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Senator Joe Lieberman Asks Google for a Terrorist Flagging Button on Blogger

WarOnYou — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:30:12 +0000

Senator Joe Lieberman Asks Google for a Terrorist Flagging Button on Blogger

November 26th, 2011

lol

Well, Joe’s at it again, and this time, it really is as embarrassing as it sounds. The Senator has taken pen to paper and written a letter to Google asking that its blogging platform Blogger be equipped with a flagging feature… for terrorists. This is largely because Jose Pimental, a man suspected of attempting to build a pipe bomb to attack the US military hosted his blog on Blogger. Now, there are a lot of terrible Blogger blogs to be sure, but is this really the best way to deal with such a problem?

Talking Points Memo acquired the letter and published it earlier today. “Pimentel’s Internet activity — both his spreading of bomb-making instructions links and his hate-filled writings — were hosted by Google” writes Lieberman, going on to add that, unlike YouTube, “Blogger’s Content Policy does not expressly ban terrorist content nor does it provide a ‘flag’ feature for such content.”

Google has not yet responded to Senator Lieberman’s request for the Blogger kill switch.

Alleged Cyber Attack on U.S. Water Plant is Propaganda to Curb Internet Freedom

WarOnYou — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:49:26 +0000

Alleged Cyber Attack on U.S. Water Plant is Propaganda to Curb Internet Freedom

November 20, 2011

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By Eric Blair
Activist Post

The Washington Post is reporting that recent damage to an Illinois water treatment plant was a cyber attack by foreign hackers, “Foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail last week, according to a preliminary state report.”

The narrative of the attack is that a Russian-based hacker created minor “glitches” in the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA) which, according to Krebs on Security, is “designed to monitor and control complex industrial networks.” Apparently, it caused the system to turn on and off, resulting in the burnout of a water pump.

Despite the alarmist title of the article, DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard cautioned “At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety.”

Although the “original source of the information was unknown and impossible to immediately verify,” the claim is allegedly made in a “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion” report. Industry expert and Department of Homeland Security adviser, Joe Weiss, as if on a publicity tour, called both theWashington Post and Wired with alarmist rhetoric.

Weiss conclusively told the Washington Post, “This is a big deal. It was tracked to Russia. It has been in the system for at least two to three months. It has caused damage. We don’t know how many other utilities are currently compromised.”

Yet, the DHS maintains that there is no credible data or threat, and Don Craven, a water district trustee, told the State Journal-Register that they don’t know what caused it and that “the water district is up and running and things are fine.”

Still, Weiss told Wired,“There very easily could be other utilities as we speak who have their networks compromised,” he said. “This is unconscionable.”

If this highly speculative report is true, it would not only be the first time hackers successfully infiltrated and physically damaged a public utility in the United States, it would also be the first time they did so through the Internet.

As was determined with the now infamous Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, a virus was planted on a USB stick that was plugged it into a computer at a secure facility — not through the Internet.

Expert insiders agree that Stuxnet was so sophisticated that it could have only come from U.S. and/or Israeli engineers, Since neither government has denied these allegations, it represents the only substantial hack attack with a credible culprit.

To date, most alleged cyber attacks have been vague stories of shadowy hackers originating from IP addresses in Romania or China. Despite having no verified accounts of successful external attacks on public utilities, the fear propaganda of cyber threats persist.

Any credible investigator would look for motive in such attacks. It’s interesting that no one would seem to benefit from attacking a random small water treatment facility except, of course, the cyber defense industry itself — of which Joe Weiss, the oft-referred to expert source for this recent unconfirmed attack, is a beneficiary of.

In all honesty, what sober “hacker” would waste their time and sophistication to target a minor public utility? And what type of cyber terrorist would waste their talent on such a fruitless endeavor? The idea that this is a “big deal . . . tracked to Russia,” as Weiss stated, implies some sort of nation-state sponsorship, making such a low-level attack even more implausible.

What we do know, however, is that the U.S. is hellbent on controlling the Internet. Therefore, they appear to have the motive to create perceived threats in order to offer the solution of reduced Internet freedom and privacy.

Indeed, one of the proposed “solutions” is to require a digital ID for all web users just to access the Internet. And if that is unsuccessful, they’ve devised other draconian solutions like making it afelony to lie on the Internet.

So this over-hyped, completely unsubstantiated cyber attack appears to be nothing more than another attempt of fear mongering by government-funded “experts” in order to pursue their desired agenda to castrate Internet freedom.

Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

WarOnYou — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:32:58 +0000

Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

September 25th, 2011

This is great, but don’t forget the context:

U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators

U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

The Sock Puppet Industrial Complex: U.S. Trains ‘Activists’ to Evade Security Forces

Think outside the box, by all means. Just don’t be surprised when you find another box.

