(5.11.2013)

Public debate about the bulk collection of U.S. citizens’ data by the NSA has focused largely on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, through which the government obtains court orders to compel American telecommunications companies to turn over phone data. But Section 215 is a small part of the picture and does not include the universe of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons authorized under Executive Order 12333.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to make a critical decision about whether Internet providers will be allowed to discriminate against certain websites. The issue is network neutrality—the principle that Internet providers must treat all data that travels over their networks equally. On Tuesday, EFF filed comments with the FCC to weigh-in on this critical debate.

EFF has filed the final brief in its dispute with the government over evidence preservation in Jewel v. NSA, one of our ongoing lawsuits against mass surveillance. As the brief explains, the government has admitted to destroying years of evidence of its mass spying, and this destruction continues today. In fact, at an emergency hearing in June, the government claimed that it was incapable of complying with a court order to preserve evidence relating to the mass interception of Internet communications it is conducting under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

(22.03.2014) Wer die Verantwortlichen als Kriminelle bezeichnet, wird schnell des »Anti-Amerikanismus« bezichtigt. An den Tatsachen ändert dies nichts: Obama und Co. sind Anzug tragende Massenmörder. Sie ermorden die einen Massen mit Kalkül, während sie andere Massen vor den Kameras belügen und betrügen.

Verizon tried to spin the story back in its favor last week, with a blog post about „the congestion myth,“ in which it claimed that the real problem was how Netflix chose to route its traffic to Verizon. It presented the following nifty chart, claiming that there was no congestion at all on Verizon‘s network, and saying that it was all about how Netflix was choosing to deliver its traffic to Verizon‘s network:

The good folks over at the EFF have a detailed overview of a new report from the UN, which has basically found that mass surveillance, similar to that which is carried out by the NSA and GCHQ can often violate international law. The full report is just 16 pages, but the EFF version highlights some of the key lines. The biggest is the report‘s rejection of the whole „collect the haystack“ approach to mass surveillance. The UN report makes it clear that this is not a reasonable approach, especially when it is not shown to be „necessary and proportionate.“

The top United Nations human rights official today warned of the “disturbing” lack of transparency in governmental surveillance policies and practices, “including de facto coercion of private sector companies to provide sweeping access to information and data relating to private individuals without the latter’s knowledge or consent.”

Since the death of SOPA/PIPA two and a half years ago, Hollywood (and Congress) have tiptoed lightly over any proposed copyright reform, insisting that they‘ve learned their lesson and that they won‘t try to bring back SOPA. Of course, with the big comprehensive copyright reform effort going on in DC, you can totally expect that the legacy copyright industry will do its best to put in place the parts of SOPA that it most wanted. That process appears to have kicked off in earnest last week, with the IP Section of the American Bar Association releasing a White Paper entitled A Call For Action For Online Piracy And Counterfeiting Legislation. I should warn you that, according to the genius intellectual property experts at the ABA‘s IP Section, clicking on that link may be a violation of their copyright.

This statement is extremely important, because it lays bare the fallacy at the heart of the „collect it all“ approach of surveillance practised by GCHQ and the NSA. It conveniently ignores the fact that until recently this was not how the intelligences services worked, for the simple reason that it was impossible to gather communications on such a vast scale (for example, opening all letters, or tapping all phones), or to search through them.