The first draft of version 3 of the Free Software Foundation's GPL has been released. Lots of talking points but the most important for me relates to the built in attack on digital rights management and anti-circumvention laws like the DMCA and the EU copyright directive, plus the anti software patent note.
"Preamble...
Some countries have adopted laws prohibiting software that enables users
to escape from Digital Restrictions Management. DRM is fundamentally
incompatible with the purpose of the GPL, which is to protect users'
freedom; therefore, the GPL ensures that the software it covers will
neither be subject to, nor subject other works to, digital restrictions
from which escape is forbidden.
Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. We
wish to avoid the special danger that redistributors of a free program will
individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program
proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL makes it clear that any patent must
be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all...
3. Digital Restrictions Management.
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors
technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share
copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of
this specific declaration of the licensor's intent. Regardless of any
other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute
covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of
distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of
the legal rights granted by this License.
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection
measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system
to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least
for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other
software capable of accessing the same data."
This isn't just an academic issue, since nearly all the big entertainment companies use GNU/linux in at least some of their devices and production/editing processes. [And Internet distribution will almost certainly be via open source enabled server farms.] It would be interesting to hear from some lawyers on this but theoretically this might mean that those companies could be challenged in court for embedding copy protection (drm) in CDs, DVDs and Internet distributed files. Not only would that be a fun case to watch but it would potentially offer an open legal battle on key intellectual property public policy issues. Given the widespread deployment of anti-circumvention laws now, there's no guarantee of the outcome either way; and even if the FSF did win, the likely reaction would be further heavy lobbying for changes in the law to effectively outlaw free and open source software.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
France rethink copyright bill
Following the unexpected success of a small number of French MPs in voting through an amendment to the French government's bill to implement the EU copyright directive, which would have meant legalising peer to peer music copying, the bill has been withdrawn.
"Set aback by rebellious MPs and an outcry by consumer groups, the French government is reworking a digital copyright protection bill to lighten restrictions on CD- and DVD-copying and mete out smaller penalties to small-time downloaders.
The culture ministry issued a statement Saturday saying the bill was being amended on the orders of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to notably enshrine the right of consumers to make private copies of music and film disks.
It would also make a distinction between people illegally downloading for profit and the estimated eight million individuals in France who occasionally add to their music and movie collections via Internet peer-to-peer sites.
The changes follow the French government's decision to withdraw its original bill from parliament when a small group of MPs from the ruling party and opposition benches managed, in a middle-of-the-night vote, to legalise peer-to-peer file-sharing in December.
That stunning vote, on top of arguments from consumer groups that private users should continue to enjoy the right to make copies of CDs and DVDs for, say, second homes or family members, forced the government rethink."
Thanks again to Michael Geist for the link. I suspect Michael might welcome a solid injection of French values into the Canadian copyright debate.
"Set aback by rebellious MPs and an outcry by consumer groups, the French government is reworking a digital copyright protection bill to lighten restrictions on CD- and DVD-copying and mete out smaller penalties to small-time downloaders.
The culture ministry issued a statement Saturday saying the bill was being amended on the orders of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to notably enshrine the right of consumers to make private copies of music and film disks.
It would also make a distinction between people illegally downloading for profit and the estimated eight million individuals in France who occasionally add to their music and movie collections via Internet peer-to-peer sites.
The changes follow the French government's decision to withdraw its original bill from parliament when a small group of MPs from the ruling party and opposition benches managed, in a middle-of-the-night vote, to legalise peer-to-peer file-sharing in December.
That stunning vote, on top of arguments from consumer groups that private users should continue to enjoy the right to make copies of CDs and DVDs for, say, second homes or family members, forced the government rethink."
Thanks again to Michael Geist for the link. I suspect Michael might welcome a solid injection of French values into the Canadian copyright debate.
Bertlesmann to back Quaero
It seems Bertelsmann are about to invest in the European search engine Quaero.
AFAIK Quaero remains just a project in computer labs at the moment but I spy a few fundamental difficulties with their url, http://www.thomson.net/EN/Home/Quaero/. Firstly it is not exactly obvious. Secondly you need a thompson.net username and password to get at it. Thirdly someone already owns the Quaero top level domain, http://www.quaero.com/, a marketing consultancy which describes itself as a "marketing and technology services company that provides unparalleled value to firms looking to improve the effectiveness of their comprehensive marketing efforts and marketing technology investments."
AFAIK Quaero remains just a project in computer labs at the moment but I spy a few fundamental difficulties with their url, http://www.thomson.net/EN/Home/Quaero/. Firstly it is not exactly obvious. Secondly you need a thompson.net username and password to get at it. Thirdly someone already owns the Quaero top level domain, http://www.quaero.com/, a marketing consultancy which describes itself as a "marketing and technology services company that provides unparalleled value to firms looking to improve the effectiveness of their comprehensive marketing efforts and marketing technology investments."
Lifting the lid on backroom deals in copyright
Michael Geist has been lifting the lid on Canadian lobbyists' success in the copyright arena.
"The mushrooming controversy over Toronto MP Sarmite Bulte's coming Thursday night fundraiser hosted by the entertainment lobby is a powerful illustration of the public's growing interest in copyright issues as well as the emerging influence of Internet weblogs or blogs. The incident has opened the door to a new public discussion of the links between lobbying, campaign contributions, elected officials and the making of copyright law and policy that promises to continue well beyond next Monday's election..
The Bulte controversy has highlighted the close connection between Canada' s Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage and the largely U.S.-backed copyright lobby with many copyright groups contributing hundreds of dollars exclusively to the Parkdale-High Park MP. Beyond the Bulte story, lobbyist registration records, campaign finance returns, and documents newly obtained under the Access to Information Act reveal a process that is badly skewed toward lobby interests and in serious need of reform...
The copyright lobby also meets regularly with government officials. A document obtained under the Access to Information Act titled “List of meetings between Canadian Heritage' s Copyright Policy Branch and its stakeholders in copyright reform” indicates that in the nearly thirteen months between April 1, 2004 and April 25, 2005, government and policy officials from that department met or held teleconferences 15 times with Access Copyright, 14 times with music collectives, seven times with CRIA, and five times with publisher associations. Meanwhile, the document lists only one meeting with education groups, two meetings with public interest groups, and two meetings with technology groups.
In fact, the close connection between the copyright lobby and government can even extend to contracts. Last year, the Canadian Publishers' Council, whose executive director is one of the hosts of the Bulte fundraiser, obtained a $20,000 contract for a “copyright awareness initiative” whose goal was to develop an Internet-based social awareness campaign to “engage young people in a new conversation about copyright.”
The cumulative effect of the lobbyist influence has left many stakeholders concerned that there is little room for the interests of the public and the balanced approach supported by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Copyright policy must be both fair and seen to be fair. It is time for a new approach that starts with a commitment from all MPs who accept funds from the copyright lobby not to serve in Ministerial positions or on legislative committees that involve copyright policy."
"The mushrooming controversy over Toronto MP Sarmite Bulte's coming Thursday night fundraiser hosted by the entertainment lobby is a powerful illustration of the public's growing interest in copyright issues as well as the emerging influence of Internet weblogs or blogs. The incident has opened the door to a new public discussion of the links between lobbying, campaign contributions, elected officials and the making of copyright law and policy that promises to continue well beyond next Monday's election..
The Bulte controversy has highlighted the close connection between Canada' s Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage and the largely U.S.-backed copyright lobby with many copyright groups contributing hundreds of dollars exclusively to the Parkdale-High Park MP. Beyond the Bulte story, lobbyist registration records, campaign finance returns, and documents newly obtained under the Access to Information Act reveal a process that is badly skewed toward lobby interests and in serious need of reform...
The copyright lobby also meets regularly with government officials. A document obtained under the Access to Information Act titled “List of meetings between Canadian Heritage' s Copyright Policy Branch and its stakeholders in copyright reform” indicates that in the nearly thirteen months between April 1, 2004 and April 25, 2005, government and policy officials from that department met or held teleconferences 15 times with Access Copyright, 14 times with music collectives, seven times with CRIA, and five times with publisher associations. Meanwhile, the document lists only one meeting with education groups, two meetings with public interest groups, and two meetings with technology groups.
In fact, the close connection between the copyright lobby and government can even extend to contracts. Last year, the Canadian Publishers' Council, whose executive director is one of the hosts of the Bulte fundraiser, obtained a $20,000 contract for a “copyright awareness initiative” whose goal was to develop an Internet-based social awareness campaign to “engage young people in a new conversation about copyright.”
The cumulative effect of the lobbyist influence has left many stakeholders concerned that there is little room for the interests of the public and the balanced approach supported by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Copyright policy must be both fair and seen to be fair. It is time for a new approach that starts with a commitment from all MPs who accept funds from the copyright lobby not to serve in Ministerial positions or on legislative committees that involve copyright policy."
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Knopf on more excess r copyright rhetoric
Knopf on more excess r copyright rhetoric in Canada.
“Piracy” is a word that should be used carefully and properly and applied only to harmful intentional commercial scale infringement. It is wholly inappropriate to apply the word to teenagers who engage in downloading music that they love, or their grandmothers who provide them internet access on occasion, or to law professors who have the temerity to believe in the inconvenient fact (as seen by the corporate and collective point of view) that there are also users’ rights in copyright law.
Overuse of the rhetoric of piracy is at best crying wolf. At worst, it is crude propaganda that has fooled some of the politicians some of the time in Canada and elsewhere but won’t work in the long run.
If there is going to be a meaningful debate about this in Canada, the Creators' Copyright Coalition and their friends should apply their creative and communication skills in a less hysteric and more constructive manner.
Ben Franklin's warning
Martin Garbus in the Huffington Post reckons We Cannot Say Ben Franklin Did Not Warn Us
Felton, the analog hole bill and the new SDMI
Ed Felton's been writing lucidly and informatively about the analog hole bill again.
Bush statement with torture bill
The NYT are not too impressed with President Bush at the moment it seems as they are also running a story saying the president issues quiet parallel statements with bills he has signed into law, saying he can interpret them as he sees fit.
" Congress late last year passed what became known as the torture amendment, sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody. Mr. Bush at first opposed the amendment, but gave in when it became clear that it had overwhelming support from the two parties on Capitol Hill. The president then invited Mr. McCain, his old political nemesis, to the Oval Office to announce that he agreed with him and "to make clear to the world that this government does not torture."
But on Dec. 30, after signing the legislation into law with no ceremony at his Texas ranch, Mr. Bush issued an accompanying "signing statement" - the 8 p.m. e-mail message - that Democrats and some Republicans say asserted that he could ignore the law if he wished.
Specifically, the statement said that the administration would interpret the amendment "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch and as commander in chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on judicial power."
Mr. McCain issued a strong statement rejecting Mr. Bush's assertion, even as the White House has repeatedly declined to say what the president meant. "
" Congress late last year passed what became known as the torture amendment, sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody. Mr. Bush at first opposed the amendment, but gave in when it became clear that it had overwhelming support from the two parties on Capitol Hill. The president then invited Mr. McCain, his old political nemesis, to the Oval Office to announce that he agreed with him and "to make clear to the world that this government does not torture."
