THE DARKLIGHT DOMAIN

APPLE – STOMPS ON JOURNALIST RIGHTS

anonymox — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:17:03 +0000

have an investigation referred immediately to the California Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT). This computer crime fighting squad, which is actually a computer crime SWAT team, is advised by a corporate panel made up of representatives from several major IT companies, including Apple.
The coppers broke in and removed private possessions from the Gizmodo editor’s residence when he was not present, including all his computers and presumably his confidential files that included names of journalistic sources and background materials. The information that they had obtained was then used to track down the guy who sold the Iphone 4G prototype to Gizmodo so it could report on the new device.
Apparently the still unnamed bloke who found the Iphone was not visited initially by law enforcement, but by Apple employees who wanted to search his room. He was out at the time and his roommate told them to go forth and multiply.
Coppers turned up later with a search warrant.
Legal and civil liberties groups are amazed that this happened. If Gizmodo was a traditional newspaper the raid on the Gizmodo editor’s home would have been plainly illegal under the First Amendment to the US Constitution as well as US federal and California state press shield laws.
The search at the second house was based on information gathered from the first illegal home invasion so that search was also null and void. With no arrests likely to stick or any charges in the matter based on the illegal searches likely to be filed, the question becomes what were the police doing there? Why was the state’s computer crime SWAT unit deployed to “search” for an Iphone that had been returned?
It can only be because Apple wanted to know what was on the Gizmodo editor’s hard drives in relation to the lost Iphone 4G prototype. As part of the seizure Apple would gain access to information about all of the editor’s contacts, including any sources at Apple.
Ordinary plods who would normally have been assigned to any normal Iphone theft case would not know how to deal with any passwords or other materials on the Gizmodo editor’s personal computer or servers. But the REACT task force likely would be capable of accessing all of the editor’s computer files.
What this looks like is a taxpayer funded elite police agency being used as an intelligence gathering resouce for a private corporation. It appears that Apple filed the theft complaint and “assisted” the coppers in the two raids because it wanted to confirm that the loss of the Iphone 4G prototype was just a cock-up and not the result of some nefarious corporate spying operation. And of course it also had the added bonus of sending a clear message to other news organisations that they could have their houses broken into by police if they publish any leaks about Apple’s unannounced products or, for that matter, potentially anything else that Apple doesn’t like.
Yesterday the tame Apple press were referring to Gizmodo as a blog. This is because Apple appears to have put the word out that Gizmodo’s editor is not a tame traditional journalist and therefore was not protected by the journalism shield laws. This would have meant that all the coppers’ actions would be legal.
Professor Lorna Woods, a media expert at City University, London, told us that the underlying question is about whether bloggers are journalists or not, a question that is signifigant in the US because of the strength of its federal and state shield laws that protect the confidentiality of press sources.
She said that even in Europe there is a question because it is recognised that in the course of normal events journalists would not, for example, have to reveal their sources, under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Woods told us that the European courts are being tougher on bloggers than they would be on traditional journalists. This question is waiting to be resolved in the EU, as this is a matter for the European Court.
San Mateo County prosecutors claimed that the searches were perfectly legal because it was a criminal investigation into an Iphone 4G prototype that had been lost by an Apple employee.
Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, said that County prosecutors had considered whether reporter shield laws applied to the searches and seizures aimed at what he called “the gadget blog” and that they had decided to proceed after carefully reviewing the applicable rules. In other words, Chen is not a reporter and Gizmodo is not a newspaper because it is online. We wonder if the New York Times would be happy to recognise that distinction for its online blog writers, or whether the Seattle PI, which is now an online only newspaper, would be well pleased with that.
Matt Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the raid on Chen’s house was unlawful. He said that the police appear to have gone too far in putting the interests of Apple ahead of citizens’ rights, particularly the rights of journalists.
It is good news as far as the likes of Steve Jobs are concerned. If this flies then online journalists and bloggers will no longer be protected by the press shield laws and all IT companies can use taxpayer funded goon squads to confiscate online reporters’ computers and files and jail all those who find and publish stories that they do not want reported.
Meanwhile reporters and editors at the New York Times, which prints nothing but pro-Apple stories, will remain protected by the press shield laws – well, except for its bloggers, perhaps – and can safely think that they are the only real journalists.
For what it is worth there is sod all difference between a blogger and a journalist. Anyone who gathers and writes news these days is a journalist. Some are formally trained, some are self taught, some hacks are not very good, and some are excellent reporters, but if they gather and publish information that is of interest to the general public at large then they should all be covered under the First Amendment to the US Constitution as well as the US federal and state press shield laws.
Apple and the state police task force must have known this when they galloped roughshod, hell for a stupid Cell phone..

FarmVille Playing Mom Admits She Killed Infant Who Interrupted Facebook Game

anonymox — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 09:52:45 +0000

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) Alexandra Tobias, a Florida mother accused of shaking her 3-month-old son to death after he interrupted her FarmVille game on Facebook, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The 22-year-old was charged in the January death of her baby, Dylan Lee Edmondson. She entered her plea on Wednesday. Tobias told investigators she became angry after the baby cried while she was playing the computer farm simulation game, and she shook him. She also said she smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook the baby again, at which time he may have hit his head, the station reported. State guidelines call for 25 to 50 years in prison, but a prosecutor said Tobias’ sentence could be shorter than that.

The Decaying Anonymity Of The Internet

anonymox — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:49:39 +0000

In January of this year, researchers at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation tried an experiment. The online privacy advocacy group set up a Web page, and collected and stored the browser information of everyone who visited it.

There were no tricks. The site would not steal any data or urge casual visitors to install tracking software. It would simply log the same basic information almost all Internet users in the world inadvertently hand over each time they visit a website, including their time zone and Internet-protocol (IP) address – important clues to their location.

The most alarming result of the study of more than 470,000 Web surfers is that 83.6 per cent of them had an instantly identifiable, totally unique fingerprint: Their particular combination of settings and information was unlike that of any other user, increasing the chance they could be personally identified, even though they had done nothing but make a few clicks of the mouse.

