Slashdot Mirror

Ponca City, We love you writes "The EFF has warned Texas Instruments not to pursue legal threats against calculator hobbyists who perform modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a 'signature check' that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded, but researchers have reverse-engineered signing keys, allowing tinkerers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response, TI has unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act require the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. 'This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device — a calculator you legally bought,' says EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. 'Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation.'"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been caught violating someone's copyright again. This time, presidential services made 400 unauthorized copies of a DVD when only 50 had been made by the publisher. Mr. Sarkozy, of course, is the one pushing the HADOPI law, which would disconnect the Internet service of an alleged pirate after three allegations of infringement. This isn't the first time he's been connected to copyright violations, either. His party had to pay some €30K for using a song without authorization. If he were he subject to his own law, Mr. Sarkozy would be subject to having his Net disconnected the next time he pirates something."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Thanks to a recent ruling (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, corporations now have a right to 'personal privacy,' due to the application of a carelessly worded definition in the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA exempts disclosure of certain records, but only if it 'could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' But in its definitions, FOIA makes the mistake of broadly defining 'person' to include legal entities, like corporations. The FCC didn't think that 'personal privacy' could apply to a corporation, so they ignored AT&T's claim that releasing data from an investigation into how AT&T was overcharging certain customers would violate the corporation's privacy. The Third Circuit thought that the FCC's actions were contrary to what the law actually says. So now the FCC has to jump through more hoops to show that releasing data on their investigation into AT&T's overcharging is 'warranted' within the meaning of 5 USC 552(b)(7)(c) before it can release anything."

pickens writes "The EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant, reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision, 'when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it.' Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads."

pickens writes "The EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant, reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision, 'when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it.' Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads."

NickFortune writes "The EFF's Danny O'Brien has pointed out that the BBC has asked a UK regulator for permission to add DRM to their high-definition broadcasts. Apparently, this is at the behest of content providers. 'BBC is proposing to encode the TV listings metadata that accompanies all digital TV channels with a simple compression algorithm. The parameters to this algorithm would be kept secret by the BBC: it would ask manufacturers to sign a private agreement in order to receive a copy. This license would require the implementation of pervasive DRM in the equipment they build.' Ofcom, the regulatory body in question, has detailed the proposal asked for comments, but the window closes today."

Trepidity writes "About seven weeks after the judge tentatively overturned Lori Drew's guilty verdict for 'cyberbullying' following her online harassment of a teenager that was linked to the teenager's suicide, the case was finally officially dismissed. In a 32-page opinion (PDF), the court avoided a minefield of possible follow-on effects that civil-liberties groups had warned of by holding that merely violating a website's Terms of Service cannot constitute 'unauthorized access' for the purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030)."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With the main Pirate Bay website experiencing DNS issues, downtime and uncertainty about both the lawsuits and potential sale to GGF, a Pirate Bay clone has already gone online. True to their principles, someone at TPB put up a torrent with a 21.3 GB copy of the site as it exists today. And now that archive is alive, at BTArena.net. Linus' old adage about backing up everything by putting it on FTP and letting the world mirror it may need to be updated. Torrents are much more efficient." "Downtime" may be a nice word for it; reader Underholdning writes "The Register has a story about a Swedish court ordering ISPs to disconnect The Pirate Bay or face a massive daily fine. The reason for the shutdown was an upcoming civil lawsuit by copyright holders. As usual, Torrentfreak has an updated story. It seems like the takedown until now has been successful." Believe what you will; the site itself says they'll be back up "in a few hours."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "After the permanent injunction barring Microsoft from selling Microsoft Word, many armchair lawyers and pundits wondered how the ruling would affect OpenOffice. The company with the patent, i4i, believes that OpenOffice does not infringe upon it. But lest anyone think that therefore ODF will win out over OOXML, keep in mind that Microsoft has its own broad XML document patent, which issued just two weeks ago, having been filed in December 2004, and they're telling the Supreme Court to apply the Bilski ruling narrowly, so that it doesn't invalidate patents like theirs (and i4i's). After all, unlike most companies and individuals, Microsoft can afford $290 million infringement fines. Then again, given that Microsoft's new patent has only two independent claims (claim #1 and claim #12), and both of those claims 'comprise' something using an 'XML file format for documents associated with an application having a rich set of features,' maybe they wouldn't be that hard to work around if you just make sure any otherwise infringing format is only associated with an application lacking in the feature richness department."