But on Dec. 30, after signing the legislation into law with no ceremony at his Texas ranch, Mr. Bush issued an accompanying "signing statement" - the 8 p.m. e-mail message - that Democrats and some Republicans say asserted that he could ignore the law if he wished.
Specifically, the statement said that the administration would interpret the amendment "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch and as commander in chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on judicial power."
Mr. McCain issued a strong statement rejecting Mr. Bush's assertion, even as the White House has repeatedly declined to say what the president meant. "
Bush authorised spying led to dead ends
From the New York Times,
2 In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said."
2 In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said."
Software patent fairtytale
There is a terrific article on Groklaw by a UK lawyer, Cristian Miceli, covering the story of developments on the software patents front in the EU and the UK in 2005. The legalese up front on the UK cases can is a bit heavy but mostly the story is very well told. Sample:
"When you wish to conduct an independent survey about whether it is good to be catholic, if you are only going to ask the pope and his cardinals, you cannot call the results objective.
We have asked the pope and cardinals of the patent system and accepted their version of events not only on what the CII Directive intended to achieve but, somewhat more subtly, whether software patents are desirable. We, as lawyers, should recognise the conflict of interest but let me instead use the words of a more enlightened cardinal:
“most patent lawyers -- most lawyers in general - …. unthinkingly spout pro-patent slogans. That is because most patent and IP and even other attorneys with an opinion on this issue mindlessly parrot the simpleminded economics with which they were propagandized in law school. Virtually every patent lawyer will reiterate the mantra that "we need patents to stimulate innovation," as if they have given deep and careful thought to this…..It does not take a genius to figure out why most patent lawyers are in favor of the patent system; and it is not because they have really studied the matter and dispassionately concluded that society is better off with a patent system -- it is because they don't want to see the system that pays the mortgage for them eroded or abolished.”2
This article is not meant to be a sermon, what I have tried to do is independently review the issues at stake and leave it the reader to make his/her own analysis. However, if I am to preach about objectivity, then that must start with me the author. Do I believe in intellectual property rights (“IPR”)? Yes I do and, as part of this, I see the benefits that patents can potentially bring in certain sectors. However, as one law professor recently commented, “good policy does not just consist of ‘more rights'; it consists of maintaining a balance between the realm of property and the realm of the public domain”.3
I do not work nor have any financial interest in an open source software company nor am I getting paid, whether directly or indirectly, for writing this article or for expressing a particular view point. In fact, rather than standing to gain financially by encouraging the reader to adopt the views that I am espousing, I am more likely to have put a damper on any prospect of having a lucrative in-house position overlooking the M4 motorway (perhaps a good thing).
The CII Directive: the fairy tale
Myth 1: the European Competiveness Council, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, as the white knights of European democracy and with our (European) best interests at heart, gallantly proposed a directive which, in its several drafts, sought to do nothing more than to codify and unify our existing laws on patents (commendable) in the area of computer related inventions whilst at the same time not extending the scope of patentability.
It is a wonderful fairy tale. Unfortunately for the knights, they were robbed by a bunch of European peasants, knocked to the ground once, got to their feet as if nothing had happened (and didn’t change their noble rhetoric) and proceeded to get knocked down for the second time, this time by more peasants and, if not a little belatedly, one or two noble men.
Those who are not interested in an objective debate about the benefit of software patents for the software industry want you to believe that the fairy tale is true and that MEPs for the last couple of years have been misled by a group of hairy open source hippies hell bent on preventing such unification of existing laws.
Upon what basis do they claim so valiantly that the CII Directive was not seeking to change the law (i.e., extend patentability) and that the hairy open source hippies, or peasants in my (or their) little fairy tale, got it wrong? Well, to put it bluntly, because these bastions of European democracy told us that this was the case. In other words, the pronouncements of these institutions is rightly to be treated as divine against the heretical statements of the open source community who should be burnt at the stake for having the audacity to question the knights’ intentions and disrupt the march of software patents across the world. The history of the passage of the CII Directive through the EU institutions exposes this myth.
If the actual words of the various drafts were so clear, why did the EU Parliament propose substantial amendments at the first reading, why did the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) vote overwhelmingly to restart the legislative process and, finally, why was a directive rejected for the first time in European history at its second reading? Was this purely the result of MEPs being misled by a misguided open source software community? To continue to make such a claim in the light of the history of the CII Directive is asking us to accept that MEPs are incapable of undertaking a simple analysis of the patent system or making independent judgements. It also discredits one of the greatest grass roots movements in recent European political history.
European laws should be made for the benefit of Europe and its citizens. This may sound like common sense but for many arguing for software patents there seems to be an assumption that EU institutions should be working in the interests of the large IT corporations (the minority companies in the IT industry – see below). Laws should only be passed if they serve the public interest. For this to happen, or at least have a chance of happening, there needs to be a democratic and accountable legislature deciding these laws.
The Commission and Council of Ministers are not democratic; they are not elected by the public or directly accountable. The course of the CII Directive through the EU institutions is marked with several unsavoury incidents where the Commission and the Council of Ministers failed to give heed to the overwhelmingly clear wishes of the European Parliament, the only democratically elected EU institution. These failures, aside from the substantive debate, have left many question marks on the lack of democracy and transparency within the Commission and the Council of Ministers. As lawyers, why are we failing to comment on these shenanigans? Why was the Commission and Council of Ministers so keen to push through their draft –- referred to ironically as the 'Common Position” but which could never be described as having anything in “common” with the views of the EU Parliament -- at all costs?
Had it not been for the undemocratic insistence of the EU Commission and Council of Ministers being so well documented by the anti-software patent lobby, coupled with the now notoriously unethical lobbying tactics of the pro-software patent lobby (reported to the EU anti-fraud commissioner by European lobby watchdogs4 -- I have never seen more dirty noblemen and such clean peasants), I and many others would have been none the wiser as to how far short the actual text of the proposed CII Directive fell from the boldly stated aims."
Not a fan of software patents, the Commission or the Council of Ministers by the sound of it.
"When you wish to conduct an independent survey about whether it is good to be catholic, if you are only going to ask the pope and his cardinals, you cannot call the results objective.
We have asked the pope and cardinals of the patent system and accepted their version of events not only on what the CII Directive intended to achieve but, somewhat more subtly, whether software patents are desirable. We, as lawyers, should recognise the conflict of interest but let me instead use the words of a more enlightened cardinal:
“most patent lawyers -- most lawyers in general - …. unthinkingly spout pro-patent slogans. That is because most patent and IP and even other attorneys with an opinion on this issue mindlessly parrot the simpleminded economics with which they were propagandized in law school. Virtually every patent lawyer will reiterate the mantra that "we need patents to stimulate innovation," as if they have given deep and careful thought to this…..It does not take a genius to figure out why most patent lawyers are in favor of the patent system; and it is not because they have really studied the matter and dispassionately concluded that society is better off with a patent system -- it is because they don't want to see the system that pays the mortgage for them eroded or abolished.”2
This article is not meant to be a sermon, what I have tried to do is independently review the issues at stake and leave it the reader to make his/her own analysis. However, if I am to preach about objectivity, then that must start with me the author. Do I believe in intellectual property rights (“IPR”)? Yes I do and, as part of this, I see the benefits that patents can potentially bring in certain sectors. However, as one law professor recently commented, “good policy does not just consist of ‘more rights'; it consists of maintaining a balance between the realm of property and the realm of the public domain”.3
I do not work nor have any financial interest in an open source software company nor am I getting paid, whether directly or indirectly, for writing this article or for expressing a particular view point. In fact, rather than standing to gain financially by encouraging the reader to adopt the views that I am espousing, I am more likely to have put a damper on any prospect of having a lucrative in-house position overlooking the M4 motorway (perhaps a good thing).
The CII Directive: the fairy tale
Myth 1: the European Competiveness Council, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, as the white knights of European democracy and with our (European) best interests at heart, gallantly proposed a directive which, in its several drafts, sought to do nothing more than to codify and unify our existing laws on patents (commendable) in the area of computer related inventions whilst at the same time not extending the scope of patentability.
It is a wonderful fairy tale. Unfortunately for the knights, they were robbed by a bunch of European peasants, knocked to the ground once, got to their feet as if nothing had happened (and didn’t change their noble rhetoric) and proceeded to get knocked down for the second time, this time by more peasants and, if not a little belatedly, one or two noble men.
Those who are not interested in an objective debate about the benefit of software patents for the software industry want you to believe that the fairy tale is true and that MEPs for the last couple of years have been misled by a group of hairy open source hippies hell bent on preventing such unification of existing laws.
Upon what basis do they claim so valiantly that the CII Directive was not seeking to change the law (i.e., extend patentability) and that the hairy open source hippies, or peasants in my (or their) little fairy tale, got it wrong? Well, to put it bluntly, because these bastions of European democracy told us that this was the case. In other words, the pronouncements of these institutions is rightly to be treated as divine against the heretical statements of the open source community who should be burnt at the stake for having the audacity to question the knights’ intentions and disrupt the march of software patents across the world. The history of the passage of the CII Directive through the EU institutions exposes this myth.
If the actual words of the various drafts were so clear, why did the EU Parliament propose substantial amendments at the first reading, why did the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) vote overwhelmingly to restart the legislative process and, finally, why was a directive rejected for the first time in European history at its second reading? Was this purely the result of MEPs being misled by a misguided open source software community? To continue to make such a claim in the light of the history of the CII Directive is asking us to accept that MEPs are incapable of undertaking a simple analysis of the patent system or making independent judgements. It also discredits one of the greatest grass roots movements in recent European political history.
European laws should be made for the benefit of Europe and its citizens. This may sound like common sense but for many arguing for software patents there seems to be an assumption that EU institutions should be working in the interests of the large IT corporations (the minority companies in the IT industry – see below). Laws should only be passed if they serve the public interest. For this to happen, or at least have a chance of happening, there needs to be a democratic and accountable legislature deciding these laws.
The Commission and Council of Ministers are not democratic; they are not elected by the public or directly accountable. The course of the CII Directive through the EU institutions is marked with several unsavoury incidents where the Commission and the Council of Ministers failed to give heed to the overwhelmingly clear wishes of the European Parliament, the only democratically elected EU institution. These failures, aside from the substantive debate, have left many question marks on the lack of democracy and transparency within the Commission and the Council of Ministers. As lawyers, why are we failing to comment on these shenanigans? Why was the Commission and Council of Ministers so keen to push through their draft –- referred to ironically as the 'Common Position” but which could never be described as having anything in “common” with the views of the EU Parliament -- at all costs?
Had it not been for the undemocratic insistence of the EU Commission and Council of Ministers being so well documented by the anti-software patent lobby, coupled with the now notoriously unethical lobbying tactics of the pro-software patent lobby (reported to the EU anti-fraud commissioner by European lobby watchdogs4 -- I have never seen more dirty noblemen and such clean peasants), I and many others would have been none the wiser as to how far short the actual text of the proposed CII Directive fell from the boldly stated aims."
Not a fan of software patents, the Commission or the Council of Ministers by the sound of it.
Good day for NO2ID campaigners
It was a good day yesterday for those campaigning against ID cards as the scheme suffered in the House of Lords. The Upper House has attached an amendment demanding detailed government costings before it will be allowed to go forward. The Home Office has been adamant that they will not release detailed costings because it will interfere with their ability to get a good deal for taxpayers when putting the scheme out to tender.
