Episode: 1221
Title: HPR1221: TGTM Newscast 93 for 2013-04-02 DeepGeek and Dann Washko 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1221/hpr1221.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:54:08

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You're listening to TGGM News No. 93 record for Tuesday, April 2, 2013.
You're listening to the Tech Only Hacker Public Radio Edition to get the full podcast
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This is Dan Waschko and now the tech round up.
From themocracynow.org dated March 26, NATO researchers, US-Israeli cyber attack on Iran
was illegal act of force.
A new study commissioned by NATO says the joint US-Israeli cyber attack launched on Iran's
nuclear facilities was an act of force that likely violated international law.
A group of 20 international researchers reportedly agreed unanimously that the launch of the
cyber-warms stocks net several years ago constituted an act of force which is prohibited
under the United Nations Charter except in cases of self-defense.
Some even thought the world constituted an armed attack which would mark the start of
a conflict and entitled Iran to use force to defend itself.
From techdirt.com by Mike Maznick dated March 25, rather than fix the CFA, how should
judiciary committee plan to make it worse?
So you know all that talk about things like Aaron's Law and how Congress needs to fix
the CFA?
Apparently, the House Judiciary Committee has decided to raise a giant middle finger
to folks who are concerned about abuses of the CFA.
Over the weekend, they began circulating a draft of a cyber security bill that is
so bad that it almost feels like the Judiciary Committee is doing it on purpose as a dig
at online activists who have fought back against things like SOPA, SISPA and the CFA.
Rather than fix the CFA, it expands it.
Rather than rein in the worst parts of the bill, it makes them worse.
And from what we've heard, the goal is to try to push this through quickly with a big
effort underway for a cyber week in the middle of April that will force through a bunch
of related bills.
Let's go through some of the pieces.
Adds computer crimes as a form of racketeering.
The bill adds to the current definition of racketeering activity so that it would now
link back to the CFA, such that if you are found to violate the CFA as part of an activity
that involves a variety of other crimes, you can now also be charged with racketeering.
Basically, this just gives the DOJ yet another tool to use against computer criminals when
they want to bring the hammer down on someone they don't like.
Not only could you be charged with computer fraud, but now racketeering as well.
Because you know, all you hackers are just like the mom.
Expanding the ways in which you could be guilty of the CFA, including making you, just
as guilty if you plan to violate the CFA, then if you actually did so.
Section 103 of the proposed bill makes a bunch of changes to the CFA, almost all of which
expand the CFA rather than limit it.
For example, they make a small change to the subsection B in 18 United States Code
1030, the CFA, such that it will now read, whoever conspires to commit or attempts to
commit an offense under subsection A of this section shall be punished as provided for
the completed offense and subsection C of this section.
All they did was add the four the completed offense to the sentence.
That may seem like a minor change at first, but it would now mean that they can claim
that anyone who talked about doing something conspired to commit that violates the CFA
shall now be punished the same as if they had completed the offense.
And considering just how broad the CFA is, think how ridiculous that might become.
Now, if you talk with others about the possibility of violating a terms of service, say talking
to your 12-year-old about helping them sign up for Facebook, even though the site requires
you to be 13, you may have already committed a felony that can get you years in jail.
That seems fair, right?
Ratchet's up many of the punishments.
They change around a bunch of the penalties that you can get for various CFA-A infractions.
Shaking up a variety of things and basically raising the maximum sentences available for
certain infractions, expanding the definition of exceeding authorized access in a very
dangerous way.
That's because the new bill says that you can exceed authorized access even if the
successor may be entitled to obtain or alter the same information in the computer for other
purposes.
Yes, read that again.
So even if the successor may be entitled to obtain or alter the same information in
the computer for other purposes, even if you are allowed to obtain info via your authorization
on your computer, they're now saying that if you use that information in a way that runs
a foul of the info above, you can be found to have exceeded authorized access.
Make it easier for the federal government to seize and forfeit anything.
We've seen how the federal seizure and forfeiture laws are frequently abused to seize goods,
which the government claims are used in commission of a crime, even if they never charge anyone
for the crime.
And we've seen with cases like, and we've seen with cases like the jazzle case, how the
government will use such tools to take and censor websites on no actual basis.
And now the CFA will make it even easier for the government to do such things.
It amends the existing sections to basically expand what can be forfeited, because it's
not like the government hasn't abused that one before.
The rest of the bill deals with two other things.
First, the section on cyber security, which includes punishment for those damaging critical
infrastructure computers.
