Category: Electronic Rights

State Electronic Surveillance Laws

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National Conference of State Legislatures:

Electronic surveillance is also examined in a brief
that is part of NCSL’s series, “States
Respond to Terrorism,” which surveys states’ efforts to protect democracy
from future terrorist attacks.

Electronic Surveillance involves the traditional laws on wiretapping–any
interception of a telephone transmission by accessing the telephone signal
itself–and eavesdropping–listening in on conversations without the consent
of the parties.

Following the tragedies of September 11, there is growing
support to give law enforcement agencies more power to tap into private
communications to thwart further acts of terrorism by monitoring private
electronic communications. State and federal policymakers face the challenge
of balancing security needs via electronic surveillance against the potential
erosion of individual privacy.

Zawodny: Has Google Lost its Soul?

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Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny:

We all knew it was a matter of “when” not “if”, but it’s surprising to see that it had to happen this way. Over on Google Blogscoped, I see that Google Removes Its Help Entry on Censorship: The page which used to say: Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.

Now simply 404s. It’s gone. Well, except for the cached copy in Google itself.

Rather than using that page to explain how and why they’ve compromised their corporate philosophy in China, they’ve removed it entirely with no e

Read the comments for a rather troubling look at Google’s censorship.

Google in China

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Rebecca MacKinnon:

So it has happened. Google has caved in. It has agreed to actively censor a new Chinese-language search service that will be housed on computer servers inside the PRC.

Obviously this contradicts its stated desire to make information freely available to everybody on the planet, and it contradicts its mission statement: "don’t be evil."  As Mike Langberg at the San Jose Mercury News puts it: their revised motto should now read "don’t be evil more than necessary."

Best Law Money Can Buy: Sensenbrenner & Conyers

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David Weinberger:

Ed Felten writes about his attempt to find out about the VEIL content protect technology specified in the Sensenbrenner/Conyers bill that would mandate that electronic devices plug the “analog hole.” (The analog hole is the fact that analog playback can be converted into digits. E.g., point a digital camcorder at a movie screen. Or, play a DRM’ed mp3 on your computer and use digital recording software to intercept the analog signal on its way to your speakers.

Obviously, these matters are vital to Wisconsin and Michigan constituents.

What is a Torrent?

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Patrick Norton:

Developed by Bram Cohen as a solution to large-file download bottlenecks—not to mention the problem of “leeches,” people who download files but then don’t share them as uploads—BitTorrent is a very effective tool for distributing big files online. And with good reason: BitTorrent works amazingly well to spread out the burden of creating thousands of copies of a file across the clients, or peers, that are downloading the file. That means there’s no large central server to keep running, or massive bandwidth bills to pay for. It also means we can download, say, a 600MB Linux distro in a few short minutes.

Internet: Freedom or Privilege?

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David Isenberg:

At issue: Is Internet access a freedom or a privilege? Just as Freedom of Speech means that, with very few limitations, nobody has the right to tell somebody else what to say, so should Internet freedom mean that gatekeepers should not control Internet applications or content. This is essential not just as a matter of freedom, but also as a matter of commerce, because the Internet’s success is directly due to its content-blindness. If the United States fails to understand this, U.S. Internet leadership will follow U.S. leadership in agriculture, in steel, in autos, and in consumer electronics to other countries that do.

How To Foil Search Engine Snoops

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Ryan Singel:

On Thursday, The Mercury News reported that the Justice Department has subpoenaed search-engine records in its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA. Google, whose corporate credo famously includes the admonishment “Don’t Be Evil,” is fighting the request for a week’s worth of search engine queries. Other search engines have already complied.

The government isn’t asking for search engine users’ identifying data — at least not yet. But for those worried about what companies or federal investigators might do with such records in the future, here’s a primer on how search logs work, and how to avoid being writ large within them.

Google’s data mining tools are not without controversy. Battelle has more here.

The Read / Write Internet

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Lessig:

This will be the next big copyright war — whether this form of noncommercial creativity will be allowed. But there will be a big difference with this war and the last (over p2p filesharing). In the p2p wars, the side that defended innovation free of judicial supervision was right. But when ordinary people heard both sides of the argument, 90% were against us. In this war, the side that will defend these new creators is right. And when ordinary people hear both sides, and more importantly, see the creativity their kids are capable of, 90% will be with us.