Via: Chronicle of Higher Education:

Computer networks proved their organizing power during the recent uprisings in the Middle East, in which Facebook pages amplified street protests that toppled dictators. But those same networks showed their weaknesses as well, such as when the Egyptian government walled off most of its citizens from the Internet in an attempt to silence protesters.

That has led scholars and activists increasingly to consider the Internet’s wiring as a disputed political frontier.

For example, one weekend each month, a small group of computer programmers gathers at a residence here to build a homemade Internet—named Project Byzantium—that could go online if parts of the current global Internet becomes blocked by a repressive government.

Using an approach called a “mesh network,” the system would set up an informal wireless network connecting users with other nearby computers, which in turn would pass along the signals. The mesh network could tie back into the Internet if one of the users found a way to plug into an unblocked route. The developers recently tested an early version of their software at George Washington University (though without the official involvement of campus officials).

The leader of the effort, who goes by the alias TheDoctor but who would not give his name, out of concern that his employer would object to the project, says he fears that some day repressive measures could be put into place in the United States.

He is not the only one with such apprehensions. Next month TheDoctor will join hundreds of like-minded high-tech activists and entrepreneurs in New York at an unusual conference called the Contact Summit. One of the participants is Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School who has built an encryption device and worries about a recent attempt by Wisconsin politicians to search a professor’s e-mail. The summit’s goal is not just to talk about the projects, but also to connect with potential financial backers, recruit programmers, and brainstorm approaches to building parallel Internets and social networks.

The meeting is a sign of the growing momentum of what is called the “free-network movement,” whose leaders are pushing to rewire online networks to make it harder for a government or corporation to exert what some worry is undue control or surveillance. Another key concern is that the Internet has not lived up to its social potential to connect people, and instead has become overrun by marketing and promotion efforts by large corporations.

At the heart of the movement is the idea that seemingly mundane technical specifications of Internet routers and social-networking software platforms have powerful political implications. In virtual realms, programmers essentially set the laws of physics, or at least the rules of interaction, for their cyberspaces. If it sometimes seems that media pundits treat Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Apple’s Steve Jobs as gods, that’s because in a sense they are—sitting on Mount Olympus with the power to hurl digital thunderbolts with a worldwide impact on people.

Instead of just complaining, many of those heading to New York next month believe they can build alternatives that reduce the power of those virtual deities and give more control to mere mortals.

U.S. Government Starts New Round of ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures

WarOnYou — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:12:13 +0000

U.S. Government Starts New Round of ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures

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May 22, 2011

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Source: TorrentFreak

US authorities have resumed ‘Operation In Our Sites’ and have seized several domain names associated with copyright infringement or counterfeit related crimes. Among the new targets are two sites that linked to copyrighted films hosted on third party streaming sites such as megavideo.com and veoh.com. Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has yet to officially announce the new operation.

Over the past several months a series of domain name seizures by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made headlines across the Internet.

Under the flag of ‘Operation In Our Sites’ the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites and many more accused of selling counterfeit goods.

Today ICE continued the operation with a 4th round, and the first one since February this year. Although the authorities are yet to give an official comment on the new seizures, TorrentFreak was able to confirm the following targets:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

The first two domains are accused of copyright-related offenses, but did not host any copyrighted films themselves. Both Re1ease.net and Watchnewfilms.com linked to popular movie streaming sites such as Veoh.com and Megavideo.com. The rest of the domains appear to be connected to sales of counterfeit goods.

The new targets were most likely put forward to ICE by movie industry groups. In April of this year ICE director John Morton admitted that his organization was acting based on ‘tips from industry representatives,’ among others.

The authorities are also aware of the fact that the domain seizures themselves are not really an effective tool. As pointed out before, more than half of the piracy-related domains that were seized by Operation In Our Sites simply continued under a different name.

Morton replied to this critique by emphasizing that the seizures also act as ‘public education about pirating.’

To quash allegedly copyright infringing sites more effectively U.S. lawmakers introduced the PROTECT IP Act last week. Aside from domain seizures, the new bill will also make it possible to block sites on an ISP level, to censor search engines, and to cut funding of allegedly copyright-infringing websites.

TorrentFreak is closely monitoring developments in Operation in Our Sites 4 and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report accordingly.

New Defense Bill Authorizes US Government To Launch “Defensive” Cyber Attacks

WarOnYou — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:40:15 +0000

New Defense Bill Authorizes US Government To Launch “Defensive” Cyber Attacks

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May 11, 2011

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Suzanne Kubota – Federal News Radio

Within the chairman’s mark of the 2012 Defense Authorization bill is language that would allow DoD to carry out clandestine operations in cyberspace against targets located outside the United States and to defend against all attacks on DoD assets.

“In particular, this section (962) would clarify that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to conduct clandestine cyberspace activities in support of military operations pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force….outside of the United States or to defend against a cyber attack on an asset of the Department of Defense.”

