Posts tagged Bill
Second Lamar Smith ISP-Oriented Bill Draws New Protests
Feb 2nd
Last December, an anti-child pornography bill co-authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R – Texas) and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D – Fla.) passed the markup phase and was referred to the House floor. Though the bill’s chief provision is to enable law enforcement authorities to arrest and prosecute entities that knowingly provide financial transaction services to child pornographers, the bill would also require Internet service providers to maintain records of the IP addresses they lease to their customers, for no less than 12 months (18 as originally drafted).
In the wake of the historic failure in the House of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was co-authored by Rep. Smith and sponsored by Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, a newly empowered – and enlarged – wave of protesters aims to stop any bill that would leverage popular sentiment to force ISPs to retain customer data for use by government.
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The portion of H.R. 1981 that’s drawing criticism would, like SOPA, assign ISPs the responsibility of intelligence gathering. Section 4(a) would insert this language into USC 18(h)(1):
A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section… Access to a record or information required to be retained under this subsection may not be compelled by any person or other entity that is not a governmental entity.
Missing from this bill is any type of mechanism for law enforcement agencies to seek a court order. Instead, H.R. 1981 uses very broad language to open up the ISP’s database of subscriber information to “a governmental entity.” Such language refrains even from restricting access to law enforcement entities.
In a statement to the press at the time the bill was introduced last July, Rep. Smith characterized the omission of a court order provision in the bill as a feature, going so far as to suggest that, in the course of conducting investigations against suspected child pornographers, courts tend to merely get in the way.
“H.R. 1981 enables law enforcement officials to successfully locate and prosecute those who want to hurt our children,” Smith stated. “Often, the only way to identify a pedophile who operates a Web site or exchanges child pornography images with other pedophiles is by an Internet Protocol address. Law enforcement officials must obtain a subpoena and then request from the Internet Service Provider the name and address of the user of the IP address. Unfortunately, Internet Service Providers regularly purge these records, making it difficult if not impossible for investigators to apprehend child pornographers on the Internet. H.R. 1981 directs ISPs to retain Internet Protocol addresses to assist federal law enforcement officials with child pornography and other Internet investigations.”
Although the bill itself does not mention the possibility of extending the database to “other Internet investigations” by “a government entity,” the American Civil Liberties Union pounced on the proposed legislation immediately. It also suggested that the creation of the database itself may give ISPs a green light to do something it says they’ve been wanting to do anyway: track and profile Web users’ habits.
As the Union’s Christopher Calabrese wrote, “The ACLU has long been concerned about companies that follow us around the Web and track our viewing habits for the purposes of advertising. They use this tracking to build personal profiles about us that can be widely shared. Forcing companies to retain data for long periods would bolster this practice. It would also make it much easier for the government to track everything we do online. No company would be able to promise not to record your visit — that would be barred by law. Respect for your anonymity online would be a thing of the past.”
But one other potential defect of the bill as written – which, amid the less technical issues, may have been missed – has to do with IP addresses themselves. There’s considerable legal precedent supporting the principle that an IP address cannot be used to identify a person. It may be used to identify a computer used by a person. Or it could identify a phone, or more often these days, a proxy that the very class of subjects the bill would target might use to anonymize their online sessions. Conceivably, a defendant could argue, with plenty of evidence to back him up, that an IP address is not enough to link an Internet session with a person.
At any rate, this afternoon the advocacy group Demand Progress reports that an online petition for opponents of H.R. 1981 has garnered over 70,000 signatures thus far. The petition cites a statement from Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D – Mich.), which reads, “The bill is mislabeled. This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”
Photo credit: Shutterstock Images
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Draft ‘Carrier IQ’ Bill Would Have Carriers Inform, Then Track, Customers
Jan 30th
Last November, after a security researcher revealed that many Android phones contained software that tracked keystrokes while users were dialing phone numbers, news providers boiled the issue into a genuine spyware scare. That gave Carrier IQ, the maker of performance monitoring software, a black eye in the public mind.
As the testing software maker continues to recover from a huge perception problem, a leading House Democrat is proposing legislation mandating that carriers inform customers of the existence of any monitoring software on the phones they intend to purchase, and obtain their consent, prior to engaging that software.
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“Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall promulgate regulations under section 553 of title 5, United States Code, that require any person who is subject to the disclosure requirements of the regulations promulgated under section 2(a) to obtain the express consent of the consumer prior to the time when the monitoring software first begins collecting and transmitting information.” This is the first paragraph of Section 3 of the proposed Mobile Device Privacy Act (PDF available here), put forth today by Rep. Edward Markey (D – Mass.), who serves on the House Energy & Commerce Committee.