Andrew Phillips of the Liberal democrats has a nice article in the Guardian and there are various other reports in the usual places.
Andrew Phillips of the Liberal democrats has a nice article in the Guardian and there are various other reports in the usual places.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Larry Lessig's Google book search presention
For those of you who, like me, are having problems getting BitTorrent working on your machines at the moment, here's a version of Larry Lessig's recent presentation on the Google book search project.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Martin Luther King tapes copyrighted
The Washinton Post yesterday had the annual story about the degree of control Martin Luther King's family have over his speeches and lament the fact that many schoolchildren will never get to experience the power of his speeches:
"It is the time of year when students are taught about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, so passionately delivered that his call for freedom changed U.S. history. Once heard, it is impossible to forget.
But many students won't get to hear it -- and most who do will hear only snippets, educators and historians said. And that, they said, is affecting the legacy of the preeminent civil rights leader, whose life will be honored tomorrow with an annual federal holiday...
All of King's speeches and papers are owned by his family, which has gone to court several times since the 1990s to protect its copyright; King obtained rights to his most famous speech a month after he gave it. Now, those who want to hear or use the speech in its entirety must buy a copy sanctioned by the King family, which receives the proceeds...
Joseph Beck, an attorney for the King family and an expert in intellectual property rights, said, "The King family has always supported providing access to the speech and to the video for educational purchases and encourages interested persons to contact the King Center in Atlanta." According to the family's Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10, but one copy often is not enough for an entire school, and many schools don't know what materials are available.
Many schools use the text -- often taken in violation of the copyright from the Internet. The King family, however, wants teachers to use the speech and has not pursued legal action against educators"
"It is the time of year when students are taught about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, so passionately delivered that his call for freedom changed U.S. history. Once heard, it is impossible to forget.
But many students won't get to hear it -- and most who do will hear only snippets, educators and historians said. And that, they said, is affecting the legacy of the preeminent civil rights leader, whose life will be honored tomorrow with an annual federal holiday...
All of King's speeches and papers are owned by his family, which has gone to court several times since the 1990s to protect its copyright; King obtained rights to his most famous speech a month after he gave it. Now, those who want to hear or use the speech in its entirety must buy a copy sanctioned by the King family, which receives the proceeds...
Joseph Beck, an attorney for the King family and an expert in intellectual property rights, said, "The King family has always supported providing access to the speech and to the video for educational purchases and encourages interested persons to contact the King Center in Atlanta." According to the family's Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10, but one copy often is not enough for an entire school, and many schools don't know what materials are available.
Many schools use the text -- often taken in violation of the copyright from the Internet. The King family, however, wants teachers to use the speech and has not pursued legal action against educators"
LSE Identity Project Report
The London School of Economics has published their latest Identity Project Status Report. It's 63 pages long and full of sensible analysis and questions.
Director of the LSE, Howard Davis, says in his introduction to the report that in spite of his surprise at the vitriolic attacks of the government over their first ID card report last year, the LSE stand by the integrity of their researchers engaged in a genuine attempt to produce an informed analysis of the scheme. He rounds off nicely
"We believe the government's proposals can only benefit from informed and independent scrutiny of the sort this work attempts to produce. I hope the government can receive this latest contribution in that spirit and eschew the emotive language with which they responded to the first effort. The authors are not politically biased, or "mad" - at least no more so than academic researchers normally are!"
The press release accompanying the latest report reads:
"To what extent does the legislation place a requirement on government departments to adopt the ID provisions...
To what extent is integration with the private sector a necessary requirement...
What criteria will be used to determine which levels of NIR verification (e.g. online, biometric) will be made available to an organisation? How will their use of NIR checks be verified and audited, and at what frequency...
To what extent and in what form will direct charging to customers apply for NIP checking by organisations...
Will direct charging by the private sector be capped...
How will organisations conducting NIR checks be verified and audited...
How will liability and non-liability be determined both for NIR checks and transactions where NIR checks are not conducted...
How will local verification against cards be used? In what circumstances and using what technology...
Will there be a requirement that biomentrics tehnology used for checking and verification will be of the same technical quality as the registration technology...
Will biomtrics be stored on the ID card, and if so what form wil this take (has, image etc.)...
What security standards will apply to verification checking, transmission of data, and data storage...
What advice has been obtained by government relating to the legality of the proposals...
What are the current integration cost and cost/benefit estimates from each government department relating to the scheme...
Precisely how will personal information be updated on the system, and what options are being considered to expedite this procedure...
To what extent will the system be reliant on chip and pin architecture...
what security measures are being considered in the event that the system will be based on chip and pin...
What limits, if any, are envisioned on use of the card by the private sector...
Precisely how can ID cards and the NIR be used for CRB checks, and how can the individual be integrated into the process at an administrative level...
What backup systems and processes will be instituted to ensure that denial of service does not occur in the event of technology or system failure...
Who owns and/or controls biometric data...
Will the identity number be visible...
Will local verification of ID cards be subject to oversight and audit, and if so, how...
How will organisations determine whether a person is required to be registered on the NIR...
How will government monitor the performance of IC checks within the private sector (failure of biometric technology, failure to match, failure of local card verification etc.)..."
These are all basic design, use, security and contingency questions of the kind that you need to make of any planned big information system. That there are so many of them at this stage of the process tells its own story. The concluding remarks are clinically damning:
"At the outset the LSE Identity Project supported the implementation of an identity scheme in principle" [given government attacks many people are surprised when they learn that] but expressed significant concerns regarding the Home Office proposal. In the light of the numerous inconsistencies and conflicts that have emerged, serious unanswered concerns that remain, poject dynamics that are dysfunctional and potential outcomes that may be harmful to the public interest we can no longer support even the principle of an identity scheme owned and operated by the Home Office.
Despite all this, however, the policy has changed hardly at all since it was first proposed three years ago. It still involves a highly centralised system. It still involves numbersou biometric technologies. Its primary purposed remain unsubstantiated. Its benefits remain unclear and its costs opaque. The scheme's own advisers are worried about time slippage and the underestimation of risks. Prospective users of the scheme are unwilling to state publicly the benefits they expect from use of the system.
Perhaps most alarming in all this is that the scheme is about to become central to the Government's strategy for IT...
the Governmentis saying it must rethink how IT is used across government, so long as it revolves around what the Home Office is offering...
Many of the perceived flaws in the scheme are a result of the Home Office's continued resistance to both listening and to adhering to traditional processes and procedures of policy deliberation. The proposed scheme is overly burdensome, dangerously centralised, and is designed only to meet the goals of the Home Office: a vast register of biometric data that will be used for policing purposes.
A more open and federated model is required for an identity scheme that will provide gains for e-government, promote access to government services, and generate trust...
We recommend that another department be made responsible for establishing an identity infrastructure for the UK...
The Treasury has extensive experience in complex IT systems...
We therefore com to the inescapable conclusion that the ID card scheme in the UK should be taken forward by the Treasury.
Identity management may well be "an idea whose time has come". But as with any such idea, there are a multiplicity of choices to be made, and directions to choose. After three years the Government remains on the wrong path."
Director of the LSE, Howard Davis, says in his introduction to the report that in spite of his surprise at the vitriolic attacks of the government over their first ID card report last year, the LSE stand by the integrity of their researchers engaged in a genuine attempt to produce an informed analysis of the scheme. He rounds off nicely
"We believe the government's proposals can only benefit from informed and independent scrutiny of the sort this work attempts to produce. I hope the government can receive this latest contribution in that spirit and eschew the emotive language with which they responded to the first effort. The authors are not politically biased, or "mad" - at least no more so than academic researchers normally are!"
The press release accompanying the latest report reads:
The London School of Economics (LSE) today publishes the second report of its controversial ‘Identity Project’. The first report from the project [pdf 5.5 MB] was published in June 2005.The "unanswered questions" alone, listed in Section III demonstrate a grasp that these researchers have of the scheme which contrasts sharply with the Observer piece I mentioned earlier.
Today's report levels criticism at the government over the secrecy of the ID planning process, conflicting statements made by the Home Office and a disregard for Parliament's right to consider important costs and facts related to the scheme.
The report recommends that planning for the ID card be removed from the Home Office and given to Treasury. The report's authors argue that the Home Office is not the appropriate department to deliver or operate the scheme. ‘In light of the numerous inconsistencies and conflicts that have emerged, serious unanswered concerns that remain, project dynamics that are dysfunctional and potential outcomes that may be harmful to the public interest we can now no longer support even the principle of an identity scheme owned and operated by the Home Office.’ the report says.
The report observes: ‘Dozens of questions about the scheme's architecture, goals, feasibility, stakeholder engagement and outcomes remain unanswered. These questions are outlined in this report. The security of the scheme remains unstable, as are the technical arrangements for the proposal. The performance of biometric technology is increasingly questionable. We continue to contest the legality of the scheme. The financial arrangements for the proposals are almost entirely secret, raising important questions of constitutional significance.’
For these reasons, the LSE team has declined to publish further costings for the scheme. In his introduction to the report LSE's Director, Sir Howard Davies observed: ‘As this second report shows, the Government have not been very forthcoming in providing details of their proposals. The LSE team stands by the cost estimates outlined in its first report, but changes to the policy made by the Home Office make it difficult now to produce a definitive assessment of the total cost. Other government departments, if they wish to adopt the ID scheme, may opt in at a later date. Any estimates made of the cost of the current proposals may therefore significantly underestimate the total cost of the scheme in the longer term.’
Professor Ian Angell, head of LSE's Department of Information Systems said: ‘We don't know what to believe any more. Contradictions, guesswork and wishful thinking on the part of the Home Office make a mockery of any pretence that this scheme is based on serious reasoning.’
Dr Edgar Whitley, reader in information systems at LSE said: ‘We have been surprised at how little consistent or reliable information exists about the government's proposals. Claims are routinely made for the scheme and then just as quickly are abandoned or contradicted.’
"To what extent does the legislation place a requirement on government departments to adopt the ID provisions...
To what extent is integration with the private sector a necessary requirement...
What criteria will be used to determine which levels of NIR verification (e.g. online, biometric) will be made available to an organisation? How will their use of NIR checks be verified and audited, and at what frequency...
To what extent and in what form will direct charging to customers apply for NIP checking by organisations...
Will direct charging by the private sector be capped...
How will organisations conducting NIR checks be verified and audited...
How will liability and non-liability be determined both for NIR checks and transactions where NIR checks are not conducted...
How will local verification against cards be used? In what circumstances and using what technology...
Will there be a requirement that biomentrics tehnology used for checking and verification will be of the same technical quality as the registration technology...
Will biomtrics be stored on the ID card, and if so what form wil this take (has, image etc.)...
What security standards will apply to verification checking, transmission of data, and data storage...
What advice has been obtained by government relating to the legality of the proposals...
What are the current integration cost and cost/benefit estimates from each government department relating to the scheme...
Precisely how will personal information be updated on the system, and what options are being considered to expedite this procedure...
To what extent will the system be reliant on chip and pin architecture...
what security measures are being considered in the event that the system will be based on chip and pin...