Hugh Pickens writes "In a few weeks, tens of thousands of creative people will make their yearly pilgrimage to Nevada's Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom, but EFF reports that the event's Terms and Conditions include 'a remarkable bit of legal sleight-of-hand.' As soon as 'any third party displays or disseminates' your photos or videos in a manner that the Burning Man Organization (BMO) doesn't like, those photos or videos become the property of the BMO. BMO's Terms and Conditions also limits your own rights to use your own photos and videos on any public websites obliging you to take down any photos to which BMO objects, for any reason; and forbidding you from allowing anyone else to reuse your photos. This 'we automatically own all your stuff' magic appears to be creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined 'notice and takedown' process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet giving BMO the power of fast and easy online censorship. 'Burning Man strives to celebrate our individuality, creativity and free spirit,' writes Corynne McSherry. 'Unfortunately, the fine print on the tickets doesn't live up to that aspiration.'"

AceJohnny writes "Joey Hess found that his Palm Pre was ratting on him. It turns out the Pre periodically uploads detailed information about the user to Palm, including the names of installed apps, application usage (and crashes), as well as GPS coordinates. This, of course, is without user consent or control. The only way he found to disable the uploads was to modify system files."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Supreme Court's review of In Re Bilski (discussed here numerous times) is heating up, having attracted no less than 44 friend-of-the-court briefs from almost everyone with a stake in the patent system. Patently-O provides a nice summary of who is arguing against Bilski. The two questions before the Supreme Court are whether or not a process must satisfy the particular machine or transformation test, and whether this test improperly excludes many business methods in spite of the wording of 35 U.S.C. 273, which specifically allows business-method patents. So far, the case has attracted legal filings from nearly every large company or group whose patents might be threatened. You can read briefs from Yahoo, IBM, Borland, Dolby Labs, the BSA, and many others, even one from some guy claiming to speak on behalf of the State of Oregon."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge overseeing the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy case has issued an order appointing a chapter 11 trustee to oversee SCO's operations. However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear. While the judge believes that SCO has 'abandoned rehabilitation' to bet its future on litigation, he doesn't think it appropriate to convert their case to Chapter 7 liquidation. So SCO's management hasn't been fired yet, but they're no longer fully in charge either. It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution, when even the US Trustee was pushing to fire SCO's management and convert the case to Chapter 7. In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead, and in desperate search of a miracle worker."

angry tapir writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is urging its supporters to pressure Google to build significant privacy protections into its Book Search service. The EFF suggests that the service gives Google access to new personal information: what people are searching for in out-of-print and out-of-copyright books. The EFF posted its concerns with Google Book Search on its blog, with EFF designer/activist Hugh D'Andrade saying the search product could infringe on 'privacy of thought.' Google, in a responding blog post, said it will protect user privacy, though it can't yet say how — the service hasn't been designed yet, nor approved."

Raul654 writes "Last week, it was reported that the UK's National Portrait Gallery had threatened a lawsuit against an American Wikipedian for uploading pictures from the NPG's website to Wikipedia. The uploaded pictures are clearly in the public domain in the United States. (In the US, copies of public domain works are also in the public domain. UK law on the matter is unclear.) Since then, there have been several developments: EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann has taken on the case pro-bono; Eric Moeller, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director, has responded to the NPG's allegations in a post on the WMF blog; and the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has weighed in on the dispute in favor of the NPG."

oliphaunt writes "As regular readers will recall, after the 2004 elections the New York Times revealed that the NSA had been conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens since early 2001. Over the course of the next four years, more information about the illegal program trickled out, leading to several lawsuits against the government and various officials involved in its implementation. This week several of these matters are coming to a head: Yesterday, the lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit against the Obama DOJ. The motion begins by quoting a statement made by Candidate Obama in 2007, acknowledging that the warrantless wiretap program was illegal. US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released. Emptywheel has the beginnings of a working thread going here."