According to the mark up, terrorists “are increasingly using the internet to exercise command and control,” and to spread technical information enabling attacks on U.S. and coalition forces, often from the relative safety of “distributed sanctuaries throughout the world. As a result, military activities may not be confined to a physical battlefield, and the use of military cyber activities has become a critical part of the effort to protect U.S. and coalition forces and combat terrorism globally.”

The section of the bill expressly “includes the authority to conduct clandestine military activities in cyberspace in support of military operations,” where Congress has authorized the use of “all necessary and appropriate force” or to defend against a cyber attack on a DoD asset.

Within the bill, there are more than a dozen items slated for funding labeled “cyber”. The largest amount goes to DISA with $24,085,000 requested and authorized by the House.

Full story here.

DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS ON THE RISE

WarOnYou — Tue, 03 May 2011 04:13:31 +0000

DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS ON THE RISE

May 2, 2011

Hmmmm…. is America trying to hide something from you?

Is it just a coincidence that both What Really Happened, War On You and Uruknet cannot be accessed by your computer?

OR…. is it a Denial of Service Attack (DOS) to keep you from learning the truth…. in this case about Bin Laden’s most recent death.

Don’t give up…. keep trying ….. THEY SHALL RETURN!

FBI Hijacks ‘Coreflood’ Botnet

WarOnYou — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 05:17:26 +0000

FBI Hijacks ‘Coreflood’ Botnet

April 17th, 2011

Alternate headline: FBI Obtains Distributed Denial of Service Capability for Free.

Interestingly, in other recent news, the government is stepping up propaganda efforts on the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace scheme, which is ‘voluntary‘, of course…

Translation: They want you to use NSTIC. They want you to want to use it. There are a lot of ways to make you want to use it.

Via: Wired:

In an extraordinary intervention, the Justice Department has sought and won permission from a federal judge to seize control of a massive criminal botnet comprising millions of private computers, and deliver a command to those computers to disable the malicious software.

The request, filed Tuesday under seal in the U.S. District Court in Connecticut, sought a temporary restraining order to allow the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium, or ISC, to swap out command-and-control servers that were communicating with machines infected with Coreflood — malicious software used by computer criminals to loot victims’ bank accounts.

According to the filing, ISC, under law enforcement supervision, planned to replace the servers with servers that it controlled, then collect the IP addresses of all infected machines communicating with the criminal servers, and send a remote “stop” command to infected machines to disable the Coreflood malware operating on them.

A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that the takeover occurred Tuesday evening, and the shutdown command was sent to infected computers based in the United States.

“Under the authority granted by the court in the TRO, we have responded to requests from infected computers in the United States with a command that temporarily stops the malware from running on the infected computers,” spokeswoman Laura Sweeney wrote in an e-mail.

A separate court filing Tuesday afternoon (.pdf) indicated that the FBI’s New Haven office is behind the operation. In that filing, authorities informed the court that a new variant of Coreflood had been released by criminals Tuesday morning, but that the FBI had tested the kill command against that variant and it had worked successfully.

According to the filing, Coreflood is designed to run whenever an infected computer is rebooted. Therefore the intervention software designed to disable Coreflood has to resend the disable command after every reboot, until the victim removes the malware from his system. The government assured the court, however, that this would cause no harm to computers.

“Based upon technical evaluation and testing, the Government assesses that the command sent to the Coreflood software to stop running will not cause any damage to the victim computers on which the Coreflood software is present, nor will it allow the Government to examine or copy the contents of the victim computers in any fashion,” the government wrote in its request.

New Zealand: Controversial Internet Piracy Bill Becomes Law

WarOnYou — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:51:03 +0000

New Zealand: Controversial Internet Piracy Bill Becomes Law

April 14th, 2011

If at first you don’t succeed, try again under urgency.

Via: Stuff:

A bill that could see internet users have their access cut off if they repeatedly share copyright material has been passed by Parliament.

The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill, which aims to stamp out internet piracy, passed by 111 votes to 11 this morning.

It was supported by all parties except the Greens and independent MPs Chris Carter and Hone Harawira.

Police to get major new powers to seize domains (UK)

WarOnYou — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:20:41 +0000

Police to get major new powers to seize domains (UK)

Editor’s Note: Once again we see a coordinated effort of similar policies and legislation being implemented simultaneously in different countries, as the system inches toward a standardized code of behavior (ACTA) to be decided by a global governing bureaucracy.

Police could soon have the power to seize any domain associated with criminal activity, under new proposals published today by UK domain registrar Nominet.

Thinq.co.uk

At present, Nominet has no clear legal obligation to ensure that .uk domains are not used for criminal activities. That situation may soon change, if proposals from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) are accepted.

SOCA wants Nominet to change its registration terms and conditions, giving the registrar the power to suspend domains if it has “reasonable grounds to believe they are being used to commit a crime”.

And Nominet gives us an example of what those “reasonable grounds” might consist of – “a request from an identified UK Law Enforcement Agency”.

