Episode: 1160
Title: HPR1160: TGTM Newscast for 1/8/2013 DeepGeek
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1160/hpr1160.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 20:47:09

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You're listening to DGTM News, record for Tuesday, January the 8th, 2013.
You're listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition to get the full podcast
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As a deepgeek talk geek to me.
This is Dan Washco and now the tech roundup.
From torrentfreak.com by Nick Maxx dated December 22nd 2012.
US and Russia announced online piracy crackdown agreement.
Quote in Nick Maxx, the United States and Russia have announced an agreement to crack down on online piracy.
The countries have agreed to disrupt sites that facilitate infringement and take action against their operator.
As a result, uncertain times may lie ahead for many bit torn and other file-sharing sites
hosted in Russia.
The agreement also allows for the improved take-down of infringing content and discussions
on allowing Russian right holders to use the United States.
Six strike system.
For many years, Russia has been viewed as a soft touch on the issue of copyright infringement.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of allegedly infringing sites operate there with impunity.
Some due to aspects of Russian law and others simply because authorities have no interest
in doing anything about them.
However, yesterday, sick December 21st 2012, came an announcement from the United States trade
representative Ron Kirk, which suggests that for the US, things are moving more quickly towards a
favorable situation. Kirk said that the United States and Russian Federation have reached
agreement on an intellectual property rights action plan aimed at improving copyright protection
and enforcement online.
Kirk, strong IPR protection and enforcement are vital to promoting innovation and creativity
by securing the rights of innovators and creative community, attracting high technology investment,
and fostering the jobs necessary for long-term sustainable growth.
According to the USTR, in addition to conducting enforcement actions against unauthorized
camcordering, agreement has been reached to disrupt the functioning of sites that, quote,
facilitate criminal copyright infringement.
In addition to disruption, whatever form that may take, Russia has reportedly agreed to take
action against the creators and operators of sites through which copyright infringement is committed.
The USTR also reports that Russian authorities have agreed to conduct meaningful consultations,
with rights holders to take action against high-priority websites.
In short, the sites on that list will probably be the ones submitted to the USTR by the RIAA
and MPAA for the Notorious Markets report.
The vast majority of the report is targeted at larger entities that might be engaged in or
connected to online piracy, but the USTR appears to have dangled a carrot that would enable
Russian companies to target US citizens in a limited way, end, quote, of the article.
From EFF.org by Trevor Tim, dated December 19, 2012, government attorneys agree with EFF,
new counterism database rules threaten privacy of every American.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on how a little-known government agency, the
National Counterterrorism Center, NCTC, got the keys to government database full of detailed
personal information of millions of innocent Americans. Using the Freedom of Information Act
and interviews with officials, the Journal obtained emails and other information,
detailing how the massive new spying program, which the Attorney General signed off on in March,
was approved by White House in secret over-strenuous objections from government privacy lawyers.
As EFF first warned months ago, despite the terrorism justification, the new rules affect
every single American, the journal explained. Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases,
flight records, casino employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign exchange
students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent US citizens
for up to five years and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior.
Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans, quote, reasonably being
believed to constitute terrorism information, and quote, may be permanently retained.
Journalist Marcy Wheeler summed up the new guidelines up nicely in March, saying quote,
So, the data the government keeps to track our travel, our taxes, our benefits, our identity,
it just got transformed from bureaucratic data into national security intelligence, end quote.
Ironically, this civil liberties debacle apparently was a response to the attempt in 2009
Christmas underwear bombing by Mar Farak Abdul-Mudalab. As the ACLU observed, however,
Abdul-Mudalab wasn't a US citizen and collecting information on him wasn't a problem.
Instead, his own father had identified him to the US government as a potential terrorist.
In short, an attack by a known foreign terrorist suspect was used to justify changes to rules
about collecting information on US citizens. The Privacy Act is supposed to limit the ability
of the US government to collect and maintain detailed data about ordinary citizens.
Among other restrictions, it prohibits agencies from maintaining personal information unless
it is, quote, relevant and necessary, end quote, for a specific purpose. But thanks to a loophole
in the law, federal agencies can issue public notices to the federal register and attempt to
skirt those rules entirely, thereby opening the door to arbitrary and unnecessary data collection.
According to the journal's investigation, the debate over the program's potential privacy
violation sparked a, quote, heated, and, quote, testy debate in the Justice Department,
Department of Homeland Security and the White House. A DHS lawyer complained via email that
the advocates of the program were, quote, complete non-sequitors, end quote, and, quote, non-responsive,
end quote, examples. Ultimately, privacy lost. Of course, it's unclear whether the
data mining operation even works. At the Department of Justice, chief privacy officer Nancy
Liven raised concerns about whether the guidelines could unfairly target innocent people.
