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"I am The Law!" - Judge Dredd and the NSA

The Patriot Act needs to go! Join the EFF Today! and start writing you your Senators and members of congress now to get this horrid piece of legislation repealed. The only way it will stop is if we tell them both in writing and in the voting booth that we want this violation of our privacy to stop.

We have a huge hidden intelligence network that has ballooned since 9/11 and it just feeds on data and money. It's largely ineffective and couldn't actually target a couple of brothers that were directly warned by the Russians, leading to the bombing of the Boston Marathon. If you think the current administration is in support of your privacy rights, Think Again!"

“All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing...” - Edmund Burke

Without cookies, they have a IP and the website that loaded the script. Hardly useful for advertising and it cannot be tied to your personalised advertising profile.

With js enabled? they have IP, user agent, screen resolution, system fonts, plugins ... see here to check how unique you are without cookies active. Compare that to your personalized profile data (which has the same info, plus cookies, if you happen to be logged into a service that requires them like webmail) and you'll have remarkably few matches. Heck, IP match would narrow it down pretty quickly. The fun begins when behind the same (corporate) IP there are multiple computers with the same configuration - you'll start to get funny targeted ads triggered by someone of the opposite sex endlessly browsing clothing stores.

Please tell me how MS intends to patent "executing used software on a game console" for the end user. Patents are normally for developers and publishers not for end users.

One fun consequence of that latter is that you can owe the MPEG-LA distribution royalties on a movie you shot using a consumer camera because the license on the camera's encoder only covers very limited commercial usage.

And I challenge the MPEG-LA to sue me or the makers of Blair Witch Project (or most indie films). The Supreme Court has not ruled specifically on MPEG-LA's claims but patent exhaustion would preclude them from doing so. In Quanta vs LG, the court unanimously ruled that patent exhaustion can be applied to method patents. In that case LG licensed method patents to Intel which then made chips. Quanta bought the Intel chips and made PCs with Intel and non-Intel chips. LG sued Quanta in that Quanta never entered in a separate agreement with them for the patents as Intel's agreement with LG specified that anyone making products with Intel and non-Intel chips required a separate agreement. Quanta won. The court ruled:

(a) The patent exhaustion doctrine provides that a patented item’s initial authorized sale terminates all patent rights to that item. . . (b) Nothing in this Court’s approach to patent exhaustion supports LGE’s argument that method claims, as a category, are never exhaustible . . . (c) The Intel Products embodied the patents here. Univis governs this case. There, exhaustion was triggered by the sale of the lens blanks because their only reasonable and intended use was to practice the patent and because they “embodie[d] essential features of [the] patented invention . . . (d)Intel’s sale to Quanta exhausted LGE’s patent rights. Exhaustion is triggered only by a sale authorized by the patent holder. Univis

Part c is the most important part as the court said you can't license a patent and then prevent the licensee from using the patent as it was intended. Part d says that since LG licensed it to Intel (and Intel used the patent as intended), anyone that bought Intel's chips are protected by patent exhaustion. It needs clarification that Quanta only purchased the chips as-is and made no modifications. Essentially the court says that it doesn't matter what clauses LG has with Intel, they can't put in a clause that defeats patent exhaustion.

Support https://www.eff.org/

Regarding

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty

I am writing to notify you that from this moment I have decided to stop giving
financial support of EFF, via both my membership and donations, including via
campaigns like the Humble Indie Bundle. I understand that my contributions
were not of any significance, so you probably won't even notice -- but thought
I should let you know anyways.

The reason for that, is I will not support or have any business with any
organization that implicitly gives legitimacy to Bitcoin by accepting them for
payment for any services or as donations.

Thanks

Regarding

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty

I am writing to notify you that from this moment I have decided to stop giving
financial support of EFF, via both my membership and donations, including via
campaigns like the Humble Indie Bundle. I understand that my contributions
were not of any significance, so you probably won't even notice -- but thought
I should let you know anyways.