Another section that tells the courts to figure out how to secure their computers are,
and finally a part that creates a national cyber investigative joint task force to be led
by the FBI.
Rather than fixing the law, they're expanding it so that computer crimes can be hit with
racketeering charges and expanding the general language and punishments for part of the
bill.
This is not a good thing.
The fact that this is being passed around the House Judiciary Committee suggests that
it's likely to be backed by HJC Chair Bob Goldley, which is unfortunate.
You would have hoped that Goldley and others in the HJC would recognize that now is the
time to fix the CFA, not make it worse.
From torrentfreak.com dated March 26th by Ernesto, BitTorrent's Brom Cohen patents revolutionary
live streaming protocol.
Earlier this month, BitTorrent Live was unveiled to the public.
The new protocol allows the public to send a video stream to millions of people without
having to invest in expensive bandwidth.
Around the same time as BitTorrent Live was launched, the underlying patent application
was published online.
In it, Cohen describes what makes the technology so unique and torrentfreak caught up with
BitTorrent's creator to find out more.
Quote, doing live streaming well on the internet has long been a problem.
Peer-to-peer live streaming has always suffered from high latency, meaning there is typically
a lot of delay between when a broadcast happens and when end users see it.
Typically dozens of seconds or minutes.
End quote, Cohen told Torrent Freak.
Quote, BitTorrent Live allows a broadcaster to stream to millions of people with just
a few seconds of latency.
This is new and unique and potentially world-changing.
End quote, he adds.
Brom Cohen explains that the patent is in no way going to restrict users' access to the
new protocol.
Quite the contrary, BitTorrent Live will be available to end users for free and publishers
who are using the service and hosting it on their own will not be charged either.
BitTorrent Live is a complex technology but basically works by dividing peers at the
various clubs of peers who share data among each other via UDP's Screamer Protocol.
To get slightly more technical, the way BitTorrent Live works is by making subsets of peers
responsible for subsets of data.
Hyrobusness and low latency is achieved by using a Screamer Protocol between those peers.
Cohen explains.
For the last hop, it uses a non-Screamer Protocol to regain congestion, control, and efficiency.
There is redundancy in some ways in the screaming.
But that's kept under control by only using it to get data to a small fraction of the
peers.
Brom Cohen believes that the future of television is on the internet, and BitTorrent Live
can help deliver live high-definition content to millions of people at once at no cost.
This is not just the future for independent broadcasters, but also for the major content
companies.
There are not many people who can change the fundamentals of the internet two times in
a row.
However, Brom Cohen already did it once with the original BitTorrent Protocol and he believes
that BitTorrent Live can have a similar impact.
To read the complete article, follow the article link in the show notes.
From techdirt.com by Mike Maznick, dated March 28th.
Department of Justice misled judges for years about how it was using stingray devices to
spy on people.
How many times does it need to be repeated?
If you give law enforcement the ability to spy on people, even with limits, law enforcement
will always blow through those limits and abuse its powers.
It has happened over and over and over again, and that becomes doubly true when law enforcement
has worked out ways to avoid oversight.
Back in 2011, the Wall Street Journal broke a huge story about the frequent use of
by-government officials of a technique for mobile device surveillance, generically
called stingray devices.
Technically, there are a few products used for this, only some of which are actually
called stingrays, but the name is now used to refer to all of them.
The device works by pretending to be a mobile phone tower, so devices can connect to it,
and law enforcement gets all your data.
It's basically a cellular man in the middle attack with law enforcement being the man
in the middle.
The technology has been a key component in the case involving Daniel Rigmaiden, which
we wrote about last year.
Rigmaiden was taken into custody on a fraud charge, and representing himself in court, he
has sought more info on how he was tracked down, leading to some reluctant disclosure about
law enforcement using stingray devices on questionable authority to find him.
In that case, we noted that law enforcement claimed it had court order to use the technology,
but the judge was confused, asking where were the warrants for the use of the device.
The judge asked how it was possible that a court order or warrant was issued without
the judge ever being told about the technology used in surveillance, and was told simply,
it was a standard practice.
Indeed, that appears to be the case.
The ACLU filed a bunch of Freedom of Information Act requests to dig into this and newly released
documents show that indeed.
It was apparently standard practice by the Department of Justice to be less than explicit
and less than forthright with judges in seeking warrants and court orders to make use of
this technology.
Here's an email that was revealed.
As some of you may be aware, our office has been working closely with the magistrate
judges in an effort to address their collective concerns regarding whether a pen register is
sufficient to authorize the use of law enforcement's wit technology, a box that simulates a
cell tower and can be placed inside a van to help pinpoint an individual's location
with some specificity to locate an individual.