Read Full Article

$335,906 Is The Price Of The Constitution

WarOnYou — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:18:21 +0000

$335,906 Is The Price Of The Constitution

Published on 11-24-2010

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Source: Eurasia Review

When Senators give speeches, they will say that you can’t put a price on freedom. But as it turns out you can. You can actually put an exact dollar amount on the Constitution. And that amount is $335,906.

That’s the amount that Hollywood gave Senator Patrick Leahy. And in return, Leahy gave them COICA. That’s not the same of some new disease, it’s the abbreviation for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, the biggest and more comprehensive internet censorship proposal in the history of this country. It would give Attorney General Eric Holder the power to create a blacklist of websites and force all companies that do business in the United States to comply with that blacklist.

Ever since the Clinton Administration’s Communications Decency Act, Democrats have been obsessed with censoring the internet. And that drive has kicked into high gear again. COICA is the most ambitious plan to enact government control over freedom of expression on the internet since the days of the CDA.

While this bill was crafted on behalf of the entertainment industry, the applications go far beyond that. Websites that feature collections of articles, such as FreeRepublic or DemocraticUnderground could easily be targeted under the terms of COICA. And so could many blogs, which list entire articles or cite extensively from them. Any site or blog that embeds videos or images which are not authorized by the copyright holder could be similarly targeted. And with the Attorney General of a highly politicized administration wielding the power to preemptively shutter and blacklist entire websites, it would be all too easy for COICA to be used as a club for suppressing dissent.

While on paper COICA is only supposed to apply to 0.01 percent of the internet, in its broadest interpretation it could apply to anywhere between 30/40 percent of the internet. And the damage can go even beyond that. COICA gives the AG’s office a billy club that can destroy any company’s business overnight. And will that billy club be used strictly for copyright oversight alone? When the Attorney General’s office has the power to shut down any webhost, costing its owners millions in revenues, what will the owners do when they’re asked to shut down a site that does not actually fall under COICA? Will they call the AG’s bluff and prepare for a legal battle to restore the site and hope their business survives, or will they do the practical thing and comply?

We already know the answer to that. Some larger companies with deep pockets will put up a fight. Maybe. Smaller companies will just go along. And this is not what free speech was supposed to look like in America.

COICA is just the beginning. It’s the first step in transforming the internet into an environment completely controlled by the government. If the Senate can move along a law that creates a copyright blacklist, the next step is to create a blacklist for political extremism. Once we’ve established the principle that you can just pull a switch and blacklist sites that the government doesn’t like, where does it end?

Liberals screeched for years about the Patriot Act, but very little attention is being paid to COICA, which is primarily co-sponsored by Democratic senators. The endless Hollywood movies bemoaning the oppression of the Patriot Act, won’t give way to movies bemoaning COICA. But that’s because COICA was written for Hollywood’s benefit. And the forms of oppression that are practiced by the people who make movies about oppression, naturally don’t make it into movies.

Some conservatives are defending COICA as a means of protecting private property, but it’s not. It creates a privileged status for specific industries through government action, which those specific industries paid for. This is classic ‘Rent Seeking Behavior’ which uses government force to protect a bad business model. Hollywood is suffering from the plague of piracy because of its own convoluted structure and its need to negotiate every iota of every action with its own unions. Rather than adapt and evolve, it uses lawyers and lobbyists to protect its defective business practices. And having a ‘red phone’ to the AG’s office in order to protect defective business practices does the entertainment industry no favors in the long term.

COICA is a unconstitutional bailout of our freedoms and internet civil rights for a specific industry that has troubling implications for everyone. And it’s a demonstration of just how dangerous the intersection of corporate lobbyists and politicians can be. Some conservatives believe that supporting capitalism means blindly endorsing any corporate action. It does not. When corporations subvert public representation and harness government force for their own benefit, then they act like a part of the government.

Leahy is a perfect example, a Senator from Vermont, not exactly a major hub of the entertainment industry, with deep ties on the other coast. Leahy’s ties to big Hollywood studios like Time Warner go so ridiculously deep that he actually got a part in the last Batman movie and had the movie premiere at his own fundraising event back in Vermont. Carrying water for Hollywood has nothing to do with the needs of Vermont’s citizens. But this is what happens when corporations can buy themselves their own senators.

Leahy picked up that infamous 335,906 from TV and movie industry donors and PAC’s. He was the third largest recipient of entertainment industry money in the Senate. The top recipient, Senator Schumer is a COICA cosponsor. So is the 5th top recipient, Senator Gillibrand, Schumer’s own trojan horse. And there’s plenty of overlap between top donors and cosponsors on the rest of this list. This isn’t unusual. This is how Washington D.C. does business all the time. And that’s the scary part.

This isn’t just about the entertainment industry. It’s about how the intersection of money and power, routed through a centralized federal government can and does lead to tyranny. When politicians are given a legislative framework that allows them to exercise virtually unlimited powers, without regard to the United States Constitution or individual freedoms or the public will, and then allowed to put that power at the service of their biggest donors, the end result is not democracy, but oligarchy. And COICA is another product of that oligarchy.