What limits, if any, are envisioned on use of the card by the private sector...
Precisely how can ID cards and the NIR be used for CRB checks, and how can the individual be integrated into the process at an administrative level...
What backup systems and processes will be instituted to ensure that denial of service does not occur in the event of technology or system failure...
Who owns and/or controls biometric data...
Will the identity number be visible...
Will local verification of ID cards be subject to oversight and audit, and if so, how...
How will organisations determine whether a person is required to be registered on the NIR...
How will government monitor the performance of IC checks within the private sector (failure of biometric technology, failure to match, failure of local card verification etc.)..."
These are all basic design, use, security and contingency questions of the kind that you need to make of any planned big information system. That there are so many of them at this stage of the process tells its own story. The concluding remarks are clinically damning:
"At the outset the LSE Identity Project supported the implementation of an identity scheme in principle" [given government attacks many people are surprised when they learn that] but expressed significant concerns regarding the Home Office proposal. In the light of the numerous inconsistencies and conflicts that have emerged, serious unanswered concerns that remain, poject dynamics that are dysfunctional and potential outcomes that may be harmful to the public interest we can no longer support even the principle of an identity scheme owned and operated by the Home Office.
Despite all this, however, the policy has changed hardly at all since it was first proposed three years ago. It still involves a highly centralised system. It still involves numbersou biometric technologies. Its primary purposed remain unsubstantiated. Its benefits remain unclear and its costs opaque. The scheme's own advisers are worried about time slippage and the underestimation of risks. Prospective users of the scheme are unwilling to state publicly the benefits they expect from use of the system.
Perhaps most alarming in all this is that the scheme is about to become central to the Government's strategy for IT...
the Governmentis saying it must rethink how IT is used across government, so long as it revolves around what the Home Office is offering...
Many of the perceived flaws in the scheme are a result of the Home Office's continued resistance to both listening and to adhering to traditional processes and procedures of policy deliberation. The proposed scheme is overly burdensome, dangerously centralised, and is designed only to meet the goals of the Home Office: a vast register of biometric data that will be used for policing purposes.
A more open and federated model is required for an identity scheme that will provide gains for e-government, promote access to government services, and generate trust...
We recommend that another department be made responsible for establishing an identity infrastructure for the UK...
The Treasury has extensive experience in complex IT systems...
We therefore com to the inescapable conclusion that the ID card scheme in the UK should be taken forward by the Treasury.
Identity management may well be "an idea whose time has come". But as with any such idea, there are a multiplicity of choices to be made, and directions to choose. After three years the Government remains on the wrong path."
Drop the costly ID Card
Yesterday's Observer had a slightly confused leader commentary on the UK ID card system.
It came down plainly against ID cards on cost grounds but included this:
"The government claims that imminent changes to the passport system, foisted on the UK by Europe, make the case for ID cards convincing. This is not so. Yes, there is a need to make the new generation of passports incorporate biometric technology such as fingerprints or iris scans. But this does not justify making it mandatory for everyone to possess a piece of plastic with so many other biometric components."
How is supporting biometrically embedded passports really that different to supporting biometrically embedded ID cards, except in the sense that only those who want to travel abroad need passports? Where do they get the notion that "there is a need" for passports to include fingerprints or iris scans? As for the piece of plastic, if we're using iris scans and fingerprints why do we need a card at all? After all we won't lose our eyes or fingers as quickly as we'll lose the cards.
The leader is just one more example of the amount of confusion about the specific detailed issues thrown up by the proposed ID card system
It came down plainly against ID cards on cost grounds but included this:
"The government claims that imminent changes to the passport system, foisted on the UK by Europe, make the case for ID cards convincing. This is not so. Yes, there is a need to make the new generation of passports incorporate biometric technology such as fingerprints or iris scans. But this does not justify making it mandatory for everyone to possess a piece of plastic with so many other biometric components."
How is supporting biometrically embedded passports really that different to supporting biometrically embedded ID cards, except in the sense that only those who want to travel abroad need passports? Where do they get the notion that "there is a need" for passports to include fingerprints or iris scans? As for the piece of plastic, if we're using iris scans and fingerprints why do we need a card at all? After all we won't lose our eyes or fingers as quickly as we'll lose the cards.
The leader is just one more example of the amount of confusion about the specific detailed issues thrown up by the proposed ID card system
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Appeal Court Judge not keen on software patents
From ZDNet UK "An Appeals Court judge has questioned whether software patents should be granted, and has criticised the US for allowing 'anything under the sun' to be patented.
Sir Robin Jacob, a judge at the Court of Appeal who specialises in intellectual-property (IP) law, has questioned whether patents should be granted for software.
"Do we need patents for computer programs? Where is the evidence for it?" said Lord Justice Jacob, speaking at a seminar for the Society for Computers and Law on Thursday evening in London."
Sir Robin Jacob, a judge at the Court of Appeal who specialises in intellectual-property (IP) law, has questioned whether patents should be granted for software.
"Do we need patents for computer programs? Where is the evidence for it?" said Lord Justice Jacob, speaking at a seminar for the Society for Computers and Law on Thursday evening in London."
New Cryptogram Out
The top two stories in Bruce Schneier's latest Crypto-gram offer two classic lessons in security.
1. When doing business, it is not whether you know someone's ID that counts, it's whether that person can be trusted. So it is accountability that matters.
"In an anonymous commerce system -- where the buyer does
not know who the seller is and vice versa -- it's easy for one to cheat
the other. This cheating, even if only a minority engaged in it, would
quickly erode confidence in the marketplace, and eBay would be out of
business. The auction site's solution was brilliant: a feedback system
that attached an ongoing "reputation" to those anonymous user names,
and made buyers and sellers accountable for their actions."
2. Unless the party who can actually do something about poor security pays the cost of that security getting breached, they have no incentive to do anything about that poor security. Says Schneier:
"According to "The Globe and
Mail":
"Susan Drummond was a customer of Rogers Wireless, a large Canadian
cell phone company. Her phone was cloned while she was on vacation,
and she got a $12,237.60 phone bill (her typical bill was $75). Rogers
maintains that there is nothing to be done, and that Drummond has to pay."
Like all cell phone companies, Rogers has automatic fraud detection
systems that detect this kind of abnormal cell phone usage. They don't
turn the cell phones off, though, because they don't want to annoy
their customers.
"Ms. Hopper [a manager in Roger's security department] said terrorist
groups had identified senior cell phone company officers as perfect
targets, since the company was loath to shut off their phones for
reasons that included inconvenience to busy executives and, of course,
the public-relations debacle that would take place if word got out."
As long as Rogers can get others to pay for the fraud, this makes
perfect sense. Shutting off a phone based on an automatic
fraud-detection system costs the phone company in two ways: people
inconvenienced by false alarms, and bad press. But the major cost of
not shutting off a phone remains an externality: the customer pays for it...
The solution here is obvious: Rogers should not be able to charge its
customers for telephone calls they did not make. Ms. Drummond's phone
was cloned; there is no possible way she could notify Rogers of this
before she saw calls she did not make on her bill. She is also
completely powerless to affect the anti-cloning security in the Rogers
phone system. To make her liable for the fraud is to ensure that the
problem never gets fixed."
It's worth repeating the key point "not shutting off a phone remains an externality: the customer pays for it." As long as someone else pays when security is breached, the phone company has no incentive to deal with the problem.
Mr Blair should be encouraged to meet Mr Schneier.
1. When doing business, it is not whether you know someone's ID that counts, it's whether that person can be trusted. So it is accountability that matters.
"In an anonymous commerce system -- where the buyer does
not know who the seller is and vice versa -- it's easy for one to cheat
the other. This cheating, even if only a minority engaged in it, would
quickly erode confidence in the marketplace, and eBay would be out of
business. The auction site's solution was brilliant: a feedback system
that attached an ongoing "reputation" to those anonymous user names,
and made buyers and sellers accountable for their actions."
2. Unless the party who can actually do something about poor security pays the cost of that security getting breached, they have no incentive to do anything about that poor security. Says Schneier:
"According to "The Globe and
Mail":
"Susan Drummond was a customer of Rogers Wireless, a large Canadian
cell phone company. Her phone was cloned while she was on vacation,
and she got a $12,237.60 phone bill (her typical bill was $75). Rogers
maintains that there is nothing to be done, and that Drummond has to pay."
Like all cell phone companies, Rogers has automatic fraud detection
systems that detect this kind of abnormal cell phone usage. They don't
turn the cell phones off, though, because they don't want to annoy
their customers.
"Ms. Hopper [a manager in Roger's security department] said terrorist
groups had identified senior cell phone company officers as perfect
targets, since the company was loath to shut off their phones for
reasons that included inconvenience to busy executives and, of course,
the public-relations debacle that would take place if word got out."
As long as Rogers can get others to pay for the fraud, this makes
perfect sense. Shutting off a phone based on an automatic
fraud-detection system costs the phone company in two ways: people
inconvenienced by false alarms, and bad press. But the major cost of
not shutting off a phone remains an externality: the customer pays for it...
The solution here is obvious: Rogers should not be able to charge its
customers for telephone calls they did not make. Ms. Drummond's phone
was cloned; there is no possible way she could notify Rogers of this
before she saw calls she did not make on her bill. She is also
completely powerless to affect the anti-cloning security in the Rogers
phone system. To make her liable for the fraud is to ensure that the
problem never gets fixed."
It's worth repeating the key point "not shutting off a phone remains an externality: the customer pays for it." As long as someone else pays when security is breached, the phone company has no incentive to deal with the problem.
Mr Blair should be encouraged to meet Mr Schneier.
Bugging MPs
According to the Independent on Sunday, "Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones, despite fierce Cabinet opposition"
Francis Eliot says
"Nobody is off limits in the Prime Minister's war on terror. Now he wants to dispose of the 'Wilson Doctrine' and bug his own MPs. But does the state need more power to spy on us?"
I imagine the political cartoonists will be smiling at the opportunities this story provides.
Francis Eliot says
"Nobody is off limits in the Prime Minister's war on terror. Now he wants to dispose of the 'Wilson Doctrine' and bug his own MPs. But does the state need more power to spy on us?"
I imagine the political cartoonists will be smiling at the opportunities this story provides.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Encouraging blawgers
The Law Gazette has some advice from experienced blawgers for lawyers logging onto blogging. A sample
Geeklawyer: "Blogs are a great way of getting initial exposure to potential clients, much more so than conventional directories. The value proposition is in the content of the blog – if it is well done you can build a sort of virtual relationship that yields results, particularly where the client respects your competence and your personality."
Ernie the Attorney: "Read lots of different types of lawyer blogs and figure out what appeals to you, and what kind of blog you would like to have. Be clear who your intended readership is, and don’t be afraid to express an opinion – something which lawyers often try to avoid."
Lilian Edwards: "If it’s going to be a flagship for the firm, put real resources behind it. If it’s going to be about your passion for patent law, then fine. But if you’re starting it cynically as a marketing tool, I’d pay someone to do it – a bright trainee even – because you just won’t find the time."
Geeklawyer: "Blogs are a great way of getting initial exposure to potential clients, much more so than conventional directories. The value proposition is in the content of the blog – if it is well done you can build a sort of virtual relationship that yields results, particularly where the client respects your competence and your personality."