These people said, some researchers suggest that, statistically speaking,
there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns of to emerge. The risk, then,
is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood, say, a man buying chemicals for a child
science fair, and a time refers to sprinkler sets off false alarms.
Just like EFF did in March, the journal compared the new NCTC program to the notorious
total information awareness. Surveillance program proposed by Admiral John Point Dexter in 2002.
Congress was so alarmed by the potential invasion to innocent American privacy that they
defunded it in 2003. What the journal did not mention, however, is that even the NCTC's
best-known database, Terrorist Identities Data Mart Environment, or TIDE, is already fraught
with problems. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links.
Explain the journal. Quote, TIDE files are important because they are used by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation to compile terrorist watch lists. End quote. But according to an unusually
blunt Senate investigation of so-called, quote, fusion centers, released last month,
the TIDE database is also full of information of innocent people that have nothing to do with
terrorism. The report gave examples of a TIDE profile of a person who the FBI had already
cleared of any connection to terrorism, a TIDE profile of two-year-old boy, and even a TIDE
profile of Ford Motor Company. Indeed, the data mining expansion seems like a horrible and
self-fulfilling prophecy. As a journal noted, the underwear bomber incident led President Obama
to order agencies to send all their leaders to NCTC to pursue thoroughly and exhaustively
terrorism threat threads. Predictably, NCTC was flooded with terror tips, creating a huge
backlog that NCTC couldn't process within the original time limits. NCTC then
predictably sought to retain more data longer. Congress needs to stop this vicious cycle.
It should investigate the new NCTC guidelines and the government's overall data collection
and data mining practices, and it should take a look at closing loopholes in the Privacy Act too.
From TechDirt.com by Mike Maznick dated December 28, 2012. Apparently, Congress isn't actually
interested in requiring a warrant for law enforcement to read your email. From the it was all a
charade department. Yes, we've already covered the rejection of key amendments in the FISA
Amendment Act renewal, but that wasn't the only case of Congress ignoring the public's privacy
concerns as they close out this subject. Back in September, we noted that Senator Patrick Lee,
who had been working on a much-needed reforms for ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,
much as requiring law enforcement get a warrant to read your email, had attached his ECPA
reform plan to an update of the Video Privacy Protection Act VPPA. While I know some privacy
folks were worried about this update to the VPPA, I don't have much of a problem with it.
The original VPPA, written as a quick response to a video store revealing Robert Bork's somewhat
boring video rental history during his Supreme Court nomination hearing, did seem a bit limiting,
especially for online video sites such as Netflix that wanted to add some useful social features.
However, it was the ECPA reform part that was more important. Attaching ECPA reform to VPPA reform
didn't make some privacy folks happy, but they seemed willing to go along with the VPPA changes
if it really meant that we get a warrant requirements for emails and other digital messages.
There were some attempts to water down that ECPA reform at the end of last month,
but the Senate Judiciary Committee kept the warrant requirement in there and rejected various
attempts to weaken the bill. As we noted, however, it still was a long way from becoming law,
given the need to pass a full Senate vote and to have a companion House bill to make the rounds.
We assume that there would be no movement until next year and the new Congress. But, late last
week, the House rubber stamped the VPPA update and the Senate almost immediately signed off on
the House's version, which the President has expected to sign any moment now. In case you missed
that means the ECPA reforms, which were supposed to be bundled with the VPPA to make the whole
thing palatable, got dropped entirely, and now we get the VPPA reforms and no ECPA reform at all.
Neat trick, bundle two things to get support, and then at the last minute, drop one part and
rush through the other. From torrentfreak.com by Ernesto Data January 3rd, 2013, mega upload,
U.S. deliberately misled the court with unlawful search warrants.
When the U.S. government applied for the search warrants against mega upload last year,
it told the court that they had warned mega upload in 2010 that it was hosting infringing files.
Through its hosting company, mega upload was informed about a criminal search warrant in an
unrelated case where the government requested information on 39 infringing files stored by the
file hosting service. At the time, mega upload, who operated with this request, and handed over
the details on the uploaders. The files were kept online as mega upload was instructed not to touch
any of the evidence. However, a year later, this inaction is being used by the U.S. government to
claim that mega upload was negligent, leaving out much of the context. As of November 18th, 2011,
36 of the 39 infringing copies of the copyrighted motion pictures were still being stored on servers
controlled by the mega conspiracy. The government claimed in the mega upload search warrants.
This course of action is misleading according to mega upload's legal team.
Nowhere did the government tell this court that mega upload had done exactly what the government
had asked it to do. Execute a search warrant without alerting the extensible targets to the
existence of an investigation. Mega upload's lawyers write. The government's contention to this
court that mega upload's preservation of the status quo was evidence of criminal intent is false
and deliberately so they add. By failing to mention that the files were not removed because the
authority specifically requested this, the government deliberately misled the court mega upload says.
