The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.
In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to the act in order to protect civil liberties.
“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.
It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions, which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
As an Illinois senator in 2008, he voted to allow the warrantless monitoring of Americans’ electronic communications if they are communicating overseas with somebody the government believes is linked to terrorism. That legislative package, which President George W. Bush signed, also immunized the nation’s telecommunication companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit with the Bush administration’s warrantless, wiretapping program. That program was also adopted in the wake of Sept. 11.
These are the three provisions due to expire:
*A secret court, known as the FISA court, may grant “roving wiretaps” without the government identifying the target. Generally, the authorities must assert that the target is an agent of a foreign power and/or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday that 22 such warrants — which allow the monitoring of any communication device — have been granted annually.
*The FISA court may grant warrants for “business records,” from banking to library to medical records. Generally, the government must assert that the records are relevant to foreign intelligence gathering and/or a terrorism investigation. The government said Tuesday that 220 of these warrants had been granted between 2004 and 2007. It said 2004 was the first year those powers were used.
*A so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of an individual even without showing that the person is an agent of a foreign power or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday it has never invoked that provision, but said it wants to keep the authority to do so.
“The basic idea behind the authority was to cover situations in which information linking the target of an investigation to an international group was absent or insufficient, although the target’s engagement in ‘international terrorism’ was sufficiently established,” Weich wrote.
The American Civil Liberties opposes renewing all three provisions, especially the lone wolf measure.
Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in a telephone interview, “The justification for FISA and these lower standards and letting it operate in secret was all about terrorist groups and foreign governments, that they posed a unique threat other than the normal criminal element. This lone wolf provision undercuts that justification.”
The committee hearing is set for 10 a.m. Sept. 23 and will be webcast live.
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Original article at Threat Level
In dismissing an infringement lawsuit, a Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects California web-video host Veoh.
It is the second time that Veoh, a YouTube-style service, has won protection from the courts under the DMCA, which immunizes web hosts from liability if they remove infringing content at the owners request via a takedown notice.
Universal Universal Music Group, which brought the copyright case, claimed Veoh was a copyright scofflaw, allowing its users to post material that repeatedly infringed its copyrights.
The two rulings, (the first one was brought against Veoh by a gay porn site) are not binding on the appeals courts or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has not squarely addressed the issue. The same legal spat is now before a New York judge in Viacom’s $1 billion suit against YouTube.
An interesting line from Friday’s Veoh decision says that web hosts do not have to enable copyright-filtering technology, even though many do, including Veoh and YouTube.
“UMG has not established that the DMCA imposed an obligation on a service provider to implement filtering technology at all, let alone technology from copyright holder’s preferred vendor or on the copyright holder’s desired timeline,” U.S. District Judge Howard Matz of Los Angeles ruled.
The ruling finalized a preliminary decision from January.
Universal vowed to appeal the latest order.
“The ruling today is wrong because it runs counter to established precedent and legislative intent, and to the express language of the DMCA. Because of this and our commitment to protecting the rights of our artists and songwriters who deserve to be compensated for the use of their music, we will appeal this ruling immediately,” the music company said in a statement.
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Original article at Threat Level
Sen. Charles Schumer asked the Justice Department’s antitrust division on Monday to investigate the recent sale of Diebold’s voting machines division to a competitor, saying the deal raises anti-competitiveness concerns and has “adverse implications on how our country votes.”
The letter comes just days after another voting machine company filed an anti-trust lawsuit in federal court in Delaware against Diebold and Election Systems & Software.
Earlier this month, Diebold announced the sale of its voting machine division, Premier Election Solutions, to top competitor ES&S for about $5 million.
The sale gives ES&S, already the largest voting machine maker in the country, a near monopoly on the voting machine industry. According to the company’s website, its systems, used in 43 states, counted “approximately 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections.”
Hart InterCivic, a voting machine firm based in Texas, filed an antitrust suit (.pdf) on Friday, seeking a temporary and permanent injunction against the sale. According to the suit, the sale “poses a significant and imminent threat of irreparable antitrust injury to plaintiffs.”
The sale also threatens harm to election districts that purchase voting equipment in that it will likely increase the costs of equipment and result in a decrease in the quality of products, the suit alleges. It will also, ultimately, cause “harm to the voters of the United States, in the form of loss of confidence in the integrity and security of the means by which elections are performed.”
The suit alleges that Diebold and ES&S have long engaged in anti-competitive practices to win bids “through both legitimate and illegitimate acts and conduct.”
This behavior includes submitting low-ball bids to get contracts, after which the companies allegedly gouge customers with additional expenses for after-market service and upgrades. The suit alleges the companies also exaggerate the capabilities of their systems, misrepresent the status of their certification and exert improper and undue influence on government officials to win contracts.
The suit identifies ES&S as serving 45 percent of the country’s approximately 180,000 voting precincts. Premier serves approximately 23 percent; Sequoia Voting Systems serves 18 percent; Hart InterCivi serves 9 percent; and Dominion Voting Systems serves 5 percent.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, agreed with Hart InterCivic’s assessment of the sale.
