declined to decide today whether to unseal documents at the heart of a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged participation in a warrantless government wiretapping program aimed at Americans' overseas emails and phone calls. Attorneys for Wired News and print organizations argued that documents provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation by former AT&T technician Mark Klein are of public interest.
December 21, 2006
WebProNews
Ten Internet Heroes Of 2006
By Jason Lee Miller
With all the drama on the Internet this year, it was difficult to narrow down the villains list. But the heroes list was harder to make - mostly because there's nothing more subjective than a hero. Subjective or not (and it's not not), there are a few clear standouts, as far as we're concerned...
2. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
For the EFF, it doesn't matter whose rights are possibly violated by someone with more money and power, they've got a friend in the digital age. Non-profit EFF has a legal staff waiting and eager to take on The Man in whatever form he takes.
EFF legal teams have fought against Congress, the DOJ, AOL, AT&T, Verizon, the RIAA, you name it, all in the name of digital rights.
And cheers to them for that.
December 20, 2006
InformationWeek
European Commission, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Want Answers About Border Security Program
By KC Jones
A European Union leader wants answers about a U.S. border security program, while Americans sue for more information about the system...
This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit demanding an urgent and expedited response to a Freedom of Information Act request about the ATS.
December 20, 2006
Wired News
Media Takes on AT&T in Spy Case
By Ryan Singel
News organizations will argue Thursday that documents under seal in a high-profile lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged participation in warrantless surveillance of Americans' phone calls and e-mails should be made public...
Klein provided the pages to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T in January 2006, just a month after President Bush acknowledged the existence of the warrantless eavesdropping program.
December 20, 2006
InformationWeek
Judge To Decide Whether To Unseal Surveillance Program Evidence
By Antone Gonsalves
Plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's surveillance program are heading to court Thursday in an attempt to unseal evidence...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other plaintiffs accuse AT&T of working with the NSA to illegally spy on millions of innocent Americans by eavesdropping without warrants.
December 20, 2006
Red Herring
Judge to Rule on Spy Documents
By Cassimir Medford
The centuries-long debate in the United States as to where individual privacy ends and national security begins will continue in a San Francisco courtroom on Thursday as a judge decides whether evidence offered by a retired AT&T technician in a spying lawsuit should be unsealed.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will also decide whether to reroute two cases that were transferred to his court back to state court. The cases were sent to him in an attempt to consolidate the lawsuits for national security reasons.
December 20, 2006
ArsTechnica
EFF taps e-voting security guru Ed Felten for board
By Jon Stokes
Princeton's Ed Felten will be joining Lawrence Lessig, John Gilmore, Brewster Kahle, and other prominent technology activists, researchers, and scholars on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Felten was previously on the EFF's advisory board, and he was involved in the EFF's anti-DMCA suit against the RIAA in 2001.
Since the RIAA suit at the height of the P2P and DMCA wars, the focus of Felten's research has shifted to other areas of information security, and he has been at the forefront of the information security community's investigations of vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems. So Felten's addition to the EFF's board shows the organization's commitment to countering the threat to democracy posed by e-voting insecurities.
December 20, 2006
CNET
Sony has far to go in rootkit case
By Greg Sandoval
Sony BMG is making amends in California and Texas for secretly loading antipiracy software onto customers' computers. But the record label has a long way to go before putting the public relations nightmare behind it...
"I think that there was a lot of record labels who got carried away with the idea of DRM," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups that filed a class-action suit against Sony last year on behalf of those affected by the antipiracy software. "I don't think many of them stopped to think about the impact to their customers when they used DRM."
December 20, 2006
IDG News Service
Sony settles two rootkit suits for $1.5M
By Robert McMillan
Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay US$1.5 million in penalties to settle lawsuits with two U.S. states over its controversial use of copy protection software...
"They're requiring disclosures to consumers before sale on the CD packaging," said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "I think that's really crucial. Part of the whole background of the rootkit fiasco was that consumers just didn't know what they were getting into."
December 19, 2006
ComputerWorld
EFF sues DHS over travel data-mining system
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, demanding the agency turn over information about an "invasive" data-mining system used to assess the terrorist threat posed by U.S. travelers...
"Individuals have no right to access information about themselves contained in the system, nor request correction of information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely or incomplete," EFF lawyers David Sobel and Marcia Hofmann wrote in their complaint, filed Tuesday in the district court.
December 19, 2006
Austin-American Statesman
DHS Sued Over Alleged Data Mining
By Rebecca Carr
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court today against the Department of Homeland Security to obtain information about a data-mining system it uses on travelers...
"The news of this secret program sparked a nationwide uproar," said David Sobel, senior counsel of at the foundation.
"DHS needs to provide answers, and provide them quickly, to the millions of law-abiding citizens who are worried about this 'risk assessment' score that will follow them throughout their lives," Sobel said.
December 15, 2006
Washingtonpost.com
Unlocking Your Phone Easier Said Than Done?
By Annys Shin
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling saying consumers can unlock their cellphones and take them with them when they switch wireless companies...
Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco last week told Consumer Union's Hear Us Now blog that having the right to break the locks is far different from having the ability to actually do it.
You can pay an outside service to unlock your phone, but von Lohmann said it remains unclear if that's even legal.
"There really isn't anything in the ruling that speaks to that sort of thing," he told CU. "It may be legal or it may not. It's very murky."
December 13, 2006
USA TODAY
Gonzales concentrates outrage on child abuse
By Kevin Johnson
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a free speech advocacy group, has argued that the stored data could unnecessarily expose personal details of users who have no ties to criminal activity.
"It treats everyone as a criminal just in case it might be useful to the government," foundation lawyer Kevin Bankston says. "It's an incredibly invasive measure."
December 11, 2006
CNET
Senator: Illegal images must be reported
By Declan McCullagh
Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law...
"I am concerned that there is a slippery slope here," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?"
December 10, 2006
The Sunday Times
The new terrorist test: chicken or beef?
Think carefully before choosing your in-flight meal next time you plan a trip to the USA, because your choice could make the difference between receiving a welcome to America and being banned from boarding your flight...
David Sobel, of civil-liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the system broke America's own Privacy Act of 1974, warning that it would "become an error-filled repository resulting in scores that will unfairly brand citizens as suspect for their entire lives".
December 9, 2006
Washington Post
Traveler Data Program Defied Ban, Critics Say
By Spencer S. Hsu and Ellen Nakashima
The Department of Homeland Security violated a congressional funding ban when it continued to develop a computerized program that creates risk assessments of travelers entering and leaving the United States, according to lawmakers and privacy advocates...
"The lack of a notice at all was clearly illegal for however many years they claim this was in operation," said David Sobel, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior counsel.
December 8, 2006
National Journal
No Secret... Maybe
By Shane Harris
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says it should not surprise people that for years his department has searched for terrorists among tens of millions of airline passengers, cross-checking travelers' personal data against terrorist watch lists and analyzing them for potential terrorist activity...
The legal mechanism for notifying the public that a government system is using personal information is a Privacy Act notice, usually through the Federal Register, said David Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group. Until November 2, there was no such notice for ATS, Sobel said. "Any use of that system prior to that time is illegal."
December 6, 2006
Christian Science Monitor
Dispute over 'terror scores' for airline travelers
By Alexandra Marks
Do you know your terror score? Think you don't have one? You may, if you've traveled internationally during the past four years. And that is generating a growing controversy both in the United States and abroad...
EFF's lead counsel, David Sobel, notes that prior to the publication of the November notice, the only public mention of ATS said that it was used to target and assess cargo shipments, not people.
"Congress didn't know they were doing this. Even DHS's own inspector general in a report issued this summer didn't realize they were using this to target passengers," he says.
December 6, 2006
New York Times
MySpace.com Moves to Keep Sex Offenders Off of Its Site
By Matt Richtel
MySpace.com, the social networking site, said Tuesday that it was developing technologies that would help combat the use of its site by sexual predators by cross-referencing its more than 130 million users against state databases of registered sex offenders...
Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a free speech and consumer advocacy group, said the technology was a response to growing worries about the extent of the problem of sexual solicitation of minors on the Internet.
Mr. Bankston said the incidents of such solicitation were falling but that fear was causing companies to take steps that could ultimately impinge civil liberties.
"My concern is MySpace is acting based on a level of pressure and fear that may be unreasonable," he said.
December 6, 2006
ZDNet UK
US to create 'risk assessments' of air passengers
By Tom Espiner
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has implemented a data-mining scheme for all passengers travelling to the US, including travellers from the European Union...
"The Government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will follow them throughout their lives," said EFF senior counsel David Sobel.
"If that wasn't frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. Homeland Security needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal."
December 5, 2006
MarketWatch
My-censored-Space in China
By Bambi Francisco
At first blush, it seems ironic that MySpace -- the quintessential publishing platform for democratized user-generated content -- is trying to set up a beachhead in China...
"What happens when an anonymous MySpace China user writes something critical of, for example, China's human rights record?" asked Kurt Opsahl, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specializes in China. "Will MySpace provide identity information upon China's request?"
December 4, 2006
InformationWeek
Senators Question Program That Put Risk Ratings On All Who Cross U.S. Borders
By KC Jones
U.S. senators are vowing to investigate the Department of Homeland Security's newly disclosed system for assigning risk assessments to all travelers trying to enter or leave the United States...
"The government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will follow them throughout their lives," says EFF senior counsel David Sobel. "If that wasn't frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. [DHS] needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal."
December 1, 2006
InformationWeek
EFF Calls Government's American Traveler Program 'Invasive'
By KC Jones
Privacy activists are trying to stop a new Department of Homeland Security program to create and assign risk assessments of American travelers...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said people would have no way to get details about their risk assessment scores or correct false information. The group has requested a delay in the program's start and submitted a request for more details under the Freedom of Information Act. EFF has said ATS may be the government's most invasive and unprecedented data-mining system.
