US Judge orders a person to divulge her password

January 27, 2012 — xanthippa

This is an interesting story with wide-ranging implications.

Police suspected a woman of fraud and, with a warrant, siezed her computers.  One of these computers was password protected and running PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) security software so the police IT experts were not able to ese the usual back doors to crack it.  The police believed that this computer contained data that would incriminate their suspect, Ramona Fricosu.

What to do?

The Colorado police went to a judge and got an order compelling Ms. Fricosu to reveal the password to the police.

This is highly problematic, on several fronts.  The PopSci article quotes the DOJ’s :

“Failing to compel Ms. Fricosu amounts to a concession to her and potential criminals (be it in child exploitation, national security, terrorism, financial crimes or drug trafficking cases) that encrypting all inculpatory digital evidence will serve to defeat the efforts of law enforcement officers to obtain such evidence through judicially authorized search warrants, and thus make their prosecution impossible.”

The other side – both the defense and the civil liberties groups whose attention was turned to this case – has, in my never-humble-opinion, a much more solid position:

“The Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination is not necessarily a right to prevent you from giving bad things over to the government, but you are protected from disclosing your thoughts,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in this case. “We argued that providing access to the contents is the equivalent to her ‘emptying the thoughts of her mind,’ because it would require her password.”

What a can of worms this one is…

Thoughts?

Posted in freedoms, technology. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »

You’ve got to fight for your right to jailbreak

January 26, 2012 — xanthippa

Imagine you buy a cake mix and then don’t follow the recipe on the box.  You could risk ‘sub-optimal results’ – but that is it.

How different would our world be if you were also facing jail time?

What if not following the manufacturer’s instruction – even just to add chocolate chips to the mix – meant that you could be arrested and criminally charged?

Well, that is actually quite similar to what used to happen to people who used their electronic devices in slightly different ways than what the manufacturer said they should.  For various reasons, the manufacturers of electronic devices argued that even though a person has purchased and 100% owns an electronic device, they are not allowed to add the ‘chocolate chips’ (like, say, Linux) to ‘the cake mix’ in a process so persecuted, it has been dubbed ‘jailbreaking’.

Why are the manufacturers opposed to this?  It really just boils down to a loss of control over their customer, making it harder for the companies to spy on their customers to obtain loads of data they could monetize…

Luckily, consumer (we really should say ‘citizen’) groups have won this battle:  jailbreaking smartphones became OK through an exemption in the DMCA.

A temporary exemption.

Which is about to run out…

bunnie Huang, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has drafted a letter and a petition to extend the jailbreaking exemption, both in time and in scope:

‘Three years ago, the Copyright Office agreed to create an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so that folks could jailbreak their smartphones. But that exemption is about to expire. We need you to renew that exemption and expand it to cover jailbreaking gadgets with similar computation potential. These are all siblings to the PC, yet unlocking their potential as versatile and powerful computers is burdened with legal murkiness.’

You can sign the petition here.

Unless, of course, you don’t think people should be allowed to add chocolate chips to their cake mix…

 

Posted in freedoms, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Michael Geist: The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada

January 24, 2012 — xanthippa

SOPA may appear to be officially dead, but that does not mean that the lobbyists will not try to convince legislators to sneak SOPA-style provisions into other legislation:  whether as bits attached to other bills in the US, or trying to incorporate aspects of it into laws of other countries.  We must remail vigilant!

That is exactly the message from Michael Geist:

‘While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the “enabler provision”to target a wider range of websites. ‘

…

‘The music industry is unsurprisingly leading the way, demanding a series of changes that would make Bill C-11 look much more like SOPA. ‘

…

‘Several lobby groups also want language similar to that found in the infamous Section 103 of SOPA. That provision, which spoke of sites “primarily designed or operated for the purpose of…offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates” infringement, raised fears that it could be used to shut down mainstream sites such as YouTube.’

This is something we must stay on top of!

Posted in technology. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Technorati: List of Sites Going Dark Over SOPA Today

January 18, 2012 — xanthippa

As you may have heard, many sites are going ‘dark’ today over SOPA today.

 

Technorati has the list – and instructions on how you can, too!

‘Just as they’ve been warning for a few weeks now, a variety of websites, some small and others large in scope and influence, have shut down their virtual doors today in response to the possible passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as SOPA.

The controversial legislation, before the House of Representatives, has caused nothing less than outrage from Internet service providers and their customers. The legislation, meant to stop companies from copying, or “pirating” content or software from others and reselling it, has been seen by many as over-reaching, a “sprawling new regime” of laws which will “stifle investment” and further “chill free speech” across the Globe.’

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EFF: U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship

January 8, 2012 — xanthippa

The full article is at Electronic Frontier Foundation:

‘ Moreover, criminalizing, or even trying to criminalize a neutral communications service like Twitter would set a dangerous precedent –like criminalizing pens and pencils or typewriters and computers based on what people choose to say when using them.’