The reason for that, is I will not support or have any business with any
organization that implicitly gives legitimacy to Bitcoin by accepting them for
payment for any services or as donations.

Thanks

I know photoshop does that, and that most printers have dots whose stated purpose is to track counterfeiters.

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots
http://petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-edit-photos-of-money-in-photoshop/

They have the chance and they do it.

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

So does every other company in the world with an advertising department.

Some are better than others.

And according to the EFF, Google is better at protecting your privacy than Microsoft..

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

Microsoft are hypocrites as well as liars? Who'd have thought...

Astroturfer or ignorant?

Microsoft tracks you everywhere for contextual ads as well. And they value your privacy far less than Microsoft.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/microsofts-new-outlook-mail-welcome-hotmail-replacement-917473

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

Microsoft has been caught selling DATA to advertisers, which is the worst offense.

http://rt.com/usa/yahoo-microsoft-campaign-political-862/

And they have a patent specifically covering selling your personal private data to advertisers, allowing advertisers to bid on that data.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2010/02/gates_ozzie_other_microsoft_execs_patent_personal_data_mining.html

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

That page does not cover all aspects of privacy protection, but let's not pretend that Apple gives a crap about user privacy. They are one of the worst on the list.

Here is a list of printers known to do this. More information here, http://seeingyellow.com/

This only seems to be a concern with color printers, but maybe there are greyscale dots?

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

Microsoft is extremely hypocritical in their claims of privacy protection, and their attacks on Google.

Those who care about keeping the contents of their IM conversations secret should not use Skype. As stated in their privacy policy "Skype may gather and use information about you, including (but not limited to) information in the following categories: ... (n) Content of instant messaging communications, voicemails, and video messages"

The EFF recommends using Pidgin or Audium with OTR encryption enabled, for reasonably secure instant messaging.

I'm glad the non-tech-savvy folks use Skype, though. If Microsoft weren't able to intercept these things, I'd have to clean out viruses from my in-laws' computers more often.

Why should they get them again as part of a corporation?

No, the proper form of that question is: "why should they lose those rights as part of a corporation?" Or as a part of a union, or religious organization, or civic organization, or minority organization, or political party?

Unless you are advocating for a complete ban on all "collective" political speech - including collective organizations like unions, religious groups, civic groups, minority groups, and any other form of grouping you care to name, then your position is logically incoherent, and amounts to wishing away the rights of some people whose views you disagree with and wish to silence. It really is that simple. And even if your position were logically coherent and you wished to ban all collective speech, it would be a fundamental violation of the rights of individuals.

The Constitution specifically affirms that the people have the right to engage in these activities - individually, or collectively. For someone who claims to be "very careful of rights," you seem to be missing that very clear point. Rather than seeking to silence your opponents (curious undemocratic, that!), you should be seeking to propose better opposing ideas, better arguments, and better solutions - and you're free to do so by grouping together with like-minded friends and neighbors and engaging in collective political speech.

And that's WHY I point out the damage that corporations lobbying politicians does to democracy.

Ah yes, lobbying is evil! Well, as long as we disagree with the goals of the lobbyist organization, amirite?

The NRA? Oh they're evil, they lobby the government!
The EFF? They're saints! They fight for our freedoms!

Campaign for Liberty? LOL LIBERTARDIANS! They're stupid and lobby the government with their backwards ideas!
MoveOn.org? They're brave soldiers fighting the good fight for democracy!

Google announces services Apple announced a couple years ago!

At least Google is more likely to keep your private data private. https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

It has been already revealed some time ago :

29C3 - Enemies of the State - William Binney about Bluffdale's capabilities

29C3 Panel: Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, William Binney on whistleblowing and surveillance

The Program - Video - The New York Times
"The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data."

Room 641A

NarusInsight - System specification and capabilities

NSA Spying - EFF

There's a huge difference between this claim and lawful intercept on demand -- meaning that a formal request is made to the Telco to intercept such and such number for a period of time, then the calls are re-routed to special recording equipment.