Senator Leahy appearing in his fave company’s movie
When you can ante up $335,906 to a Senator in exchange for a bill that lets the government play croquet with freedom of expression on the internet, then freedom is dead.

Giving the Federal government unlimited legislative scope is why we will now be forced to buy health insurance from HMO’s (an entity created by the Nixon Administration) whether we want to or not. Call it a tax, call it a fine, the bottom line is that the current position of the Obama Administration is that they have the right to force people to purchase services from their corporate donors. And most liberal judicial experts appear to agree with them, and see no civil rights violations or unconstitutionally in empowering politicians to force the public to buy a service from their own donors, for the crime of ‘breathing’ in the United States.

There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s justified by agenda politics and corporate profits. A combination that has torn the Constitution asunder, over and over again. The only answer is to take away that power, to tear it out of the hands of politicians that willfully, fanatically and greedily abuse it, and restore it back to its original owners. The American people.

The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

WarOnYou — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:04:19 +0000

The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

from the free-speech-isn’t-free dept

This is hardly a surprise but, this morning (as previously announced), the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill — despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. What’s really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it’s seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy. There’s very little chance that the bill will actually get passed by the end of the term but, in the meantime, we figured it might be useful to highlight the 19 Senators who voted to censor the internet this morning:

Patrick J. Leahy — Vermont
Herb Kohl — Wisconsin
Jeff Sessions — Alabama
Dianne Feinstein — California
Orrin G. Hatch — Utah
Russ Feingold — Wisconsin
Chuck Grassley — Iowa
Arlen Specter — Pennsylvania
Jon Kyl — Arizona
Chuck Schumer — New York
Lindsey Graham — South Carolina
Dick Durbin — Illinois
John Cornyn — Texas
Benjamin L. Cardin — Maryland
Tom Coburn — Oklahoma
Sheldon Whitehouse — Rhode Island
Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
Al Franken — Minnesota
Chris Coons — Delaware

This should be a list of shame. You would think that our own elected officials would understand the First Amendment but, apparently, they have no problem turning the US into one of the small list of authoritarian countries that censors internet content it does not like (in this case, content some of its largest campaign contributors do not like). We already have laws in place to deal with infringing content, so don’t buy the excuse that this law is about stopping infringement. This law takes down entire websites based on the government’s say-so. First Amendment protections make clear that if you are going to stop any specific speech, it has to be extremely specific speech. This law has no such restrictions. It’s really quite unfortunate that these 19 US Senators are the first American politicians to publicly vote in favor of censoring speech in America. 211 Comments

End of Free Internet: US Senate Committee Approves Internet “Blacklist” Bill

WarOnYou — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 09:33:06 +0000

End of Free Internet: US Senate Committee Approves Internet “Blacklist” Bill

Published on 11-18-2010

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Source: Activist Post

It seems the lame duck Congressional session is becoming anything but unproductive. Yesterday, we saw the cloture of the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510), and today the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was unanimously approved by the US Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday with a 19-0 vote. The COICA has been overwhelmingly viewed as a corporate hijacking of the internet by mega-media cartels. Indeed, it is the end of the free internet as we now it.

The Associated Press reported on the COICA vote:

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which has the support of the entertainment industry but has been strongly criticized by digital rights and other groups, was approved by a vote of 19-0.

“Few things are more important to the future of the American economy and job creation than protecting our intellectual property,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who co-sponsored the bill.

“That is why the legislation is supported by both labor and industry, and Democrats and Republicans are standing together,” Leahy said.

The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy or the sale of counterfeit goods including having courts issue shutdown orders against domains based outside the United States.

“Rogue websites are essentially digital stores selling illegal and sometimes dangerous products,” Leahy said. “If they existed in the physical world, the store would be shuttered immediately and the proprietors would be arrested.”

“We cannot excuse the behavior because it happens online and the owners operate overseas,” he said. “The Internet needs to be free — not lawless.”

This legislation may be the most dangerous weapon against free speech in modern history. The infringing activity that may land a website on the “Blacklist” is defined very broadly. It appears that the blacklist can be enforced without a court order via ISPs. This is total information tyranny and all independent voices need to stand up and protest or surely we’ll face the arbitrary blacklist. David Segal reported on the blacklist regulations:

COICA creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. Courts could add sites to the first list; the Attorney General would have control over the second. Internet service providers and others (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the good favor of the government) if they block domains on the second list.

The lists are for sites “dedicated to infringing activity,” but that’s defined very broadly — any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are “central to the activity of the Internet site” could be blocked.

