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Congress is sending President Barack Obama legislation that extends three provisions of the Patriot Act — despite heated debate among lawmakers that the surveillance measure goes too far.
The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expands the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security. Three measures of the act were set to expire at the end of 2009, but in December lawmakers extended the deadline to the end of February in hopes of reaching a compromise.
But no deal was reached by the end of the new Feb. 28 deadline. Instead, the Senate and House of Representatives ditched their two conflicting measures and extended the Patriot Act for another year without any changes. The final package was sent to the president Thursday for his expected signature.
Lawmakers had taken the expiration as an opportunity to revisit a number of the act’s surveillance provisions, including elements of the Patriot Act that were not expiring. This included proposals to alter the standard by which so-called National Security Letters are issued.
The letters allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 NSLs annually, and an internal watchdog has found repeated abuses of the NSL powers.
At one point last year, reforming the NSL took center stage during vigorous debate in committee hearings. The Senate had moved to make it more difficult for the FBI to issue NSLs, but caved after the administration argued NSLs were assisting the fight against terrorism. A House version granted the public greater protections.
The status quo, however, prevailed this week and the NSL structure was left intact, as were the three expiring provisions. They were extended on a 315-97 House vote Thursday and by a Senate voice vote the day before.
The three extended Patriot Act provisions are:
The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court, without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.
The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.
The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.
Illustration: Chuckumentary/Flickr
See Also:
Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions
Handy Chart Tracks Proposed Amendments to Patriot Act
FBI Use of Patriot Act Authority Increased Dramatically in 2008
Bloggers, TV, Go Nuts Over Misleading ‘Patriot Act’ Arrest Claim
House Considers Limiting Patriot Act Spy Powers
Lawmakers Cave to FBI in Patriot Act Debate
Senators Vote to Renew Patriot Act Spy Powers
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Whitney Harper must pay the RIAA $27,750 for file sharing that began when she was 14
A federal appeals court is ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.
The decision Thursday by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Texas federal judge who had ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or $200 per song. The lower court had granted her an “innocent infringer’s” exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum of $750 per track because she said she didn’t know she was violating copyrights and thought file sharing was akin to internet radio streaming.
The appeals court, however, said the woman was not eligible for such a defense — even if it was true she was between 14 and 16 years old when the infringing activity occurred on Limewire. The reason, the court concluded, is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs of the music in question provide copyright notices.
“Harper cannot rely on her purported legal naivety [sic] to defeat the … bar to her innocent infringer defense,” the New Orleans-based appeals court ruled unanimously, 3-0.
Harper, now 22 and a Texas Tech senior, said in 2008 interview that she didn’t know what she did was wrong when she file shared Eminem, the Police, Mariah Carey and others as a teen.
“I knew I was listening to music. I didn’t have an understanding of file sharing,” she said.
Scott Mackenzie, the woman’s attorney, said Friday that “She’s going to graduate with a federal judgment against her.” The RIAA, which has sued thousands of people for infringement, labeled Harper as “vexatious” when she refused to settle the case.
Harper’s case moved up the judicial ladder without a trial. Mackenzie said he was mulling whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Only two RIAA cases against individuals have gone to trial, both of which earned the RIAA whopping verdicts.
Most of the thousands of RIAA file sharing cases have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. The RIAA is winding down its 6-year-old litigation campaign targeting individual file sharers and instead is working with internet service providers to adopt rules that could cut off or hinder internet access to copyright scofflaws.
The first RIAA case to go to trial against an individual concerned Jammie Thomas. A Minnesota jury ordered the woman to pay $1.92 million for file sharing 24 songs. The judge in the case reduced the award to $54,000 — $2,250 a track.
The second case concerns Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University grad student who a jury ordered to pay $675,000 for file sharing 30 tracks last year. Tenenbaum has asked the judge in the case to lower the award. A decision is pending.
See Also:
Jury in RIAA Trial Slaps $2 Million Fine on Jammie Thomas
$675000 RIAA File Sharing Verdict Is ‘Unreasonable’
Anti-RIAA Site Folds
Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
Authors Guild: ‘To RIAA or Not to RIAA’
Settlement Rejected in ‘Shocking’ RIAA File Sharing Verdict
Judge Refuses to Punish Lawyer for Anti-RIAA Blogging
Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan
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A group identifying themselves as “anti-fascist hackers” broke into the web site and AOL e-mail account of controversial British historian and accused Holocaust-denier David Irving and obtained his private communications as well as attendee lists for his current U.S. speaking tour.
The hackers posted Irving’s e-mail correspondence online, as well as the user name and password for his web site account and AOL e-mail account, which shared the same password. The hackers also posted the e-mail addresses and other personal information — such as names, phone numbers and shipping and credit card billing addresses — of people who made donations through his web sites, purchased his books or bought tickets for his appearances.
Irving’s username and password for his Authorize.net account, which handles the credit card transactions on his web site, were also exposed.
The data was posted on the WikiLeaks site Friday evening in advance of Irving’s Saturday speaking engagement at the Catholic Kolping Society of America in New York City. The organization reportedly canceled the event on Friday after someone contacted it.
The organization said its facility had been booked a few days ago by someone using the name “Michael Singer,” who said he wanted to hold a book reading. The organization canceled the engagement after learning that the event was scheduled for Irving.
The location of Irving’s engagements are generally kept secret and announced to attendees only at the last minute to prevent protesters from appearing at the venues or pressuring facilities to cancel Irving’s reservations.
Irving was once a popular historian specializing in World War II but has been a lightning rod for controversy over opinions he’s expressed in the past about the Holocaust and the Nazi regime. Although he asserts he’s not a Holocaust denier, he was convicted in Austria in 2006 of denying the Holocaust and sentenced to three years in prison, and was called a racist and anti-semite by a British judge in a libel case that Irving lost. He has underplayed the extent of the extermination of Jews, saying the number killed was much fewer than 6 million. He also claimed in 1989 that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp — though he has since recanted.
“History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989,” the BBC reported him saying.
The Anti-Defamation League considers him one of the world’s most effective purveyors of Holocaust denial and has carefully monitored his activities.
The e-mails published on Friday exposed discussions that occurred between Irving and others about booking his speaking engagements under pseudonyms to thwart protestors.
“The venue is reserved under my name . . . , my phone number and wonderfully
disguised . . . as a book signing, not yours or some group so just in case some nasty is poking around they will come up with nothing,” wrote one supporter in the U.S. who had booked an engagement for Irving in Richmond, Virginia.
The e-mails include other personal correspondence about the East Coast speaking tour Irving is currently conducting in the U.S., security issues — such as an incident involving weapons that someone brought to one of his recent speaking engagements in Florida — and a tense exchange between Irving and his assistant about his poor treatment of her and her threats to quit.
The data also includes the bank account number of Irving’s landlord in the United Kingdom and instructions to Irving’s bank in Florida to wire money to the account, as well as personal exchanges with supporters.
One supporter writes to Irving: “You should continually blame the Jews who controlled Churchill with causing their own disaster. Also blame the Jews for the loss of your empire and the immigration invasion caused by it. As Reichminister Goebbles, of Blessed Memory, loved to say, ‘The Jews are to blame’.”
Among the published data is a list of people who bought tickets for Irving’s speaking engagements through his web site. The word “Achtung” has been appended to some ticket orders that appear to come from Jewish attendees. The published e-mails discuss playing tricks on attendees believed to be Jewish, such as giving them a false address for speaking events.
Irving’s web site was inaccessible Friday evening and calls to cell phones belonging to Irving and his assistant went unanswered. But Michael Santomauro, whose correspondence with Irving was among those posted online, confirmed that the e-mails were authentic and that Irving had been hacked.
Santomauro identified himself as the “Michael Singer” who had booked Irving’s New York speaking engagement. He told Threat Level that around 7pm Friday evening an e-mail was sent out by the hackers from Irving’s AOL account shortly before Irving was scheduled to give a talk in New Jersey. The e-mail was sent to a list of Irving supporters with the subject line reading: “ADVISORY: Anti-Fascist Hackers Destroy Holocaust Denier David Irving’s Website and Release Private Emails, Attendee Lists.”
The e-mail contained all of the information that was posted on the WikiLeaks web site and indicated that the hackers destroyed all the files, including backup files and databases, on Irving’s web sites irvingbooks.com and fpp.co.uk.
In the e-mail, the hackers wrote: “We did this to expose this Nazi-sympathizer for who he is and to shut down/disrupt any possibility of Irving rearing his fascist head in public during his tour. To David Irving and all aspiring white-power, anti-immigrant, queer-bashing, racist pigs - give it up! We will fight you on the streets and on the internet until you are swept into the dustbin of history.”