The lawyers argue that this is not only troubling by itself, but also fits into a wider picture of
misconduct that was revealed in New Zealand court proceedings. It is clear from the unsealed
warrants that the government withheld critical information from its supporting affidavits.
That withholding calls into grave question the legality of any and all seizures affected
pursuant to those warrants. The withholding is all the more worrisome considering the identified
pattern of governmental misconduct plaguing the proceedings in New Zealand, the legal team writes.
Mega upload therefore asks for these seashoes to be addressed in an upcoming hearing.
Kim.com told Torrent Freak that he is furious about the US government's actions which ruined his
business. Quote Kim.com, a legitimate business destroyed, 220 jobs destroyed, all assets frozen
without a hearing. Millions of users without access to the legitimate files, anti-terror forces to
arrest non-violent nerds, spy agencies to surveil our communications illegally. The White House,
a prime minister, two governments abusing all rights. To read this filing and the rest of the
article, please see the link in the show notes. From eff.org by Hannah Fackery dated December 21,
2012, Vermont Supreme Court allows limits to government computer search power. A new and
important decision by the Vermont Supreme Court could go a long way to safeguard privacy by
ensuring police computer searches remain narrow. EFF together with the ACLU and ACLU of Vermont
filed an amicus brief in the case which empowered courts that issue warrants to include specific
instructions on how the police can conduct the search so they remain narrow and particular.
This case started as part of an identity theft investigation where police in Burlington,
Vermont, applied for a search warrant to seize and search a number of computers, cell phones,
and other electronic devices in a house. Noting the ease with which electronic data can travel
between electronic devices, as well as the fact that evidence could be stored anywhere on the
computer, investigators submitted an extraordinarily overbroad search warrant application,
including requests to search other electronic devices found in the house even if its owners
wasn't suspected of committing a crime. They also ask for the ability to search the entire
contents of all the computers and devices they seized. But the fourth amendment requires searches
to be reasonable. That obviously means the police need a search warrant to search a place.
It also means that their search must be limited or particular so that the search only
intrudes into a private space where the thing the police want is most likely to be found.
But how does that work in the digital age, where computers and other electronic devices
store vast amounts of our private and sensitive information in any number of places?
The judge, grappling with the fourth amendment implications, issued the search warrant but
imposed limits on how the government could execute the search. The court relied heavily on the
ninth circuit court of appeals 2010 decision in United States versus comprehensive drug testing
incorporated, which provided law enforcement with the suggested guidelines designed to protect
privacy during computer searches. Unhappy with these limitations, the government filed a petition
for extraordinary relief in the Vermont Supreme Court asking that the original broad-worn
officers request to be granted. In last Friday's decision, the Vermont Supreme Court understood
the privacy implications at issue and ruled that the fourth amendment allows a judge to include
instructions in the search warrant to ensure an electronic search remains narrow and particular.
The court approved the three different limitations judges can place on the government as part of
a computer search that have important ramifications for other forms of electronic seizures.
First, searches can be performed by third parties or police personnel segregated from the main
investigators who segregate irrelevant information prior to disclosure. Second, judges can order
investigators to focus search techniques while precluding use of specialized search tools without
prior judicial authorization. And third, investigators are limited in data that they can copy,
non-responsive data should be destroyed and devices return. Judges control search
warns not the government. The court noted that warrant applications aren't submitted to judges
on a take it or leave it basis, but oftentimes it seems that this is precisely what the government
wants, wide-ranging authorization into electronic evidence with minimal oversight and little
particularity. And when prosecutors don't get their way, their default is to argue that the judges
are little more than rubber stamps permitted to do nothing more than approve or deny government
requests. Thankfully, the Vermont Supreme Court stood up to the government and told them they
couldn't have whatever they wanted. Other courts are starting to be more vocal too about the
government's efforts to intrude into the private lives of Americans. We need more courts to think
about the implications of their decisions and craft limits on electronic surveillance so they
can fulfill their traditional role as a check against government overreach. To read more details
about the three limitations, follow the article link in the show notes. Other headlines in the
news to read these stories follow the links in the show notes. German privacy regulator orders
Facebook to end its real name policy. List of groups honed by websites with anti-student
policy. Staff and produced by the talk geek to me news team, editorial selection by Deep Geek.
Views of the story authors reflect their own opinions and not necessarily those of TGTM news.
News from techdirt.com, the stand.org, and Havana Times.org used under arranged permission.
News from tornfreak.com and EFF.org used under permission of the creative commons by attribution
license. News from wlcentral.org and democracy now.org used under permission of the creative commons
by attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license. News sources retain the respective copyrights.
Thank you very much. This has been Dan Walshko. Have a great day.
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