Segal has also established a petition against this hijacking of the free internet which can be signed here. However, given that this bill passed out of committee unanimously proves that our corporate-owned public officials will surely jam this legislation down our throats. It will likely change the internet as we know it, essentially redirecting the flow of free information to media conglomerates. The bill is proposed as a piracy protection bill where according to AP:

The US Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill on Thursday that would give US law enforcement more tools to crack down on websites abroad engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.

Clearly this was funded by media cartels, but this has a lot more to do with internet censorship as it does about copyright infringement. Further, this law gives the Department of Justice to block access to websites located outside the United States. This self-appointed global power grab is explained by activist Francis Anthony Govia:

The Justice Department will be granted power to serve court orders upon the registry where the domain name registrar is not located in the United States, and upon receipt of such an order, the domain registry must suspend operations of, and lock, the domain name of the infringing site.

During the action intended to “lock the domain name,” a court may determine, at a minimum threshold, that an Internet site is not conducting business to residents in the United States if the Internet site “states that it is not intended, and has measures to prevent, infringing materials from being accessed in or delivered to the United States,” including other provisions in subsection (d)(2)(B). The owner or operator of the “infringing site” shall also have recourse to petition the Justice Department to remove his domain name from an offending list, or petition the court to modify, suspend, or vacate the order in accordance with subsection (h)(1)(B).

This is very bad news for alternative voices and news aggregators. Although it may be futile, we encourage everyone to call the Senate switchboard and voice their strong objection to this legislation, or we and many other “truth” sites may be essentially finished. The U.S. Capitol Hill Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.

Will the Justice Department Be Authorized to Shut Down Internet Sites?

WarOnYou — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:57:44 +0000

Will the Justice Department Be Authorized to Shut Down Internet Sites?

by Rich Muny

September 30, 2010

On September 20^th, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation — S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act — that seeks to give the Department of Justice the power to shut down websites anywhere in the world that are found to infringe on intellectual property rights. This would be accomplished by ordering U.S. domain registrars and registries to stop resolving infringing sites’ domain names. While this bill has the noble-sounding goal of preventing online piracy, handing the federal government authority over the Internet would set a troubling precedent that would imperil Internet freedom in America and across the world.

One disquieting issue is the lack of any requirement that these sites be found to violate the laws of the countries from where they operate. In fact, under this bill sites operating perfectly legally under the laws of their own nations could be shut down by the U.S. Justice Department.

The concept that domain names of Internet sites operating legally in their home nations could be shut down by other nations for violation of their laws is one that should concern everyone. For example, a few years ago a French court ordered Yahoo.com to block French citizens from accessing portions of the site deemed to contain content unlawful under French law. Yahoo.com resisted this demand, citing free speech issues. What if French courts had the capability to shut down the domain www.yahoo.com to force compliance with that decision? What if every nation had the right to shut down Internet domains to force the entire Internet to comply with their local laws? If the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act passes, a very dangerous precedent will be set.

Additionally, there is a threat that this power will be expanded well beyond piracy. In fact, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear (D) is already in court seeking seizure of the domain names of 141 Internet poker and gaming websites — none based in the Commonwealth of Kentucky — with claims that these sites compete with the state lottery and with the horse racing industry.

The likelihood of this effort expanding well beyond issues of online piracy is simply too great. The Department of Justice should use its already ample tools and not resort to censoring the Internet.

Link: biggovernment.com/rmuny/2010/09/30/senate-bill-seeks-to-give-justice-department-
authority-to-shut-down-internet-sites-anywhere-in-the-world/

Age of Censorship and Internet Trade Wars

WarOnYou — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:25:15 +0000

Age of Censorship and Internet Trade Wars

Published on 09-28-2010

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By Francis Anthony Govia – Activist Post

New U.S. legislation will impact every user of the Internet. The “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” would empower the U.S. Department of Justice to shut down, or block access to, websites found to be dedicated to infringing activities. The bill also contains provisions to block sites with domain names and Top-Level Domains (TLDs) that are maintained by overseas companies, which exist outside the U.S. legal jurisdiction and enforcement mechanism. The Justice Department would obtain court orders directing United States-based Internet Service Providers to stop resolving the IP addresses that allow customers in the United States to access the infringing websites. As a result, the sites will be inaccessible to U.S.-based Web users who do not use some sort of proxy service. The bill was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary last Monday; it is sponsored by Senators Hatch, Leahy, Klobuchar, Whitehouse, Schumer, Kohl, Specter, Durbin, Bayh, Voinovich, and Feinstein.

The legislation is expected to have strong support in Hollywood, labor unions and manufacturers, but in some circles — namely grassroots political organizations, alternative press, and Internet start-ups — the response has been lukewarm, and even questioning. They are concerned that the “other purposes” of the legislation include censorship and, if made law, will employ the Justice Department to police the Internet, eventually resulting in the disruption of the free flow of information and trade globally.