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the case of Mikhail Mallayev, who was convicted in March of murder after data from his cellphone disproved his alibi, highlights the surge in law enforcement's use of increasingly sophisticated cellular tracking techniques to keep tabs on suspects before they are arrested and build criminal cases against them by mapping their past movements. But cellphone tracking is raising concerns about civil liberties in a debate that pits public safety against privacy rights. Investigators seeking warrants must provide a judge with probable cause that a crime has been committed, but investigators often obtain cell-tracking records under lower standards of judicial review — through subpoenas, which are granted routinely, or through an intermediate type of court order based on an argument that the information requested would be relevant to an investigation. 'Cell phone providers store an increasing amount of sensitive data about where you are and when, based on which cell towers your phone uses when making a call. Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants,' said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. Last year the Federal District Court in Pittsburgh ruled that a search warrant is required even for historical phone location records, but the Justice Department has appealed the ruling. 'The cost of carrying a cellphone should not include the loss of one's personal privacy,' said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the ACLU."

gerddie notes a piece up on the EFF site outlining the fairly outlandish legal theories ASCAP is trying out in their court fight with AT&T. "ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by 'publicly performing' it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief (PDF, 2.5 MB) it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T."

gerddie notes a piece up on the EFF site outlining the fairly outlandish legal theories ASCAP is trying out in their court fight with AT&T. "ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by 'publicly performing' it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief (PDF, 2.5 MB) it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the fact that no less than 23 journalists have been arrested in Iran in the week following the elections, making Iran one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Online activists are trying to counter this trend by giving advice for helping Iranian protesters. One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that the reformers are puppets of foreign powers, so special discretion is required for anyone wanting to help the Iranian people."

mikesd81 notes a press release on the EFF website that begins "The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Federal judges have very little discretion to overrule Executive Branch decisions to classify information on 'national security' grounds, and the Obama Administration has recently informed the court that it intends to defend the classification claims originally made by the Bush Administration. ... Very little is known about ACTA, currently under negotiation between the US and more than a dozen other countries, other than that it is not limited to anti-counterfeiting measures. Leaked documents indicate that it could establish far-reaching customs regulations governing searches over personal computers and iPods. Multi-national IP corporations have publicly requested mandatory filtering of Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, as well as the adoption of 'Three Strikes' policies requiring the termination of Internet access after repeat allegations of copyright infringement, like the legislation recently invalidated in France. Last year, more than 100 public interest organizations around the world called on ACTA country negotiators to make the draft text available for public comment."

eldavojohn writes "Unlike a lot of community support protection programs, the EFF's Patent Busting Project is starting to bear real fruit instead of just leveling the finger at offenders. The USPTO is revoking an illegitimate patent granted in 2004 that sounds like automatically assigning subdomains. Sites like Wordpress, LiveJournal, or basically anyone with generated subdomains have been doing this for quite some time. If you have some extra cash, now's the time to pony up a few bucks so the EFF can carry on as one of the few organizations genuinely protecting your interests."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

stoolpigeon writes with this quote from the EFF: "'Terms of Service' policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies — or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching TOSBack: a 'terms of service' tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites. ... The issue of terms-of-service changes — and how and why they are made — was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook modified its terms of use. Facebook users worried that the change gave the company the right to use members' content indefinitely. After a user revolt, Facebook announced that it would restore the former terms while it worked through the concerns users had raised."

btempleton writes "It all started when I prepared yet another Downfall subtitle parody. In this one, Hitler is the studio head, upset at all the Downfall parodies, and he wants to do DMCA takedowns on them all. (If you're a DMCA/DRM fighting Slashdotter, you'll like it.) The EFF, which I chair, blogged it on Deeplinks, and hilarity ensued. That weekend, Exact Magic, an iPhone developer, had submitted a special RSS reader app to display EFF news on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone app store evaluators looked at the RSS reader, read the feed it pointed to, and then played the linked-to video. They saw the F-word flash in the subtitles of the video, and then rejected the RSS-reading tool from the App Store. We're up to several levels of meta here — Apple has banned an app over a parody about banning, and is now parodying itself. Bonus: TFA also has the story of just how hard it is to be fully legal in obtaining the famous clip for parody."

btempleton writes "It all started when I prepared yet another Downfall subtitle parody. In this one, Hitler is the studio head, upset at all the Downfall parodies, and he wants to do DMCA takedowns on them all. (If you're a DMCA/DRM fighting Slashdotter, you'll like it.) The EFF, which I chair, blogged it on Deeplinks, and hilarity ensued. That weekend, Exact Magic, an iPhone developer, had submitted a special RSS reader app to display EFF news on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone app store evaluators looked at the RSS reader, read the feed it pointed to, and then played the linked-to video. They saw the F-word flash in the subtitles of the video, and then rejected the RSS-reading tool from the App Store. We're up to several levels of meta here — Apple has banned an app over a parody about banning, and is now parodying itself. Bonus: TFA also has the story of just how hard it is to be fully legal in obtaining the famous clip for parody."

