January 23, 2011 New Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Prison
NYT – Christopher Drew is a 60-year-old artist and teacher who wears a gray ponytail and lives on the North Side. Tiawanda Moore, 20, a former stripper, lives on the South Side and dreams of going back to school and starting a new life.
About the only thing these strangers have in common is the prospect that by spring, they could each be sent to prison for up to 15 years.
“That’s one step below attempted murder,” Mr. Drew said of their potential sentences.
The crime they are accused of is eavesdropping.
Christopher Drew faces eavesdropping charges for recording his arrest for selling art on the streets without a permit.
The authorities say that Mr. Drew and Ms. Moore audio-recorded their separate nonviolent encounters with Chicago police officers without the officers’ permission, a Class 1 felony in Illinois, which, along with Massachusetts and Oregon, has one of the country’s toughest, if rarely prosecuted, eavesdropping laws.
“Before they arrested me for it,” Ms. Moore said, “I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”
Ms. Moore, whose trial is scheduled for Feb. 7 in Cook County Criminal Court, is accused of using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside Police Headquarters while she filed a sexual harassment complaint last August against another police officer. Mr. Drew was charged with using a digital recorder to capture his Dec. 2, 2009, arrest for selling art without a permit on North State Street in the Loop. Mr. Drew said his trial date was April 4.
Both cases illustrate the increasingly busy and confusing intersection of technology and the law, public space and private.
“Our society is going through a technological transformation,” said Adam Schwartz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which last August challenged the Illinois Eavesdropping Act in federal court. “We are at a time where tens of millions of Americans carry around a telephone or other device in their pocket that has an audio-video capacity. Ten years ago, Americans weren’t walking around with all these devices.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html
Tags: civil liberties, Eavesdropping, Felony, First Amendment, Free Speech, listening, police, Prior Restraint, prison, taping, Wiretapping
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January 10, 2011 Twitter Shines a Spotlight on Secret F.B.I. Subpoenas
Nicholas Merrill filed a constituional challenge over the national security letter the F.B.I. sent to a company he founded, the Calyx Internet Access Corporation.
NYT- THE news that federal prosecutors have demanded that the microblogging site Twitter provide the account details of people connected to the WikiLeaks case, including its founder, Julian Assange, isn’t noteworthy because the government’s request was unusual or intrusive. It is noteworthy because it became public.
Even as Web sites, social networking services and telephone companies amass more and more information about their users, the government — in the course of conducting inquiries — has been able to look through much of the information without the knowledge of the people being investigated.
For the Twitter request, the government obtained a secret subpoena from a federal court. Twitter challenged the secrecy, not the subpoena itself, and won the right to inform the people whose records the government was seeking. WikiLeaks says it suspects that other large sites likeGoogle and Facebook have received similar requests and simply went along with the government.
This kind of order is far more common than one may think, and in the case of terrorism and espionage investigations the government can issue them without a court order. The government says more than 50,000 of these requests, known as national security letters, are sent each year, but they come with gag orders that prevent those contacted from revealing what the agency has been seeking or even the existence of the gag orders.
“It’s a perfect example of how the government can use its broad powers to silence people,” said Nicholas Merrill, who was the first person to file a constitutional challenge against the use of national security letters, authorized by the USA Patriot Act. Until August, he was forbidden to acknowledge the existence of a 2004 letter that the company he founded, the Calyx Internet Access Corporation, received from the F.B.I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/business/media/10link.html
Tags: Censorship, Free Speech, National Security Letters, Subpoenas, U.S.A. Patriot Act
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- Posted under First Amendment, Secrecy
December 20, 2010 Man who wrote ‘how-to’ for pedophiles arrested
Post courtesy of Elizabeth Sheffield
(CNN) — The man behind a controversial book considered a “how-to” guide for pedophiles was arrested in Colorado, officials in Florida said Monday.
“You cannot engage or depict children in a harmful relationship,” said Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd as he described the Florida obscenity statute that officials used to charge Phillip Greaves with distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct.
The self-published author was arrested in Pueblo, Colorado, on a Florida felony warrant after undercover detectives in Polk County purchased and received a copy of the book through the mail. He will have to be extradited to Florida to face charges.
Judd said the book was Greaves’ last copy, which he autographed before sending out.
Greaves and his book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct,” gained national attention earlier this year after Amazon.com defended selling the book on its website despite angry comments and threats of boycotts from thousands of users.
Amazon pulled the book from its site in early November.