To some extent, their concerns are formed by experience. There have been examples of business censorship, and government legislation to curtail what is viewed on the Internet. Infowars reported recently that “London’s St. Pancras International, one of the biggest transport hubs in the West,” implemented “stringent filters that block users of their Wi-Fi service from accessing even mildly political websites.” Sites like prisonplanet.com and thinkprogress.org were not available to customers in some areas. There are plans in Australia to promulgate legislation to institute a “mandatory, countrywide filtering system,” which supporters say is “designed to keep out child abuse content, but which blocks a much wider variety of content and topics.” And recently when media reported about an Iranian website with cartoons denying the Holocaust, some viewers in the U.S. discovered that access to the site was blocked.

Granted, there is recognition in Washington that the Internet is the new frontier for global enterprise, but some perceive that Washington still views the world through the lens of a bygone era. A critic of the bill told me that many nations, including the United States, legislate for businesses founded in a brick-and-mortar world; and attempts to regulate the Internet would be like turning back the clock.

“Nations will act independently and this will be detrimental to customers that use the Internet near and far,” advised the critic.

A similar sentiment was echoed by former Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, in a speech at the Foreign Ministry Faculty of International Relations in Tehran. Mr. Prodi suggested that Italy within Europe must play a greater role in matters of global importance, and that may entail Europe’s acting with greater independence of the United States. The message, though given on a different topic, is not one that instills confidence to those who see governments encroaching on their privacy, and would prefer unrestricted use, or less regulation, of the services for which they pay.

The U.S. legislation for infringement is written to tackle many concerns, and is certainly not archaic in regard to lawmakers’ ambition to affect what goes on well beyond the scope of U.S. jurisdiction.

For infringing sites outside the United States, it provides for in rem action in the District of Columbia to prevent the importation into the United States of goods and services directed to U.S. residents. The effect of this “importation” must be that the owner or operator of the infringing site must harm intellectual property rights holders that are residents of the United States.

The Justice Department will be granted power to serve court orders upon the registry where the domain name registrar is not located in the United States, and upon receipt of such an order, the domain registry must suspend operations of, and lock, the domain name of the infringing site.

During the action intended to “lock the domain name,” a court may determine, at a minimum threshold, that an Internet site is not conducting business to residents in the United States if the Internet site “states that it is not intended, and has measures to prevent, infringing materials from being accessed in or delivered to the United States,” including other provisions in subsection (d)(2)(B). The owner or operator of the “infringing site” shall also have recourse to petition the Justice Department to remove his domain name from an offending list, or petition the court to modify, suspend, or vacate the order in accordance with subsection (h)(1)(B).

The bill has an immunity clause which protects any entity from a cause of action in U.S. courts or administration agency for any action reasonably calculated to comply with an action intended to prevent the infringing site from continuing to do business with U.S.-based customers, receive financial transactions, and other matters under subsection (e)(3).

The U.S. legislation does not appear to put the onus on any businesses, such as Internet Service Providers, to stop known infringement from occurring. This is an interesting stance. In February, an Australian ISP won a precedent-setting copyright infringement lawsuit (Down Under) against the Motion Picture Industry. The bill sponsors may be cognizant of this ruling.

Softpedia reported that 34 U.S. movie studios and broadcasters filed a lawsuit in Australia against iiNet after the ISP refused to send warning letters to its customers who illegally downloaded movies using BitTorrent. The Australian Justice, Dennis Cowdrey, ruled that while iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring, and did not act to stop them, such findings do not necessitate a finding that the ISP authorized the infringing activities. Possibly, Hollywood supporters of the U.S. infringement legislation now agree with Cowdrey’s ruling that to ask ISPs to police the Internet would “open them any number of legal claims for anything that might happen over their pipes,” and that would engender strong opposition to the legislation among ISPs in the United States. However, to take on the responsibility of policing the Internet may not seem a burden to Obama’s Justice Department.

Certainly, Hollywood will welcome any new infringement legislation aimed at stemming the loss of royalties through piracy and copyright violation in the digital age. Infringers often meet efforts to protect intellectual property with resilient and thought-out action to thwart the law. As a law intern in Thailand I learned, for example, that illegal duplication facilities for CDs and DVDs existed in mobile transportation. Persons engaged in copyright violations avoided the ability of local enforcement to easily locate them and shut them down. It is a sure bet that those engaged in infringing activities overseas will find ways and new technology to evade laws promulgated by a foreign government (like the U.S.) that will have no jurisdiction over them.

The Obama Justice Department, which tapped Hollywood lawyers, may be charged to police Intellectual Property — an assignment to which attorneys for President George W. Bush were “strongly opposed.” The Republican President threatened to veto a previous version of the bill sponsored by the same Sens. Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter.

In correspondence to the Senators, attorneys for President Bush wrote that they “strongly opposed” expanding the powers of the Justice Department. Doing so, they said, could undermine the Department’s prosecution of criminal cases and transform it into an office “serving as pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders.”