You may remember a case we discussed this April in which a Boston College student's computers and other electronics were seized after he allegedly sent an email outing another student as gay. The search warrant made sure to note the student's ever-so-suspicious use of "two different operating systems," one of which was "a black screen with a white font which he uses prompt commands on." Now, the EFF reports that a Massachusetts judge has thrown out the search warrant and declared the search and seizure illegal. Quoting: "In her order Thursday, Justice Margot Botsford rejected the Commonwealth's theory that sending a hoax email might be unlawful under a Massachusetts computer crime statute barring the 'unauthorized access' to a computer, concluding that there could be no violation of what was only a 'hypothetical internet use policy.' Thursday's decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer 'hacking' crimes. Justice Botsford further found that details offered by police as corroboration of other alleged offenses were insufficient and did not establish probable cause for the search." The court order (PDF) is available for viewing, and the EFF has broken down the significant arguments against the Commonwealth's claims.

You may remember a case we discussed this April in which a Boston College student's computers and other electronics were seized after he allegedly sent an email outing another student as gay. The search warrant made sure to note the student's ever-so-suspicious use of "two different operating systems," one of which was "a black screen with a white font which he uses prompt commands on." Now, the EFF reports that a Massachusetts judge has thrown out the search warrant and declared the search and seizure illegal. Quoting: "In her order Thursday, Justice Margot Botsford rejected the Commonwealth's theory that sending a hoax email might be unlawful under a Massachusetts computer crime statute barring the 'unauthorized access' to a computer, concluding that there could be no violation of what was only a 'hypothetical internet use policy.' Thursday's decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer 'hacking' crimes. Justice Botsford further found that details offered by police as corroboration of other alleged offenses were insufficient and did not establish probable cause for the search." The court order (PDF) is available for viewing, and the EFF has broken down the significant arguments against the Commonwealth's claims.

You may remember a case we discussed this April in which a Boston College student's computers and other electronics were seized after he allegedly sent an email outing another student as gay. The search warrant made sure to note the student's ever-so-suspicious use of "two different operating systems," one of which was "a black screen with a white font which he uses prompt commands on." Now, the EFF reports that a Massachusetts judge has thrown out the search warrant and declared the search and seizure illegal. Quoting: "In her order Thursday, Justice Margot Botsford rejected the Commonwealth's theory that sending a hoax email might be unlawful under a Massachusetts computer crime statute barring the 'unauthorized access' to a computer, concluding that there could be no violation of what was only a 'hypothetical internet use policy.' Thursday's decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer 'hacking' crimes. Justice Botsford further found that details offered by police as corroboration of other alleged offenses were insufficient and did not establish probable cause for the search." The court order (PDF) is available for viewing, and the EFF has broken down the significant arguments against the Commonwealth's claims.

eldavojohn writes "Ralph Nader's back to hounding the automotive industry ... but it's not about safety this time, it's about the pesky DRM in your car. Most cars have a UART in them that allows you to read off diagnostic codes and information about what may be wrong with the vehicle so you can repair it. Late model cars have been getting increasingly complex and dependent on computers which has caused them, as with most things digital, to move towards a proprietary DRM for these tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information. This has kept independent auto-shops out of the market for fixing your car and relegating you to depend on pricier dealers to get your automotive ailments cured. The bill still has a provision to protect trade secrets but is a step forward to open up the codes and tools necessary to keep your car running."