“He actually provided a how-to guide to commit sexual battery against children,” according to Judd, who said he was shocked and mortified by specific examples and illustrations using 9- and 13-year-old boys.
Judd said he was frustrated that Greaves’ book was
protected under freedom of speech laws, even though it was created “specifically to teach people how to sexually molest and rape children.”
“There may be nothing that the other 49 states can do, but there is something that the state of Florida can do … to make sure we prosecute Philip Greaves for his manifesto,” Judd said.
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/crime/2010/12/20/sot.phillip.greaves.arrest.baynews9
Tags: Felony, Free Speech, obscenity, Pedophiles
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- Posted under First Amendment, Free Speech
December 1, 2010 Advertisers want to ‘Fingerprint’ Phones, PC
BlueCava CEO David Norris plans to fingerprint billions of devices. Tracking cookies 'are a joke,' he says.
WSJ – IRVINE, Calif.—David Norris wants to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world.
Companies are developing digital fingerprint technology to identify how we use our computers, mobile devices and TV set-top boxes. WSJ’s Simon Constable talks to Senior Technology Editor Julia Angwin about the next generation of tracking tools.
He’s off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris’s start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world’s estimated 10 billion devices.
Advertisers no longer want to just buy ads. They want to buy access to specific people. So, Mr. Norris is building a “credit bureau for devices” in which every computer or cellphone will have a “reputation” based on its user’s online behavior, shopping habits and demographics. He plans to sell this information to advertisers willing to pay top dollar for granular data about people’s interests and activities.
Device fingerprinting is a powerful emerging tool in this trade. It’s “the next generation of online advertising,” Mr. Norris says.
It might seem that one computer is pretty much like any other. Far from it: Each has a different clock setting, different fonts, different software and many other characteristics that make it unique. Every time a typical computer goes online, it broadcasts hundreds of such details as a calling card to other computers it communicates with. Tracking companies can use this data to uniquely identify computers, cellphones and other devices, and then build profiles of the people who use them.
Until recently, fingerprinting was used mainly to prevent illegal copying of computer software or to thwart credit-card fraud. BlueCava’s own fingerprinting technology traces its unlikely roots to an inventor who, in the early 1990s, wanted to protect the software he used to program music keyboards for the Australian pop band INXS.
Tracking companies are now embracing fingerprinting partly because it is much tougher to block than other common tools used to monitor people online, such as browser “cookies,” tiny text files on a computer that can be deleted.
Tags: Advertising, digital fingerprints, Digital Online, PR, privacy
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November 25, 2010 Fight brewing over the re-selling free TV
WSJ – In the latest cat-and-mouse game between media companies and technology start-ups threatening to undermine their businesses, the big networks are intensifying their fight to stop Internet services that stream TV stations online.
Owners of the major broadcast-television networks are suing in federal court two start-up companies that stream broadcast TV stations online without their consent, arguing the start-ups are infringing on their copyrights. A judge in New York has scheduled a hearing Monday on the networks’ request for a temporary restraining order against FilmOn.com Inc., while another case against Ivi Inc. could be heard in coming weeks.
Ivi and FilmOn, which grab free over-the-air broadcast signals and convert them to online streams, are claiming their right to distribute the networks under a provision in the U.S. Copyright Act. Seattle-based Ivi is also arguing that Ivi isn’t governed by a separate communications statute that requires cable and satellite companies to negotiate licenses with content owners before transmitting their networks.
Media companies disagree, arguing the fledgling companies don’t qualify as “cable systems” or “passive carriers” entitled to protections in the Copyright Act. General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, CBS Corp., News Corp.‘s Fox and other content owners filed separate suits against each company in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Ivi earlier filed a suit in a U.S. District Court in Seattle, seeking a judge to rule that Ivi isn’t infringing on media companies’ copyrights.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704264804575626902698357466.html#ixzz16JNS1tke
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November 25, 2010 EU Web Privacy Rights Proposed
Europe is eyeing online privacy standards. Above, a trike-mounted Google Street View camera Tuesday in Bavaria.
WSJ – The European Union on Thursday proposed new privacy rights for citizens sharing personal data with websites such as Facebook and Google—threatening to heighten tensions between European regulators on the one hand and U.S. tech companies and a fast-growing online advertising industry on the other.
Both Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have come under fire in the EU this year for collecting personal data without authorization.
