Privacy

EFF Joins With Diverse Coalition To Get Copyright Right

May 5, 2015 Corynne McSherry, www.eff.org Educate! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

After decades of increasingly draconian statutes and judicial decisions, our copyright system has veered far away from its original purpose. To help get copyright back on track, EFF is joining forces with a variety of groups—including libraries, industry associations, and public interest advocates—to launch a new coalition focused on promoting smart, balanced copyright policy: Re:create. Restoring a sense of balance, fairness, and rationality to the copyright system has never been more urgent. Copyright is supposed to promote creativity, but too often we’ve seen it used to shut down innovation, new creative expression, and even everyday activities like tinkering with your car. When a farmer needs to ask the Librarian of Congress for permission to fix her tractor, it’s not just the tractor that’s broken.

Inside The Military-Police Center That Spies On Baltimore’s Rioters

May 3, 2015 Adam Weinstein, phasezero.gawker.com Educate! Militarization, Police abuse, Privacy, spying, Surveillance

Above: Image by Jim Cooke; photo via AP On Ambassador Road, just off I-695 around the corner from the FBI, nearly 100 employees sit in a high-tech suite and wait for terrorists to attack Baltimore. They’ve waited 11 years. But they still have plenty of work to do, like using the intel community’s toys to target this week’s street protests. They are the keepers of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a government “fusion center” set up to share information and coordinate counterterrorist activities between 29 law enforcement agencies—federal, state, and local, including Baltimore city and county cops—in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Seeded by a state anti-terror advisory council whose meetings are closed to the public, nourished by Republican and Democratic governors alike, MCAC has expanded its access to spying tools over the past decade and a half. It can pinpoint cellphone users. It can monitor movements of state motorists through their license plates, as it has done with an estimated 85 million drivers.

Industries Dedicated To Getting Your Privacy Back

April 26, 2015 Janet Burns, www.alternet.org Create! Mass Surveillance, Privacy

Low-tech protections against widespread surveillance have been gaining ground, too. Though initially designed as a tongue-in-cheek solution to prying eyes and cameras, Becky Stern’s Laptop Compubody Sock offers a portable, peek-free zone to laptop users, while the CHBL Jammer Coat and sold-out Phonekerchief use metal-infused fabrics to make personal gadgets unreachable, blocking texts, calls and radio waves. For people willing to sport a bit more hardware in the name of privacy, the Sentient City Survival Kit offers underwear that notifies wearers about real-life phishing and tracking attempts, and its LED umbrella lets users “flirt with object tracking algorithms used in advanced surveillance systems” and even “train these systems to recognize nonhuman shapes.”

Why Surveillance Reform Is Inevitable

April 22, 2015 Anthony D. Romero, www.latimes.com Resist! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Youth

In late February, the American Civil Liberties Union commissioned a global poll surveying millennials (18- to 34-year-olds) in 10 countries, including the United States, about their opinions of Snowden and what the effect of his disclosures will mean for privacy. The results confirmed that surveillance reform, like marriage equality, will come about because of generational change. The poll showed that in every country surveyed — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. — millennials have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of Snowden. In continental Europe, 78% to 86% has positive opinions of him. Even in the United States, where the Justice Department has charged Snowden with espionage, 56% view him favorably.

Developing A People-Centered Security Culture

April 13, 2015 Staff, www.mobilisationlab.org Educate! NSA, Privacy, Security culture, spying

One of the challenges faced by the movement for social, economic and environmental justice is the intrusive security state that not only includes government agencies but corporations. Many activists take the approach of transparency -- we have nothing to hide -- because they do not want paranoia to creep in. But, in fact it is not paranoia creeping in, it is reality. Some of this response is also because people do not know what to do. The video below comes from a webinar hosted by Greenpeace. The guest speaker, Allen Gunn, Executive Director of Aspiration, puts forward an excellent overview of the situation and puts forward a practical philosophy of security culture. We recommend it highly for all activists working for transformational change against the power structure and entrenched interests.

Newsletter: Shake Off Hypnosis, See Root Causes Of Crises

April 11, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter fast track, killed by police, Media, NSA, Privacy, spying, Student Activism, TPP, Walter Scott

An ambitious young journalist who wanted to speak truth to power, Matt Kennard, was writing for the Financial Times. He quickly learned the corporate media was not the place to tell truths that the power structure did not want to hear. Now he has written a new book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter Takes on the Masters of the Universe,” which does speak truth to power.Time for Truth Kennard describes the racket as the “global elite’s prolonged war on the people of our world with the sole aim of pumping up their bottom line.” That ‘war’ has come home and is being waged against people. Just as Matt Kennard shook off the hypnosis and saw reality, we must not be afraid to see the truth around us. Once we do the root causes of the crisis become evident. And, in the end we must fight for a revolution of values; values that end the violence of militarism, racism and capitalism; lead to cooperation between people working together for social, economic and environmental justice. And, when we seek that we will quickly recognize we are not alone, millions are already on that path with us.