…

‘Twitter is right to resist.  If the U.S. were to pressure Twitter to censor tweets by organizations it opposes, even those on the terrorist lists, it would join the ranks of countries like India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Syria, Uzbekistan, all of which have censored online speech in the name of “national security.”  And it would be even worse if Twitter were to undertake its own censorship regime, which would have to be based upon its own investigations or relying on the investigations of others that certain account holders were, in fact, terrorists.’

This is the true test of our committment to the freedom of speech:  do we deny it to those who are despicable scum?

Who is to know if you yourself will, one day, be defined to be ‘despicable scum’ by the powers that be?

Some things are non-negotiable.

Freedom of speech is one of these non-negotiables!

Posted in freedoms, technology. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

GoDaddy: a case study in how democracy is being lost

December 29, 2011 — xanthippa

December 29th, 2011, is the official ‘Boycott GoDaddy Day’:  everyone is being encouraged to move any domain names they may have with GoDaddy

Why GoDaddy?

Let me count the ways…

Yes, GoDaddy has backtracked on their support of SOPA – but this is more than just a case of ‘too little, too late’.

GoDaddy actually helped draft SOPA – and is already one of the go-to companies when the US government  (long before SOPA ever becomes a law) wants to blacklist websites:

“That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.”

Yes – right now, long before SOPA, a judge had ordered that a website be transferred to GoDaddy in order for it to make it easier to blacklist them – following a court proceeding where the accused may not even be notified until after the ruling is made.

(Aside:  this shows that the stated goal of SOPA – to protect copyrights from pirating – is unnecessary, as all of this is already being accomplished under current laws.  The scales of justice are already very strongly tipped towards the copyright holder and against regular citizens – SOPA would not only tip them even further, it would destroy the internet as we know it.  If, say, one copyright holder complained that one single blogger at WordPress were to publish a link on their blog that led to a home movie of their kid singing a (copyrighted) pop song, under SOPA, the whole of WordPress and all the innocent blogs on it would be blacklisted!!!!  Yes – this is what life under SOPA would be, and not just in the US because the effects would be internet-wide!)

It seems GoDaddy is a willing tool at best, an active collaborator in the process of oppressing people without just process at worst.  This is the type of behaviour which enables totalitarian governments to keep their populace ‘under control’!

It is easy to see why it is so very easy for people to hate GoDaddy – even before one considers their idiotic commercials or their CEO’s weird hobby of shooting and killing elephants…

In other words, GoDaddy is a poster child for the collusion of government and business – the result of which is that government policy is increasingly shaped by the concerns (and thus passes laws to the benefit of) of a smaller and smaller circle of businesses.  This leaves the citizenry unable to affect political change, since legislators of all stripes are dependent on these corporate interests to raise sufficient funds.

Have you ever heard of the ‘four boxes’ necessary for constitutional democracy to function?

  • Soap box: A box you stand on in the street trying to explain your views to the public. Figuratively, building public opinion for your case.
  • Ballot box: Public, free, democratic elections. If the laws don’t work, and the elected representatives don’t get it, replace them.
  • Jury box: If no public representatives get it, neither the elected nor those available to elect, the second to last line of defense is the judicial system, which can overturn laws that go against the most fundamental rights.
  • Ammo box: If the system has been so thoroughly corrupted that the entire establishment is acting as one, and it is not possible to change the laws to safeguard fundamental liberties, then only one option remains.

Think about this while keeping in mind the lessons of SOPA:

  • Our soap box is being taken away on the internet using anti-piracy and anti-child-predator laws so badly written that once passed, they can be used to ‘disappear’ any voice on the internet the government does not like – at the same time as anti-terrorism laws coupled with classifying even non-violent protesters as ‘low-grade terrorists’  and the rise of anti-blasphemy legislation is stripping our rights to speak our minds in public.
  • Our ballot box has been made irrelevant:  the political process has been so twisted that now, in order to get elected, governments are less reliant on the citizenry than they are on an ever-narrowing circle of corporate and special interests.  We, the regular people, no longer believe that it makes any difference whom we vote for, because all the politicians are responding to the needs of this circle,, not to the citizens.  THAT is why the voter turnouts are falling so rapidly:  ordinary people believe that the ballot box has been lost to irrelevance…
  • The Jury box:  that is where we are now!  We are now relying on the last of the checks and balances – the judiciary – to protect us.  But, if the above-linked ruling and the Austrian ruling against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff are any indication, we are quickly but surely loosing our third box, on both sides of the big pond!
  • Which inevitably leaves us with the very last box:  the ammo box…  This is not something I would like to see happen, but we must never forget that all our rights exist only as long as we are prepared to take up arms to defend them…which is why there is such a direct link between how oppressive a government is and how much it wishes to disarm its citizens.

So, how did we get from the GoDaddy boycott to taking up arms in defense of our innate rights?

GoDaddy has highlighted just how close we are to having lost our first three boxes.

It has highlighted just how high the stakes are.

It has shown us just how hard we have to fight so that our society does not devolve to that fourth box!