Ernie the Attorney: "Read lots of different types of lawyer blogs and figure out what appeals to you, and what kind of blog you would like to have. Be clear who your intended readership is, and don’t be afraid to express an opinion – something which lawyers often try to avoid."
Lilian Edwards: "If it’s going to be a flagship for the firm, put real resources behind it. If it’s going to be about your passion for patent law, then fine. But if you’re starting it cynically as a marketing tool, I’d pay someone to do it – a bright trainee even – because you just won’t find the time."
The Law of Defamation and the Internet
Oxford University Press have published a second edition of Matthew Collins' The Law of Defamation and the Internet. Not cheap at £125, which is the reason I won't be buying my own copy, but the cases are fascinating and the book is well written (and this is not an easy or well settled area of law to get your head around), so I'll be recommending it.
Give everyone an iPod not an ID card to fight fraud
From ZDNet "A senior manager at a British government agency has come up with an alternative to the U.K.'s identity card scheme: Give everyone a free iPod installed with a digital certificate."
What were those ID cost estimates again?
William Heath is frustrated that various government ministers are singing from the same hymn sheet when asked about the detailed costing of the ID cards scheme. The message is we can't tell you that because the information is commercially sensitive and putting it in the public domain "may prejudice the procurement process" and interfere with the government's ability to get value for money.
William has his own interpretation of these responses:
"This information is politically sensitive and to release it would be prejudicial to the acceptability of the ID card system. It's already criticised as unfeasible by IT experts at IEEE, LSE, and global identity specialists in suppliers such as Qinetiq, Sun, IBM and Microsoft. The fact is it will cost the department a lot of money - enough for me to play these games on the pretext of commercial sensitivity - but I don't want to give our estimate of how much. Because if you took our estimate and added it to other departments' estimates plus the core £6bn cost already admitted by the Home Office, well, you'd be talking serious money and people might start to realise this isn't such a smart policy"
I like it.
William has his own interpretation of these responses:
"This information is politically sensitive and to release it would be prejudicial to the acceptability of the ID card system. It's already criticised as unfeasible by IT experts at IEEE, LSE, and global identity specialists in suppliers such as Qinetiq, Sun, IBM and Microsoft. The fact is it will cost the department a lot of money - enough for me to play these games on the pretext of commercial sensitivity - but I don't want to give our estimate of how much. Because if you took our estimate and added it to other departments' estimates plus the core £6bn cost already admitted by the Home Office, well, you'd be talking serious money and people might start to realise this isn't such a smart policy"
I like it.
US Appeal court punts on Yahoo v France speech
A US Appeals court has avoided the opportunity to declare that the imposition of a large fine by a French court on Yahoo!, over the company's displaying of nazi memorabilia, would amount to an infringement of their first amendment rights.
"In a 99-page decision, the court left open the central question of whether U.S.-based Internet service providers are liable for damages in foreign courts for displaying content that is unlawful overseas but protected in the United States.
The court said it was unlikely the French would ever enforce the judgment and doubted Yahoo’s free speech rights under U.S. law were violated."
"In a 99-page decision, the court left open the central question of whether U.S.-based Internet service providers are liable for damages in foreign courts for displaying content that is unlawful overseas but protected in the United States.
The court said it was unlikely the French would ever enforce the judgment and doubted Yahoo’s free speech rights under U.S. law were violated."
Blears Ideal Government further comments
There have been some further interesting comments on Home Office minister Hazel Blears defence of data retention at the Ideal Government blog. Ms Blears used an example of the rescue of a kidnap and torture victim as a good reason for needing the regulations.
Comment 21 provides a counter example of where things can go wrong, with an innocent Duch woman getting wrongly arrested for allegedly sending threatening messages to a celebrity.
"For every example of law enforcement, intelligence or others using traffic data “for good” there are examples of its use going terribly wrong. These simply haven’t been heard in the limited debate.
I like to point to the example (dutch: http://www.netkwesties.nl/editie124/artikel1.html) of a Dutch woman who was arrested early in the morning by six police officers at her home. A threatening E-mail was supposedly send to a celebrity from a phone for which her name was apparently in the billing records. During the interview that follows after many hours in a police cell she keeps her cool. After a long talk the investigating officer finally confronts her with the “evidence”. A piece of paper with her name, a phone number and the address where she lived ten years ago (but wasn’t picked up early in the morning). She quickly points out that she never had a phone with that number or from that provider. She manages to figure out that here personal detail might have been used by someone who stole her car and papers a couple of years back.
The investigating police officer lets her wait while he “checks her story”. Later he lets her go “based on her background, appearance and education”.. which begs the question? what would have happened if she had another skin color, was just laid of and/or went to a different school? It turned out the police had mistaken the pre-paid phone for one for which a contract was signed with a billing address. Even then the bills wouldn’t have been paid at a decade old address, which isn`t where they picked her up…
But that just an unlucky example from which no conclusion can be drawn right? No one in the debate took the time to realise why this is an important example regardless of which side you are on..
What if the sender of the threat had really hurt the target of the threatening e-mail?
Would the perpetrator have framed an innocent person, or would a defence attorney successfully explain the police the difference between a phone number and a social security number thus cutting the legs from underneath any future attempts to use traffic data (collected at billion Euro costs Europe wide) as evidence in a court of law? What about organisations that don’t haul people in for questioning but just start spying on a person?
But you can ask whether one would want legislation passed based on a few examples that supposedly demonstrate usefulness anyway. In my opinion its a shame that legislation that initially demanded colossal changes to the huge multi-billion Euro communication infrastructure was allowed to pass without any research into the usefulness, cost or or impact of the legislation. (Asking the people that came up with this plan to try and prove who send them an offer for products that can “enhance” various body parts should adequately demonstrate that E-mail protocols aren’t designed for this.)
Would the EU ever pass environmental legislation without at least considering a serious impact study?"
Hard cases make bad law and there is way too much reactive legislating going on, off the back of a few high media profile shocking events. In the wake of terrible tragedies there is always an emotional clamour to 'do something' to 'ensure it never happens again' and the thing that governments can do most visibly, in order that they can be seen to be acting, is to change the law in some way. There is an intense focus on the terrible event and an almost complete lack of awareness of the real probability of its occurrence.
3000 people die on UK roads every year but there would be complete outrage if the government introduced a blanket speed limit of 10 miles per hour. By comparison the chances of getting caught up in a terrorist atrocity are negligible. The consequences of getting caught in road accidents or terrorist events are roughly equivalent - death or serious injury. Yet we focus far more fear, media and legislative attention on the hugely less likely scenario. I sincerely hope it never comes anywhere close to reality in this country but if terrorist atrocities were as common as road traffic accidents, as sadly they are in some parts of the world, I suspect we'd pay them about as much attention.
Comment 21 provides a counter example of where things can go wrong, with an innocent Duch woman getting wrongly arrested for allegedly sending threatening messages to a celebrity.
"For every example of law enforcement, intelligence or others using traffic data “for good” there are examples of its use going terribly wrong. These simply haven’t been heard in the limited debate.
I like to point to the example (dutch: http://www.netkwesties.nl/editie124/artikel1.html) of a Dutch woman who was arrested early in the morning by six police officers at her home. A threatening E-mail was supposedly send to a celebrity from a phone for which her name was apparently in the billing records. During the interview that follows after many hours in a police cell she keeps her cool. After a long talk the investigating officer finally confronts her with the “evidence”. A piece of paper with her name, a phone number and the address where she lived ten years ago (but wasn’t picked up early in the morning). She quickly points out that she never had a phone with that number or from that provider. She manages to figure out that here personal detail might have been used by someone who stole her car and papers a couple of years back.
The investigating police officer lets her wait while he “checks her story”. Later he lets her go “based on her background, appearance and education”.. which begs the question? what would have happened if she had another skin color, was just laid of and/or went to a different school? It turned out the police had mistaken the pre-paid phone for one for which a contract was signed with a billing address. Even then the bills wouldn’t have been paid at a decade old address, which isn`t where they picked her up…
But that just an unlucky example from which no conclusion can be drawn right? No one in the debate took the time to realise why this is an important example regardless of which side you are on..
What if the sender of the threat had really hurt the target of the threatening e-mail?
Would the perpetrator have framed an innocent person, or would a defence attorney successfully explain the police the difference between a phone number and a social security number thus cutting the legs from underneath any future attempts to use traffic data (collected at billion Euro costs Europe wide) as evidence in a court of law? What about organisations that don’t haul people in for questioning but just start spying on a person?
But you can ask whether one would want legislation passed based on a few examples that supposedly demonstrate usefulness anyway. In my opinion its a shame that legislation that initially demanded colossal changes to the huge multi-billion Euro communication infrastructure was allowed to pass without any research into the usefulness, cost or or impact of the legislation. (Asking the people that came up with this plan to try and prove who send them an offer for products that can “enhance” various body parts should adequately demonstrate that E-mail protocols aren’t designed for this.)
Would the EU ever pass environmental legislation without at least considering a serious impact study?"
Hard cases make bad law and there is way too much reactive legislating going on, off the back of a few high media profile shocking events. In the wake of terrible tragedies there is always an emotional clamour to 'do something' to 'ensure it never happens again' and the thing that governments can do most visibly, in order that they can be seen to be acting, is to change the law in some way. There is an intense focus on the terrible event and an almost complete lack of awareness of the real probability of its occurrence.
3000 people die on UK roads every year but there would be complete outrage if the government introduced a blanket speed limit of 10 miles per hour. By comparison the chances of getting caught up in a terrorist atrocity are negligible. The consequences of getting caught in road accidents or terrorist events are roughly equivalent - death or serious injury. Yet we focus far more fear, media and legislative attention on the hugely less likely scenario. I sincerely hope it never comes anywhere close to reality in this country but if terrorist atrocities were as common as road traffic accidents, as sadly they are in some parts of the world, I suspect we'd pay them about as much attention.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
New York to monitor diabetics
From the Washington Post: "New York City is starting to monitor the blood sugar levels of its diabetic residents, marking the first time any government in the United States has begun tracking people with a chronic disease.
Under the program, the city is requiring laboratories to report the results of blood sugar tests directly to the health department, which will use the data to study the disease and to prod doctors and patients when levels run too high.
The unprecedented step is being hailed by many health experts as a bold attempt to improve care for diabetes, one of the nation's biggest medical problems, which is burgeoning into a crisis because of the aging population and the obesity epidemic.
Some public health experts, ethicists and privacy advocates, however, say that the initiative raises serious concerns about confidentiality and is an alarming government intrusion into people's medical care."
Under the program, the city is requiring laboratories to report the results of blood sugar tests directly to the health department, which will use the data to study the disease and to prod doctors and patients when levels run too high.
The unprecedented step is being hailed by many health experts as a bold attempt to improve care for diabetes, one of the nation's biggest medical problems, which is burgeoning into a crisis because of the aging population and the obesity epidemic.
Some public health experts, ethicists and privacy advocates, however, say that the initiative raises serious concerns about confidentiality and is an alarming government intrusion into people's medical care."
Concerns about RFIDs
Toby Stevens (he credited by Kim Cameron as suggesting data rejection is the highest form of data management) was disappointed at a recent conference by one speaker's response to his question about some people's concerns about RFID tags.