Santomauro said there was an inkling that something was wrong about half an hour before the hacker’s email arrived when Irving contacted him to tell him the New York event had been canceled and asked how his detractors could have learned the location. The two had only discussed it among themselves by email and by phone.
“Apparently [the hackers] have been monitoring his AOL for a certain amount of time,” Santomauro said.
He told Threat Level he suspected the Jewish Defense Organization was behind the hack. He says he’s been targeted himself by protestors from this group and others who have harrassed him outside his apartment building and hacked the account for a Yahoo study group he runs.
But, he says, the harassment against Irving is much worse.
“I don’t agree with everything Irving has to say, but he should have the freedom to express whatever views he has,” Santomauro said. “I can agree that he’s not a very pleasant person. But he’s not a Holocaust denier. He could care less about it and is not very knowledgeable about it. . . . He doesn’t talk about it in his speaking tours.”
No one was available to respond to questions left at a phone number posted at the Jewish Defense Organization’s web site.
UPDATE: Irving’s assistant, Jaenelle Antas, forwarded a statement from Irving saying that it would be several days before he could assess the damage from the hack, since his web provider had apparently scheduled repairs to begin on Friday — the day of the hack — and last for seven days, making it difficult for him to access his account.
“We have a complete back-up, in any case,” he wrote. “Half the files [the hackers] posted were already publicly available on the website, like the Radical’s Diary. Other items they appear to have invented. We shall be apologising to the many people who may find themselves inconvenienced by these juvenile cyber-nasties. We are puzzled that they are so frightened by historical debate.”
Antas did not respond to a follow-up question asking which items the hackers posted were invented.
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The secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement document we wrote about on Wednesday appeared on Wikileaks today, and our source has cleared us to publish it here as well.
We wrote that the document, (.pdf) if true, amounted to policy laundering at its finest -– that the United States was pushing the world to require ISPs to adopt “graduated response” policies that amounted to terminating internet service of repeat, copyright offenders.
We refrained from publishing the three-page leaked document in its entirety at the request of our source.
On Friday, ACTA participating nations concluded a sixth-round of top-secret negotiations. The countries include Australia, Canada, European Union states, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.
The countries are to meet again in January, Sweden announced.
See Also:
Details Lacking in Counterfeiting Treaty Paper
The Heat Is On for Details of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Special Interests See ‘Classified’ Copyright Treaty; You Can’t …
Copyright Treaty Is Policy Laundering at Its Finest
Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
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The Justice Department needs to investigate whether the secretiveness of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program tainted terrorism prosecutions by hiding exculpatory evidence from defendants, an oversight report from five inspectors general warned Friday.
The report (.pdf), mandated by Congress, also warned that President’ Bush’s post-9/11 extrajudicial intelligence programs involved unprecedented collection of communications, and that the government needs to be careful about storing and using that data.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said the report shed some light on the hidden legal machinations of the Bush administration’s secret spying programs, but that a nonpartisan commission was needed to really find out what happened.
“Without a thorough, independent review of decisions that run counter to our laws and treaties, we cannot ensure that these same mistakes are not repeated,” Leahy said.
The government has only admitted to eavesdropping on calls and e-mails where one end was overseas and one person was suspected to be a terrorist. It has never officially confirmed that it sucked in the telephone records of millions of Americans or eavesdropped wholesale on the internet, despite repeated media reports and confirmations from Congress members. But the report makes clear that there were more intelligence programs that the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” that the administration acknowledged after the New York Times revealed in December 2005.
The report comes exactly a year after Bush signed the FISA Amendments Act into law after a protracted battle in Congress over whether the telecoms that aided in the secret spying should get immunity from civil lawsuits. The Democrats, including then Senator and de-facto Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, eventually capitulated, granting immunity and giving the nation’s spooks broad powers to sift through communications in U.S. telecom hubs without court approval.
The law directed the inspectors general from the NSA, DoD, CIA, DoJ and Office of the Director of National intelligence to create reports explaining what the Bush spying programs entailed, and to create a single, unclassified summary.
The promised report reveals little new information about the program and the drama surrounding it.
After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush authorized several ultra-secret spying initiatives designed to thwart another terrorism attack. Few were allowed to know of the program’s existence, and John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer with close ties to the White House, was given the task of creating the legal rationale for the “President’s Surveillance Program.” Yoo’s logic hinged on a belief, espoused most strongly by Vice President Dick Cheney, that the President’s wartime powers were nearly boundless.
Yoo was one of three in the Justice Department who knew about the spying programs. Not even Yoo’s boss knew what he was doing or that the programs existed.
Every 45 days the CIA or other intelligence group would write up terrorism threat summaries, later known as the “scary memos.” Those created the justification for the President’s recurring authorizations, which contradicted the plain language of the nation’s wiretapping law. That 1978 law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, required court approval for spying wiretaps placed inside the United States and it is a felony to violate that law.
According to the consolidated unclassified report, the head of the NSA in 2001, General Michael Hayden, took the White House’s legal assurances at their word and pulled together a small group of NSA employees. He told them, “We are going to do exactly what he said and not one photon or electron more.”
But Yoo’s legal memos did not withstand scrutiny from other Justice department lawyers in 2003, who found that his rationales were deeply flawed. They also discovered that his descriptions of the programs were inadequate, meaning that some of the government’s activities had no legal justification whatsoever.
That led to a much publicized showdown that included a race to then Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bed and a handwritten note, never delivered, from FBI director Robert Mueller. That note said in part, “Should the President order the continuation of the FBI’s participation in the program, and in the absence of further legal advice from the AG, I would be constrained to resign as the Director of the FBI.”
The surveillance programs were saved at the last moment, using a different legal rationale. Eventually the programs were submitted to the nation’s secret spying court, but they were quickly struck down as illegal, forcing the Bush Administration to finally go to Congress to expand its wiretapping authorities.
The Justice Department IG found that the program played only a “limited role in the FBI’s overall counterterrorism efforts,” but warned that the information collected by the program could have tainted criminal prosecutions. It recommended that the Justice Department look hard to see if there was information collected by that program that should have been or should be turned over to defendants in terrorism cases. By law, prosecutors have to give a defendant all relevant information about their case, including any evidence that helps a defendant prove they are innocent.
The report ends with a stern, albeit vague, warning about the scale and lingering effects of the program now that it has been legalized by Congress.
“The collection activities pursued under the PSP and under FISA following the PSP’s transition to that authority, involved unprecedented collection activities. We believe the retention and use by Intelligence Community organizations of information collected under the PSP and FISA should be carefully monitored,” the reports final lines read.
See Also:
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
Bush Signs Spy Bill, ACLU Sues
Obama to Defend Telco Spy Immunity
Obama Administration Supports Telco Spy Immunity
NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records …
NSA Secret Database Ensnared President Clinton's Private E-mail …
News from Bizzaro World: Ashcroft Opposed Taps
Former DOJ Lawyer Couldn't Find Way to Legalize Bush Spying …
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LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Thursday overturned guilty verdicts against Lori Drew, issuing a directed acquittal on three misdemeanor charges.
Drew, 50, was accused of participating in a cyberbullying scheme against 13-year-old Megan Meier who later committed suicide. The case against Drew hinged on the government’s novel argument that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking. But U.S. District Judge George Wu found the premise troubling.
“It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime,” said Wu on Thursday, echoing what critics of the case have been saying for months. “And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract.”
Tina Meier, the mother of Megan Meier, walked out of the courtroom while Wu was still delivering his ruling. She later told reporters that she was “extremely upset with the decision” and that she left because she “was done listening to” the judge. She indicated that the family is still considering whether to bring a civil case against Drew.
Ron Meier, Megan Meier’s father, whose marriage fell apart after his daughter’s death, wore a large lapel button bearing his daughter’s smiling face as he spoke to reporters with tears in his eyes. He said despite Drew’s acquittal, “a jury of her peers did convict her, so that itself is a victory.”
Drew’s attorney, H. Dean Steward, praised Wu’s decision and said that “those of us that are concerned about being prosecuted” for violating a terms of service agreement “should feel a bit better now.”
Drew had been charged with four potential felony counts of unauthorized computer access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The jury convicted her last year of three misdemeanor charges instead and deadlocked on the fourth charge.
Wu told Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause that if Drew had been convicted of the felonies, he would have let the convictions stand, and would have already sentenced her. But the misdemeanor convictions troubled him, because of the vague wording of the statute.
The judge sparred with Krause for nearly 45 minutes over the government’s interpretation of the computer crime law, before granting the long-pending defense motion to overturn the jury verdict in the case.