In this case you'd need to have active real-time recording capability for every call made on every switch in the entire national phone network. You'd also have to hide this capability from the techs who work on the switches and/or swear them all to secrecy. That would be tens of thousands of switches, and many thousands of technicians.

Leaving aside the fact that you'd have to re-engineer the switches themselves, since they were not designed to support this kind of logging (no storage capacity, limited CPU, etc.)

All it would take at this point is a single wagging tongue or a Wikileaks dump to break the whole thing open. Since we've seen this happen for much smaller wiretapping deployments, I'm skeptical that you could pull anything like it off without everybody knowing.

What you can do is monitor trunk lines (which is what happened in the case of the Folsom Street tap, mentioned above) and you can certainly build your own wireless interception hardware. But this is a very different thing than what TFA claims.

Here is Klein's statement.

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/SER_klein_decl.pdf

The splitter sent the internet traffic to a secure room.

And another interview with Klein:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html

It's pretty obvious that room contained a Narus DPI. End of story.

There was a Frontline a while back about this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/view/.
The EFF notes similar here: https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
Neither stated that the government is recording _everything_, though.

As I recall from the Frontline documentary, the NSA argues that sweeping up and recording emails and conversations does not require a warrant if they do not actually read or listen to the recorded information. They say they would need a warrant for wire tapping if they want to open up a record and examine it.

1) So what if it's older. They get huge bushels of cash from Google and the Brin foundation today. And so they dance like any hired gun. http://boingboing.net/2011/12/10/give-to-eff-today-and-your-do.html 2) Maybe the reason you don't know this is because your invite got lost: https://www.eff.org/event/eff-mixer-google 3) DRM is secure communication. The pirates are the eavesdroppers. Get a frickin clue. And Torvalds's logic is solid. Locking up my love letter so only my spouse can read it is the exact technological challenge as locking up my artistic creation so only the non-pirates can view it. http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2003042401126OSKNLL http://news.cnet.com/Torvalds-says-DRM-isnt-necessarily-bad/2100-7344_3-6034964.html Quit being a sap for leeching business models. The EFF and Google just want to manipulate you into hating DRM so the money will keep flowing to them. DRM doesn't break the Internet, it breaks Google's business model. They're not the same thing.

but saddened it doesnt carry the same clout on websites like SOPA did.

today you might want to check out the open source app store for android (https://www.F-Droid.org) and kick your facebook account to the curb.
LinkedIn is a recruiters dream, not an employment tool and is mostly spam anyhow.
http://www.freeshell.org/ offers affordable email and web storage so you can start to ditch google.
godaddy.com doesnt care about your privacy (but we all know this.) maybe check out places like http://www.dreamhost.com/
your local book store will be more than willing to sell you a fresh paperback or luxurious hardbook copy of that e-book amazon just nicked from your device.
Lastly, maybe try linux if you havent? just search for it (https://www.duckduckgo.com is a good alternative engine that doesnt spy on you) and find a flavour you like.
while youre browsing, you might want to check out the EFF's suggestions to make sure you limit tracking and increase security
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/4-simple-changes-protect-your-privacy-online

Sorry for the cynicism. I agree that stripping out all the junk is a great idea. The question is where to do this. Working through a third-party proxy as described above is great if the proxy is trustworthy. Unfortunately, it just adds another link in the chain that, if the idea takes off, would be attractive to scumsucking privacy invaders to exploit with their own deceptive variants. Working towards privacy-by-default on the browser side seems to me a better approach. Wouldn't it be cool if a default Firefox install would require the user to add a bunch of plugins if they wanted to unblock ads and tracking? Better browser privacy design to prevent "data leaks" (like what the EFF is trying to study with Panopticlick) can provide much of the benefit of proxies without requiring extra layers of trust (and costs for proxy operation).

Either CNET crossed his creepy line, or maybe he shouldn't have been doing some things in the first place.