“If this acquisition proceeds, one company could control over three-quarters of the U.S. market for voting systems,” Schumer wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. “Given other factors, including high barriers to entering the market, I am deeply concerned that local governments and taxpayers will not be getting a fair deal because too much market power will be held in too few hands.”
Schumer also noted that consolidating the election-machine market in fewer hands would make it easier for someone to commit fraud.
ES&S, or its precursor, American Information Systems, was the focus of previous Justice Department interference in 1997. At the time, AIS purchased Business Records Corporation and morphed into ES&S. The DoJ forced the company to relinquish its optical-scan voting equipment business to Sequoia Voting Systems, which became the third largest voting machine company in the country.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
Photo: A Diebold voting machine from Oct. 28, 2005. (AP/Kiichiro Sato)
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Original article at Threat Level
CDT today filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Southern District of New York requesting that key privacy requirements be included in the Court’s approval of the class-action settlement that would dramatically expand Google Book Search. CDT previously released a report in July analyzing the privacy implications of this settlement and is urging the judge to guarantee strong privacy safeguards for the exciting new services Google will be able to offer. The brief asks that the court approve the proposed settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and authors and publishers, but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan.
Original article at Center for Democracy and Technology
CDT today released a report analyzing the privacy risks associated with the proposed expansion of Google Book Search. The report urges Google to commit to a strong privacy regime for the new service in advance of the settlement fairness hearing this fall. The tentative settlement between Google and publishers, the result of a copyright infringement lawsuit, would dramatically alter the way the public obtains and interacts with books. The report asks the court to approve the settlement but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan.Original article at Center for Democracy and Technology
Every three years, as mandated by Congress in Sec. 1201(a)(1)(C) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Librarian of Congress and Register of Copyrights conduct a rulemaking on exemptions from the DMCA’s prohibition on circumvention of access controls protecting copyrighted works. This year’s revival opened in Stanford, then moved here to Washington DC for a three-day run.
Now Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works may not sound like a Broadway hit, but there was plenty of drama (for the copyright geek, at least). I live-tweeted and Identi.ca-posted the hearings, and offer a few highlights from the show here:
As at past runs (2000, ‘03, and ‘06), DVD’s CSS technological protections were the star attraction. Film and media educators, librarians, filmmakers, and creators of transformative works argued that they should be permitted to circumvent CSS to take DVD clips for fair and non-infringing purposes: film studies, media literacy, classroom teaching of the law or medical ethics, creation of commentary in the videographic “language” of the works to which they respond.
Rebecca Tushnet, law professor and founder of the Organization for Transformative Works called the anticircumvention rule a modern-day literacy test or poll tax: law-abiding creators are chilled by the welter of rules seemingly designed to privilege some users over others. Francesca Coppa and Tisha Turk showed the direct impact of the circumvention rule on women and minority creators offering alternative readings of mainstream culture, while educators noted that a too-narrow exemption might let teachers make art with media clips but forbid students from using the same techniques after graduation.
The hearings’ setup is a perfect theater of the absurd: First, the LOC is authorized to exempt non-infringing users of “classes of works” from the circumvention prohibition, but not to legalize the tools needed to circumvent access controls (which are prohibited by 1201(a)(2)). That leaves all participants dancing around the question of how users are to exercise their rights, if granted — “surreal,” as Jon Band put it. Likewise, we all ignore the ready availability of DeCSS and the near-instant posting of DRM-free versions of anything issued in “protected” format.
Then Steve Metalitz, representing a Group of 9 copyright industries, argued that the proponents of an exemption were taking the law too seriously if they were being chilled by the remote threat of an anticircumvention lawsuit. Was he really advocating that we disregard the law??
The proceedings jumped the line to farce when Fritz Attaway and a colleague from the MPAA pulled out a cinematic demonstration of just how to camcord a movie from your television screen. (You start with a $900 HD video camera, a tripod, a flat-screen television, and a room that can be completely darkened.) Tim Vollmer captured the whole scene on a video of his own. Mind you, this is the same industry that has lobbied to make a crime of camcording in movie theaters, telling us how to frame shots properly from the television. (As Fred Benenson notes, they’re also demonstrating DRM’s impossibility of closing the “analog hole.”)
Finally, Bruce Turnbull, representing DVD CSS-licensing body, DVD-CCA, said we were all in the wrong place (LOC, rather than Congress) talking about the wrong subject. 1201 isn’t a copyright protection, but a technology protection, aimed at protecting the “commercial viability of the technological protection measure.” This may be operationally true, but it would sure surprise many in Congress who put anticircumvention into Title 17.
Other acts in the drama included Chris Soghoian’s argument for access to media after authentication servers go defunct; and Alex Halderman and Blake Reid’s arguments that security researchers should be able to investigate the hazards of DRM to personal computer security. Up today: eBooks, dongles, and cell phones.
Other reviews: Pat Aufderheide, Rebecca Tushnet, and Temple’s Media Education Lab live twitter-stream
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