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society, technology, war. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were found responsible for 9/11 attacks

December 28, 2011 — xanthippa

Bloomberg reports:

“In Havlish,   et   al.   v.   bin   La den,   et   al. , Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran’s agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (“MOIS”), and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11.  “

This is all well and good, but what does this truly mean?

Will the representatives of the Iranian regime who enter the U.S.A. be arrested and held accountable?

Will they – at least – be expelled from the US and will all representatives of the Government of Iran be prevented from entering the US, including to attend the UN, ehich is physically located there?

Because if they are not then what is the point of even going through with this exercise?

Posted in religion, society, war. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The 2011 year roundup from Michael Geist

December 27, 2011 — xanthippa

Michael Geist takes a look at technology laws in 2011 from A to Z.

Readers of this blog may be familiar with some, like:

“B is for Baglow v. Smith, an Ontario Superior Court decision which ruled that comments on a blog should not necessarily give rise to a claim in defamation, when the person alleging defamation has a right of reply in the same blog.”

Well worth bookmarking for future reference…

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The power of your fingertips

December 23, 2011 — xanthippa

Improving the internet, one click at a time!

GoDaddy is a company that hosts domain names.  (If you have trouble remembering them, their most memorable ads show Danica Patrick, a race car driver, claiming she is a ‘GoDaddy girl’.)  GoDaddy also vocally suported SOPA – the oppressive Stop Online Piracy Act  that would not only give the US government unprecedented warantless surveilance powers but would also extend their legal reach far beyond their borders, violationg (among others) Canadian territorial jurisdiction.

(Yes, SOPA would actually give the US government the power to warantlessly monitor all internet communication in domains within the North American sector, including all internal emails of the Canadian government.  And that is just the tip of the proverbial ice-berg…  It is being presented as a copyright protection act, but the way it is written will do little to protect copyright while givving unprecedented tools of oppression into the hands of US government and select large corporations.)

So, GoDaddy says it could not understand why good, law-abiding people would not support SOPA…

Reddit was not impressed:  SOPA will definitely cause injury to the online community – so adding an insult to it did not strike Reddit as cricket.  They called for a boycot of GoDaddy and advocated that people move their domains to other sites.

The news spread through the online community like wildfire!

Immediatelly, these ‘other sites’ publicly announced their opposition to SOPA – and began offering ‘special deals’ for domains being moved from GoDaddy to themselves.

GoDaddy has announced that it no longer supports SOPA…

Is it a case of too little, too late?

It is nice to see that regular people can indeed have an impact.

And let’s hope the anti-SOPA momentum keeps building!

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

An appeal for support of the plight of US online gambling sites facing persecution by the US government

December 22, 2011 — xanthippa

At times, I come accross interesting information on topics on which I do not consider myself qualified to comment on.  The situation faced by online gambling sites in the USA and the actions of the US government in this ‘legal gray a area’ falls into this category.

However, as I have written about various abuses of government authority, especially in the areas concerning the internet and electronic privacy, I have privately received an article about this topic from PokerCanada with a request to publish it. Without making a judgment on this specific situation one way or another, I present it to you for your consideration:

Description: The government’s war on online poker rages on, with a legal maze of regulations to hit online poker providers hard.

It’s been a tough few years for the world of American online poker. With some of biggest US sites having been seized by the FBI, it would appear that the government sure has made a pretty penny on what online poker fans see as a great loss.

The United States Department of Justice have been cracking down on online poker since 2006, but this vendetta really hit the headlines in April of this year when US investigators shut down and charged three of the biggest and best online poker websites in the world: Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and PokerStars. Not only were the founders of these 3 online poker giants said to be facing a whopping 20 years in jail if they were found guilty to be in breach of US money laundering and anti-gambling law, but they were all ordered to repay $3 billion to cover the “illegal gambling profits”. The US Department of Justice also allege that these companies masqueraded the money earned from U.S. poker players as payments of jewellery and golf balls.

The fact that these online poker sites were hit so very hard with such a massive fee sparked online poker fans worldwide to be extremely suspicious of this battle on online gambling suppliers. Take the crackdown of the Wachovia Bank for example. Though alleged to be involved in a serious drug-smuggling ring, they were fined only $160 million. This may very well be due to the government’s attitude regarding online gambling rather than a ploy to make titanic amounts of money, but online gambling fans tend not to see it this way.

However, while some online poker sites have been seized by the FBI, legislation surrounding online gambling is still very much of a “grey area”, and fans of the 3 aforementioned online poker venues remain strangely optimistic. They believe that their poker favourites will beat the charges and business will continue as normal. Understandable, considering Full Tilt Poker expect to be cleared of all charges, with PokerStars conveying the same optimistic attitude. The fact remains that there is a LOT of legal tape surrounding gambling in the US and indeed Canada, so even if these online poker giants do have all charges against them dropped, they will need to adhere to the government’s labyrinth of rules and regulations.

Posted in technology. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »
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