It has always been so –
think about it.
I have a New York
Review of Books blog
up today on Congress’s efforts to rein in NSA spying — or at
least that part of it that directly targets Americans. It starts
with a remarkable admission former director of NSA and CIA Michael
Hayden made in a debate I had with him last month at Johns Hopkins,
in which he asserted, in response to my argument that metadata is
very revealing – “We kill people based on metadata.”
But the focus of the
piece is Congress’s effort to rein in NSA metadata collection. To
many peoples’ surprise, the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees
this week unanimously approved an amended version of the USA Freedom
Act, the bill originally introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy and
Representative James Sensenbrenner. In my blog, I address whether
this unprecedented bipartisan agreement should be grounds for
suspicion.
(Related) ...and we
can find metadata anywhere! (Serve your subpoena/warrant locally,
grab data globally.)
I’ve mentioned this
ruling on Pogo before,
but thought some readers might appreciate this write-up by Bennett B.
Borden, Andrea L. D’Ambra and Edward James Beale of Drinker Biddle
& Reath LLP:
On
April 25, 2014 in the Southern District of New York, U.S. Magistrate
Judge James C. Francis IV compelled extensive production of the
contents of an unnamed user’s email account stored on a Microsoft
server located in Dublin, Ireland.1 Memorandum
and Order, In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail
Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corp., 13 Mag. 2814
(S.D.N.Y. Apr. 25, 2014). This
startling ruling could have a significant impact on not only the use
of free email services like Hotmail and Gmail, but also all
cloud-based services like Office 365, Google Apps, and even cloud
providers like Amazon. If this ruling stands and is
widely adopted, U.S. service providers may be compelled to produce
customer’s data regardless of the jurisdiction in which it
physically resides.
Read more on Mondaq.
What if the phrase the
government translated as “deliver a bomb” really meant “deliver
a pizza?”
Hanni Fakhoury writes:
In
the 36-year existence of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), the government has never disclosed classified FISA
materials—the specific applications for surveillance and the
factual affidavits that support the surveillance request—to a
criminal defendant. That all changed in January 2014 when a federal
judge in Chicago ordered
the government to turn over surveillance applications and affidavits
to the attorneys representing Adel
Daoud, a 19 year-old accused of attempting to blow up a bar in
Chicago. As the government appeals that decision to the Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals, we’ve signed onto an amicus
brief written by the ACLU and the ACLU of Illinois filed today
that explains why Judge Sharon Coleman was right to order disclosure.
Read more on EFF.
Ready, Fire, Aim”
This judge gets it!
Julia
Love reports:
A
Bay Area federal judge refused to let the government search a Google
email account Friday and chided the Mountain View company for not
living up to its pledge to push back against sweeping requests for
user data.
U.S.
Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the Northern District of California
denied federal prosecutors’ application for a warrant for the Gmail
account, finding the request overbroad and perhaps unconstitutional.
The San Jose judge agreed in a six-page
order that
there was probable cause that the Gmail account contained evidence of
theft of government funds. But he found the government had put few
limits on its request, not even narrowing down a time frame for the
search. “The
court is … unpersuaded that the particular seize first, search
second proposed here is reasonable in the Fourth Amendment sense of
the word,” he wrote.
Read
more on The
Recorder.
This
is the same government request that was denied by U.S. Magistrate
Judge John Facciola in D.C., and Grewal noted that it appeared the
government was just court-shopping to get a better result.
But it was his slap on the wrist to Google that is likely to be
somewhat embarrassing for the firm:
“While
Google has publicly declared that it challenges overbroad warrants,
in three-plus years on the bench in the federal courthouse serving
its headquarters, the undersigned has yet to see any such motion,”
he wrote.
Update:
As I kept reading online, I found this great
post by Scott Greenfield.
Dilbert illustrates the
“Joy” of workplace monitoring.
Must be a British
thing. Another deal this non-lawyer is having trouble understanding.
You get one of these letters if the ISP “believes” you are
pirating content. You have no way to respond and tell them you are
gathering evidence of copyright infringement. Where did this
database of “known” infringers come from? Clearly not public
court records, or they would already have the data.
Deal
to combat piracy in UK with 'alerts' is imminent
BT, Sky, TalkTalk and
Virgin Media will send "educational" letters to customers
believed to be downloading illegally.
… The bodies had
originally suggested the letters should tell repeat infringers about
possible punitive measures.
They
also wanted access to a database of known illegal downloaders,
opening the possibility of further legal action against individuals.
… Steve Kuncewicz,
a lawyer specialising in online and internet law, said the agreement
had been "watered down beyond all recognition".
… Instead, letters
sent to suspected infringers must be "educational" in tone,
"promoting an increase in awareness" of legal downloading
services.
The rights holders have
agreed to pay £750,000 towards each internet service provider (ISP)
to set up the system, or 75% of the total costs, whichever is
smaller.
… A record of which
accounts had received alerts, and how many, will be kept on file by
the ISPs for up to a year.
The rights holders will
receive a monthly break down of how many alerts have been sent out,
but only the ISPs will know the identities of the customers involved.
A cap for the total
number of alerts that can be sent out per year has also been set.
Between the four ISPS,
no more than 2.5 million alerts can be sent out.
… A maximum of four
alerts - by either email or physical letter - can be sent to an
individual customer account. Language will "escalate in
severity" - but will not contain threats or talk of consequences
for the accused users.
After four alerts, no
further action will be taken by the ISPs.
What's better than a
$100 computer? A cheap way to “recycle” obsolete computers.
Keepod:
Can a $7 stick provide billions computer access?
… Nissan Bahar and
Franky Imbesi aim to combat the lack of access to computers by
providing what amounts to an operating-system-on-a-stick.
In six weeks, their
idea managed to raise more than $40,000 (£23,750) on fundraising
site Indiegogo, providing the cash to begin a campaign to offer
low-cost computing to the two-thirds of the globe's population that
currently has little or no access.
… It
will allow old, discarded and potentially non-functional PCs to be
revived, while allowing each user to have ownership of
their own "personal computer" experience - with their
chosen desktop layout, programs and data - at a fraction of the cost
of providing a unique laptop, tablet or other machine to each person.
… The pair also
brought five old laptops with their hard disks removed to the school.
As they gave each child
one of the Keepod USB sticks to keep, they explained the
second-hand computers would boot up directly from the flash drives.
For my students (with
iPads)
– Encyclopedias have
always showcased culture and style. Das Referenz strives to build on
this heritage. With an eye for detail, Das Referenz puts Wikipedia’s
vast amount of knowledge into a sleek package of clear layouts,
world-class typography, and playful interactions. Quench your thirst
for important facts and for trivia, too. Wikipedia research has
never been more efficient.
I find my students do
have two or three old phones or computers.
– Turn your
smartphone into a portable IP camera. Instantly turn your used
smartphone (iPhone or
Android phone) into a full-featured video surveillance
system with AtHome Video Streamer. Easily connect and watch your
home anywhere anytime. With the AtHome Camera app, you can access
your security camera from your mobile phone.
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