The traditional notions of privacy and anonymity – and even the revamped versions that arose with the Web two decades ago – are dying.

If you think the long-form census is pushy for asking you how many bedrooms are in your house, imagine someone knowing the exact colour of the IKEA sheets you’re thinking of buying for your bed.

Indeed, a variety of players – including state security agencies to Internet marketers to organized-crime circles – are creating an online world in which the very concept of anonymity has basically vanished.

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal published a series detailing the type and quantity of information that online advertisers collected from site visitors. The investigation found that the top 50 websites in the United States “on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning.”

The Web is simply the most visible fragment of a system that includes everything from credit-score reports to radio-frequency-identification tags. Human beings are creating new data at an exponentially growing rate, and much of that data is personal.

The stakes are high. Privacy legislation in many countries was never tailored for the Internet age. As such, a host of nations – including Canada – are rethinking the very concept, and how to protect it in a world where personal information is becoming a form of currency.

Some of the world’s fastest-growing companies, including Facebook, which is close to becoming the most-visited site on the Web, are in the business of collecting such information.

What they do with it will go a long way toward shaping the future of everything from how advertisers target customers to how banks decide on loan approvals.

The marketing-oriented assault on privacy is unnervingly complemented by a move to greater security measures, with everything from airport scanners to street surveillance cameras turning an invasive eye on citizens as they go through everyday life – and governments demanding access to your BlackBerry.

Put it all together with the constant availability impelled by texting, tweeting, cellphones and status updates – and you have a culture on a path to near-total transparency, a see-through society that may be past the point when it could ever cover back up.

ANONYMITY ANONYMOUS

Just a few years ago, many people thought the Internet was effectively anonymous, partly because they could do things such as leave comments on blogs without being identified, said Nart Villeneuve, a senior research fellow of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies.

“People at first thought anonymity was very simple,” he says. “It’s the complete opposite: The Internet is a great tool for spying.”

At a conference earlier this month, Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt outlined the not-too-distant future of information with a simple prediction: “True transparency, and no anonymity.”

The buzzword of the day is “de-anonymization.” And it goes beyond the Internet – starting with the postal system.

If you’ve ever entered your postal code to gain access to a website, the company that operates it probably knows roughly 14,000 things about you – if that company is a client of Toronto-based research firm Generation5 or a similar service. (The Globe and Mail is a Generation5 client.)

Generation5 has built exhaustive consumer profiles based on postal codes across Canada – mini-slices of communities whose residents tend to have certain traits.

It builds those profiles from data it collects from credit bureaus, Statistics Canada, media-rating agency BBM and others.

Businesses that buy its research also sometimes contribute to it: Retail stores have handed over purchasing information from their own loyalty programs or those times a cashier asks for a customer’s postal code at checkout.

“People will give their postal code where they won’t give their name, their telephone number, their address,” says Chris Matys, chief analytics officer for the company.

Using its data, Generation5 can build a rough profile that includes probable demographics such as age range, education level and income, but also credit information, past purchase behaviour, media-consumption habits and preferences, as well as attitudes about everything from politics to technology: “All of which, when combined, create a very granular individual profile,” says Generation5′s director of client management, Jim Green.

For example, say you live in the trendy Westboro neighbourhood of Ottawa.

Depending on your exact address, there is a good chance you’ll fall into the Young Homebodies category of Canadian consumers.

Your household income probably falls between $60,000 and $100,000 a year; you’re probably unmarried, between 20 and 39 years of age and university- or college-educated; you probably rent your place, in a low-rise building or townhouse; you know about style but shop with thrift; you go camping.

If you live in the Yonge-Eglinton area of Toronto, on the other hand, depending on your exact address, there’s a good chance you’ll fall into the Mature & Prosperous category of Canadian consumers.

There is a 23-per-cent chance you’re Jewish; your household income probably falls between $100,000 and $150,000 a year; you’re married with children in elementary or high school; probably between 45 and 64 years of age; university-educated; you read the business section of the paper; and your spouse is an avid gardener.

“We’re not working with any individual consumer information,” Mr. Green says. “In fact, we don’t want it.” Instead, Generation5 says it focuses on balancing anonymity with consumer targeting.

In a way, it can be wise for businesses to know more about their customers, meaning less hassle for the rest of us: Why should you be harassed with flashing Web ads for poker sites if you never gamble?

If you’re headed out to a movie at the last minute and haven’t done much searching, a smart advertiser could suggest a more convenient show time at a theatre closer to you. If you’ve been coveting a couch that is out of your entry-level-salary price range, you would probably appreciate being told when it’s on sale, or where to find a similar style at half the price.

To serve you these perks, an advertiser wouldn’t have to know anything that could identify you personally.

“The winning approach is getting the right balance between knowing your consumer and respecting their privacy,” Mr. Matys says.

COOKIE MONSTERS

But privacy is relative: When all these attributes connect with tracking technologies, supposedly anonymous information starts to look much more personal. And with the ability to narrow down a person’s approximate location based on his IP address, companies may not need you to type in your postal code.

In a single visit, a website with enough aggregated data could know a whole lot about you before you have told them a thing.

If a user enables the use of “cookies” – little pieces of code that live on a person’s computer, tracking the number of times they return to a particular site – it becomes even easier to unveil his or her identity.

For websites whose entire business model revolves around online ads, the ability to better reach consumers is increasingly what drives profits.

For example, in addition to posting classified job ads, Workopolis.com uses an ad-serving technology called Helios to track user behaviour on its website, helping its employer-advertisers target their messages better. Through its partnership with online advertising network Olive Media, owned by Torstar Corp. (which also owns 50 per cent of Workopolis), it follows users and shows them ads elsewhere on the Web.

If a new graduate searches for financial-services jobs in Toronto, and then gives up for a while and goes elsewhere to read the news, Workopolis could continue showing her ads for financial-service jobs in Toronto on the New York Times website.

However, the company says personal information included on users’ résumés is highly protected and not used in targeting.