The ruling is not official until Wu releases a written decision, which could come as early as next week. Prosecutors then have the option of appealing. They’ve already filed to have the deadlocked fourth conspiracy charge dismissed without prejudice, but indicated they could continue to pursue that charge as well.
U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien said afterward that he had no regrets.
“I’m proud of this case …. and this team [of prosecutors],” he said, even though using the CFAA to prosecute Drew “was a risk.” He added that his office “will always take risks on behalf of children.”
The case had its roots in a tragedy that began unfolding in September 2006 when, prosecutors said, Drew conspired to create a fake MySpace account for “Josh Evans” with her then 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, and a then-18-year-old employee and family friend named Ashley Grills.
Prosecutors alleged that Drew and the two others used the profile to lure Megan Meier into an online relationship with “Josh” to find out what Megan was saying about Drew’s daughter online. But in October, one of the group, writing as Josh, turned against Megan, and told her that the world would be a better place without her. Shortly afterward, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom.
Neighbors in O’Fallon, Missouri, the small town where the Drews and Meiers lived four houses away from each other, turned on Drew when her supposed complicity in the hoax emerged.
Missouri prosecutors sought to charge Drew with a crime, but were stymied by the fact that there was no federal statute against cyber bullying. O’Brien said on Thursday that Megan’s death “cried out for someone to do something.” And that’s when he and other prosecutors in California devised the novel idea to charge her under the anti-hacking statute, filing the case in Los Angeles because this is where MySpace’s servers are based.
MySpace’s user agreement requires registrants, among other things, to provide factual information about themselves, and to refrain from soliciting personal information from minors and using information obtained from MySpace services to harass or harm other people. By allegedly violating that click-to-agree contract, Drew committed the same crime as any hacker, prosecutors claimed.
But testimony in the case offered by prosecution witness Ashley Grills under a grant of immunity showed that nobody involved in the hoax actually read the terms of service. Grills also said that the hoax was her idea, not Drew’s, and that it was Grills who created the Josh Evans profile, and later sent the cruel message that tipped the emotionally vulnerable 13-year-old girl into her final, tragic act.
Wu’s problem with the case, he said, lay in the lesser burden required for a misdemeanor conviction.
To convict Drew of the felonies, prosecutors would have needed to prove two things: that Drew accessed MySpace “without authorization,” and did it for the purpose of committing a tortious act — in this case, to intentionally cause harm to Megan Meier.
But for the misdemeanors, the jury just had to find that Drew obtained the unauthorized access. Wu said that language, standing on its own, was too vague to pass constitutional muster in this case.
“I don’t see how the misdemeanor aspect would be constitutional,” he said. “That is the issue I’m wrestling with at this time.”
Wu also doubted that MySpace provided sufficient notice to members to hold them responsible. If a user didn’t read the terms of service, the judge asked prosecutor Krause, could they still be charged with violating them?
Krause struggled to respond to Wu’s questions, emphasizing that not every terms-of-service violation would be prosecuted as a crime. In Drew’s case, he said, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that she knew what she was doing was wrong.
But Wu disputed this, pointing out that the government’s star witness — Ashley Grills — had testified that she never read the terms of service before clicking on a button agreeing to them.
Wu and Krause circled around each other for several more minutes before Wu finally announced that he was granting the defense’s motion to acquit.
Drew had faced a maximum sentence of three years and a $300,000 fine. Although prosecutors sought the maximum, probation authorities, in a pre-sentencing report sent to the court, had recommended probation and a $5,000 fine.
Drew’s father, Jerry Shreeves, told Threat Level after the hearing, “I think this is what needed to happen.”
Drew’s attorney, Steward, said that the federal prosecutors in Los Angeles should be ashamed for having brought the case to trial.
“Missouri prosecutors got it right” by not filing charges, he said. “How is it that Tom O’Brien’s people are that much smarter?”
Steward wouldn’t say how much the case had cost his client, only noting that her parents had taken care of his fee, which was “significantly lower” than what he normally charged.
He said that Drew and her family have since moved out of Missouri, due to the harassment they received, noting that she’s been “an internet punching bag for almost three years” having been “tried, convicted and lynched by bloggers” and others who didn’t know all the facts of the case.
He said Drew has already been in touch with a lawyer to discuss a possible civil case that she might still face, but felt fairly certain that her criminal troubles were done.
“Hopefully, [prosecutors] will just let this case end now,” he said.
(Last updated: 6:30 p.m. Eastern)
Photo: AP
See also:
Judge Postpones Lori Drew Sentencing; Weighs Dismissal
Can Lori Drew Verdict Survive the 9th Circuit Court?
Prosecutors Seek 3 Years in Prison for Lori Drew
Lori Drew Not Guilty of Felonies in Landmark Cyberbullying Trial
Prosecution: Lori Drew Schemed to Humiliate Teen Girl
Government’s Star Witness Stumbles: MySpace Hoax Was Her Idea, Not Drew’s
Experts Say MySpace Suicide Indictment Sets ‘Scary’ Legal Precedent
Blog Readers Out Anonymous Adults that Newspaper Refused to Identify
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Iran’s Guardian Council has found that the number of ballots cast in the country’s presidential election this month exceeded the number of registered voters in at least 50 cities.
Officials found that a total of 3 million more ballots were cast in these cities than there were eligible voters, according to the New York Times.
Nonetheless, the council insists that the election results are valid and says the 3 million discrepancy would not affect the results of the election.
The deadline for certifying the election results is Wednesday, although the council has the option of calling for a runoff between Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won the election with 63 percent of the vote, or a margin of 11 million votes.
Discrepancies between registered voters and ballots is common in elections, though not at the rate experienced in Iran. Iranian voters can cast their ballot at any polling place after showing their shenasnameh, or ID wallet. This can explain why the number of ballots might exceed registered voters in some cities. And there have been suggestions that many Iranians who own summer vacation homes cast ballots in their vacation districts rather than the cities they normally reside.
But it’s unlikely that this can explain all 3 million excessive ballots, and it’s reported that many of the 50 cities where the ballots were cast are small and remote locations that rarely see visitors or vacationers.
Many questions still remain about the election, which the Times lists in its story.
How did the government manage to count enough of the 40 million paper ballots to be able to announce results within two hours of the polls closing?
How is it that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s margin of victory remained constant throughout the ballot count?
Why did the government order polls closed at 10 p.m. when they often stay open until midnight for presidential races?
Why were some ballot boxes sealed before candidates’ inspectors could validate they were empty?
Why were votes counted centrally, by the Interior Ministry, instead of locally, as in the past?
Why did some polling places lock their doors at 6 p.m. after running out of ballots?
Photo: An Iranian woman casts her ballot for the presidential elections at a polling station in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 12, 2009. (AP/Vahid Salemi)
See also:
Crunching Iranian Election Numbers for Evidence of Fraud
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SAN FRANCISCO — The Obama administration has until Friday to convince a federal judge not to levy sanctions against the government for “failing to obey the court’s orders” in a key NSA wiretapping lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is threatening (.pdf) to summarily decide the 3-year-old lawsuit in favor of the plaintiffs, and award unspecified monetary damages to two American lawyers who claim their telephone calls were illegally intercepted by the NSA under the Bush administration. The lawyer represented a now-defunct Saudi charity that the Treasury Department claimed was linked to terrorism.
If it survived appeal, such a ruling would be a blow to the government, but it would fall far short of deciding the important question the case asks: Can a sitting president, without congressional authority, create a spying program to eavesdrop on Americans’ electronic communications without warrants, as George W. Bush did in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks?
The San Francisco case began when the government accidentally sent the plaintiffs documents that showed their overseas communications with Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation officials were intercepted without warrants. The pair sued, but were forced to return the document because it was marked “top secret.”
The Justice Department, under the Bush and Obama administrations, has repeatedly maintained that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it threatens to expose state secrets.
But after years of legal wrangling, Walker decided in January that the documents were admissible, and ordered the government to craft a protective order that would allow the plaintiff’s counsel to review the documents in secret, without them being disclosed to their clients or the public. A similar process has been applied to lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
This month the Obama administration refused to comply with Walker’s order. The government is “refusing to cooperate with the court’s orders because, they assert, plaintiffs’ attorneys do not ‘need to know’ the information that the court has determined they do need to know,” Walker wrote Friday.
The refusal came after after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to override the judge. Until Walker directly orders the government to turn over the classified document to the plaintiff lawyers, the appeals court will not consider hearing the case. In defying the court order, the government urged Walker to go ahead and order the release of the secret documents to the lawyers, so the Justice Department could appeal. But Walker declined that invitation to become the nation’s first judge to disclose data the government has classified as a state secret.