In the USA at least, if the police have a legal reason to enter your home, (even including you allowing them in through the front door for any reason), they can then seize anything they can see that is also known to be illegal from any vantage point they have that is legal. Standing outside your window and looking in is not a legal vantage point, but you opening the front door would create one at the entryway just as the warrant makes your entire kitchen one. If they respond to a noise complaint, which doesn't even require a warrant, then see a bag of weed on the table when you open the door, they absolutely can enter your home, seize the drugs and arrest you. Its called Plain View Doctrine and its irrelevant to the warrant in as far as the photo in your post is concerned. It definitely could result in a more inclusive warrant being issued to search for more evidence concerning the murder, but that still wouldn't negate the fact that the original warrant would allow them to seize the photo on the fridge, a gun with the serial number filed off or anything else illegal that is in plain view, or in any place they expected to find the marijuana they came for in your kitchen.

Not *entirely* accurate... From https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/warrantless

Plain view. The police can make a warrantless search or seizure if they are lawfully in a position to see and access the evidence, so long as that evidence is obviously incriminating. For example, if the police enter a house with a valid search warrant to search for and seize some stolen electronics and then see a bag of drugs in plain view on the coffee table, they can seize the drugs too, even though the warrant didn't specifically authorize that seizure. Similarly, the police could seize the drugs without a warrant, or look at any other documents or things left in plain view in the house, if there were exigent circumstances that led the police into the house — for example, if a suspect they were chasing ran into the house, or if they heard gunshots from inside. Even a law-abiding citizen who does not have any contraband or evidence that the police would want to seize may still have sensitive documents in plain view that one would not want the authorities to see.

The plain view exception alone does not allow the police to enter your home or office without a warrant. So, for example, even if the police see evidence through your window, they cannot enter and seize it. However, plain view can combine with other exceptions to allow searches that might otherwise require a warrant. For example, if the person with the bag of drugs in the previous example saw the police looking through his window, then grabbed the bag and ran towards the bathroom as if he was about to flush the evidence down the toilet, that would be an exigent circumstance and the police could enter without a warrant to stop him.

DRM is bad.[1]
HTML5 is good.
If a bad thing is included in something good, that thing is still bad.
Therefore, DRM in HTML5 is bad.

[1] It should be obvious DRM is bad, but: https://www.eff.org/issues/drm

In fact, Consumer oriented DRM should be illegal. It's an anti-competive anti-consumer dangerous practice. (I'm totally fine with the military using DRM to protect confidential information, etc).

Perhaps, but in practice it doesn't matter what it was *intended* to do, only what the wording allows it to be *used* to do. And in this case, it's being used in an attempt to block unfavorable discussions.

That said, the original discussion's use would almost certainly fall within fair use, so they could just respond to the DMCA request and get their stuff put back up, putting the ball back into the court the company sending the request.

They could indeed respond to the DMCA request and get their stuff put back up. But then, potentially, lawyers get involved. And when lawyers get involved, it gets very very expensive. Maybe the EFF or the ACLU will take your case, but they don't have the staff or money (donate today!) to take every case, so they might not be able to, in which case you'll have to hire your own.

Should be leading here

You can count on this issue never going away. For all the corporately-fueled K St. lobbiests lurking in Congress, private citizens have *VERY* few friends. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of them, the American Civil Liberties Union is another. Donations to these two organizations, and others like them are the only way to ensure these watchdog organizations stick around. Without watchdog organizations pouring over every amendment and potential bill we are FUBAR'd. Who else will be watching the watchers?

A privacy app where the user has complete control of everything be it leaking information & data to social networks, their affiliates, partners and assorted purchasers of such stuff. Something along the lines of http://tosdr.org/ or the slumbering https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/06/03-0 .

Since this ruling, the use of the stingrays has skyrocketed (allegedly)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/what-fbi-doesnt-want-you-know-about-its-surveillance-techniques

Well, on the one hand, the idea that IP addresses are not personally identifiable information is of benefit to the masses when arguing against RIAA/MPAA attacks saying "this IP address downloaded XYZ, thus the current user of said IP address is responsible", because an IP address is not a personal identifier.
.
On the other hand, google can then say that they keep track of IP addresses and other information which combine to become personally identifying information.
.
See the EFF's site Panopticlick to see the huge amount of identifiable information your web-browsing leaves behind, especially if you have javascript enabled. If google argues that your IP addy isn't personally identifiable info, then they can't get in any trouble for keeping track of it, even though in combination with your "user agent string" and the leaked browser information, they certainly can keep track of you.