“The last thing you want to do is give the seeker the impression that Big Brother is standing over them. That’s an eerie experience,” said Mario Bottone, vice-president of marketing at Workopolis. “Targeted advertising is about your behaviour. It’s not about, ‘Hey, your name is Jim and you live in Oakville and have two kids, and here’s a product you might like.’”

The problem is that there is little incentive for companies to collect less data about consumers.

Increasingly, advertisers’ money is flowing to targeted ads; information about the type of consumers that visit a site, and when, and what they look at, can make a website’s ad space far more attractive, and therefore more likely to sell.

“Advertisers don’t just want to send their message out into the ether any more,” says Paula Gignac, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB), an industry group that represents marketers. “Any [company] that can give them the best target with the most that’s known about the type of user that you’re going to be reaching with the ad … will get the highest rate.”

CONSENTING ADULTS – OR AT LEAST THEY SEEM TO BE

Yet the federal privacy watchdog disputes the idea that consumer-data collection is truly anonymous.

“As the technologies become more sophisticated, not only are there greater amounts of information collected about you – the meshing of the different actors who are collecting information means that it is much easier for them to constitute a profile of you,” says the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart.

“Even if they say they’re doing it anonymously, at some point they’ve got so much different and complementary information, they basically fill in the dots,” thereby turning individual pieces of non-identifying information into a mosaic sufficient to identify an individual, Ms. Stoddart says.

The commissioner’s office held a series of discussions with industry leaders on the topic of consumer data tracking in March and April, and will publish a report on those talks in the fall. It will also ask for comments from the public as it prepares to review privacy legislation next year.

“I think we’re going to have to find a way to regulate this, and I think more strictly,” Ms. Stoddart says.

On the Web, consent is a tricky idea. Companies have to say how they collect and use data, but lengthy privacy policies require users with the patience to parse out exactly how that information is being shared – sometimes with partners who have entirely different privacy policies, says John Lawford, a research analyst and lawyer with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) in Ottawa. How many people actually read sites’ privacy policies before clicking “I agree”?

“If you are at a retail website, it’s going to be a member of a number of affiliate-advertising networks: Doubleclick, probably Microsoft One, and one or two others. It’s going to place at least one cookie, and then report back to [its] affiliate networks what you did,” Mr. Lawford says. “There’s effectively a perfect, almost biographical sketch of you somewhere in these affiliate computers, but it’s not identified by your actual name.”

In June, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner awarded a $50,000 grant to PIAC to study how likely it is that supposedly unidentifiable consumer sketches could be “re-identified,” constituting a full personal profile that is no longer anonymous. Mr. Stoddart hopes to use the information to fill gaps in Canadian law.

Ms. Gignac, however, argues that consumers already are well protected by Canadian law: The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act deals with consumer-data collection, and typically requires that companies have individuals’ consent before they use that data or make it available to others.

Beyond the law, her organization has proposed a number of moves the industry could make to educate consumers about how their information is collected, and give them more control over advertising that is targeted to them online. The IAB has proposed an opt-out system, similar to the Do Not Call list for telemarketers, but applied to all behavioural advertising on the Web.

“The industry is doing its best in a rapidly changing environment,” Ms. Gignac says. She argues that there’s no cause for alarm. “If you really see what a cookie looks like, it’s unintelligible,” she says. “There’s no identifying information in a cookie,” such as a name, phone number or address.

But PIAC’s Mr. Lawford points out that consent with regards to behavioural targeting is also a problem when children are the ones visiting websites. As with any user, their clicks and movements can be analyzed to determine their interests, and they can be targeted.

“They have potential to build a profile on someone before that person’s developed the personality they’re going to have,” he says.

HIDE AND SEEK? GAME OVER

There is another option available to users – call it re-anonymization. But it’s becoming harder and harder to do.

Traditionally, websites can detect where a user is coming from because the request to view a page comes with the user’s IP address. However, there is software that is meant to disguise that information from sites. A program called Tor, for example, routes the user’s request through its own internal maze first, so the website sees only the request from Tor, not the original user.

It’s not perfect, but using a system such as Tor restricts access to many of the bits of information the Electronic Frontier Foundation managed to collect during its research study in January, and cuts down on marketers pinpointing consumer data.

However, there are powerful opponents to this kind of anonymity software, and they aren’t online advertisers; they’re security agencies. Simply put, the same technology that allows people to maintain their privacy online also makes criminals tougher to catch. As such, there is a push to limit anonymity on the Web.

A perfect example is Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. For years, big businesses have purchased the devices in droves because of their strong encryption, which makes messages sent from BlackBerrys much more difficult for outside parties to monitor. But now, a host of countries are threatening to ban BlackBerry services precisely because RIM keeps the data too private.

The Indian government, for example, is threatening to shut down RIM’s enterprise-grade devices and its BlackBerry Messenger service by the end of the month unless the company gives state authorities access to the data. The Indian position was prompted at least in part by the fact that some of the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks communicated using the devices.

Within Internet security circles (those charged with stopping cyber-criminals), there is growing talk about issuing virtual “passports” online, according to Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab.

“There is this pressure bearing down on anonymity with the coming securitization of the Internet,” Mr. Deibert says. “The irony is that a lot of those [security agencies] themselves use anonymity services.”

Many of the same tools that enable privacy online are also helping criminals organize the largest theft and fraud rings in history. Mr. Deibert, for example, divides his time between working with dissidents who are trying to communicate with one another without getting caught, and working to catch cyber-criminals trafficking in stolen credit cards and other such data.

It is difficult to conceive of too many ways to empower or restrict one side without doing the same to the other.

He adds that anonymity is almost never entirely possible, since there are always chunks of personal data floating around on the Internet. Think of all those networking sites that build profiles from searchable information on the Web; think of all those times a friend tagged you in a Facebook photo without your permission.

“There are traces of us everywhere [online], some of which we don’t even generate,” Mr. Deibert says. “There are digital doppelgangers of us all over the place.”