Hugh Pickens writes "More than a thousand pages of material about Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), are still being withheld, despite the Obama administration's promises to run a more open government. The EFF and Public Knowledge filed suit in September of 2008, demanding that background documents on ACTA be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 'We are very disappointed with the USTR's decision to continue to withhold these documents. The president promised an open and transparent administration,' said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. Publicly available information about the treaty shows it could establish far-reaching customs regulations over Internet traffic in the guise of anti-counterfeiting measures. Additionally, multi-national IP industry companies have publicly requested that ISPs be required to engage in filtering of their customers' Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, force mandatory disclosure of personal information about alleged copyright infringers, and adopt 'Three Strikes' policies requiring ISPs to automatically terminate customers' Internet access upon a repeat allegation of copyright infringement. 'What we've seen tends to confirm that the substance of ACTA remains a grave concern,' said Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Sherwin Siy. 'The agreement increasingly looks like an attempt by Hollywood and the content industries to perform an end-run around national legislatures and public international forums to advance an aggressive, radical change in the way that copyright and trademark laws are enforced.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "More than a thousand pages of material about Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), are still being withheld, despite the Obama administration's promises to run a more open government. The EFF and Public Knowledge filed suit in September of 2008, demanding that background documents on ACTA be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 'We are very disappointed with the USTR's decision to continue to withhold these documents. The president promised an open and transparent administration,' said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. Publicly available information about the treaty shows it could establish far-reaching customs regulations over Internet traffic in the guise of anti-counterfeiting measures. Additionally, multi-national IP industry companies have publicly requested that ISPs be required to engage in filtering of their customers' Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, force mandatory disclosure of personal information about alleged copyright infringers, and adopt 'Three Strikes' policies requiring ISPs to automatically terminate customers' Internet access upon a repeat allegation of copyright infringement. 'What we've seen tends to confirm that the substance of ACTA remains a grave concern,' said Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Sherwin Siy. 'The agreement increasingly looks like an attempt by Hollywood and the content industries to perform an end-run around national legislatures and public international forums to advance an aggressive, radical change in the way that copyright and trademark laws are enforced.'"

Death Metal notes an EFF report on information wrested from the FBI over the last three years via Freedom of Information requests. The report characterizes what Ars Technica calls the FBI's "Everything Bucket" — its Investigative Data Warehouse. (Here's the EFF's introduction and the report itself.) The warehouse, at least 7 years in the making, "...appears to be something like a combination of Google and a university's slightly out-of-date custom card catalog with a front-end written for Windows 2000 that uses cartoon icons that some work-study student made in Microsoft Paint. I guess I'm supposed to fear the IDW as an invasion of privacy, and indeed I do, but given the report's description of it and my experiences with the internal-facing software products of large, sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracies, I mostly just fear for our collective safety."

Death Metal notes an EFF report on information wrested from the FBI over the last three years via Freedom of Information requests. The report characterizes what Ars Technica calls the FBI's "Everything Bucket" — its Investigative Data Warehouse. (Here's the EFF's introduction and the report itself.) The warehouse, at least 7 years in the making, "...appears to be something like a combination of Google and a university's slightly out-of-date custom card catalog with a front-end written for Windows 2000 that uses cartoon icons that some work-study student made in Microsoft Paint. I guess I'm supposed to fear the IDW as an invasion of privacy, and indeed I do, but given the report's description of it and my experiences with the internal-facing software products of large, sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracies, I mostly just fear for our collective safety."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against Apple to defend the First Amendment rights of BluWiki, a noncommercial, public Internet 'wiki' site operated by OdioWorks. Last year, BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple's iTunes. Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content (pdf) sending a letter to OdioWorks, alleging that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site but has now filed a lawsuit to vindicate its right to restore those discussions (pdf) and seeking a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple. 'I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,' said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. 'Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.'" Random BedHead Ed adds ZDNet quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann, who says that this is an issue of censorship. 'Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It's legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it's legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it's legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against Apple to defend the First Amendment rights of BluWiki, a noncommercial, public Internet 'wiki' site operated by OdioWorks. Last year, BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple's iTunes. Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content (pdf) sending a letter to OdioWorks, alleging that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site but has now filed a lawsuit to vindicate its right to restore those discussions (pdf) and seeking a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple. 'I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,' said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. 'Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.'" Random BedHead Ed adds ZDNet quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann, who says that this is an issue of censorship. 'Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It's legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it's legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it's legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against Apple to defend the First Amendment rights of BluWiki, a noncommercial, public Internet 'wiki' site operated by OdioWorks. Last year, BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple's iTunes. Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content (pdf) sending a letter to OdioWorks, alleging that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site but has now filed a lawsuit to vindicate its right to restore those discussions (pdf) and seeking a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple. 'I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,' said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. 'Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.'" Random BedHead Ed adds ZDNet quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann, who says that this is an issue of censorship. 'Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It's legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it's legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it's legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Can a noncommercial website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not. The EFF reports that Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern have created a noncommercial website at Wikipediaart.org intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. Since 'Wikipedia' is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by legal force. 'Wikipedia should know better. There is no trademark or cybersquatting issue here,' writes the EFF's Corynne McSherry. 'Moreover, even if US trademark laws somehow reached this noncommercial activity, the artists' use of the mark is an obvious fair use.' It is hard to see what Wikipedia gains by litigating this matter, but easy to see how they lose."