Read this as it talks about the different types of immunity that can be granted.

This is a good summary of those 2 cases. One was overturned on appeal and the other lost on general technicalities that the defendant had willingly already exposed herself legally and so there was no risk to the decryption.

But the premise is still valid - you can't be compelled to turn over a combination to a safe; i.e. the passcode.

Sure there is some wisdom in that but it will only help to save you. And with the millions of rodents using privacy destroying services like for example Failbook and Ogle, soon you will stand out clearly as an outcast and cannot even take a shit without an account. So while intuitive, this is a wrong solution. The actual solution is to keep everybody safe so Big Brother will not get a beachhead. We must affect dramatic legal changes and demand our civil rights. The predatory corporations must be stopped.

https://www.eff.org/

Informative post could be more informative:

https://ssd.eff.org/tech/im

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

Aside from encouraging bad developer behavior, User Agents are a privacy risk. Point releases in browsers contribute to having a unique set of headers which may specifically identify your computer. It doesn't work as well as a cookie, but you have no control over it. Head over to Panopticlick for a demonstration.

I’m a constituent calling on you to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. 1030. This law contains vague language that broadly criminalizes accessing a computer "without authorization," carries heavy-handed penalties, and shows no regard for whether an act was done to further the public good. We saw how these laws could be abused in the case of Aaron Swartz, a recently-deceased 26-year-old coder and social activist who was hounded by the Justice Department in a relentless and unjust felony prosecution.

The CFAA needs three critical fixes: first, terms of service violations must not be considered crimes. Second, if a user is allowed to access information, it should not be a crime to access that data in a new or innovative way -- which means commonplace computing techniques that protect privacy or help test security cannot be illegal. And finally, penalties must be made proportionate to offenses: minor violations should be met with minor penalties.

While it is too late to intervene on behalf of Aaron, it’s not too late to ensure that this harm is not done to future social justice activists and security researchers. Please hold a Congressional hearing to examine the ongoing abuses of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and similar laws, and champion reform so that the potential punishments fit the crimes.

You can write to them easily here: https://www.eff.org/aarons-law

Take the time to add a note to the end of the boilerplate about how you WILL NOT vote for them if they don't act.

Senators and Representatives, even somebody like me who doesn't follow all things politics-related can still see how you vote and how well you represent my interests via http://www.opencongress.org/ , at the very least. Just remember, we are watching.

It isn't clear that you'll hit the bar for perjury by doing just about anything related to DMCA takedowns; but the US District Court specificially agreed with Lenz's lawyer that fair use is one of the elements that the copyright holder must consider in order to file a takedown request meeting the standards set out by the DMCA:

(Quoted from pages 5-6 of the above):
 
  "Fair Use and 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A)(v).

When interpreting a statute, a court must begin “with the language of the statute and ask
whether Congress has spoken on the subject before [it].” Norfolk and Western Ry. Co. v.
American Train Dispatchers Ass’n, 499 U.S. 117, 128 (1991). If “Congress has made its intent
clear, [the court] must give effect to that intent.” Miller v. French, 530 U.S. 327, 336 (2000)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the Court concludes that the plain meaning
of “authorized by law” is unambiguous. An activity or behavior “authorized by law” is one
permitted by law or not contrary to law. Though Congress did not expressly mention the fair use
doctrine in the DMCA, the Copyright Act provides explicitly that “the fair use of a copyrighted work . . .
is not an infringement of copyright.” 17 U.S.C. 107. Even if Universal is correct that
fair use only excuses infringement, the fact remains that fair use is a lawful use of a copyright.4
Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with “a good faith
belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright
owner, its agent, or the law,” the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the
copyright. 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A)(v). An allegation that a copyright owner acted in bad faith
by issuing a takedown notice without proper consideration of the fair use doctrine thus is
sufficient to state a misrepresentation claim pursuant to Section 512(f) of the DMCA.