Civil Rights Photographer’s FBI Ties

anonymox — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:50:52 +0000

In many ways, civil rights photographer Ernest Withers would have been the perfect FBI
informant, said leaders of the movement whom
he photographed during quiet moments in
their hotel rooms, at strategy meetings and in
the midst of powerful street protests.
This Story
Mixed reactions to civil rights photographer’s
FBI ties
Photographer Ernest Withers worked with FBI
Guidebook that aided black travelers during
segregation reveals vastly different D.C.

He was known to them as “Ernie” and later
lionized as the “original civil rights
photographer.” It was Withers who took
photos of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the
day he was slain on the balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, and it was Withers who
documented the trial of the men who killed
young Emmett Till.

The revelation this week by the Memphis
Commercial Appeal that Withers also assisted
an organization that many in the movement
considered an enemy further exposes the
desperation of the federal government to gain
access to the highest levels of the civil rights
leadership.

The FBI kept an extensive file on King and his
aides, and distrust between the movement’s
leaders and the agency was great. Civil rights
leaders knew their hotel rooms were bugged
and were careful about what they said even on
their home phones, knowing that federal
agents were listening. They felt like people
inside and outside of their organizations were
always watching them.

“It was just par for the course,” said Juanita
Jones Abernathy, widow of King’s close friend
Ralph Abernathy. “They could be in strategy
sessions, and the FBI had a way of calling
almost immediately after they had made plans
for something to inform them of what they had
planned to do. They would check into hotels,
and the FBI was in the room across the aisle.”
“But they kept moving,” she said.

Withers, who died in 2007 at 85, provided
photographs, scheduling information and
biographical sketches to two FBI agents in
Memphis, according to files the Commercial
Appeal attained through a Freedom of
Information Act request. The photographer
was a former police officer, and the Memphis
newspaper noted that Withers had eight
children and may have needed the money paid

to informants to support them.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
knew Withers well and said he is disappointed.
The photographer moved freely in the tight
circle of King’s lieutenants, taking pictures and
selling them to black magazines such as Jet and
other outlets. He would give the photos free to
the ministers who led the movement and could
not afford to pay.

Those pictures have been collected in books
and show a rare intimacy with civil rights
leaders.

“He was very close,” Lowery said from his home
in Atlanta. “He was beloved. I’m surprised and
I’m a little disappointed, but I suspect he did it
with his tongue in check knowing that he was
not doing anything to hurt the movement.”

According to FBI files obtained by the Memphis
newspaper during a two-year investigation,
Withers worked closely with two FBI agents in
the late 1960s.

“There was nothing he could report on us that
would hurt us,” Lowery said. “We were not an
undercover group. We didn’t have any need to
hide. We weren’t planning any ambushes or
surprise attacks. We were quite open with
what we were planning to do. We publicized it
and invited people to join it. He probably knew
that as well as anybody.”"We felt there was nothing wrong with saying
who we had or hadn’t seen. Lots of people
talked to the FBI and did so innocently,” Bond
said. “They believed that they were helping in
some legitimate law enforcement reason.”

When agents began asking questions about
politics – who was a communist, or about
specific political figures – the SNCC leaders
became more wary.

“We know some people in the movement were
informants. I grew up in a political culture in
which an informant – somebody who told on his
friends – was the lowest form of life,” Bond
said.

Withers’s daughter, Rosalind Withers, told
local news organizations that she did not find
the newspaper report convincing. “This is the
the Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here
to defend himself. That is a very, very strong,
strong accusation.”

Abernathy said Withers’s family has her
sympathy and concern. Withers was closer than
any other journalist when King traveled to
Memphis in 1968 for the sanitation workers’
strike. It was there that King was assassinated,
and Withers, who lived in Memphis, captured
the sad, bloody aftermath beyond police lines.

Many details of Withers’s relationship with the
FBI have not been disclosed. The bureau keeps
information on all its informers but has
declined repeated requests to release any files
on Withers.

As a whole, journalists were largely supportive
of the movement’s aims, said former
Washington Post columnist William Raspberry,
who was part of the small cadre of black
journalists who covered civil rights. “There’s a
distinction to be made between those
informants who pretended to be something
other than what they were and those who were
pressured,” said Raspberry, who noted that
civil rights activist Julius Hobson – who ran the
D.C. chapter of the Congress on Racial Equity -
was later revealed in FBI files to have been an
informant.

“His experience was that sometimes you have to
throw them a little something to get them off
your back,” Raspberry said.

By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer

Broadband Speeds Are Bogus

anonymox — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:39:17 +0000

Your fears confirmed: “up to” broadband speeds are bogus

Broadband providers in the US have long hawked their wares in “up to” terms. You know—”up to” 10Mbps, where “up to” sits like a tiny pebble beside the huge font size of the raw number.

In reality, no one gets these speeds. That’s not news to the techno-literate, of course, but a new Federal Communications Commission report (PDF) shines a probing flashlight on the issue and makes a sharp conclusion: broadband users get, on average, a mere 50 percent of that “up to” speed they had hoped to achieve.

After crunching the data, FCC wonks have concluded that ISPs advertised an average (mean) “up to” download speed of 6.7Mbps in 2009. That’s not what broadband users got, though.

“However, FCC analysis shows that the median actual speed consumers experienced in the first half of 2009 was roughly 3 Mbps, while the average (mean) actual speed was approximately 4 Mbps,” says the report. “Therefore actual download speeds experienced by US consumers appear to lag advertised speeds by roughly 50 percent.”

The agency used metrics data from Akamai and comScore to make this determination, though a more accurate direct measurement is currently taking place under FCC auspices. The more accurate measurement will put small boxes in people’s homes for weeks at a time, recording actual line speeds in thousands of US homes at all times of the day and night. But, until that data set is complete, Internet traffic data from Akamai and comScore will have to suffice.

When you look at actual speeds, most Americans have fairly slow service

Data source: FCC

The gap between advertisement and reality isn’t a function of technology—it applied to all kinds of broadband connections, from cable to DSL to fiber. The less-than-ideal speeds aren’t necessarily the “fault” of the ISP, either; crufty computers, poky routers, misconfigured WiFi, transient line noise, and Internet congestion all play a role.