“While consumers rely on their phones, their phones relay all sorts of information about them, often without their knowledge or consent,” reads a statement from Rep. Markey’s office today. “I am concerned about the threat to consumers’ privacy posed by electronic monitoring software on mobile phones, such as the software developed by Carrier IQ.”
Carriers (or parties to the sale of a phone) failing to make this disclosure to customers, under Rep. Markey’s proposed provisions, could find themselves prosecuted for deception and/or unfair trade practices.
But that might not be the stickiest part of this bill. Under Rep. Markey’s proposal, once the customer consented to the monitoring software doing its job, the carrier (or other point of sale) would become responsible for maintaining a secure database of the identities of those who consented. Such a database could conceivably be used to retrieve data about the phones being monitored.
It would be precisely the situation that Carrier IQ says its architecture tries to avoid: tracking people. Rather, the company says its interest is in the performance and engineering of phones, for the benefit of engineers who build phones.
“In building a solution capable of scaling to millions of subscribers,” reads last month’s Carrier IQ white paper (PDF available here), “we understand that having an effective solution requires that the software gather only the critical diagnostic information and do so in a manner that protects consumers’ information. From a business perspective, using the least amount of data possible reduces costs in providing the service (less storage facilities, less data to analyze).”
Carrier IQ’s software is capable of detecting signal degradation down to the level of a single phone, pinpointing the location of that phone. But the company says it does not use personally identifiable data in its analysis. In that sense, the best way to safeguard customer data from being pilfered from Carrier IQ is for Carrier IQ not to have it in the first place. “Carrier IQ have no rights to the data that is gathered into the MSIP system for any Carrier IQ customer,” the company says.
Rep. Markey’s statement reminds us that his office requested the Federal Trade Commission last year to investigate Carrier IQ for possible unfair or deceptive trade practices.
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Data Privacy: What Bill Gates Said 10 Years Ago
Jan 28th
Today is International Data Privacy Day, an event backed by companies like Intel, Ebay, Facebook and Microsoft, and dedicated to educating data owners about best practices in protecting the privacy of consumer data.
The need to keep people from being exploited on account of violations of their privacy is clear, well-known, intuitive and amply articulated by highly capable people. The up-side of making use of peoples’ data is far less so. The two concerns are closely tied together. That’s something Bill Gates is likely very aware of, if his comments 10 years ago are any indication.
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The forthcoming era of computing is all about data. In as much as that data is associated with people, it’s essential that data owners feel secure in the belief that they can make use of their data in computing without concern it will be misused.
Bill Gates got this about the last era of computing, the first instances of e-commerce and the web. He wrote a famous company-wide memo ten years ago this month all about the importance of what he called Trusted Computing.
“If we don’t do this, people simply won’t be willing — or able — to take advantage of all the other great work we do. Trustworthy Computing is the highest priority for all the work we are doing. We must lead the industry to a whole new level of Trustworthiness in computing.”
Regarding Privacy in particular, the Gates memo put some things in ways we can relate to today, but other things seem antiquated.
“Users should be in control of how their data is used. Policies for information use should be clear to the user. Users should be in control of when and if they receive information to make best use of their time. It should be easy for users to specify appropriate use of their information including controlling the use of email they send.”
Users should be in control of when and if they receive information to make best use of their time! Can you imagine that? Info overload as privacy violation. It makes sense, yet it seems hopelessly antiquated too.
“In the past, we’ve made our software and services more compelling for users by adding new features and functionality, and by making our platform richly extensible,” he wrote.
“We’ve done a terrific job at that, but all those great features won’t matter unless customers trust our software.
“So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine and improve that security as threats evolve.”
Here’s how the International Data Privacy Day organization puts it today.
“In this networked world, in which we are thoroughly digitized, with our identities, locations, actions, purchases, associations, movements, and histories stored as so many bits and bytes, we have to ask – who is collecting all of this data – what are they doing with it – with whom are they sharing it? Most of all, individuals are asking ‘How can I protect my information from being misused?’ These are reasonable questions to ask – we should all want to know the answers.
“Data Privacy Day promotes awareness about the many ways personal information is collected, stored, used, and shared, and education about privacy practices that will enable individuals to protect their personal information.