Now Walker has given the Justice Department until Friday to explain why he shouldn’t sanction the government by simply deciding the entire lawsuit in favor of the plaintiffs.
A hearing on the matter is set for June 3.
Walker is the same judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit targeting the nation’s telecommunication companies of being complicit in Bush’s once-secret spy program. Congress, with the vote of then-Sen. Barack Obama, legalized the spy program last summer.
That legislation allows electronic eavesdropping of Americans without obtaining a warrant if the subjects of the wiretap are communicating overseas with somebody believed connected to terrorism.
No such congressional authority was in place when lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Gafoor’s telephone calls were intercepted in 2005. The United States had designated the Al-Haramain charity a terror organization.
The legislation authorizing the spy powers also immunized the telcos from being sued for their part in Bush’s eavesdropping program. Walker is entertaining a constitutional challenge to the immunity legislation.
See Also:
Obama Dares Judge to Order Release Of NSA Spy Document
Thoughts of Storm Troopers Filling Spy Case
Obama Administration: Wiretapping Legal Challenge Must Die …
Spied-On Lawyers May Get Second Chance in NSA Lawsuit
NSA Judge: ‘I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland’
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RealNetworks is upping the ante in litigation seeking to prevent it from distributing DVD-copying software. The company argues the Hollywood studios are a “price-fixing cartel” that have no right to prevent consumers from duplicating the movie discs.
The Seattle-based electronics concern is making the argument in a bid to convince a federal judge to lift the distribution ban of its RealDVD software (.pdf) that allows consumers to make copies of the discs to their computer hard drives. The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood studios, and others, sued RealNetworks last year, claiming the software is illegal because it circumvents technology designed to prevent copying.
But RealNetworks, in counterclaims filed late Wednesday, maintains that the studios, as a collective, have illegally crafted a licensing scheme called the Content Scramble System licensing agreement that prevents the fair-use copying of DVDs. It is the first time the studios, in conjunction with the DVD Copy Control Association (which licenses the CSS code) have been accused of anti-trust practices in a lawsuit.
The CSS code is licensed to DVD-player manufacturers so electronic companies can acquire the keys to unscramble Hollywood’s encrypted DVDs. The code is designed to prevent unauthorized copying of movie discs.
“The CSS agreement is being used to extend a legally granted monopoly over content into separate markets – to prevent competition from technologies that would allow a copy of content for fair use purposes. But making the making of a copy of a studio DVD is authorized fair use under the Copyright Act,” RealNetworks wrote U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in a court filing.
That said, RealNetworks has gargantuan legal hurdles to clear before it can prevail on its claim, which includes allegations the companies colluded against RealNetworks to banish its DVD-copying software.
For starters, RealNetworks’ argument that consumers have a “fair use” right to make copies of their DVDs for personal use is a claim the federal courts have never embraced. The reason is the 10-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which clearly bans circumventing encryption technology designed to prevent copying.
Hence, for good or bad, fair use is not a part of the legal equation, at least as far as the DMCA is concerned. RealNetworks, however, maintains the DMCA does not apply because the company is not circumventing technology. It claims the CSS license it acquired allows for copying DVDs – an issue at the center of the case and a proposition the studios staunchly reject.
What’s more, it’s possible the so-called cartel of studios is immunized from anti-trust allegations under what is known as the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, where the Supreme Court has said that competitors (in this instance the studios) have the First Amendment right to band together to advocate for their interests. Without such immunity, there likely wouldn’t be trade associations, according to Los Angeles copyright attorney Ben Sheffner, who writes the must-read Copyrights & Campaigns blog,
“In the RealDVD case, I expect one of the studios’ defenses (though certainly not their only defense) will be that, to the extent that they cooperated or made any agreements regarding copyright enforcement, such cooperation or agreements are immunized under N-P as legitimate anti-piracy activities,” Sheffner said in an e-mail. “I also expect them to argue strenuously that — contrary to what Real alleges — there was no agreement among them not to deal with Real.”
Fred von Lohmann, a copyright attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed that “this will be one of their arguments. But whether the court will buy it is another.”
The studios said RealNetworks’ counterclaims are a ploy.
“While we have not yet had a chance to examine RealNetworks’ new antitrust allegations fully, they appear to be based on significant factual and legal errors, and an attempt to distract attention away from the issue of RealNetworks’ misconduct and the injunction issue pending before the court,” Glenn Pomerantz, an MPAA attorney, said in an e-mail.
Patel, the judge in the case, also presided over the Napster trial. Anti-trust issues raised in that case went by the wayside. Among them were allegations that the record labels colluded to delay the sale of digital audio files to extract more money from music fans. The theory was that the music industry didn’t quickly adopt digital sales because it wanted to sell CDs, thus forcing consumers to pay for an entire CD instead of individual — and cheaper — digital songs.
But let’s assume RealNetworks prevails on its anti-trust claims, that the CSS licensing agreement should be null and void. Would consumers be better off? They might not unless the DMCA is changed.
If the DMCA is left intact, the individual studios — even if barred from being a collective — would still encrypt their DVDs to prevent copying. The DMCA would still make it unlawful to circumvent encryption technology designed to prevent copying.
A likely result would be that the studios might each encrypt their DVDs differently. That might result in consumers having to purchase several DVD-playing machines to unscramble discs from different studios.
So even if RealNetworks is right on the anti-trust issues, it does not necessarily result in the company being able to market its DVD-copying software. Instead, RealNetworks should lobby to change the DMCA.
Photo: john_a_ward
See Also:
Glaser: RealDVD Not For Pirates
MPAA Claims RealNetworks ‘Destroyed’ Evidence in DVD Copying Case …
Wink Wink: RealNetworks Says Don’t Copy Rented DVDs
10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web
It’s Time to Legalize Personal-Use DVD Copying
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Apple’s demands to control completely the iPhone and iPod – and free speech about them — was met with legal resistance Monday when the Cupertino electronics concern was hit by a lawsuit challenging that presumption.
The San Francisco federal court case concerns a wiki that last year removed a thread discussing integrating non-Apple software into the closely guarded iPhone and iPod. Virginia-based OdioWorks, the operator of the non-commercial wiki – BluWiki, removed the string amid threats of being sued by one of the world’s richest companies.
To OdioWorks’ rescue Monday were two San Francisco-based law firms, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Keker & Van Nest. Apple, in its November takedown notice to BluWiki, said the wiki’s discussions amounted to copyright infringement and violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because the threat discussed methods to circumvent encryption technology.
Apple’s position should come as no surprise as it protects its virtual monopoly in the digital music player space, while sales of the popular iPhone are skyrocketing despite worldwide economic tumult. The company also claims jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone is illegal – positions the U.S. Copyright Office is now mulling.
The deleted BluWiki threads discussed reverse engineering a cheksum hash connected to the iTunesDB file — which is an operating system index to keep track of what music is on an Apple device. Cracking the checksum enables iPods and iPhones to sinc with other desktop management tools like gtkpod, Winamp or Songbird, the EFF says.
The lawsuit (.pdf) against Apple claims no law was broken by BluWiki because the writers of the wiki threads “had apparently not yet succeeded in their reverse engineering efforts and were simply discussing Apple’s code obfuscation techniques,” writes Fred von Lohmann, an EFF attorney. “If Apple is suggesting that the DMCA reaches people merely talking about technical protection measures, then they’ve got a serious First Amendment problem.”
What’s more, von Lohmann points out in a blog post, “the iTunesDB file on an iPod is the result of the individual choices each iPod owner makes in deciding what music and other media to put on her iPod. In other words, the iTunesDB file is to iTunes as this blog post is to Safari – when I use Safari to produce a new work, I own the copyright in the resulting file, not Apple.”
Apple, however, claims the EFF is wrong (.pdf) and that the BluWiki threatens its Fairplay copyprotection scheme.
Photo: rudolf schuba
See Also:
Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking is Illegal
Hacked iPhone No Longer Just a Theory: Demo Turns iPhone into Spy …
Supreme Court OKs Cell Phone Unlocking Suit
TracFone: Cell Phone Unlocking Supports Terrorism
Unlocking Your iPhone is Legal; Distributing the Hack, Maybe Not …
Extra Extra: Threat Level Wants Your Apple Conspiracy Theory …
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The National Organization for Marriage seems to be ratcheting up its efforts to suppress the audition videos that leaked from its anti-gay-rights "gathering storm" shoot. According to YouTube, the group has gotten a clip from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show pulled from the site. In the segment, which aired Thursday, Maddow criticizes the group's ad, and shows 40 seconds of the audition tapes. "We do not know how Human Rights Campaign got access to the audition tapes, but because they did, we do know that pretending to be a straight person hurt by gay marriage is apparently very, very challenging," she says.