Whatever the cause, though, the FCC has concluded that advertising the “up to” speed is so inaccurate (and so confusing to consumers) that something better should be tried, sort of a “nutrition label” for Internet access. The National Broadband Plan suggested something along these lines and the new FCC report supports the idea, recommending that a standard truth-in-labeling form should be drafted by the FCC, “the National Institute of Standards and Technology, consumer groups, industry and other technical experts.”

The FCC has proposed a few example labels of its own:

Example broadband labels (source: FCC)

The New America Foundation last year proposed a standardized “truth-in-labeling” box with far more detail, and it used the new FCC report as a way to pitch its idea once more.

New America Foundation’s prototype Schumer Box for broadband customers

For now, broadband buyers should just expect their connections to offer about half the promised maximum speed. If that gets you down, just remember: you aren’t in this alone. UK broadband users also see speeds only half as fast as advertised. By Nate Anderson |

The consequences of virtual lives and over-sharing.

anonymox — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:31:21 +0000

Google is often accused of behaving like Big Brother, and Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt isn’tdoing much to dispel those perceptions. In fact, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Schmidt dropped an interesting — and frightening — tidbit: perhaps people should change their names upon reaching adulthood to eradicate the potentially reputation-damaging search records Google keeps.

“‘I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,’ [Schmidt] says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Thanks, Dad

This isn’t the first time Schmidt has made parental — and borderline moralistic — statements about Internet behavior. Late last year Schmidt told CNBC that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Schmidt’s offputting statements don’t do anything for his company’s repute, and are in direct contrast to Google’s increasingly-ironic motto: “Don’t be evil.” Still, it’s possible that Schmidt is making a joke that the Wall Street Journal took too seriously. Schmidt has made comments in the past about how posting excessive personal information on social networking sites can damage one’s ability to get a job in the future. But if he was joking — or even half-joking — it’s these types of comments that motivate the paranoid to change their locks.

To some, Google can be seen as behaving especially evil lately. Most glaringly is the net neutrality fiasco with Verizon, in which the companies are for new Web standards in which users would pay premium rates to access content such as critical health care services and online gaming platforms. Critics have blasted this stance as highly damaging and have called the proposal “worse than feared.” There’s also the case in Switzerland accusing Google ofsilently stealing users’ personal information over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

Too Suspicious?

Google stores data about search habits for nine months as compared to Bing’s retention period of six months and Yahoo’s three months. (Of course, this doesn’t mean the information that came up in the search disappears, or that it can’t be retrieved again). However, Google simply makes this trend data anonymous, rather than scrubbing the entire IP address. Google removes only the last octet of the IP address, “which means there are 254 possibilities for the IP address in question (.0 and .255 are reserved addresses),” According to Ars Technica.Bing removes the entire IP address, and Yahoo eradicates everything.

The list goes on and on. Privacy issues exist with Google Social Search, Google recentlymodified indexing of Gmail messages to address concerns over transcribed Google Voice e-mail messages showing up in the search engine, Google’s Dashboard has raised hairs, and even the embryonic Chrome OS has raised privacy concerns.

While some tech pundits suggest Schmidt’s “change your name” comment is eerie, not all concede his point. (People do have a tendency to post incriminating information on social networks.)

“Perhaps it’s a good idea, even. But it’s probably far more a fantasy scenario to chew on than anything tied to reality. It demonstrates an unusual understanding of privacy, freedom, indiscretion and consequences: as tied to the line between youth and adulthood more than the basic human experience,” Marshall Kirkpatrick writes for ReadWriteWeb

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid also sees the reasonableness of Google’s CEO’s comments: “Schmidt may be envisioning a centralized system where such critical background information is available to employers without their needing an applicant’s full name, which could make a name change worthwhile. Fair enough.”

Still, I tend to agree with Computerworld’s Preston Gralla’s assessment in that Google may have one-upped Orwell. “George Orwell’s dystopic imagination in 1984 couldn’t ever venture this far. He imagined a government knowing everything about you. Even he didn’t see that it might be private industry one should instead be scared of.”

DRM- BUSTER

anonymox — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:08:12 +0000

Today’s Library of Congress statement marks a historic moment in the battle between those who dictate how we should be able to use media and technology, and the rest of us. We explain what the new exemptions mean for you.

Copyright law is a giant, hulking swamp beast of legislation and tangled legal precedent.The Digital Millenium Copyright Act—which essentially serves as a sweeping, powerful legal instrument for copyright holders to wield against us—has been further complicating intellectual property law since 1998. This is the law that has, for twelve years, made it illegal for you to crack the stifling DRM placed on your music, movies, books, software, and almost anything else that can be digitized.

But tucked away in the DMCA is the stipulation that every three years, the Librarian of Congress, on behalf of the Library of Congress (which houses the US Copyright Office) will evaluate this infuriating legal bear trap and consider exemptions to the circumvention clause, giving you the right to blast DRM for select uses.

The Librarian has decreed a set of such exemptions, and they are a (relative) doozy. We’re here to help you make sense of these dizzying acronyms, legalese, and the consequences it’ll have on the way we all use technology.

What exactly is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA, because that’s a lot to type out) is an addition to the existing Copyright Act of 1976, intended to deal with the rise of digital media and mass online proliferation. The 1976 act was, of course, never meant to deal with game changing technologies like DVDs, MP3s, and—gee golly!—modems. The ability to make a perfect digital copy of a movie or song and distribute thousands of copies online sent copyright holders (and, unfortunately, lawmakers) into a frenzy, with the DMCA being the reactionary end result. In short, the act makes bypassing DRM for your own personal or educational consumption—things that would normally be legally protected as fair use—illegal.

That sounds kind of excessive. Are there ANY exemptions?

Yes. But they were few, far between, and often not very significant—such as allowing university professors to rip a DRMed DVD to show short clips to students. Not exactly permissive. But, not wanting to be too shortsighted given the unbelievably rapid advance of technology, Congress mandated that the Librarian of Congress review and declare new exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention powers every three years. And this year is one of those years.