Robert Siciliano, an Online Security Evangelist at McAfee, paints a much more negative picture in a blog post yesterday – probably even about the companies participating in International Data Privacy Day. McAfee is owned by the primary sponsor of the event, though, Intel. Siciliano speaks for many people when he says:
“Lately, it seems that barely a day goes by when we don’t learn about a major Internet presence taking steps to further erode users’ privacy. The companies with access to our data are tracking us in ways that make Big Brother look like a sweet little baby sister.
“Typically when we hear an outcry about privacy violations, these perceived violations involve some apparently omnipotent corporation recording the websites we visit, the applications we download, the social networks we join, the mobile phones we carry, the text messages we send and receive, the places we go, the people we’re with, the things we like and dislike, and so on.
“How do they do this? By offering us free stuff to consume online and infrastructure for the online communities that tie us together. We gobble up their technologies, download their programs, use their services, and mindlessly click ‘I Agree’ to terms and conditions we haven’t bothered to read.”
It’s a cynical perspective that refers to all the glory of the Interwebs as simply free stuff to consume with mindless clicks.
I think I prefer the description Gates might have offered. The global computer is now rich with features and opportunities, but those will be put at risk if people don’t trust the network. Please, Mr. Zuckerberg, don’t spoil this opportunity.
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On Magic & SEO: Open Letter to Forbes, Bill Barol
Jan 25th
SEW’s reply to a blog post on Forbes.com entitled, “Sex, Free iPad, Naked Pictures of Cat Deeley, 8 Ways to Get Rich Right This Second and Lose Weight While You Sleep” which urged demystification in SEO but instead reproduced endemic superstitions.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
SOPA Opponents Sign On to Wyden-Issa Alternative Piracy Bill
Dec 14th
There is already a well-functioning administrative body for handling intellectual property disputes between U.S.-based companies and parties in foreign countries. It’s the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), and if you’ve followed the many disputes brought by Apple against mobile phone makers, by mobile phone makers against Apple, and among IP portfolio holders such as Qualcomm and Broadcom, no doubt you’ve heard of USITC.
So why didn’t Congress consider the Commission as a solution for the burning problem of resolving piracy matters with unknown parties outside U.S. borders? That’s a question being asked, and possibly even answered, by an alternative bill introduced last week to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP bills in the House and Senate, respectively. This morning, a cavalcade of leading tech companies known to oppose SOPA already have signed on as supporters of the USITC-based alternative.
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Sen. Ron Wyden (D – Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R – Calif.) are promoting alternative legislation that delegates the USITC as the jurisdiction for international online IP piracy matters. That court has the authority to ban the import and sale of infringing material to U.S. customers, though it appears the court would not have the authority that would be granted to courts under SOPA to order ISPs to block access to Internet DNS addresses.
The Wyden-Issa approach, which also goes by the name “Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act” (which folks accept under the acronym “OPEN”), was praised by a coalition comprised of AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, and Zynga. “This approach targets foreign rogue sites without inflicting collateral damage on legitimate, law-abiding U.S. Internet companies by bringing well-established international trade remedies to bear on this problem,” the coalition wrote today in a joint letter to Issa and Wyden.
The one principal flaw some see in the Wyden-Issa approach, as their bill is currently written (it has yet to go through markup), is that it does not yet give USITC an effective means to enforce decisions against parties found to be trafficking in illicit or counterfeit intellectual property online. While it can’t shut off the DNS valve for accessing the Web site, the current bill would literally have the court try to reach the absent party by mail (the kind that uses stamps). If it doesn’t get a response, the court is then authorized to implement “any other such form as the Commission finds necessary,” whatever that may be.
Would USITC have any authority?
Since the Commission is technically not a court, all it can effectively do is grant the authority to agencies and departments to do what’s necessary to protect the rights of complainants. “What’s necessary” has changed over the years, though today it typically grants the Dept. of Commerce (not the Dept. of Justice) the authority to impose tariffs against the import of certain goods or products, as well as to enforce bans in imports of certain products. Not being a court, the USITC cannot order an ISP to alter its services.
Can the Dept. of Commerce issue such an order? Essentially, DoC is the final caretaker of U.S. copyright law, and is perceived as the enforcer of valid DMCA takedown provisions. But as long as it takes the USITC now to reach a decision in copyright and patent infringement cases, it could theoretically take years after a case is brought before the Commission, before it can issue the authority that DoC or any other agency would require to take action.