"I asked the speaker what could be done to accelerate consumer acceptance of RFID. His somewhat worrying response was to refer to those of us who worry about civil liberties as 'luddites'. He went on to say that consumers who are concerned about RFID are likely to have to shop at 'special' stores for untagged products, and to pay a premium for the privilege. Apparently, they will eventually see the error of their ways because of resulting social exclusion.
This thought reminded me of Orwell's Winston Smith using a black market store to purchase a diary without it coming to Big Brother's attention. I doubt this was quite what the speaker intended. However, it got me thinking about some of the attitudes that people have when they encounter individuals who care about the social implications of technology.
The Luddites were not specifically opposed to the new mass-production technologies of their day, but were deeply upset about the impact of technology on their livelihoods. The state responded with armed repression, hangings and deportations.
Over the next few years we will pass a 'tipping point' for RFID where it rapidly escalates in use and moves towards becoming a ubiquitous technology (I believe this is known in some circles as the "oh sh*t!" point). But we're not there yet. Earlier this year I was involved in an informal survey of patient awareness of RFID. Only a few per cent of the participants had any workable understanding of what RFID is, and even fewer had considered the implications.
Until RFID tagging is commonplace, and everyone understands and accepts its use (in the same way as we now accept mobile phones or the Internet), it befalls those of us who are aware of the risks to try to find an acceptable, balanced middle way.
Moreover, it is utterly wrong to condemn anyone who questions the social implications of a new technology as a Luddite, ne'er do well, or loony. Someone has to stand up and force the debate on whether a technology such as RFID is ready for consumer use. And if a Luddite is someone who objects to the imposition of a new technology on their life without proper consideration - and democratic debate - of its social impact, then I'm proud to be a follower of Ned Ludd."
"I asked the speaker what could be done to accelerate consumer acceptance of RFID. His somewhat worrying response was to refer to those of us who worry about civil liberties as 'luddites'. He went on to say that consumers who are concerned about RFID are likely to have to shop at 'special' stores for untagged products, and to pay a premium for the privilege. Apparently, they will eventually see the error of their ways because of resulting social exclusion.
This thought reminded me of Orwell's Winston Smith using a black market store to purchase a diary without it coming to Big Brother's attention. I doubt this was quite what the speaker intended. However, it got me thinking about some of the attitudes that people have when they encounter individuals who care about the social implications of technology.
The Luddites were not specifically opposed to the new mass-production technologies of their day, but were deeply upset about the impact of technology on their livelihoods. The state responded with armed repression, hangings and deportations.
Over the next few years we will pass a 'tipping point' for RFID where it rapidly escalates in use and moves towards becoming a ubiquitous technology (I believe this is known in some circles as the "oh sh*t!" point). But we're not there yet. Earlier this year I was involved in an informal survey of patient awareness of RFID. Only a few per cent of the participants had any workable understanding of what RFID is, and even fewer had considered the implications.
Until RFID tagging is commonplace, and everyone understands and accepts its use (in the same way as we now accept mobile phones or the Internet), it befalls those of us who are aware of the risks to try to find an acceptable, balanced middle way.
Moreover, it is utterly wrong to condemn anyone who questions the social implications of a new technology as a Luddite, ne'er do well, or loony. Someone has to stand up and force the debate on whether a technology such as RFID is ready for consumer use. And if a Luddite is someone who objects to the imposition of a new technology on their life without proper consideration - and democratic debate - of its social impact, then I'm proud to be a follower of Ned Ludd."
Howard Knoff
Canadian lawyer, Howard Knoff, has started a blog, Excess Copyright.
"Copyright is good. Excess in copyright is not. There are many parties in the copyright construct. All of them must avoid excess in order for copyright to be sustainable. This blog will explore when success is excess."
One of his early posts is about prominent Canadian historian, Jack Granatstein's foray into copyright activism. He includes a copy of an email from Prof Granatstein outlining his dislike for the copyright bill proposed in the Canadian parliament
" I wear 2 hats: creator and researcher/teacher. As a creator, I want to be paid for my work. As a researcher/teacher, I want free access to archival materials and as much free access as I (and all teachers and students) can get to published or www material. The bill did not achieve a balance that met my concerns, and thus I opposed it."
"Copyright is good. Excess in copyright is not. There are many parties in the copyright construct. All of them must avoid excess in order for copyright to be sustainable. This blog will explore when success is excess."
One of his early posts is about prominent Canadian historian, Jack Granatstein's foray into copyright activism. He includes a copy of an email from Prof Granatstein outlining his dislike for the copyright bill proposed in the Canadian parliament
" I wear 2 hats: creator and researcher/teacher. As a creator, I want to be paid for my work. As a researcher/teacher, I want free access to archival materials and as much free access as I (and all teachers and students) can get to published or www material. The bill did not achieve a balance that met my concerns, and thus I opposed it."
Medical wiki goes live
I learn from Dr Adrian Midgley that the medical wiki, Ganfyd, has gone live with the message:
"Welcome to ganfyd.org - The free medical knowledge base that anyone can read and any registered medical practitioner may edit. Ganfyd is a collaborative, creative commons licenced medical reference by medical professionals and invited non-medical experts. The site is based around the wiki format, enabling true sharing of knowledge. GANFYD was initiated by a group of doctors who use Doctors.net.uk (AKA Ausdoctors.net) to contribute their knowledge and experience to the commonwealth. Ganfyd is an old medical mutterance whose meaning is known only to the initiated."
Btw ganfyd means "get a note from your doctor" and I think is GP-speak for basically healthy folks looking for sicknotes.
"Welcome to ganfyd.org - The free medical knowledge base that anyone can read and any registered medical practitioner may edit. Ganfyd is a collaborative, creative commons licenced medical reference by medical professionals and invited non-medical experts. The site is based around the wiki format, enabling true sharing of knowledge. GANFYD was initiated by a group of doctors who use Doctors.net.uk (AKA Ausdoctors.net) to contribute their knowledge and experience to the commonwealth. Ganfyd is an old medical mutterance whose meaning is known only to the initiated."
Btw ganfyd means "get a note from your doctor" and I think is GP-speak for basically healthy folks looking for sicknotes.
Felten on the analog hole bill
Ed Felten, as usual when he turns his attention to these things, has some critically important things to say about the proposed analog hole bill in the US.
"The Analog Hole Bill would mandate that any devices that can translate certain types of video signals from analog to digital form must comply with a Byzantine set of design restrictions that talk about things like “certified digital content rights protection output technologies”. Let’s put aside for now the details of the technology design being mandated; I’ll critique them in a later post. I want to write today about the bill’s exemption for “professional devices”:
PROFESSIONAL DEVICE.—(A) The term‘‘professional device’’ means a device that is designed, manufactured, marketed, and intended for use by a person who regularly employs such a device for lawful business or industrial purposes, such as making, performing, displaying, distributing, or transmitting copies of audiovisual works on a commercial scale at the request of, or with the explicit permission of, the copyright owner.
(B) If a device is marketed to or is commonly purchased by persons other than those described in subparagraph (A), then such device shall not be considered to be a ‘‘professional device’’...
The really interesting thing about the professional device hole is that it makes one provision of the bill utterly impossible to put into practice. For those reading along at home, I’m referring to the robustness rulemaking of section 202(1), which requires the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to establish technical requirements that (among other things) “can only with difficulty be defeated or circumvented by use of professional tools or equipment”. But there’s a small problem: professional tools are exempt from the technical requirements.
The robustness requirements, in other words, have to stop professional tools from copying content — and they have to do that, somehow, without regulating what professional tools can do. That, as they say, is a tall order."
Brilliant.
"The Analog Hole Bill would mandate that any devices that can translate certain types of video signals from analog to digital form must comply with a Byzantine set of design restrictions that talk about things like “certified digital content rights protection output technologies”. Let’s put aside for now the details of the technology design being mandated; I’ll critique them in a later post. I want to write today about the bill’s exemption for “professional devices”:
PROFESSIONAL DEVICE.—(A) The term‘‘professional device’’ means a device that is designed, manufactured, marketed, and intended for use by a person who regularly employs such a device for lawful business or industrial purposes, such as making, performing, displaying, distributing, or transmitting copies of audiovisual works on a commercial scale at the request of, or with the explicit permission of, the copyright owner.
(B) If a device is marketed to or is commonly purchased by persons other than those described in subparagraph (A), then such device shall not be considered to be a ‘‘professional device’’...
The really interesting thing about the professional device hole is that it makes one provision of the bill utterly impossible to put into practice. For those reading along at home, I’m referring to the robustness rulemaking of section 202(1), which requires the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to establish technical requirements that (among other things) “can only with difficulty be defeated or circumvented by use of professional tools or equipment”. But there’s a small problem: professional tools are exempt from the technical requirements.
The robustness requirements, in other words, have to stop professional tools from copying content — and they have to do that, somehow, without regulating what professional tools can do. That, as they say, is a tall order."
Brilliant.
Wiretapping, president Bush and the NSA
Mark Rasch has been thinking about the domestic spying controversy in the US.
"Let's start with a little reality check here. Much of what the NSA and the intelligence community does is in violation of some law somewhere. Indeed, much of what the military does is as well. When the NSA intercepts a communication from France to Afghanistan, it probably violates the privacy and electronic surveillance laws in both countries. When it installs alligator clips on a phone in Turkmenistan, it probably violates some local burglary or trespass law. Espionage - the staple of the CIA - is a felony in almost every nation, and a capitol offense in the US. In fact, it is part of the intelligence community's job to try to get people to commit treason. So we are hardly shocked or offended that our government or any government is violating the law. What the so-called NSA domestic spying scandal addresses is whether the process violates US law...
Now it is difficult for me to imagine a circumstance where someone could be part of a terrorist organization, planning or discussing terrorist activities and not be suspected of a crime. Terrorism is a crime. Murder is a crime. Destruction of property is a crime. Conspiracy is a crime. Money laundering, fraud, immigration fraud, false statements, counterfeiting - all of these are crimes. In the recent Spielberg movie Munich, Mossad agents assigned to assassinate those responsible for planning the abduction and murder of Israeli Olympic athletes agonize over the legality of their actions, but ultimately focus on its necessity. Niceties of the law are rarely debated on the battlefield, and according to the current administration, the battlefield is everywhere and forever...
Thirty-three years ago, the US Government tried to rely on pure Presidential power to engage in domestic surveillance of domestic subversive groups without a warrant. US Supreme Court rejected the government's contention (http://www.justia.us/us/407/297/case.html) that the courts were not prepared to deal with the sensitive classified information, could not make informed decisions about the threats to national security, and that the President had independent authority to order these wiretaps without the Courts. Even if the wiretaps were "reasonable" the Supreme court opined, they violated the Fourth Amendment...
It was this precedent - establishing that a government official's immunity for ordering such illegal wiretaps is only limited - that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito sought to reverse when he was advising the Reagan Administration's Justice Department...