So, what are the newest exemptions?

The full text of the six (!) new exemptions to the DMCA can be viewed at the Library of Congress, but we’ll give you a quick rundown here.

You can rip your own DVDs, and nobody will stop you.

First, and arguably most importantly, is an exemption for DVDs you legally own, giving everyone (not just film and media studies majors!) the right to break DRM for the purposes of “short” use in both “documentary filmmaking” and original “noncommercial videos.” The first is rather specific, of course, but the broadness of the latter is impressive—although for now you can’t appropriate the entire film. But as long as you aren’t charging money for it or profiting off it, it’s noncommercial. So go ahead, rip and remix a scene from Inception so that it actually makes sense.

You can jailbreak your phone.

Second, and another huge one, is an exemption that allows you to jailbreak your phone—100% legally—and run the applications of your choosing. As Ars Technica points out, this is almost certainly a direct shot at Apple and the battle over jailbroken iPhones. Since computer code is classified as a literary work under copyright law, and, as the Library of Congress pointed out, jailbroken firmware alters “fewer than 50 bytes of code out of more than 8 million bytes, or approximately 1/160,000 of the copyrighted work as a whole,” Apple’s infringement claims have been totally bogus.

The third exemption is for software that would unlock your phone for use on a different network. Again, a loss for Apple and AT&T. As we’ve commented, this won’t stop Apple from continuing to lock jailbreakers out through firmware updates and voided warranties, but the issue was clearly of enough importance to prompt Apple to issue a strongly worded defenseof its practices before the federal government.

And The Rest:

The fourth exemption is narrower than the first three, granting the right to crack video or computer game DRM (such as SecuROM) for the purposes of research or “investigation.” The language here is broad enough to give a little wiggle room (after all, anyone who’s curious can investigate).

The fifth exemption is less exciting still, allowing you to bypass software protected by a hardware dongle that is either broken or no longer manufactured.

Finally, the sixth exemption will let you crack the DRM on encrypted eBooks to have the text read aloud, even if this function is explicitly prohibited by copy protection. This is great news for the blind and otherwise visually impaired.

How did this happen?

The first three and inarguably most significant exemptions are thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who petitioned the Copyright Office and Library of Congress on behalf of all of us.

What about music? Or ripping video games?

No dice this time around—the act makes no exemption for copying DRM-protected music or games, so breaking the encryption on a song or Blu-ray you rightfully own is still illegal.

How long will these exemptions last?

Exemptions to the DMCA must be reconsidered every three years, but because this round took so long, the next review will take place only two years from now.

Is this the same thing as the Fifth Circuit court decision?

No. The Librarian of Congress has the authority to issue exemptions to federal law—United States Code Title 17, to be specific. This applies to the entire country. But, as Nilay Patel points out, Fifth Circuit rulings aren’t nationally applicable (in fact, they only apply to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). It is possible that, should the case advance, the Supreme Court would side with GE and either interpret the DMCA as allowing for fair use DRM circumvention, or strike down part of the law itself. The Fifth Circuit decision is a promising step, but it isn’t a final one.

How big of a deal is this?

A very big deal. The Library of Congress has proven that it is willing to listen to the fair, rational arguments of tireless groups like the EFF, and able to stand up to powerful copyright interests. These exemptions might seem trivial when compared to the things that are still illegal under the DMCA, but keep in mind that twelve years of precedent has been reversed today. What might happen two years from now? We can only hope the realization that DRM stifles creativity, productivity, and intellectual curiosity—and what are copyrighted works intended for if not these things?—will continue into the future. Until then, we applaud the Librarian of Congress for taking a loud, stomping step in the right direction.

5 Cops Charged in Post-Katrina Killing

anonymox — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:38:34 +0000

Five current or former New Orleans police officers were charged Friday in the shooting death and burning of a New Orleans man during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

According to earlier published reports, police were using a school as a temporary headquarters on Sept. 2, 2005, when a group of men drove up looking for help for 31-year-old Henry Glover, who had been shot.

One of the men reportedly later told investigators that Glover was still in the back seat when a police officer drove off with his car. Glover’s burned remains later were recovered from the charred car when it turned up on a levee near a police station.

Prosecutors would not provide details Friday of what they believe happened.

In indictments Friday, former officer David Warren was charged with violating Glover’s rights by allegedly shooting him to death. Along with a charge of unlawful use of a firearm he faces a possible life sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Warren was immediately arrested after the indictment was handed up and is in federal custody, the Department of Justice said in a news release. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said a federal judge would be asked to order Warren jailed until trial.

Letten also said that under some circumstances, prosecutors can seek a death sentence for a civil rights violation. However, he said the case would require more review before a recommendation to seek the death penalty might be made.

Others charged were former Lt. Robert Italiano, Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, Lt. Travis McCabe and Officer Gregory McRae.

Scheuermann and McRae are charged with obstructing justice and burning Glover’s body and the car in which he was found. They also are accused of assaulting residents who tried to help Glover. If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Italiano and McCabe are charged with obstruction of justice for their alleged roles in submitting false reports of the incident and lying to investigators. Italiano, if convicted, faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years and a $500,000 fine. If convicted, McCabe could get 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. Following announcement of the indictment, Letten said the five have a duty to the public, “certainly not to kill them, certainly not to destroy evidence.”

At a brief initial appearance hearing, U.S. Magistrate Louis Moore ordered Warren jailed until an arraignment and detention hearing on Thursday. Warren did not enter a plea Friday. His attorney, Joseph Albe, said he could not comment.

Letten said he could not comment on who was representing the other defendants. Their attorneys had not been posted in the court record Friday.

The case is one of several civil rights investigations involving actions of the New Orleans Police Department after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005, plunging the city into flooding and civil chaos after levees broke.

A civil suit was filed Tuesday in federal court against Warren, McRae and Schueremann by Charlene Green, who says she is the mother of Glover’s son, Henry Glover Jr. Although the suit claims that Glover was the victim of civil rights violations, it does not detail what allegedly happened.