It is obvious during this era when citizens’ rights are curtailed and infringed upon, with the bipartisan sponsorship of the bill and the composition of the current administration, that the infringement legislation has a better chance of becoming law. But will it open a Pandora’s Box? Will it do exactly what critics suspect it is intended to do: censor more of the Internet, create bottlenecks that will allow governments to intrude on the flow of information and services around the world, and do possible damage to a wider spectrum of businesses (other than those it is intended to protect)?

Many of the dynamic economies that U.S. businesses now compete against were born out of things other than a free market; and other economies are driven, or manipulated by State controls, as is the case of China. Foreign nations may follow the U.S. lead in writing laws to regulate the Internet and address their concerns, but not with the results U.S. legislators necessarily hope to engender.

Through retaliation, or even pretext, governments may decide to regulate, or shut down legitimate Internet traffic and services to violate human rights, hinder trade, and to engage in industry espionage. We already have examples of these developments with China’s efforts to regulate Google, and the recent firestorm when India and other nations, acting within their security concerns, decided to take action to regulate Blackberry and gain access to users’ encrypted corporate e-mails and messages. The offices of Sen. Byron L Dorgan and Rep. Sander M. Levin of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China undertook a hearing in March to investigate if China’s efforts to regulate the Internet contravene free trade and human rights. Delegates to the hearing cited that:

China’s Internet users remain subject to the arbitrary dictates of state censorship. More than a dozen agencies are involved in implementing a host of laws, regulations, and other tools to try to keep information and ideas from the Chinese people . . .

China’s censorship practices and control of the Internet have had a terrible impact on human rights advocates. These include ordinary people who promote political freedoms or try to organize online . . . attempting to share information about ongoing government repression.

Internet censorship and regulation in China have serious economic implications for many U.S. companies . . . [and] often run against basic international trade principles of nondiscrimination and maintaining a level playing field.

To these charges, China responded that it laws regarding the Internet are not much different than those of the West, and that critics are applying a double standard.

Perhaps U.S. lawmakers have forgotten a cause it often champions: that respect for human rights, deregulation, and open trade are important to a dynamic and properly functioning global community. As ownership of patents, trademarks, and copyrights becomes a contested grey area, nations may block business occurring over the Internet through the guise of copyright infringement. Only the rich and powerful will have the resources to go through the legal hurdles at home and/or abroad to clear their domains of actions to lock them, and resume operations. Damage would be done to a business during the course of a legal action brought against it; its customers may simply believe that the domain ceases to exist, with transactions lost forever.

Small businesses could be shut out of that presumptuous dream of going global and becoming rich, while the elite, big businesses and powerful governments can dominate cyberspace. Many micro-states and individuals could be harmed, and educational pursuits stifled through this world of more legislation, regulation, and censorship.

Why should we be concerned about this future for the Internet?

Well, because the Internet is now everyone’s classroom; and perhaps more-so it has become individuals’ business personality. A properly set up website for a Mom-and-Pop enterprise can look as good as that of a billion dollar company’s front-store. The ramifications of more regulation will result in the free and booming frontier of cyberspace, now functioning as the gold rush for enterprise, ceasing to exist.

The U.S. may find it useful to confer with trading partners in the North and the South, and come to an understanding that perhaps unilateral action is not the way to address concerns in regard to a frontier in which everyone has an interest. President George W. Bush may have gotten it right when his attorneys writing on his behalf to Sens. Leahy and Specter implied, when taken altogether, that U.S. law already provides owners of Intellectual Property with effective legal tools to protect their rights. It need not go in the direction proposed by the Senators.

No one wants Washington’s efforts to backfire and force us to return to a world where we have to resort domestically to find the goods and services that we need, such as cheap medicine. Or, to have to wait on someone in a dusty library to find a book or paper we once could have accessed readily over the Internet. Or, in some far corner of the world men will cower in fear of infringing before they cite links as sources of information. A Big Brother that will censor access to the latest celebrity sex videos, or certain religious texts or even Osama bin Laden’s latest rant (however misguided they may be). The result of this could be that owners of presumed “infringing sites” must raise ungodly sums of money to hire attorneys to clear their domain names, while good sites like WikiLeaks (which make governments accountable for their actions) are shut down or blocked here and abroad through a pretext; and Mom-and-Pop operating a start-up Internet business within the cornfields of America are locked out through action suggested by a smooth operator with deep pockets who knows how to play the system and use it against his competitor, blocking sites because somebody with power did not like the owner’s point of view.

Francis Anthony Govia received a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations at Boston University where he studied U.S. National Security and Foreign Policy with teachers who inspired him, such as General Fred F. Woerner (Ret.), Ambassador Stephen R. Lyne (Ret.), and Joseph Fewsmith. He received a law degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

U.S. Government Wants All Providers of Encrypted Internet Services to Implement Key Escrow

WarOnYou — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:03:01 +0000

September 27th, 2010

Wikipedia has an entry on key escrow, if you aren’t familiar with the concept.

Via: New York Times:

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

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