Now anyone who has worked in a bureaucracy knows how hard it is to get anything done. Indeed, to get a FISA tap, the NSA agent monitoring traffic in the field (whether that is in Afghanistan, at an ISP, or in Fort Meade, Maryland) would likely have to get the approval of several levels of supervisors, and then lawyers for the NSA would get involved. Then the NSA would have to involve the Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, and the Office of the Attorney General to review and analyze the FISA order, establish appropriate minimization procedures, and present the case for review by the FISA court. Finally, the FISA court would be convened and review, modify or approve the request for a wiretap. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow...
I can't imagine, however, that the non-FISA "presidential authority" wiretaps would be much faster. NSA agents and supervisors, NSA counsel and the Department of Justice would all have to be involved in approving the wiretaps, and they would then have to be reviewed by the White House, and ultimately approved by the President himself. This may turn out to be a case where the need for "speed" is really a euphemism for the need to assert Presidential authority over the courts."
Thoughtful piece (runs to 5 pages), well worth reading in full.
"Let's start with a little reality check here. Much of what the NSA and the intelligence community does is in violation of some law somewhere. Indeed, much of what the military does is as well. When the NSA intercepts a communication from France to Afghanistan, it probably violates the privacy and electronic surveillance laws in both countries. When it installs alligator clips on a phone in Turkmenistan, it probably violates some local burglary or trespass law. Espionage - the staple of the CIA - is a felony in almost every nation, and a capitol offense in the US. In fact, it is part of the intelligence community's job to try to get people to commit treason. So we are hardly shocked or offended that our government or any government is violating the law. What the so-called NSA domestic spying scandal addresses is whether the process violates US law...
Now it is difficult for me to imagine a circumstance where someone could be part of a terrorist organization, planning or discussing terrorist activities and not be suspected of a crime. Terrorism is a crime. Murder is a crime. Destruction of property is a crime. Conspiracy is a crime. Money laundering, fraud, immigration fraud, false statements, counterfeiting - all of these are crimes. In the recent Spielberg movie Munich, Mossad agents assigned to assassinate those responsible for planning the abduction and murder of Israeli Olympic athletes agonize over the legality of their actions, but ultimately focus on its necessity. Niceties of the law are rarely debated on the battlefield, and according to the current administration, the battlefield is everywhere and forever...
Thirty-three years ago, the US Government tried to rely on pure Presidential power to engage in domestic surveillance of domestic subversive groups without a warrant. US Supreme Court rejected the government's contention (http://www.justia.us/us/407/297/case.html) that the courts were not prepared to deal with the sensitive classified information, could not make informed decisions about the threats to national security, and that the President had independent authority to order these wiretaps without the Courts. Even if the wiretaps were "reasonable" the Supreme court opined, they violated the Fourth Amendment...
It was this precedent - establishing that a government official's immunity for ordering such illegal wiretaps is only limited - that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito sought to reverse when he was advising the Reagan Administration's Justice Department...
Now anyone who has worked in a bureaucracy knows how hard it is to get anything done. Indeed, to get a FISA tap, the NSA agent monitoring traffic in the field (whether that is in Afghanistan, at an ISP, or in Fort Meade, Maryland) would likely have to get the approval of several levels of supervisors, and then lawyers for the NSA would get involved. Then the NSA would have to involve the Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, and the Office of the Attorney General to review and analyze the FISA order, establish appropriate minimization procedures, and present the case for review by the FISA court. Finally, the FISA court would be convened and review, modify or approve the request for a wiretap. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow...
I can't imagine, however, that the non-FISA "presidential authority" wiretaps would be much faster. NSA agents and supervisors, NSA counsel and the Department of Justice would all have to be involved in approving the wiretaps, and they would then have to be reviewed by the White House, and ultimately approved by the President himself. This may turn out to be a case where the need for "speed" is really a euphemism for the need to assert Presidential authority over the courts."
Thoughtful piece (runs to 5 pages), well worth reading in full.
Google Print and Copyright
Jonathan Band has written a very helpful 16 page guide to the copyright debate in relation to the Google library project. It was also Jonathan who produced one of the clearest early analyses of the project when there was so much confusion in the media even over the basic facts (partly because the protagonists in the case talk past each other in rhetorical soundbites rather than engaging directly on the complex issues).
As a one stop shop on getting to the bottom of the Google Print issues you won't get much better.
As a one stop shop on getting to the bottom of the Google Print issues you won't get much better.
ARCast - The Laws of Identity
If you ever wanted a gentle introduction to Kim Cameron's "7 Laws of Identity" you could do a lot worse than listen to this radio programme where he gets interviewed by Ron Jacobs.
There are some real gems from Cameron in this.
"Privacy concerns ultimately end up being security concerns."
So an approriately designed identity layer of the Internet would be equivalent to a privacy enhancing layer.
He talks about Toby Stevens notion of data rejection being the highest form of data management.
He mentions his signature is in thousands of scanned databases, so what now is the value of his signature?
And when it comes to building an identity layer for the Net notes that as architects and technologists we have to assume our system will be breached, so that we're ready to react appropriately when they are. If a decent identity layer is not built into the Net then people will rapidly get fed up with the negative consequences to the extent that all trust in the infrastructure will be lost. We also have to build the system in such a way as to avoid locking out the possibility of innovative developments in identity architecture in the future. We're just at the begining of what identity systems can be technologically and there are some amazing developments in universities, so we have to be able to build these into the system when they are developed.
There are some real gems from Cameron in this.
"Privacy concerns ultimately end up being security concerns."
So an approriately designed identity layer of the Internet would be equivalent to a privacy enhancing layer.
He talks about Toby Stevens notion of data rejection being the highest form of data management.
He mentions his signature is in thousands of scanned databases, so what now is the value of his signature?
And when it comes to building an identity layer for the Net notes that as architects and technologists we have to assume our system will be breached, so that we're ready to react appropriately when they are. If a decent identity layer is not built into the Net then people will rapidly get fed up with the negative consequences to the extent that all trust in the infrastructure will be lost. We also have to build the system in such a way as to avoid locking out the possibility of innovative developments in identity architecture in the future. We're just at the begining of what identity systems can be technologically and there are some amazing developments in universities, so we have to be able to build these into the system when they are developed.
Geist abused by Canadian MP
Michael Geist has been verbally abused by a Canadian member of parliament, Sam Bulte, who has pushed for copyright reform following heavy campaign contributions by the entertainment industries. She says she won't let "Michael Geist and his pro-user zealots, and Electronic Frontier Foundation members" intimidate her.
How exactly did professor Geist intimidate her? Well he has been critical about proposals for Canadian copyright reform but it seems his intimidation comes in the form of a pledge which he has asked party leaders to take during the election campaign:
"No Member of Parliament who has accepted financial contributions or other benefits from (i) a copyright lobby group, (ii) its corporate members, or (iii) senior executives as well as (iv) a copyright collective shall serve as Minister of Canadian Heritage or as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, nor sit on any legislative committee (parliamentary or standing committees) conducting hearings or deliberations on copyright matters."
Mmm. So he's suggesting that an MP should not be allowed to take a job in parliament that would temp her into doing favours for the people who supported her election though significant funding or other benefits. Er... no... I'm looking hard but I can't see the intimidation factor here. What am I missing?
How exactly did professor Geist intimidate her? Well he has been critical about proposals for Canadian copyright reform but it seems his intimidation comes in the form of a pledge which he has asked party leaders to take during the election campaign:
"No Member of Parliament who has accepted financial contributions or other benefits from (i) a copyright lobby group, (ii) its corporate members, or (iii) senior executives as well as (iv) a copyright collective shall serve as Minister of Canadian Heritage or as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, nor sit on any legislative committee (parliamentary or standing committees) conducting hearings or deliberations on copyright matters."
Mmm. So he's suggesting that an MP should not be allowed to take a job in parliament that would temp her into doing favours for the people who supported her election though significant funding or other benefits. Er... no... I'm looking hard but I can't see the intimidation factor here. What am I missing?
James Love on WIPO broadcasting treaty
I don't think I got round to pointing to a terrific article by James Love in the Huufington Post in November?
Essential reading for anyone concerned about developments in the intellectual property landscape.
"A UN Agency is debating a sweeping new form of regulation for the Internet. The call for this new regulation is being led by the United States government and the European Commission, pushed by highly paid lobbyists for a trade association that includes Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Real Networks and a handful of other companies...
The US negotiators are not trying to impose US law on the rest of the world. They are instead seeking a new global law that is completely outside of US legal traditions, and according to legal experts, of dubious constitutional legality in the United States...
The European Commission is also not trying to impose current European legal traditions on the rest of the world. Both the US and the EC negotiators are trying to create a brand new and untested regime of Internet regulation that they have never even attempted to adopt in their own Congress or parliaments.
The fora for this international law-making exercise is the World Intellectual Property Organization, known in English speaking countries as WIPO. What is proposed has nothing to do with copyrights or patents, but rather something new, that no country has yet tried, and which is granted to protect “investments” in the distribution of works, rather than to reward creative activity...
What is proposed is as follows. Any web page operator who makes any combination or representations of “images or sounds . . . accessible to the public . . . at substantially the same time,” would be granted a new right, to authorize or prohibit anyone from copying the data, or republishing or re-using the information in any form.
This may sound like copyright, but it’s not. This new “webcaster” right is something that would apply to public domain material, and it would apply to works that are copyrighted, even if the webcaster is not the copyright owner, and does not even have a license to use or to restrict access to the copyrighted work.
What this means is this. If you download a file from the Internet, you would have to get the permission of the web page operator before you could republish the data elsewhere. This permission would be in addition to any permissions you would need from the actual copyright owner, and it would even be required if you are seeking to publish something that was either in the public domain under copyright law, or that had been licensed for distribution under something like a creative commons license.
This new “webcaster right” would be automatic, and come also with a whole set of new requirements to enforce technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) schemes on Internet transmissions. The webcaster would have an ownership right in the information for 50 years, and the 50 year term would start new with every transmission of information...
The actual proposals for new treaty provisions on this “webcaster” right were written by lobbyists for a trade association called DiMA, that includes some 25 firms, including such heavy hitters as America Online, Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Yahoo!...
what the broadcasters and the webcasters really want has nothing to do with protecting copyrighted works. They want to "own" the content of what they transmit, even when they are not the creative party, and even if they can't acquire such rights from the copyright owner (if any).
In the words of the treaty critics, the treaty proponents are guilty of piracy of the knowledge commons. They are seeking to claim ownership rights in works they did not create, and which today they do not own. They want something different from copyright, and different from the legal regime that exists in any country. They want to own what they simply transmit. And this will be quite harmful to the Internet."
There in a nutshell you have many of the fundamental problems with the decision making process regarding the development of intellectual property policy in the digital age.
These laws or anything like them do not exist in the EU or the US.
There is absolutely no empirical evidence to support their introduction. Though there would be the possibility of engaging in substantive research to compare and contrast the EU and US broadcasting arenas, due to the existence of the different broadcasting legal regimes, nobody wants to do that.
Some powerful commercial interests would like these regulations to exist.
The actual wording of the proposed treaty is drafted by lobbyists working for these commercial interests.
A small number of highly placed unelected officials from the EU and US quietly drive the proposals through an unelected World Intellectual Property Organisation. Quietly is the key adverb here because the more people find out about the details, the more they think these proposals are a bad idea.
We then have an international treaty.
Everyone returns home.