The clip was previous available on YouTube, but now the page says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by National Organization for Marriage." MSNBC, of course, would have been well within its rights to demand the clip be removed. But NOM asserting a copyright interest to have a critical newscast scrubbed from the net? That sets an extraordinary precedent.Update: The Rachel Maddow show writes in to point out that the clip is still available on MSNBC's website. The section on the NOM ad begins at 2:15. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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You might not think it's newsworthy when the Department of Homeland Security fills a job vacancy. But it's news when a department that has "security" in its name appoints someone with security in his background.Unfortunately, in this case, the security background comes courtesy of Microsoft, which might cause some to ponder the phrase "unclear on the concept."DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today that she was appointing Philip Reitinger to the position of deputy undersecretary of the department's National Protections Program Directorate. The job requires Reitinger to oversee the protection of the government's computer networks and work with the private sector to help secure critical infrastructures.Reitinger comes to DHS from his job as chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist for Microsoft, a job that required him in part to help develop and implement strategies for enhancing the security of critical infrastructures.But since many people in the security industry feel that Microsoft has played a large role in the lack of security (.pdf) with government and infrastructure systems, his appointment might be considered what some would call ironic (.pdf).A DHS representative indicated that the appointment is a signal of how seriously Napolitano takes the issue of computer security.Dan Geer, vice president and chief scientist at computer security firm Verdasys and one of Microsoft's chief critics in the past, said, "The theory is that the best security program managers are sadder but wiser — that nothing focuses the mind like having been really close to the really ugly. As number two in security at Microsoft, Phil has been far closer to far uglier than anyone else on the planet, so we'll soon see if the theory is correct."Reitinger, who served during the Bush Administration on the Industry Executive Subcommittee of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee,
is an improvement over Scott Charbo, who held the DHS job last year
after being promoted from his position as chief information officer of
the DHS — a promotion that was criticized on Capitol Hill.
Charbo had come to DHS from the Department of Agriculture, where, as
CIO, his focus was on integrating networks, not securing them.
Reitinger at least has a background and an understanding of computer
security issues. He also has a strong background in computer crime
issues. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2003, he was executive director
of the Department of Defense's Cyber Crime Center, which includes a
computer forensic lab and computer investigations training program. And
before that, he was a federal criminal prosecutor for the Department of
Justice where he served as deputy chief of its Computer Crime and
Intellectual Property Section.
One of Reitinger's first tasks in his new job will be deciding what to
do with the job that Rod Beckstrom will vacate this Friday. Beckstrom
resigned last week from his position as director of DHS's National
Cyber Security Center, where he was, essentially, the government's
cybersecurity czar. Beckstrom expressed frustration in his resignation letter
that DHS wasn't taking cybersecurity seriously, and he wasn't being
given the resources to do his job. He also complained that the National
Security Agency was moving to take over DHS's cybersecurity role.DHS wouldn't respond to those criticisms directly, but told Threat Level that Beckstrom wasn't a team player.
"He was not really doing what he needs to do and working with people," the spokeswoman said. "The secretary wanted to bring someone in who was more a team
player and was good at their job and knew what was going on. She has
brought in someone who will really do something with this issue."See also: NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to 'Grave Peril', Ex-Cyber Chief Tells CongressNSA Should Oversee Cybersecurity, Intel Chief SaysCybersecurity Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA TakeoverOutgoing DHS Cyber Chief Expands on Why He ResignedNSA Chief Continues Bid to Take Over CyberseucrityComputer Malware the New 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'
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For more than a decade, Carl Malamud of public.resource.org has been angering government bureaucrats by setting government documents free using his online pirate printing press. But now, Malamud is campaigning to be The Man.Or, more accurately, the chief printer for The Man.Malamud started by forcing the SEC to put filings online in the '90s, moved into publishing the nation's laws and regulations for free online, and is now fighting to free federal court document-retrieval systems from its onerous per-page fees. It's all part of his plan to open-source the nation's operating system.Now Malamud has launched a public campaign — found online at YesWeScan.org — to be nominated to become the "Public Printer of the United States," the head of the Government Printing Office.He writes:In 2008,
Public.Resource.Org
published over 32.4 million pages of primary legal materials, as well
as thousands of hours of video and thousands of photographs. In the
1990s, I fought to place the databases of the United States on the
Internet. In the 1980s, I fought to make the standards that govern our
global Internet open standards available to all. Should I be honored to
be nominated and confirmed, I would continue to work to preserve and
extend our public domain, and would place special attention to our
relationship with our customers, especially the United States Congress. Malamud has already filed his radical transparency proposals with the Obama transition team, and now is looking for people to support his nominations by blogging about his campaign or adding their support in comments on blog posts.Given Malamud's ability to wear down government bureaucracies, the Obama administration might do well to save themselves the trouble. Malamud will be the nation's public printer — it's just a question of whether he'll be rogue or legit.
See Also:
Advocacy Group Angry at Smithsonian's Fake Copyrights Claims Their ...
Online Rebel Publishes Millions of Dollars in U.S. Court Records ...2.01: Electric Word
2.07: Street Cred
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/urC_F0i4HUc/rogue-archivist.html
A 16-year veteran of the CIA pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal fraud charge after using undercover agency credit cards to run up $75,000 in personal expenses, including costly hotel stays and a $700 watch.
Steven J. Levan, 48, worked as a case agent at the CIA until his recent termination over the fraud. According to an affidavit (.pdf) by a U.S. postal inspector who investigated the case, Levan made unauthorized personal use of four special credit cards that, while not officially billed to the government, are “customarily paid by the agency.”
“The agency had to pay the defendant's fraudulent charges on those credit cards, in order to maintain the means by which the agency protects the identity of certain of its employees,” reads the affidavit.
Despite the relatively mild charges, Levan’s been held without bail since his arrest on January 12, based on the government’s assertion that the former spy could begin peddling national security secrets to foreign powers to raise more money. Levan’s attorney slammed the espionage rhetoric as “rank speculation” in a motion for bail (.pdf) last month.
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Contrary to the often cited statistic that one out of five minors is sexually solicited online, a controversial report released this week indicates that cyberbullies are a more prevalent problem than predators on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and that in the case of predators, "the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations."About half of minors who report receiving sexual solicitations online say the advances come from other minors, the report says.Where sexual interactions do occur between adults and minors online, they rarely progress to physical encounters offline and, when they do, they usually involve post-pubescent minors between the ages of 14 and 17, who are aware before the encounter that the person they are planning to meet is an adult.The researchers found that the minors who are most at risk of encountering inappropriate content and encounters online often engage in risky behaviors or come from environments that make them more susceptible to risks, such as environments where there is little adult supervision or where there is drug abuse or physical and mental abuse."Those who are most at risk often engage in risky behaviors and have difficulties in other parts of their lives. The psychosocial makeup of and family dynamics surrounding particular minors are better predictors of risk than the use of specific media or technologies," the report says.The report also says that although cyberbullying is a greater problem than predators, there is no evidence that bullying has increased because of social networking sites and that bullying still occurs more often offline than online, although social networking sites have created another avenue for expressing it.The report, titled "Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies," was commissioned by the National Association of Attorneys General, which is trying to determine the best way to combat cyberthreats against minors. It was produced by a task force headed by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and is based on reviews of existing research in the area, of which the task force says there's a paucity, as well as an examination of existing tools that offer online safety features.The task force included more than two-dozen representatives from policy groups (Center for Democracy and Technology and the Institute for Policy Innovation) child safety groups (WiredSafey.org, ConnectSafely.org) as well as technology companies (MySpace, Google and Yahoo).Although the national attorneys general association commissioned the report, there's been some breaking of the ranks among its members. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster has complained in a letter (.pdf) that the report's findings are "as disturbing as they are wrong," and "create a troubling false sense of security on the issue of child internet safety."Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had a similar reaction, saying that the "harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report."See also:
Child Porn Laws Used Against Kids Who Photograph ThemselvesLori Drew Not Guilty of Felonies in Landmark Cyberbullying TrialProsecutors Charge 7 People Under New Cyberbullying LawMySpace Predator Caught by CodeMySpace Faces a Perp Problem
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Privacy advocates say prosecutors are misusing child pornography laws by turning them against the very people they are meant to protect.
The accusation comes following a raft of recent child pornography cases against juveniles accused of photographing themselves in the nude.
This week, prosecutors in Greensburg, Pennsylvania charged six teens ranging in age from 14 to 17 with creating, distributing and possessing child pornography, after three girls were found to have taken photos of themselves in the nude or partially nude and e-mailed them to friends, including three boys who are among the defendants.