Does your boss want you dead?

anonymox — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:25:06 +0000

‘Dead peasants’ insurance pays your employer a secret, tax-free windfall when you die. Insurers have sold millions of policies to companies such as Dow Chemical.

By Liz Pulliam Weston

Right now, your company could have a life insurance policy on you that you know nothing about. When you die — perhaps years after you leave your employer — the tax-free proceeds from this policy wouldnt go to your family. The money would go to the company.

Whats more, the company might use this policy to pay for retirement benefits and other perks not for you or your fellow workers, but for your companys top executives.

Sound outrageous? Such corporate-owned life insurance is also big business:

Companies pay a whopping $8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage, according to the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group.

The policies make up more than 20% of the all the life insurance sold each year.

Companies expect to reap more than $9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. The policies are treated as whole life policies. So, companies can borrow against the policies (though the IRS won’t let them write off the interest). And the death benefits are tax-free.

Hundreds of companies — including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie — have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank-and-file workers.

These policies, nicknamed dead janitors or dead peasants insurance, soared in popularity after many states cleared the way for them in the 1980s. Congress recently tried to crack down on the practice, to the howls of the insurance industry — which earlier this year managed to derail reforms.

The policies have generated lawsuits by survivors who got little or nothing when insured workers died. A couple of examples:

Jane St. John had two children and was pregnant with a third when her husband, a butcher at a Winn-Dixie store, was killed in an auto accident. When the Killeen, Texas, woman called the company to ask about insurance, she said she was told about a $17,500 policy to which she was entitled. St. John said Winn-Dixie told her nothing about the $102,000 the company collected from a corporate-owned policy on his life. She found out about it this summer, eight years after his death, from a lawyer who researched court records. The idea that the company would secretly insure lives, and then not share the benefits with the families, “is sick,” she said. “That is creepy.”

Mike Rice was a 48-year-old assistant manager when he died of a massive heart attack at the Wal-Mart store in Tilton, N.H. His widow, Vicki, became the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the company after she discovered Wal-Mart collected $300,000 from a life insurance policy it owned on him. Vicki Rice believes job-related stress contributed to the heart attack and says it is totally immoral for Wal-Mart to profit from his death.

In a lot of circumstances, the families dont get anything, said attorney Mike Myers of Houstons McClanahan & Clearman, which represents survivors suing companies over corporate-owned policies. The company tries its hardest to keep the policy a secret.

Labor leaders and some lawmakers have denounced the policies as unjust and repulsive. The companies say profits from the policies can help offset the increased cost of employee benefits and enhance the businesses bottom lines.

Corporate-owned life insurance actually comes in two flavors:

Executive or key person policies that insure the lives of top executives. This coverage has been around for decades and has a clear business purpose, since losing the expertise, knowledge and contacts of top managers can be financially devastating for companies.

Broad-based or janitors policies that insure rank-and-file workers. Here the purpose is basically profit. The life insurance proceeds are tax-free. The policies have an investment component that allows companies to earn tax-deferred returns while the employee is still alive. And, of course, companies can take out tax-free loans on the policies. All these gains and income are used to fund operations, pay for executive compensation or boost other benefits.

No one knows how many corporate-owned policies are issued on executives versus rank-and-file workers. Wal-Mart alone had taken out about 350,000 such policies between 1993 and 1996. Nestle USA had policies on 18,000 workers in 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported. Enron had $500 million in policies on workers.

Sales of the policies came to a virtual standstill in September 2003, according to the insurer trade group ACLI, when the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation that would have taxed payouts made to companies if the employee had left more than a year earlier. That indicates that most policies arent being sold to protect companies financially against the loss of key current employees.

Strong insurance industry protests led the powerful committee to reconsider its action. Further work on the issue has been postponed until 2004, and indications are that the senators are softening on the idea of greatly restricting the policies, said Jack Dolan, ACLI spokesman.

Companies insist that janitors policies have a legitimate business function, but the IRS has been cracking down, arguing that many of the arrangements are nothing more than tax shelters. The agency has been particularly harsh on once-popular leveraged policies, in which policy loans were used to pay premiums. In the mid-1990s, the tax agency began disallowing billions of dollars in interest payment deductions the companies had been taking on such loans. Companies efforts to defend their programs have been largely unsuccessful; a U.S. Tax Court judge called Winn-Dixies program a sham, saying it lacked economic substance and business purpose.

The controversy helped convince Walt Disney and Wal-Mart, among others, to drop the policies. Winn-Dixie battled the IRS in court, but the supermarket chain recently lost its final round when the Supreme Court refused to review a lower court decision that backed the IRS.

So far, one company has prevailed against the IRS — Dow Chemical, which took out the policies on more than 21,000 workers. A U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan ordered the IRS to return $22.2 million plus interest to the company. The IRS has appealed the ruling.

Survivors lawsuits, meanwhile, typically focus on two issues:

Whether the companies had an insurable interest in their employees lives.

Whether the companies were required to get the employees permission for the policies.

Insurable interest is usually a big deal for insurers. They want to make sure whoever is buying life insurance doesnt have an incentive for bumping off the insured. Insurers usually require purchasers have a strong familial or emotional connection to the people being insured, or that they would suffer significant financial losses if the insured people died.

(Its that latter standard that was loosened in the 1980s, making it easier for companies to buy policies for all their employees, not just key executives.)

Most states also have advise and consent laws that technically require companies to get workers permission before buying life insurance on them. But attorney Myers said many businesses circumvent these laws by purchasing the insurance in one of the states that doesnt require notice or consent, including Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

“Executives fly to Atlanta to meet with the insurance company and its brokers, sign some papers, get on their respective corporate jets and fly home, Myers said.

Other companies offered their workers small policies — typically $5,000 to $10,000 — as an incentive to allow larger corporate-owned policies to be issued on the workers lives. The small policies can later be canceled, even if the company keeps up the premiums on the other insurance.

