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Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - EFF challenges National Security Letter (eff.org)

Submitted by
sunbird
sunbird writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in San Francisco on behalf of an anonymous petitioner seeking to challenge a National Security Letter (NSL) the petitioner had received. NSLs are issued by law enforcement with neither judicial oversight nor probable cause, and have been discussed on Slashdot before. In response to the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a separate lawsuit against the individual who had received the NSL, requesting that the court order the receipient to comply with the NSL and asking the court to find that the "failure to comply with a lawfully issued National Security Letter interferes with the United States' vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security." Both cases are filed under seal, but heavily-redacted filings are available. The cases remain pending."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - FBI caught on camera returning seized server (mayfirst.org)

Submitted by
sunbird
sunbird writes: "As previously covered on Slashdot, on April 18th the FBI seized a server located in a New York colocation facility shared by May First / People Link and Riseup.net. The server, which was operated by the European Counter Network ("ECN"), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, was seized in relation to bomb threats sent to the University of Pittsburgh using a Mixmaster anonymous remailer hosted on the server (search warrant). The FBI's action has been criticized by the EFF. Predictably, the threats continued even after the server seizure. On April 24th, the FBI quietly returned the server, without notifying either Mayfirst / People Link or riseup, and were caught on video doing it."

Submission + - FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer (riseup.net)

Submitted by sunbird
sunbird writes: At 16:00 ET on April 18, federal agents seized a server located in a New York colocation facility shared by May First / People Link and Riseup.net. The server was operated by the European Counter Network ("ECN"), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe. The server was seized as a part of the investigation into bomb threats sent via the Mixmaster anonymous remailer received by the University of Pittsburgh that were previously discussed on Slashdot. As a result of the seizure, hundreds of unrelated people and organizations have been disrupted.
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - Warrantless wiretaping decisions issued by Ninth C (eff.org)

Submitted by
sunbird
sunbird writes: "The Ninth Circuit yesterday issued two decisions in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuits against the National Security Agency (Jewel v. NSA) and the telecommunications companies (Hepting v. AT&T). EFF had argued in Hepting that the retroactive immunity passed by Congress was unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit decision (.pdf) upholds the immunity and the district court's dismissal of the case. Short of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, this effectively ends the suit against the telecoms. In much better news, the same panel issued a decision (.pdf) reversing the dismissal of the lawsuit against the N.S.A. and remanded the case back to the lower court for more proceedings. These cases have been previously discussed here ."
Piracy

Submission + - Lawsuits are not the solution to Piracy (tekgoblin.com) 1

Submitted by
tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: "I read an interesting article today on New Times News about internet pirating and a new strategy that’s being used to combat it. Lawyers log into torrenting swarms, record the IP addresses of everyone sharing in said swarm, and then file a lawsuit against all of them, using a Judge’s subpoena to gain their identities from Internet Service Providers.

The article was discussing the new strategy’s pros and cons, and including interviews of several people who had been swept into the nets accidentally, through leaving their wireless networks unlocked. I don’t want to repeat the entire article, you should go read it. But what interested me the most was at the very end.

Indeed, virtually everyone interviewed for this story agrees that the only real solution to piracy is to make more movies available online for an affordable price. As long as it remains difficult for people to access the most popular types of content from their home computer, illegal downloading will continue unabated. Services like Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes have made momentous strides in this regard, but industry observers—and frustrated movie viewers—still say that Hollywood has been too reluctant to embrace new technology."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - Warrantless wiretapping cases at the 9th Circuit (eff.org)

Submitted by sunbird
sunbird writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued several critical cases yesterday before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Both Hepting v. AT&T and Jewel v. National Security Agency raise important questions regarding whether the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program (pdf summary of evidence) disclosed by whistleblower Mark Klein and implemented by AT&T and other telecoms, violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The full text of the Klein declaration and redacted exhibits are publicly available (pdf). This issue has been previously discussed here (1 2 3 4). The Klein evidence establishes that AT&T cut into the fiber optic cables in San Francisco to route a complete copy of internet and phone traffic to the "SG3" secure room operated by the NSA. The trial court dismissed the Hepting lawsuit (pdf order) based on the 2008 Congressional grant of immunity to telecoms. Similarly, the trial court in Jewel dismissed (pdf order) the lawsuit against the government agencies and officials based on the state secrets privilege. Both cases were argued together before the same panel of judges. The audio of the oral argument will be available after 12noon PT today.