The case is only one of the latest in a spate of similar prosecutions and investigations. In Florida, officials similarly charged a 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old boyfriend with producing, directing or promoting child porn after they photographed themselves having sex. Neither of the teens shared the images with anyone else.
The issue of teenagers distributing self-made pornography isn't new, but its prevalence and consequences have been exacerbated by advances in technology. Thirty years ago a teen who wanted to take nude self-portraits had to develop the film at a lab, and distribution was limited by the number of copies made from the negative. Now a camera-phone and internet connection are enough to send the image around the world in an instant, whether or not the sender intended it to reach that far.
Critics say the criminal charges against minors, under laws that were meant to protect them from adults, is the wrong way to address the issue of teens exploring their sexuality. Law enforcement's reaction effectively turns victims into perpetrators, they say.
"The problem is that the child porn laws were really designed for a situation where an adult abuses a minor by forcing that minor ... psychologically as well as physically ... into taking these pictures," said Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor. "But when the person takes the picture herself or consents to the picture being taken, it turns the whole statute on its head."
In the Pennsylvania case, a school official seized the phone of one of the boys after he was caught using it during school hours in violation of a school rule, according to local police Capt. George Seranko. The official found the picture on the phone, and after some interrogation, discovered that two other girls had also e-mailed photos of themselves in the nude to friends. That's when the school called police, who obtained search warrants to seize the phones and examine them. Police showed the images to the local district attorney, who recommended they bring charges.
Seranko said the images "weren't just breasts; they showed female anatomy."
Authorities argue that bringing child porn charges against teens is
designed to educate them about the dangers of creating and distributing
such images, which could fall into the hands of commercial
pornographers, pedophiles or others who might want to harm or exploit
them.
But Parry Aftab, founder and director of WiredSafety, which educates
kids about internet safety, says the prosecutions are desperate acts by
frustrated law enforcement officials, and they don't achieve the
desired effect.
"Prosecutors don't know what to do, so they are reaching out in the way that prosecutors do," she said.
Rasch agrees. "You take teenagers, alcohol and cell phone cameras
and put them in a room together and you've got a prescription for
disaster," he said. "But you shouldn't be making felons out of it."
Rasch supports legislation to exempt any minor from prosecution for
creating an image of himself or herself and distributing it to friends.
The recipient, too, should be exempt, though Rasch sees no problem with
charging a boyfriend or friend if they distribute the image further
without the girl's consent. Even then, though, he thinks there's room
for debate about the consequences.
"If my son or daughter were doing this kind of stuff, I'd have a
serious discussion with them about the consequences, but I don't know
that it would help anybody to throw them in jail," he said.
Rasch said teens don't realize that one unintentional consequence of
self-made child porn is that it can sometimes provide authorities with
evidence of other crimes. He cites the case of Genarlow Wilson in
Georgia who was convicted of having consensual oral sex with a
15-year-old girl when he was 17 based on a videotape of his encounter
with the girl at a party. Wilson was sentenced to 10 years in prison
and required to register as a sex offender, though he was released
after serving two years following an appeal to the state supreme court.
There are no known cases involving federal charges against a minor for
child porn: the recent cases were brought under state laws by local
prosecutors, usually in juvenile court. Since juvenile cases are not
part of the public record, Rasch says it's not known what kinds of
sentences have resulted from such cases. But he said generally
juveniles who commit crimes get convicted of delinquency, not the
actual crime they commit.
In the recent Pennsylvania case, Capt. Seranko said the teens are likely to get community service if convicted.
"Their records won't be scarred for life," he said.
Rasch points out that people who take or share nude self-portraits
when they're minors could be prosecuted as adults and face harsher
penalties if they're still in possession of the images when they reach
the age of 18.
With regard to the claim that prosecution of minors will deter other
teens from engaging in the same activity, Aftab says this isn't the
case, because teens don't identify with the concept of criminal
charges. She points to the famous case of several teenage girls in
Florida last year who were arrested for beating up another girl.
"They were laughing on the way to jail and worrying about if their hair
will look good on camera," said Aftab. "They didn’t understand that
jail is jail."
In the case of teens charged with child pornography, they simply don't
see a difference between posting provocative pictures on MySpace and
sending nude photos to friends.
"These kids are now seeing stuff on MySpace and other places online
where other kids are posing in sexual poses in the nude performing real
or mock sex, and to them it's just their 15 megabytes of fame. They
think it's the norm," she said.
Aftab says the solution is counseling and education. The former should
enlist mental health experts, and the latter should involve teen
educators, since teens don't listen to adults when it comes to
regulating their behavior.
She also said teens who engage in this kind of activity should be
punished with a consequence that really matters -- having their cell
phone taken away or losing internet or other privileges.
"That's real," Aftab said. "It's quantifiable and it's within their reach."
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/gqRa8rwqvcY/kids.html
In the first case of its kind, a Pennsylvania man faces federal criminal charges for allegedly selling hacked cable modems capable of stealing free, anonymous internet service from broadband providers.
Thomas Swingler was charged Thursday in federal court in New York with trafficking in unlawful access devices for his online business cablehack.net. The site, still in operation, sells "pre-modded" Motorola Surfboard modems for between $38 and $58 that can be customized by the owner without a cable company's knowledge. Among other things, the user can set their own upload and download rates, and change the MAC address — the unique normally hard-coded into a modem.
"If you decide to use one of these modems to get free internet, then you're committing theft of service and we will take no responsibility for what may happen to you if you're caught," the site cautions in its FAQ.
The prosecution treads on a gray area largely avoided by federal law enforcement until now. Modified modems and detailed hacking tutorials have long been available over the internet, with much of the hacking aimed at "uncapping" modems to get higher speeds than offered by providers. The hacking is effective because, unlike old-fashioned telephone service, in which the phone company exerts independent control of every line, cable modem systems hang an entire neighborhood off a common backbone in the field. To bill customers and set individual bandwidth limits, they rely on their ability to track and control the modems attached to their network.
Customizable modems can also have legitimate uses. But despite his public disclaimer, Swingler knew exactly why people were buying his hacked modems, according to the FBI, which set an informant on Swingler last June. "The modem steals the internet," he allegedly said in an online chat with the snitch. He described his business as "modem modification where you can get free cable internet." "It's 100 percent legal," he boasted. "What the end user does is theft-of-service. Not my problem."
Using a cloned or fictitious MAC address could not only provide free broadband, it would frustrate law enforcement efforts to track down an internet user committing other crimes online. "You could do mad fraud off it," Swingler allegedly explained in another chat session. Swingler declined to comment for this story.
It's not clear how many modems Swingler has sold, but the online forum attached to his site boasts over 4,000 users, and the FBI's review of Swingler's PayPal account showed "numerous sales of modems to individuals around the world."
In July, FBI agent Milan Patel ordered a modem (.pdf) from Swingler and sent it to Motorola for analysis. The company verified for the FBI that the device had been hacked to allow users to change their MAC address.
Because the hacked modems have legitimate uses, Swingler's statements to the informant could make all the difference in the case, says Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor.
"I think the law is pretty clear that if you can convincingly say that you didn't know it was going to be used illegally, you shouldn't be prosecuted," says Rasch. "I don't think that argument will fly here."
The author of Hacking the Cable Modem: What Cable Companies Don't Want You to Know, who goes by the name DerEngel, says he's familiar with cablehack.net. Last year the site licensed DerEngel's custom cable-modem firmware, called Sigma, for a flat $150 fee. "They used to just steal it," he says.
Like cablehack.net, DerEngel's website sells pre-modded modems loaded with Sigma, which allows users to reconfigure the modem through a built-in web interface. Among other things, the custom interface lets users to change their MAC address. But DerEngel says he doesn't support fraud, and that MAC address tinkering has legitimate uses, and is just one step in the complicated process that allows a modem to get free, untraceable internet.
"I think that's morally wrong and probably illegal," DerEngel says. "There's a gray area there, but theft-of-service is a crime no matter where you're at."
According to the FBI, Swingler took up modem-modding after retiring from a career managing botnets — fleets of hacked computers used to steal consumer information and launch denial-of-service attacks. Update: January 12, 2009 | 7:30:00 PM"Tom from Cablehack" responds in the comments, denying the FBI's allegations across the board.
I have customers all the time asking me, "Can I use this modem and cancel my sub account"I simply state NO. It is NOT intended for that purpose. These modems are 100% legal to sell, it is a stock Motorola diagnostic shelled firmware. This is why they are allowed to be sold on eBay, because we as modders are doing NOTHING illegal if we are just simply upgrading the firmware to shell access.You have 7 business days to remove this report / story from your blog. if you fail to do so, I will press charges to the full extent.