  The Supreme Court also has held consistently that fair use is not infringement of a
copyright. See e.g., Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 433
(1984) (“[a]nyone . . . who makes a fair use of the work is not an infringer of the copyright with
respect to such use.”). "

Since the boundaries of fair use are not terribly clearly defined, it could easily be the case that a DMCA takedown is judged to not be a 'misrepresentation' under Section 512(f); but that a counterclaim on fair use grounds could still end up being accepted. However, the courts have apparently decided that, while they may be the ones to step in on disputes over whether something is fair use, 'fair use' is something that you have to take into account to file a valid DMCA takedown. Not that this has had much deterrent effect in practice, of course.

According to the EFF, Google has removed Adblock plus from the Google Play, citing that it violates Google's terms and conditions that stipulate that apps will not interfere with any other app on the store. This only affects android so far, but I imagine now that Google has decided that content blocking is a bad thing, I would imagine that the chrome and firefox extensions will follow. And, sadly, it's probably only a matter of time before Google turn their considerable talents to making sure that any method will fail. I'm not interested in starting a flame war here; I'm just pointing out that when the pre-eminent search engine on the planet weighs in on content blocking in such a heavy-handed way, it can't bode well for any of us.

It's my understanding that tracking is done by cookies. I delete all cookies 2-3 times a day, and always after logging out of Google (which I rarely log in to) and Facebook. The only downside is that I have to log in to again to certain sites but that is easy because of OS X's built-in password manager.

Cookies are just the simplest way to track you. Another common way is to use DSOs (Flash storage). And there are also several other possibilities to store identifying data.

And even if you manage to block everything, your browser still sends some identifying information by default. With JavaScript, even more partially identifying information can be collected, like screen resolution, your time zone or feature tests which might identify your browser even if you send a forged HTTP User Agent line (and the very fact that your browser line doesn't fit the JavaScript results might further help with identifying you).

We are pleased to receive anonymous donations in the mail, but please note that your personal information is required if you choose to donate using our online form.

Their address is:

Electronic Frontier Foundation, 454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

This is probably as close as you can get to anonymous, unless you have a friend drop off cash at their office.

It's not just for Humble Bundles anymore.

This is true, and a reason I always chide those who go on about the President controlling things like gas prices. However, in the case of laws, President Obama is slightly different: When he was campaigning for his first term, he was against immunity for telecos on warrantless wiretapping. But, while still Senator Obama, he voted for immunity, and has done many things since to keep it in action (like arguing against the journalists in the SC that they can't even challenge the law when there's no way to find out who can, IIRC).

So, yes, the President doesn't write or vote in laws, but he has the power to veto them. According to Wikipedia, he's used this power twice, once in each of his first years in office. He certainly hasn't used it on anything that should have been veto'd, like FISA extensions/renewals. Even if it were certain that whatever he vetoes would get the necessary overriding votes in Congress, it would still send a message.

As things stand, he's no better than the driver of the get-away van for a bank robbery who spends the whole time thinking/saying "this is wrong", but doesn't hesitate to drive for a moment.

I do thank President Obama for one thing, though: His actions have opened my eyes to how the Democrats are just as shitty as the Republicans, and that our two-party system is horrible.

Humm, well let's see.