Fight215.org Launches To Amplify Opposition To The NSA

April 10, 2015 Nadia Kayyali, www.eff.org Resist! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

A coalition of 34 organizations from across the political spectrum is launching Fight215.orgtoday to help concerned individuals contact lawmakers and demand an end to NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance under the Patriot Act. The launch coincides with the countdown to the expiration of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the NSA claims justifies bulk collection of the phone records of millions of innocent people. Whistleblower Edward Snowden shared these thoughts with the coalition: Suspicionless surveillance has no place in a democracy. The next 60 days are a historic opportunity to rein in the NSA, but the only one who can end the worst of its abuses is you. Call your representatives and tell them that the unconstitutional 'bulk collection' of Americans' private records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act must end.

Tracking Calls Failed To Prevent 9/11, US Tracked Billions Before Event

April 10, 2015 Brad Heath, www.wtsp.com Educate! Law, Privacy, Surveillance

The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed. For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America. Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers.

Barrett Brown Stripped Of Prison Email After Talking To Media

April 8, 2015 Cyrus Farivar, www.arstechnica.com Resist! Freedom of Expression, Prison, Privacy, Surveillance

Barrett Brown, the brash journalist and former member of Anonymous who was sentenced in January 2015 to over five years in federal prison, had his e-mail privileges suddenly revoked, seemingly for corresponding with journalists. On Sunday, Brown’s supporters published his account of the punishment, describing how he suddenly lost access to his prison-supplied e-mail account on March 31. In the ensuing days, Brown attempted to contact various prison officials to get further information, including someone named “Trust Fund Manager Coleman.” As Ars reported previously, in April 2014 Brown took a plea deal admitting guilt on three charges: “transmitting a threat in interstate commerce,” interfering with the execution of a search warrant, and being "accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer."

Day Of Action Against C-51 Across Canada

March 15, 2015 The Canadian Press, www.macleans.ca Resist! Canada, Mass Surveillance, Police, Privacy

MONTREAL — Thousands of Canadians came together to loudly denounce the Conservative government’s proposed anti-terror legislation in rallies held across the country on Saturday. In a park in Montreal’s north end, a few dozen of the hundreds of demonstrators taped their mouths shut in protest of the bill, which opponents say would allow the government to stifle protest and dissent. As they marched toward the office of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, many of the large contingent waved signs bearing messages such as “Stop Harper,” and “Activism is not a crime.” The Conservative government introduced the legislation, known as Bill C-51, in January. The wide-ranging bill would give police much broader powers and allow them to detain terror suspects and give new powers to Canada’s spy agency.

ACLU, Wikimedia & Others Sue NSA To Take Back The Internet

March 11, 2015 Patrick Toomey, www.aclu.org Resist! ACLU, Law, NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

Every time you email someone overseas, the NSA copies and searches your message. It makes no difference if you or the person you're communicating with has done anything wrong. If the NSA believes your message could contain information relating to the foreign affairs of the United States – because of whom you're talking to, or whom you're talking about – it may hold on to it for as long as three years and sometimes much longer. A new ACLU lawsuit filed today challenges this dragnet spying, called "upstream" surveillance, on behalf of Wikimedia and a broad coalition of educational, human rights, legal, and media organizations whose work depends on the privacy of their communications. The plaintiffs include Amnesty International USA, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Nation magazine, and many other organizations whose work is critical to the functioning of our democracy.

If Mass Surveillance Is A Permanent State — We Resist

March 9, 2015 Hendrik Alexandersson, www.hax.5july.org Resist! Mass Surveillance, Privacy, Resistance, Technology

From the Snowden files, people know for sure. There is mass surveillance. It is conducted on a global scale by various NSA schemes. In most countries there are national surveillance programmes. And in the EU, data retention means logging all our phone calls, text messages, e-mails, net connections and mobile positions. (This is done in most EU countries, despite the European Court of Justice having invalidated the EU data retention directive for breaching human rights.) Then we have the things we do not know. Obviously the Russians and the Chinese have their own global mass surveillance systems. And in the western world there are many surveillance programmes still unknown for the public. (Sometimes outsourced to private contractors.)

Snowden: There’s ‘No Fair Trial Available’ If I Return

March 5, 2015 Solarina Ho, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Edward Snowden, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Most sentient people rationally accept that the U.S. media routinely disseminates misleading stories and outright falsehoods in the most authoritative tones. But it’s nonetheless valuable to examine particularly egregious case studies to see how that works. In that spirit, let’s take yesterday’s numerous, breathlessreports trumpeting the “BREAKING” news that “Edward Snowden now wants to come home!” and is “now negotiating the terms of his return!” Ever since Snowden revealed himself to the public 20 months ago, he has repeatedly said the same exact thing when asked about his returning to the U.S.: I would love to come home, and would do so if I could get a fair trial, but right now, I can’t.

Canadian Spies Collect Domestic Emails In Secret Security Sweep

February 26, 2015 Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! Canada, Privacy, Surveillance

Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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