See Also:
Cable Modem Hacker Publishes a Tell-All
Comcast Deflects User's Questions
Charter to Snoop on Broadband Customers' Web Histories for Ad ...
Reminder: Monday Is Wiretap the Internet Day
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wired27b/~3/TYdUGg0zkSE/hardware-hacker.html
A powerful digital certificate that can be used to forge the of any website on the internet is in the hands of in international band of security researchers, thanks to a sophisticated attack on the ailing MD5 hash algorithm, a slip-up by Verisign, and about 200 PlayStation 3s.
"We can impersonate Amazon.com and you won't notice," says David Molnar, a computer science PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. "The padlock will be there and everything will look like it's a perfectly ordinary certificate."
The security researchers from the U.S., Switzerland and the Netherlands planned to detail their technique Tuesday, at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
At issue is the crypto technology used to ensure visitors to Amazon.com, for example, are actually connected to the online retailer and not to a fake site erected by a fraudster. That assurance comes from a digital certificate that's vouched for and digitally signed by a trusted authority like Verisign. The certificate is transmitted to a user's browser and automatically verified during SSL connections -- the high-security web links heralded by a locked-padlock icon in the browser.
Key to the signing process is a so-called hash function -- an algorithm that turns a digital file into a small fingerprint of a fixed size. To prevent forgery, the hash function must make it practically impossible for anyone to create two files that will boil down to the same hash.
In 2004 and 2007, cryptographers published research showing that the once-common MD5 hash function suffers weaknesses that could allow attackers to create these "collisions." Since then, most certificate authorities have moved to more secure hashes. But in an automated survey earlier this year, the researchers presenting in Berlin say they discovered a weak link at Verisign-owned RapidSSL, which was still signing certificates using MD5. Out of 38,000 website certificates the team collected, 9,485 were signed using MD5, and 97% of those were issued by RapidSSL.
That's when they hit the company with the first real-world version of the attack. They say they submitted a certificate for their own website to RapidSSL for signing. Then they successfully modified the resulting signed certificate to turn it into a vastly more powerful "CA certificate," stealing RapidSSL's authority to sign and verify certificates for any other site on the internet.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/498683540/berlin.html
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/490012421/no-isp-filterin.html
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/489943312/mediterranean-c.html
The Wall Street Journal says the Recording Industry Association of America's
litigation campaignagainst online file sharing
is over.
Is it true? Stay tuned.
See Also:
File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA ...
RIAA Appeals Jammie Thomas Mistrial
RIAA Decries Attorney-Blogger as 'Vexatious' Litigator
Judge Rejects 'Making Available' Defense, Orders Teen File Sharer ...
Retrial Date Set in RIAA v. Thomas
Thomas Mistrial Decision Bolsters RIAA Litigation
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/489837888/wsj-says-riaa-l.html
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/475112594/online-auction.html
div xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmlpa '_blank', 'width=400,height=601,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false href=http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/11/20/mert_ortac.jpgimg width=350 height=525 border=0 src=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/images/2008/11/20/mert_ortac.jpg title=Mert_ortac alt=Mert_ortac style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; float: right; //a
A Turkish computer hacker and informant who'd been allegedly kidnapped and tortured by a notorious ATM swindler was arrested this week,nbsp; according to a report from the Turkish press.
/p
p
Turkish police arrested Mert Ortac on computer hacking charges on Tuesday, a href=http://www.haber7.com/haber/20081119/Cetenin-bilgi-kaynagi-yakalandi.php reports Haber 7/a. Ortac, known under the hacker handle Kier, is an associate of another Turkish hacker called Cha0, who allegedly abducted him earlier this year.
/p
p
Ortac had been leaking information about Cha0 to Turkish reporters and police when he briefly disappeared last spring. He resurfaced in May, and described being kidnapped and beaten by Cha0 and his henchmen. A photo of Kier stripped down to his underwear and seated in a chair then appeared on the online crime forum DarkMarket, where Cha0 served as an administrator. In the image, Ortac is seen holding a sign that reads in part: quot;I am rat. I am pig. I am reporter. I am fucked by Cha0.quot; /p
p
Cha0, as one Cagatay Evyapan, was a href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/turkish-police.htmlarrested/a in September, shortly before a href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/darkmarket-post.htmlDarkMarket/a was revealed as an FBI sting run out of an officenbsp; in Pittsburgh.
/p
p
Cha0 had specialized in selling a high-quality ATM skimmer and keypad that fraudsters can covertly affix to certain models of cash machines to collect magstripe data and PINs from unsuspecting customers. According to Haber 7, Ortac is accused of participating in the cash machine scheme.
/p
pstrongSee Also:/strong/p
ul
lia href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/darkmarket-post.html#previouspostCybercrime Supersite 'DarkMarket' Was FBI Sting, Documents Confirmbr //a/li
lia href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/notorious-crime.html#previouspostNotorious Crime Forum DarkMarket Goes Dark/a/li
lia href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/turkish-police.html#previouspostTurkish Police Arrest Alleged ATM Hacker-Kidnapper/a/li
lia href=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/hacker-reported.html#previouspostHacker Reportedly Kidnaps and Tortures Informant, Posts Picture as Warning to Othersbr //a/li
/ul/divbr style=clear: both;/
a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=69b5bd0a7ba121d334c1559221a50a87p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=69b5bd0a7ba121d334c1559221a50a87p=1//a
img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=69b5bd0a7ba121d334c1559221a50a87 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/11/kidnapped-hacke.html
Two U.K. residents were sentenced to jail last week for using an array of computers and wireless gear to feed answers to paying clients taking an immigration test in London, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Rong Yang, 28, and her partner Steven Lee, 36, aroused suspicion when they parked outside the Wimbledon library in March, and a passer-by noticed wires running from under the hood of the car to the passenger compartment.
Police searched the vehicle and found it packed with laptops, radio transmitters and receivers and other equipment. Also in the car with Yang and Lee was 52-year-old Ka Hung Pang, who'd taken his immigration test inside the library earlier in the day.
Initially it was thought the equipment was being used as part of a cash machine fraud, while those in the car claimed it was used to watch Chinese television channels. However, as officers were leaving the scene to take the three people to the police station a fourth man, [Ed] Zhuang, arrived.
Officers stopped and questioned Zhuang. When taken back to the station, CID officers found out that Lee and Yang had been helping him with his immigration 'knowledge of life' test. They had supplied him with a shirt fitted with tiny buttonhole cameras sewn in, a microphone and a small earpiece.
Zhuang explained the pair would help the person taking the exam, who may be unable to speak, read or write English, directing them via the earpiece to move their body so the camera could view the exam paper. This is then transmitted back to Lee and Yang who would tell the person taking the test which box to tick.
The two men who passed the earpiece-aided exam that day have
been sentencedto 180 hours community service, while the two feeding them answers got eight months in prison for three counts of "facilitating a breach of immigration law."
Scotland Yard says Lee and Yang were professionals, who earned a lot of money helping immigrants pass the test that allows them to remain in the U.K. The police have begun proceedings to seize a "substantial amount of assets" from the pair.
Photo courtesy Metropolitan Police.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/456505073/high-tech-team.html
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Newsweek is reporting that computer networks of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were the targets of a sophisticated cyberattack in the run-up to the general election and, in the Obama case, "a serious amount of files" were downloaded" from the systemThe Obama camp initially thought in midsummer that their system was infected by password-stealing malware uploaded to someone's computer through a phishing attack. But after FBI and Secret Service agents investigated, they told staff they had a problem "way bigger than what you understand."The intrusion even led White House chief of staff Josh Bolten to tell the Obama camp "You have a real problem . . . and you have to deal with it."Oddly, Newsweek reports that officials at the FBI and White House told the Obama camp that the culprit was a "foreign entity" likely seeking information on the two sides' policy positions to use in negotiations with the next administration, and that the Obama system had not been hacked by its political opponents.Newsweek doesn't say how, exactly, they were able to make this determination.The piece adds, however, that Obama "technical experts" speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.Feel free to comment.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/444567900/obama-and-mccai.html
With magic walls, transparent 3D monitors and other kinds of high-tech gadgets that will be used to illustrate emerging election results, television will still grab the lion's share of the electorate's attention this evening.
But the web will also provide the world with plenty of data, and will be of especial interest to those living outside of the United States.
CNN.com Live,
ABC Newsand
MSNBC will stream live coverage on the web. And most of the major American television news outlets offer a
plethora of live
election results widgets. In addition to
Video Your Vote, Current TV's viewers are also
sending in videos of their election experiences.