GOP vs. GOP
That’s a critical flaw in the Wyden-Issa bill that will no doubt be pointed out by one of Rep. Issa’s GOP rivals in the House, Rep. Lamar Smith, who heads the House Judiciary Committee on which Issa serves, and who is SOPA’s principal sponsor. The Washington Post‘s Cecilia Kang reports this morning that Smith’s bill may go further significant changes, in a markup hearing for SOPA scheduled for Thursday. On the table is at least one manager’s amendment, says Kang, that may water down or strip entirely SOPA’s provision for ordering ISPs to block IP address resolution.
That may leave SOPA as equally naked and unprotected as the OPEN bill, which could potentially doom both. In a blog post last week on the subject, Harvard Law Prof. Jonathan Zittrain suggested that the merits of both bills could be better weighed if Congress would use some of its otherwise wasted time to investigate actual instances of piracy, even if just to determine if there would simply be too many defendants for USITC or an actual court to manage.
“The question Congress ideally would take up before passing anything is an empirical one,” Prof. Zittrain writes, “because overseas copyright infringement is a classic example of a public policy issue that hungers for real data. We’d do well to have less unanchored rhetoric around this topic and more information about just what kinds of sites proponents want to target and what evidence they can produce to show the harm these sites are causing. Then Congress could evaluate how risky or costly legislative action against those sorts of sites would prove. This is an earnest plea – we really could benefit from good data here. Without it, any compromise may be simply pitted against a caricatured initial proposal – when both are ill-considered. Bottom line: The Wyden compromise is significantly better than the original SOPA proposal, and it might form the basis for a new law against egregious overseas ‘kingpin’ infringement. A narrowly tailored proposal fleshing out the compromise would test how much the publishers seeking the law mean to go after only the big fish. And developing some real data on the scope of the problem and the impact of solutions is both desirable and doable.”
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SOPA Alternative Bill Would Shift Piracy Cases to Trade Commission
Dec 8th
The U.S. International Trade Commission would be the court of first instance for disputes brought by parties claiming that a Web site hosted offshore is trafficking in its intellectual property, in a draft of a bi-partisan bill released today by Sen. Ron Wyden (D – Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R – Calif.). The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade bill (whose acronym is somehow “OPEN”) is being offered as an alternative to the PROTECT-IP anti-piracy legislation which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last May, but which has yet to come to a vote of the full Senate. The bill’s House counterpart, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is currently being debated by representatives.
USITC is already the principal court for resolving intellectual property disputes between American and foreign companies, so certainly no one yet can fault the bill lack of precedent.
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But while the SOPA and PROTECT-IP bills both would empower the Attorney-General to order DNS server hosts and Internet service providers to stop resolving the addresses of suspected pirate sites, the Wyden-Issa bill would instead have a Commission judge issue a cease and desist order against the proprietor of the site once the judge has found the proprietor guilty of infringing activity.
“The OPEN Act would combat the flow of infringing digital goods into the United States by expanding the International Trade Commission’s existing authority to enforce copyright and trademark infringement as it currently applies to the import of physical goods,” reads a statement from Rep. Issa’s and Sen. Wyden’s offices, issued today. “While downloading a movie from a foreign-registered site is akin to importing a good from a foreign company, U.S. trade laws have failed to keep pace with the digital economy and have yet to extend the protections that U.S. rights holders enjoy in the physical world to the online world. The OPEN Act would expand those protections and empower U.S. rights holders to petition the ITC to investigate cases of illegal digital imports just as they currently petition the ITC to investigate infringement cases involving physical goods.”
At the same time, the statement reads, the Wyden-Issa bill refrains from messing with the DNS system, while also providing what it characterizes as a clear definition of an infringing site, as opposed to SOPA’s phrase “rogue site” which some say is legally fuzzy. The initial draft of Wyden-Issa states that a foreign infringer “is accessed through a non-domestic domain name; conducts business directed to residents of the United States; and has only limited purpose or use other than engaging in infringing activity and whose owner or operator primarily uses the site to willfully engage in infringing activity.”
The SOPA bill (which takes some of its language from the un-voted-on COICA bill from 2010) would apply precedent in real estate law to enable the Attorney-General’s office to pursue the Web sites of unreachable foreign proprietors, seizing their domains much the same way the FBI currently seizes foreign assets of suspected counterfeiters. The Wyden-Issa language would take foreign piracy matters out of the Attorney-General’s hands almost entirely, employing the DOJ for consultation matters only, and reverting cases back to domestic authorities including the DOJ if it should be determined that the domain holder in question resides on U.S. soil after all.