Anger about these practices likely will keep the heat on Congress to make some reforms. Its possible that lawmakers will restrict severely companies ability to write the policies on rank-and-file workers. At the very least, companies probably will have to get workers consent before buying any new policies and clearly disclose that the coverage may extend past the time they leave the company, the ACLIs Dolan said.

But he rejected the idea that corporate-owned life insurance was immoral or a company bet against its workers.

Its an important business planning tool, Dolan said. Companies are using it for extremely valid reasons.

Facebook Is Not Satan’s Spawn

anonymox — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:29:28 +0000

The Internet is all aflutter once again about the online social networking service Facebook and its privacy settings. I’m no fan of how Facebook seems to change everything just when you finally figured out the last set of changes, but frankly, there are too many people complaining for no good reason.

There have been some Facebook privacy issues worthy of criticism. Late last year when the first major changes to Facebook’s privacy settings went into effect, there was a fatal flaw: Even when users had their friend lists hidden, they could still be seen. That problem was fixed in short order.

There was also a problem with users quickly agreeing to new privacy settings without carefully looking at them. Many users were unaware that they were making a ton of data public by default. Oops to Facebook for allowing this to happen — the default should have been all private to protect careless users — and oops to the Facebook users who didn’t read before they clicked.

Don’t Get Alarmed

While I’m not a huge fan of some of the current privacy options on Facebook, there’s really nothing to be all that alarmed about. I’ve decided to just accept the Facebook hand I’ve been dealt, and not participate in things that don’t have privacy options to my liking.

The anti-Facebook crowd’s first false argument is that the Facebook privacy options are very complicated. The New York Times calls the privacy options “bewildering.” That seems to be based mostly on the fact that there are a ton of options: You can choose your preferred level of privacy for a bunch of different bits on information in your Facebook account.

What’s so bad about that? A user might not have a problem with everyone seeing his or her workplace, but doesn’t want people to see his or her email address. I actually give Facebook credit in this regard. Thanks for letting me choose! I guarantee you that if things were “less complicated,” with one, big all-or-nothing privacy option for a whole slew of data fields on your profile, the naysayers would then be complaining over the lack of control.

Too Many Choices?

Here at DailyFinance, Sam Gustin is peeved at Facebook for having so darn many choices regarding privacy. He’s so mad that he quit Facebook over it, but frankly, he wasn’t really an active user anyway: “Facebook’s privacy policies are alarming, to be sure. But the truth is I’m not really getting any value out of Facebook, anyway, and I don’t think I will really miss it.”

On how confusing Facebook now is, Sam writes, “The simple fact is that Facebook has created a bewildering situation for its users. For most people, it’s next to impossible to decipher what all of its frequent policy changes mean for individual privacy.”

The thing is that the Facebook privacy settings aren’t the least bit confusing for anyone who can be bothered to take 10 minutes to look at them and use Facebook’s “help” function when necessary. My privacy is important enough to make me spend 10 or 20 minutes looking at all of my settings each time Facebook makes a change. I submit that Sam and many others are simply too lazy to take a few minutes to learn about the privacy settings on Facebook. That would have been much easier (and quicker) than writing his “quitting Facebook” article.

True Privacy on Facebook?

The second myth perpetuated by the anti-Facebook crowd is that privacy on Facebook isn’t really privacy at all, and the company is just looking for ways to exploit users. I used to believe this too, so I’m not giving myself a pass on this issue. But I’ve come around. Facebook is a business. The company needs to make money in order to stay alive. If users aren’t willing to pay for the service (and I think it’s pretty clear that they aren’t), then the company needs to find other ways to earn income.

Being attractive to advertisers means opening things up on Facebook. More access to user data means more revenue for Facebook. Can you really begrudge them that? Did I mention that Facebook is a business?

I think where the problem is for Facebook is in their transparency — or the perception of their transparency. They have to be up-front about the privacy controls, and make sure users can know (if they bother to look) who can access what data.

Still a Downside

I am a little nervous about how Facebook is going to allow non-Facebook sites to access your data. The “like” button is changing. Sites that become partners with Facebook can get access to your likes, and when you go to those outside sites, they can customize your experience there. A good example is the idea that if you “like” a particular band on Facebook, when you go to the Pandora customized music site, for instance, that band’s music could automatically show up on a playlist for you. If you’re concerned about how these outside sites are going to be using your Facebook data, then take steps to avoid that stuff.

I don’t really care what Mark Zuckerberg said in an instant message exchange six years ago when he was still a teenager and Facebook wasn’t really a business. How many of us are guilty of saying unflattering things in emails we think are private? His attitude back then was not about today’s Facebook. It was about a pet project of a college student. Big deal.

Facebook Is a Business

Remember that Facebook is a business. There has to be a way for the company to make money, because it costs money to provide the service. If users aren’t willing to pay any fees for Facebook, what’s the alternative? The company is finding ways to incorporate advertising and applications, both of which can bring in money.

Facebook executives have to make judgment calls about what users want — and will want years from now — and execute their business strategy in a way that will appeal to people with money to spend. They’ve made their call. And of course when talking to the media, they’re going to talk in a way that supports their business model.

Admittedly, there is a delicate balance that needs to be achieved. Facebook has to be able to give enough access to data to those willing to pay for it in order to make any money. But they have to allow some level of privacy that meets users’ needs and desires if they want to keep the users.

You Are Responsible

It’s dangerous to believe that sites like Facebook are responsible for our privacy. We each have ultimate responsibility for our own privacy. Anything we put on the Internet, no matter how private we want it to be, is susceptible to being made public. You thought your status updates and photos were private? They were until a friend let someone else use their account, or copied one of your photos and reposted it for public viewing. There are untold ways for our online data to become public, despite our best intentions. The only way to keep things truly private is by not posting them anywhere on the Internet.

Take the time to understand what is really private on Facebook and what is not. Deal with it, or don’t be on Facebook. Users have every right to delete or deactivate their accounts, just like Sam did. You have the choice whether you participate and what you upload to your account. Choose wisely.