The proposed EU rules—called “A comprehensive approach on personal data protection in the European Union”—suggest the creation of an online “right to be forgotten.” That would impart to users the power to tell websites to permanently delete already submitted personal data. The rules also mandate that users give explicit consent before companies can use or process their personal data in any way. The 20-page document also criticizes the companies’ current privacy policies as opaque.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704805204575594423931135084.html#ixzz16JLegOKh
Tags: Advertising, European Union, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Personal Data, privacy, Web
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- Posted under Internet
November 25, 2010 Online Health Sites Share Data With Marketers
NYT - QualityHealth is a popular health Web site with more than 20 million registered users that offers online medical information and e-mail newsletters on a variety of topics, including diabetes, allergies, asthmaand arthritis.
But according to a complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, site visitors who provide personal details about themselves might not be aware that QualityHealth collects information about people’s medical conditions, preferred medicines and treatment plans and uses it to profile its users for prescription drug marketing.
Rob Rebak, the chief executive of QualityHealth, a company also known as Marketing Technology Solutions of Delaware, did not return a request for comment.
QualityHealth is one of a number of companies cited in the complaint to the F.T.C. filed by four nonprofit privacy and consumer advocacy groups. In the complaint, the Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog and the World Privacy Forum charged that online marketing of medications, products and medical services posed fundamental new risks to consumer privacy and health because of sophisticated data collection and patient-profiling techniques.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/24drug.html
Tags: Federal Trade Commission, Internet, Marketing, Medical Information, privacy, Web
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November 13, 2010 Traveler’s Tweet Lands Him In Jail, But Wins Followers
Paul J. Chambers failed to overturn his conviction in Doncaster, England, for his joke on Twitter about blowing up an airport.
Authorities need to make sure the skies are safe, but when are they overstepping their bounds and trampling an individual’s right to free speech? - MT
NYT – DONCASTER, England — The troubles of Paul J. Chambers began on a cold night in January, when his attempt to visit a woman from Northern Ireland he had met online was thwarted by a snowstorm that grounded flights at his local airport. Mr. Chambers’s first reaction, as in many things in his life, was to address the issue onTwitter.
“Robin Hood Airport is closed,” Mr. Chambers, then 26 and a financial supervisor, said to his 690 followers, who included the woman, known on Twitter as @crazycolours. “You’ve got a week to get your [expletive] together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
That would have been the end of it. But Mr. Chambers’s impulsive outburst led him down a long and unexpected path, turning him into both a convicted criminal and a cause célèbre for Twitter users and free-speech advocates in Britain and beyond.
On Thursday, after a judge in this South Yorkshire town refused to overturn Mr. Chambers’s previous conviction for causing a “menace,” ordered him to pay about $4,800 in costs and fines, and icily lectured the courtroom about the impropriety of sending Twitter updates during the case, Mr. Chambers’s outraged supporters let loose.
The actor and Twitter enthusiast Stephen Fry offered to pay his court bills. Other users began raising money for a new appeal. And on a new and wildly popular trending topic,#IAmSpartacus, people began defiantly expressing their solidarity with Mr. Chambers by reposting his offending Twitter message or by threatening to blow up other, random, things. These included Downing Street, the courtroom, the town of Doncaster, Gatwick Airport, Robin Hood the person, the White House, the Basingstoke Hockey Club, “everyone,” “my garage,” some balloons, and NBC (if it canceled “The Event”).
“I think I’ll blow up Parliament,” one person wrote. “Oh, wait, that was a JOKE.”
That none of these people appear yet to have been arrested for doing the exact same thing that Mr. Chambers did shows how hard it has become for law enforcement officials to know how to respond to the anarchic culture of social media sites, especially Twitter, with its rapid-fire, off-the-cuff, often satirical exchanges.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/world/europe/13twitter.html
Tags: Air Travel, Prior Restraint, Terrorism
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- Posted under Free Speech
October 27, 2010 Judge Tells LimeWire to Disable Its Software
NYT – A federal judge in New York issued an injunction on Tuesday that will essentially shut down LimeWire, the big music file-sharing service that has been mired in a four-year legal struggle with the music industry. The case has already resulted in the company and its founder being found liable for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Although LimeWire, the file-sharing service that allows users to swap music that is a major descendant of Napster, is on the verge of vanishing in its current form, the company will continue negotiations with the major music companies about a licensing deal to offer music legally for sale with a subscription service.
“While this is not our ideal path, we hope to work with the music industry in moving forward,” the company said in a statement. “We look forward to embracing necessary changes and collaborating with the entire music industry in the future.”
In her ruling, Judge Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan forced the company to disable “searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality” of the company’s file-sharing software.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/technology/27limewire.html
Tags: copyright, Filesharing, illegal downloading, Limewire, Napster
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- Posted under copyright