Just like patent infringement cases today, piracy cases would be brought by individual complainants to the USITC. Conceivably the DOJ may act as a complainant on behalf of U.S. interests, although there’s no language in the current draft that expressly states this. The Administrative Law Judge there would be given the authority, under the current draft, to issue temporary restraining orders while a case is being heard. These would be similar to temporary injunctions that the USITC grants today against the import or sale of foreign goods alleged to infringe upon U.S. patents or trademarks.
But the lack of a means to disable a suspect site if its proprietors cannot be located, may become a topic of debate should Wyden-Issa be brought before a committee for markup. When a complaint is filed against a site, USITC would have the obligation to notify the site’s proprietors. It would use the e-mail or mail address listed on the site itself (which you don’t generally find on a pirate site); or, barring that, the mail address listed in the domain registry (which is often hidden or falsified); or finally, when all else fails, “any other such form as the Commission finds necessary.”
Just last October, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the USITC does have the authority to use its own means outside the U.S. to investigate cases of alleged unfair competition. Conceivably, that authority could also be extended to include investigations of illicit intellectual property trafficking outside U.S. borders.
The latest statements of opposition to SOPA and PROTECT-IP published this week, including from legal scholars, assert that the bills would have detrimental impacts on Americans’ free speech rights. But the new support group established to promote the Wyden-Issa bill, launched at KeepTheWebOpen.com, is noticeably refraining from invoking the free speech argument, perhaps in order to retain vital Republican support necessary for this language to be passed by the GOP-controlled House.
“The OPEN Act secures two fundamental principles,” the new site reads. “First, Americans have a right benefit from what they’ve created. And second, Americans have a right to an open Internet. Our duty is to protect these rights. That’s why congressional Republicans and Democrats came together to write the OPEN Act. But it’s only a start.”
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Weekly Wrap-up: Effects of the Internet Blacklist Bill and More
Nov 18th
HR 3261 has riled up the internet and with good reason. We take a look at the effects of the new bill, in an easy to follow infographic from the folks at AmericanCensorship.org. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.
After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.
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Top Stories of the Week
Infographic: Effects of the Internet Blacklist Bill (SOPA) [Updated]
Trying to keep up with every threat to privacy online is a never-ending race on the hamster wheel. For that reason, when someone jumps up and down and tells us to pay close attention to the latest threat, many of us shrug our shoulders because we just don’t have the time to learn about each and every major privacy threat in the tech new cycle. To help us cut through the overwhelming amount of information we’ve already received about SOPA, the Stop Internet Piracy Act, the team at AmericanCensorship.org brings us this simple to follow infographic that very clearly details the risks of SOPA.
ReadWriteWeb commenter COV summed it up best:
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Comment from Diane Gomez:
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Vijay Hanumolu tweeted:
9 Innings worth of MLB on ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb coverage of the MLB.com College Challenge, a 14 hour Hack Day open to only a few students but with impressive VC potential.
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Comment from Les Orchard:
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Infographic: Effects of the Internet Blacklist Bill (SOPA)
Nov 16th
If you’ve been living under an Internet-free rock the past couple of weeks, you might have managed to miss the steady drumbeat of opposition to HR 3261, the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Then again, if you’ve been living under an Internet-free rock, you’ve already had a preview of what we’re facing if SOPA goes into effect.
I’m exaggerating a little, but not by much. We’ve covered SOPA earlier this week and the EFF’s efforts to rally opposition to the bill. But today is American Censorship Day and a hearing for the bill in the U.S. House that’s stacked in favor of the bill.
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AmericanCensorship.org has pulled together an infographic that explains in very basic terms the services and sites that are at greatest risk from SOPA. This includes Facebook, Reddit, The Onion Router (TOR), Alternative DNS services and a lot more. DNS blocking, which is what the proponents of SOPA want to use to block any site that might be considered infringing – before a court has even ruled – is also used in China, Iran and Syria to try to block political sites.
American Censorship Day is organized by Mozilla, the Free Software Foundation, PublicKnowledge, Demand Progress, the EFF, Creative Commons and a number of other organizations. I happened on the page thanks to a “censored” logo in the Disqus dashboard while moderating comments. If you’d like to get your own “censored” logo, or if you want to learn a bit more, head over to AmericanCensorship.org.
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