1) RIAA and the MPAA spend lots of money lobbying congress. The MPAA for example has a former US Senator as it's current leader, Chris Dodd. Because of lobbying and influence in terms of campaign contributions we have such wonderful legislation like the DMCA.
2) Patent Trolling in the US is a legitimate business, there are examples of this going back nearly 200 years. My favorite example of patent thickets and trolling involves the Sewing Machine wars which started in the 1850s. It's an interesting read.
3) Businesses in this country derive special protection, some business practices while questionable aren't illegal. To make something illegal there has to be some law prohibiting it. If RIAA and the MPAA can go after people with John Doe cases which amount largely to fishing expeditions then that's allowed under our right of due process. Some judges have disagreed with these tactics while some still are proceeding on appeal. reference: https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
4) The tool that all of these folks use is the DMCA, which is a flawed piece of legislation. Not only is it flawed, it's also being pushed worldwide under the guises of free trade agreements like the "secret" ACTA treaty.
5) Congress really doesn't write anything, they take pieces of put together bullshit from lobbyists, change a couple of things and present it as their own bill. Others attach their bullshit, called a rider onto the Bill that may or may not have anything to do with it but makes it more "passable" because they included a mom + apple pie subsidy along with the big bad legislation. It gets out of dozens of committees and then is voted upon. It's the worst form of legislative process possible run by career politicians and staff people who have no fear of ever losing their jobs. It's no wonder that the approval rating for congress is in the low teens.

So, in simple terms. lobbying + campaign contributions + pre written legislation = DMCA
DMCA + Legal System that allow John Doe suits = (RIAA + MPAA + Big Money Law Firms) + Courts flooded with meaningless cases + defense lawyers + big fees = screwed John Doe who can't defend himself with a fine that exceeds the value of the pilfering many fold.

this is the worst possible outcome and if you download a CD from a file sharing site you could get slapped very heavily. In a word don't do it but in another word, defending yourself in a wrongful prosecution could become extremely costly. That's why John Doe cases need to be abolished, the DMCA needs to be appealed and where pirating has been found, only the value of the property illegally copied * number of copies should be the penalty. If you have kids at home, I suggest you let them know about downloading and its dangers, not just from malware and viruses but because of that knock on the door from a process server saying you're being sued.

What about domestic censorship, monitoring and even censoring on all foreign communications? Spying on their own citizens are internal affairs, could be justified on maintaining order, internal peace or whatever, but doing it for most communications of other countries or between other countries? Wikipedia is full of references on it, among others, And is acting on the information that is gathering.

Does anyone have a link to a more recent EFF Financial statement than this one?

If not, then why is 2009 - 2010 the latest?

Why is this pertinent to the article? Chewbacca wants me to get them.

You are right but telling your congressman to support FASTR (Fair Access to Science and Technology Research) is much more useful. You can do so quite easily thanks to the EFF and Alliance for Taxpayer Access. FASTR would make federally funded research (non classified and funded by a federal agency with a budget over 100 million$) freely available after 6 months of publication. This would go far beyond the disappointing recent White House OSTP policy where the embargo is 1 year and doesn't include any resuse rights.

If you live in Illinois or California, please consider supporting similar legislation for state funded research. See
Open Access to Research Articles Act for Illinois and California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act.

If, as is described on the copyrightinformation.org website, the copyright alert system is implemented such that the IP addresses it gathers genuinely are being used by infringers, I don't have much of a problem with this, since I don't download infringing content, nor do I do anything which might permit or enable other people to use my internet connection who may, and I do not hold much sympathy for those who do.

The software being used to determine IPs in the "Copyright Alert System" is the same one that sent a DMCA notices to laser printers.

Still feel certain you won't be getting an alert?

Probably because the article links to some Lexis Nexus paywall site rather than say, the EFF Article that not only links to the full text of the bill but also has a handy link to Congressional contact info.

It's easy to be cynical. On our end it seems like Congress has it's head up it's ass. But I've actually talked to several Congressmen and from their end, it's the American people who have their heads stuck in their ass because none of them get involved beyond maybe going to a polling place every few years.

Many of them do keep to the idea their job is to represent their constituents (other than the nutbags like Barton and Akin). Some will even go so far as to vote contrary to their own beliefs or loyalties if enough people within their district ask it of them.
The problem is that most of the time the only ones who give a crap about any pending legislation are those with a vested interest in the outcome. When those are the only constituents who voice an opinion, they're the ones get represented.

So if people get involved and actually voice their support for this one, it could turn out like SOPA and PIPA which many people thought would pass regardless of how bad they were or how many people told the internet they hated them.