For its part,
The New York Times
has this fun word graphic that allows voters to share their sentiments about Election Day with each other online. And you can examine
Karl Rove's electoral prediction map here.
Google has set up a live elections result map that will be updated with data from the
Associated Press. You can look at the results, and compare them with
presidential election results and demographic between 1980 to 2004 on
a separate map that the company created in a partnership with the
University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab. Both maps provide
data down to the county level.
National Journal
has
created this great Political Almanac mash-up map that provides you with
detailed political and demographic statistics about every state.
Below is a map from CNN that shows poll closing times across the
United States. Some pundits are predicting that we could know as soon
as 7 or 8 pm who's won the election based on exit poll results from
Virginia and a couple of other states on the East Coast.
And of course, you should also check in periodically to take a look at
Wired.com's own voting problem map, where our readers are reporting in
from across the country.
If you still don't know where you're supposed to go to vote, find out using Google's
polling station locator. Just type in your address.
Have any other suggestions, footage, or photos you want to share? Send them to stirland at gmail dot com. Or post your suggestion in the comments.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/442352624/where-to-follow.html
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An 18-year-old New Jersey man agreed to plead guilty to federal computer hacking charges Friday for participating in a denial-of-service attack against Church of Scientology websites, as part of collective of online troublemakers known as "Anonymous."
Dmitriy Guzner is charged with a single felony count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer for the January distributed denial-of-service attack. He faces a likely sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison based on stipulations in his plea agreement, which also obliges him to pay $37,500 in restitution.
Anonymous is best described as a collection of griefers who hang out in the net's most juvenile corners looking for some outlet for their boredom.
Past targetsinclude uncool virtual worlds, an epilepsy message board and a Neo-Nazi webcaster.
Most recently, the FBI
chargeda 20-year-old Tennessee student named David Kernell with breaking into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, and sharing the password, and partial contents, on an Anonymous message board.
Friday's case, in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, marks the first prosecution of an Anonymous member for a series of attacks against the Church of Scientology that began in mid-January. The secretive religious group
strayed into Anonymous' sightsafter trying to suppress the publication of a creepy Tom Cruise video produced for Scientology members.
The group's efforts against the church included extended denial-of-service attacks, in which more skilled members of anonymous authored attack scripts that less-skilled members executed. The scripts sent waves of fake traffic at various Scientology websites in an effort to overwhelm their servers.
Other tactics included swamping phone lines with crank calls and
sending black fax pages to Scientology offices. A core group graduated
to real-world demonstrations outside of Scientology centers, where they
were joined by mainstream critics of the church, who largely mistook
Anonymous as an anti-Scientology group, rather than anti-everything.
According to court papers, Guzner "knowingly caused the transmission
of information, codes and commands and as a result of such conduct,
intentionally and without authorization caused damage by impairing the
integrity and availability of data, a program, a system and information
on a computer system that was used in interstate and foreign commerce
and communications, specifically websites belonging to the Church of
Scientology, thereby causing loss to one or more persons aggregating at
least $5,000 in value[...]"
His plea agreement estimates that the attacks cost Scientology between $30,000 and $70,000 in damage.
Guzner was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service Electronic Crimes
Task Force in Los Angeles, which says it worked with the FBI and Los
Angeles law enforcement groups.
It's not clear whether others remain under investigation.
Photo:
Scragz/Flickr
See Also:
Palin Hacker Group's All-Time Greatest Hits
Tennessee Student Indicted for Hacking Palin E-Mail
Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer
War Breaks Out Between Hackers and Scientology — There Can Be Only One
Investigative Report Reveals Hackers Terrorize the Internet for LULZ
Group Posts E-Mail Hacked From Palin Account — Update
Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/424139905/anonymous-membe.html
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/424131717/riaa-decries-te.html
John McCain's campaign appears to be using robocalls at three times the rate that Barack Obama's campaign is, according to anecdotal evidence collected by Shaun Dakin, an anti-robocall activist in Virginia.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/422974217/john-mccains-ca.html
Had a problem casting your ballot in this year's general election? We want to hear from you. Wired.com has created a map to track your issues, but we need your help to complete it.Over the next weeks, if you have trouble at the polls, either during early voting or on Election Day, we'd like you to add your issue to our map. Be sure to provide as much detail as possible. You may also include links to video or audio.• Be specific about the precinct where the problem occurred. (Either provide the exact address or the specific name of the location. For example: Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School or the All Community Baptist Church.) Be sure to provide the city and state as well.• If a voting machine malfunctioned, tell us what happened and what kind of machine it was. (Touchscreen machine made by Diebold Election Systems; optical-scan machine made by Sequoia Voting Systems, etc.)• An additional comment box is provided where you should state the problem you experienced in as much detail as possible. (e.g., "The voter registration machines used to check in voters at the poll were not working, and voters had to wait in line for three hours. I left after an hour without voting.")• Although not required, it would be helpful if you provide your name and some way to contact you to obtain more details if we need them, particularly if your issue involved voter registration problems or someone at the polls challenging your eligibility to vote. If you prefer not to provide your name and contact details, contact us directly at vote@wired.com. Or, if you don't have time to add your information to the map, contact us directly at vote@wired.com, and we'll add it for you.Please note that we're not interested in hearing political rants. We're interested in hearing only about problems casting your ballot. Consult the "Key to Voting Problems" beneath the map for a list of problems from which to choose:
Report your issue by clicking the "add" button on the map below...
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Key to Voting Problems
There was a problem with my ID (States now require first-time voters who registered by mail -- and did not provide verification of their with their mail-in application -- to provide ID at the poll to cast a ballot. Twenty-four states require all voters to show some form of ID at the polls.)
My name didn't appear on the registration list
I was at the wrong precinct (Your polling place changed and you arrived at the wrong precinct.)
My eligibility to vote was challenged at the poll (All states allow voters to be challenged if someone suspects the person isn't eligible to vote; this can sometimes be used as an intimidation tactic to discourage or prevent voters from casting ballots. If you were challenged, specify the reason you were given: Were you suspected of not being of age, of not having registered, of not being a resident in the county or of being a convicted felon in a state that doesn't allow felons to vote?)
Machine used to check in voters at the poll failed (These machines are called electronic pollbooks or e-pollbooks and contain the list of registered voters.)
Problems with voting machines at your poll (Not enough machines at precinct or machine(s) malfunctioned.)
Long lines (Specify the reason for the long line if you know it. For example, there were 10 voting machines at the precinct, but only five were working.)
Provisional ballot problem (Provisional ballots are ballots that voters are allowed by law to cast if their name doesn't appear on the registration list and the voter claims to be registered. The ballots are counted if election officials determine within days after the election that the voter was eligible to cast a ballot. Provisional ballots are problematic, because poll workers don't always know the laws around using them, and the rules for counting them vary by state. Tell us if your precinct denied you the right to vote on a provisional ballot or if the precinct didn't have enough ballots on hand to accommodate everyone who needed one.)
Other (Anything not listed above.)
Voting Methods by State
Paper-Ballot Voting Systems
Paper-Ballot and Punch Card Voting Systems
Mixed Paper-Ballot Voting Systems and DREs with VVPAT
DREs with VVPAT
Mixed Paper-Ballot Voting Systems and DREs with and without VVPAT
Mixed Paper-Ballot Voting Systems and DREs without VVPAT
DREs without VVPAT
Mechanical Lever Machines and Accessible Ballot-Marking Devices
VVPAT = Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail Printers
DRE = Direct-Recording Electronic
Visit verifiedvoting.org for more information on election equipment in your state.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/421975869/had-problems-vo.html
John McCain's e-mails don't get through to their intended recipients as much as Barack Obama's do, finds a recent test by the emarketing firm
ClickMail.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/421929982/have-you-got-ma.html
YouTube on Tuesday rebuffed a request from John McCain's presidential campaign to examine fair-use issues more carefully before yanking campaign videos in response to DMCA takedown notices.
"Lawyers and judges constantly disagree about what does and does not constitute fair-use," YouTube's general counsel Zahavah Levine wrote in a letter Tuesday. "No number of lawyers could possibly determine with a reasonable level of certainty whether all the videos for which we receive disputed takedown notices qualify as fair-use.""We hope that as a content uploader, you have gained a sense of some of the challenges we face everyday in operating YouTube," she added.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/421790895/youtube-to-mcca.html
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/421004498/nominate-your-c.html
John McCain is an egotistical, sexist man who oppresses people taking vacations with him by reading aloud to them from William Faulkner novels, and who polices what his wife eats so that she stays slim.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~3/417195859/underground-whi.html
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