It has recently come to my attention that many agents are still using wit technology
in the field, although the pen register application does not make that explicit.
While we continue to work on long-term fix for this problem, it is important that we are
consistent and forthright in our pen register requests to the magistrates.
Basically, that's the Department of Justice in admitting that it is not been forthright
or explicit in letting judges know that it is going to use this extremely intrusive form
of surveillance in seeking approvals.
And the courts have been concerned about this.
As the ACLU notes, this email was written three years after the rig made in situation
happened, suggesting that the Department of Justice has been getting away with this
sort of thing for many years without anyone digging in.
The ACLU is now arguing that this should be a reason to suppress the evidence obtained
via these devices, and will ask for the court to send a clear message that it cannot hide
the truth from federal judges in seeking rubber stamps to violate the privacy of the public.
From TechDirt.com by Mike Masnick, dated March 28th, government can keep key emails with Hollywood
lobbyists about six strikes secret.
From the Cannes interferes with that commercial relationship department.
While we keep hearing folks in the entertainment industry and their supporters in DC talk about
how great it is that the six strikes copyright alert system, CAS, was a voluntary agreement
between industry players and one of the worst kept secrets in the world was that the White
House was heavily involved.
They basically helped Hollywood out and at least hinted strongly at the fact that if
no voluntary agreement came through, legislation might have to be put in place, creating a novel
definition of voluntary.
Specifically, it came out that Victoria Espinell, the White House IP Enforcement Coordinator,
had been emailing with people about the program.
That news came out because Chris Sohoyin had submitted a Freedom of Information Act,
request seeking details of all communications between Espinell and her staff and the various
players and six strikes, both the entertainment industry and the various ISPs.
However, Sohoyin felt that the Office of Management and Budget OMB in which Espinell works kept
key documents from being revealed and appealed.
Following that, OMB released a few more documents, but still kept many secret.
Sohoyin then went to court over the issue, arguing specifically that exemptions claimed
for, quote, trade secrets, commercial or financial interests, end quote, and quote,
privileged interagency memoranda and letters, end quote, were inappropriate.
Unfortunately, the court has now rejected that case, citing with OMB.
At issue are some details of the draft memorandum of understanding that created the six strikes
cast program.
Apparently, entertainment industry lobbyists shared those drafts with Espinell, but OMB
won't release them, claiming that their commercial, confidential information.
OMB also argued that the documents were provided voluntarily and that the drafts were not
compelled or obligated.
In response, Sohoyin argued that the documents were clearly provided to OMB for the sake
of having Espinell, quote, press ISPs for additional steps to combat, copyright infringement.
Because they are not legally obligated to take end quote.
The court rejects this saying that the info was provided confidentially and voluntarily,
and it represents commercial information.
Sohoyin remained secret.
The court also rejected an attempt to see internal discussions within the government about
the Six Strikes Plan, as well as discussions on foreign laws like Hadopi Strikes, Six Strikes
Plan in France.
Espinell's office argued that these are protected because they are part of the deliberative
process privilege that lets them withhold internal deliberative discussions about policy
so that government employees can discuss stuff openly before coming to an official policy
position.
However, here Sohoyin argued that Espinell and the IPEC have almost no policy setting
role under the law, and thus this exemption makes little sense.
Once again, the court disagreed.
Here they argued that since the government may make policy decisions based on whether or
not Six Strikes formed or how well it works, that these communications were properly classified
as privilege and not open the FOIA requests.
The court goes into a bit more detail on a few specific withheld documents, but the conclusion
is all the same.
OME can keep these documents secret because they involve internal deliberative discussions.
This isn't too surprising, but it also means that we don't get to learn the full extent
of the government's involvement in this voluntary process.
There are headlines in the news to read these stories via the links in the show notes.
New Zealand gave Kim.com residency knowing he was wanted by FBI.
Websites can legally pirate porn movies, prosecutors' rule.
Staffed and produced by the TGTM News Team, editorial selected by Deep Geek, views of the
story authors reflect their own opinions and not necessarily those of TGTM News.
News from techdirt.com, in these times.com and allgov.com used under a range permission.
News from realitycheck.org used under terms of their re-publication policy.
News from tortfreak.com is used under permission of the Creative Commons by Attribution License.
News from democracy now used under permission of the Creative Commons by Attribution, non-commercial
no-derivatives license.
New sources retain their respective copyrights.
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