Afforess writes "'Proxy servers are an everyday part of Internet surfing. But using one in a crime could soon lead to more time in the clink,' reports the Associated Press. The new federal rules would make the use of proxy servers count as 'sophistication' in a crime, leading to 25% longer jail sentences. Privacy advocates complain this will disincentivize privacy and anonymity online. '[The government is telling people] ... if you take normal steps to protect your privacy, we're going to view you as a more sophisticated criminal,' writes the Center for Democracy and Technology. Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments' as Internet and cell phone providers often use proxies without users' knowledge to reroute Internet traffic. This may also ultimately harm corporations when employees abuse VPN's, as they too are counted as a 'proxy' in the new legislation. TOR, a common Internet anonymizer, is also targeted in the new legislation. Some analysts believe this legislation is an effort to stop leaked US Government information from reaching outside sources, such as Wikileaks. The legislation (PDF, the proposed amendment is on pages 5-15) will be voted on by the United States Sentencing Commission on April 15, and is set to take effect on November 1st. The EFF has already urged the Commission to reject the amendment."

FutureDomain writes "The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."

FutureDomain writes "The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."

SonicSpike writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just said that 'In the warrantless wiretapping case, Obama DOJ's new arguments are worse than Bush's.'"

a whoabot writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has stepped in to defend AT&T in the case over their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program started by Bush. The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has described the action as an 'embrace' of the Bush policy." Update: 04/07 15:18 GMT by T : Glenn Greenwald of Salon has up an analysis of this move, including excerpts from the actual brief filed. Excerpt: "This brief and this case are exclusively the Obama DOJ's, and the ample time that elapsed — almost three full months — makes clear that it was fully considered by Obama officials."

An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, Warner Music Group started pitching universities on the idea of a new program where they would pay a chunk of money to an organization named Choruss to provide 'covenants not to sue' those students for file sharing, leading many in the press to claim that the record labels are looking to license ISPs to let users file share. Even the EFF has called it a 'promising new approach.' However, the details are quite troubling and suggest that the plan is really a bait-and-switch idea." (More below.) "The industry still plans to demand three strikes and try to shut down file sharing networks, and it's already giving up on lawsuits. So... it's basically going to keep doing everything the same as before, but force your ISP or your university (who in turn will raise your rates) to just hand over a bunch of money. Oh yeah, also, since the 'covenant not to sue' isn't a license and only covers the rights of the record labels, it means that you can still get sued by the publishers or songwriters whose rights aren't covered by the deal at all. Unfortunately, the press is just repeating the claim that this is a 'file sharing license' when the details show it's anything but that. It's just a way to get people and companies to hand over large chunks of money to the record labels."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, is alleging that Amazon's Kindle e-book reader infringes upon their patent for DRM-encumbered e-books (Discovery's complaint, PDF). The patent in question was filed back in 1999 and issued in 2007 — coincidentally one day after Kindle 1.0 went on the market — and has claims for DRM implemented with a great many particular symmetric key ciphers and key exchange algorithms, (the patent has 171 claims). Unlike most software patents, this one goes into quite a lot of detail about how the encryption is to be performed. But it will still be interesting to see if it can pass the 'machine or transformation' test now that In Re Bilski is being accepted as precedent. After all, it seems like all of these encryption and e-book distribution schemes could be run on a general-purpose PC, so is the 'invention' actually tied to a 'particular machine or apparatus' just because an e-book 'viewer' (not to mention 'home system', 'library', and 'kiosk') happens to be specified in the patent's claims? Or can the encryption of an e-book be claimed as some kind of 'transformation' when the law in that area is especially murky — when no one knows how In Re Bilski may affect the precedent of In Re Schrader?"

The EFF has released a beta version of a new search tool that lets you mine the documents the EFF has unearthed using FOIA requests and lawsuits over the years. Quoting: "In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy." I tried a search for "border" among the documents relating to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and turned up 21 results and fascinating reading.

The EFF has released a beta version of a new search tool that lets you mine the documents the EFF has unearthed using FOIA requests and lawsuits over the years. Quoting: "In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy." I tried a search for "border" among the documents relating to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and turned up 21 results and fascinating reading.