Submission + - Man Faces 75 Year Sentence For Recording Police (youtube.com) 3

Submitted by esocid
esocid writes: 42-year-old Michael Allison of Illinois could spend the rest of his life in prison for recording police in public. He faces five counts of eavesdropping, a class one felony. The Illinois Assistant Attorney General has joined the case and told the judge that citizens do not have the constitutional right to record police.

Comment Re:no more shopping in pakistan for me (Score 1) 351

by sunbird (#37264472) Attached to: Pakistan Bans Encryption

Not so fast. Recall that India has implemented a similar regulation. Remember the whole dispute with RIM a while back? From the linked article:

the ISP license also bans internet providers from deploying 'bulk encryption' and further restricts the level of encryption for individuals, groups or organisations to a key length of only 40 bits in symmetric key algorithms or equivalents. Such weak encryption is easily broken, highly insecure and not suitable for e-commerce or any other sensitive applications. For the use of encryption equipment stronger than 40 bits, individuals, groups or organisations are required to obtain prior written permission and to deposit the decryption key, split into two parts, with the Department of Telecommunications.

Comment Re:Pakistan is NOT benning encryption (Score 2) 351

by sunbird (#37264434) Attached to: Pakistan Bans Encryption

IANANE, but the regulation does not appear to be as limited as you suggest. Part II, Section 4, Clause 5 states:

All landing station and infrastructure licensee(s) shall establish a Monitoring System with its interface to the Authority . . . for the purpose of monitoring of telecommunications traffic (voice and data) within one hundred and twenty (120) days . . . .

And later on in clause (6) it requires each system to have "the following features:"

Capability to monitor, control, measure and record traffic in real-time

The clause you are referring to (and the only reference to encryption) occurs on the next page:

The Licensee(s) and Access Provider shall ensure that signaling information is uncompressed, unencrypted, and not formatted in a manner which the installed monitoring system is unable to decipher using installed capabilities.

But the limitation of this clause to signaling information seems to conflict with the earlier statement that the monitoring system must be capable of recording voice and data traffic in real time. I suppose you could argue that turning over the encrypted stream is sufficient, but I wouldn't want to hang my hat on that.

It'll be interesting to see how this is enforced. My guess will be that if they take the position that it applies to VPNs, it will not be enforced against the foreign visitor. There are many internet cafes in Pakistan and many hotels with internet service so there would be a huge logistical problem to enforce it. Sadly, Pakistanis and long-term ex-pats who use a VPN from their home or office could be targeted, especially if they are government opponents or dissidents.

Comment Re:This is unacceptable (Score 5, Informative) 840

by sunbird (#35029746) Attached to: Egypt Shuts Off All Internet Access

I've always considered Egypt to be on of the more progressive muslim states

Whaaaaat? Egypt is ruled by a dictator that tolerates no dissent. There has been a state of emergency there for 44 years! Let's see, where to start. In 2009, the U.S. Department of State Human Rights report had this to say:

Police, security personnel, and prison guards often tortured and abused prisoners and detainees, sometimes in cases of detentions under the Emergency Law, which authorizes incommunicado detention indefinitely, subject to a judge's ruling.

and

Police and the SSIS reportedly employed torture methods such as stripping and blindfolding victims; suspending victims by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions or from a ceiling or door frame with feet just touching the floor; beating victims with fists, whips, metal rods, or other objects; using electric shocks; dousing victims with cold water; sleep deprivation; and sexual abuse, including sodomy. There was evidence that security officials sexually assaulted some victims or threatened to rape them or their family members. Human rights groups reported that the lack of legally required written police records often effectively blocked investigations.

It just goes on and on. And, keep in mind, the U.S. DOS reports tend to be very conservative, so when this stuff ends up in a DOS report, things on the ground are much, much worse.

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