At home the message is "It's terrible. You can't trust the UN or the US(/EU depending on which side of the pond you hail from). We'd never have done anything like that here but we have an international treaty obligation now to implement these laws in our country. There's nothing we can do about it."
Rational decision making goes something like this:
1. Survey the situation.
2. Specify the problem.
3. Identify a series of alternative options to tackle the problem.
4. Assess the alternatives e.g. through cost benefit analysis and other modeling and empirical testing/research.
5. Choose one of the options and implement it.
6. Monitor the outcome and adjust action in accordance the relevant feedback.
By contrast IP policy development looks like:
1. We have an idea for a money making scheme.
2. Call in the lobbyists
3. We need an appropriately tailored, trade-protectionist, international treaty.
4. Don't worry we'll draft it and call in our buddies in the US and EU government services to push it through WIPO. Assess the alternatives? Haa Ha.
5. WIPO cleansweep (and I'm not talking about a Harry Potter broomstick).
6. Monitor the income and complain it's not enough. The treaty needs to be strengthened to save us losing hundreds of billions to pirates. Go back to step 1.
Essential reading for anyone concerned about developments in the intellectual property landscape.
"A UN Agency is debating a sweeping new form of regulation for the Internet. The call for this new regulation is being led by the United States government and the European Commission, pushed by highly paid lobbyists for a trade association that includes Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Real Networks and a handful of other companies...
The US negotiators are not trying to impose US law on the rest of the world. They are instead seeking a new global law that is completely outside of US legal traditions, and according to legal experts, of dubious constitutional legality in the United States...
The European Commission is also not trying to impose current European legal traditions on the rest of the world. Both the US and the EC negotiators are trying to create a brand new and untested regime of Internet regulation that they have never even attempted to adopt in their own Congress or parliaments.
The fora for this international law-making exercise is the World Intellectual Property Organization, known in English speaking countries as WIPO. What is proposed has nothing to do with copyrights or patents, but rather something new, that no country has yet tried, and which is granted to protect “investments” in the distribution of works, rather than to reward creative activity...
What is proposed is as follows. Any web page operator who makes any combination or representations of “images or sounds . . . accessible to the public . . . at substantially the same time,” would be granted a new right, to authorize or prohibit anyone from copying the data, or republishing or re-using the information in any form.
This may sound like copyright, but it’s not. This new “webcaster” right is something that would apply to public domain material, and it would apply to works that are copyrighted, even if the webcaster is not the copyright owner, and does not even have a license to use or to restrict access to the copyrighted work.
What this means is this. If you download a file from the Internet, you would have to get the permission of the web page operator before you could republish the data elsewhere. This permission would be in addition to any permissions you would need from the actual copyright owner, and it would even be required if you are seeking to publish something that was either in the public domain under copyright law, or that had been licensed for distribution under something like a creative commons license.
This new “webcaster right” would be automatic, and come also with a whole set of new requirements to enforce technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) schemes on Internet transmissions. The webcaster would have an ownership right in the information for 50 years, and the 50 year term would start new with every transmission of information...
The actual proposals for new treaty provisions on this “webcaster” right were written by lobbyists for a trade association called DiMA, that includes some 25 firms, including such heavy hitters as America Online, Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Yahoo!...
what the broadcasters and the webcasters really want has nothing to do with protecting copyrighted works. They want to "own" the content of what they transmit, even when they are not the creative party, and even if they can't acquire such rights from the copyright owner (if any).
In the words of the treaty critics, the treaty proponents are guilty of piracy of the knowledge commons. They are seeking to claim ownership rights in works they did not create, and which today they do not own. They want something different from copyright, and different from the legal regime that exists in any country. They want to own what they simply transmit. And this will be quite harmful to the Internet."
There in a nutshell you have many of the fundamental problems with the decision making process regarding the development of intellectual property policy in the digital age.
These laws or anything like them do not exist in the EU or the US.
There is absolutely no empirical evidence to support their introduction. Though there would be the possibility of engaging in substantive research to compare and contrast the EU and US broadcasting arenas, due to the existence of the different broadcasting legal regimes, nobody wants to do that.
Some powerful commercial interests would like these regulations to exist.
The actual wording of the proposed treaty is drafted by lobbyists working for these commercial interests.
A small number of highly placed unelected officials from the EU and US quietly drive the proposals through an unelected World Intellectual Property Organisation. Quietly is the key adverb here because the more people find out about the details, the more they think these proposals are a bad idea.
We then have an international treaty.
Everyone returns home.
At home the message is "It's terrible. You can't trust the UN or the US(/EU depending on which side of the pond you hail from). We'd never have done anything like that here but we have an international treaty obligation now to implement these laws in our country. There's nothing we can do about it."
Rational decision making goes something like this:
1. Survey the situation.
2. Specify the problem.
3. Identify a series of alternative options to tackle the problem.
4. Assess the alternatives e.g. through cost benefit analysis and other modeling and empirical testing/research.
5. Choose one of the options and implement it.
6. Monitor the outcome and adjust action in accordance the relevant feedback.
By contrast IP policy development looks like:
1. We have an idea for a money making scheme.
2. Call in the lobbyists
3. We need an appropriately tailored, trade-protectionist, international treaty.
4. Don't worry we'll draft it and call in our buddies in the US and EU government services to push it through WIPO. Assess the alternatives? Haa Ha.
5. WIPO cleansweep (and I'm not talking about a Harry Potter broomstick).
6. Monitor the income and complain it's not enough. The treaty needs to be strengthened to save us losing hundreds of billions to pirates. Go back to step 1.
Weinberger on Wikipedia
David Weinberger has a very sensible assessment of the media reaction to the Wikipedia controversy, towards the end of last year relating to the fictitious and defamatory entry about respected journalist, John Seigenthaler.
"When the mainstream media addressed the John Seigenthaler Sr. affair — he's the respected journalist who wrote an op-ed in USAToday complaining that slanderously wrong information about him was in Wikipedia for four months — the subtext couldn't be clearer: The media were implicitly contrasting Wikipedia's credibility to their own. Ironically, the some of the media got the story fundamentally wrong, in tone and sometimes in substance...
Wikipedia has been a continuous state of self-criticism that newspapers would do well to emulate. It has discussion pages for every article. It has handled inaccuracies not defensively but with the humble understanding that of course Wikipedia articles will have mistakes, so let's get on with the unending task of improving them. Wikipedia's ambitions are immodest, but Wikipedia is not...
Jimmy thinks the the mainstream media misunderstood this story because they have a cognitive problem when it comes to anonymity and accountability:
The media literally can't hear that humility, which reflects accurately the fluid and uneven quality of Wikipedia. The media — amplifying our general cultural assumptions — have come to expect knowledge to be coupled with arrogance...
With Wikipedia, the balance of knowing shifts from the individual to the social process. The solution to a failure of knowledge (as the Seigenthaler entry clearly was) is to fix the social process, while acknowledging that it will never work perfectly. There are still individuals involved, of course, but Wikipedia reputations are made and advanced by being consistent and persistent contributors to the social process. Yes, persistent violators of the social trust can be banished from Wikipedia, but the threat of banishment is not what keeps good contributors contributing well."
"When the mainstream media addressed the John Seigenthaler Sr. affair — he's the respected journalist who wrote an op-ed in USAToday complaining that slanderously wrong information about him was in Wikipedia for four months — the subtext couldn't be clearer: The media were implicitly contrasting Wikipedia's credibility to their own. Ironically, the some of the media got the story fundamentally wrong, in tone and sometimes in substance...
Wikipedia has been a continuous state of self-criticism that newspapers would do well to emulate. It has discussion pages for every article. It has handled inaccuracies not defensively but with the humble understanding that of course Wikipedia articles will have mistakes, so let's get on with the unending task of improving them. Wikipedia's ambitions are immodest, but Wikipedia is not...
Jimmy thinks the the mainstream media misunderstood this story because they have a cognitive problem when it comes to anonymity and accountability:
The thing that people always latch onto is that it has to do with anonymity. But it doesn't have to do with knowing who you are [in the real world] . We care about pseudo-identity, not identity. The fact that a certain user has a persistent pseudo-identity over time allows us to gauge the quality of that user without having any idea of who it really is...Jimmy has been all over the news telling people that Wikipedia is not yet as reliable as the Britannica, that students shouldn't cite it, that you should take every article with a grain of salt. (One Wikipedian suggested to me that such a disclaimer ought to be on every page; I agree.) The media are acting as if this is a humbling confession when in fact it's been what Jimmy and Wikipedians have been saying from the first day of this remarkable, and remarkably successful experiment in building an inclusive encyclopedia together.
The media literally can't hear that humility, which reflects accurately the fluid and uneven quality of Wikipedia. The media — amplifying our general cultural assumptions — have come to expect knowledge to be coupled with arrogance...
With Wikipedia, the balance of knowing shifts from the individual to the social process. The solution to a failure of knowledge (as the Seigenthaler entry clearly was) is to fix the social process, while acknowledging that it will never work perfectly. There are still individuals involved, of course, but Wikipedia reputations are made and advanced by being consistent and persistent contributors to the social process. Yes, persistent violators of the social trust can be banished from Wikipedia, but the threat of banishment is not what keeps good contributors contributing well."
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Will Blears respond to Ideal Government critique
John Lettice is skeptical about whether Hazel Blears will respond to the questions generated in response to her posting on the Ideal Government blog.
"Pretend for a moment that the Home Office understands what it's doing, then consider the implications. Government policy is currently communicated, argued and implemented in a largely non-interactive, adversarial way. Government determines what it intends to do, puts forward its arguments and goes ahead. Its intentions and arguments will be questioned in Parliament, in consultations and in the press, but (as the experience of the past few years makes clear), it will usually respond to these by carrying on going ahead and repeating the same arguments as it does so.
Don't knock it too hard though - irritating as it is to to see the same faulty logic and discredited arguments trucked out over and over again, it's a viable mode of Government, up to a point. It gets stuff done, and any personal dislikes you may have of the stuff that's getting done only become material when enough other people hate it enough for stuff to be modified, or not to get done...
If Ministers don't answer questions, address points and develop arguments openly and honestly in Parliament, they can't rationally do so in blog discussions, and they'd get fired if they tried. "
"Pretend for a moment that the Home Office understands what it's doing, then consider the implications. Government policy is currently communicated, argued and implemented in a largely non-interactive, adversarial way. Government determines what it intends to do, puts forward its arguments and goes ahead. Its intentions and arguments will be questioned in Parliament, in consultations and in the press, but (as the experience of the past few years makes clear), it will usually respond to these by carrying on going ahead and repeating the same arguments as it does so.
Don't knock it too hard though - irritating as it is to to see the same faulty logic and discredited arguments trucked out over and over again, it's a viable mode of Government, up to a point. It gets stuff done, and any personal dislikes you may have of the stuff that's getting done only become material when enough other people hate it enough for stuff to be modified, or not to get done...
If Ministers don't answer questions, address points and develop arguments openly and honestly in Parliament, they can't rationally do so in blog discussions, and they'd get fired if they tried. "
Scholars write to Congress on NSA domestic spying
14 constitutional scholars and former government official have written to Congress outlineing their belief that President Bush's authorisation of the NSA domestic spying practices was illegal. It's fairly dense with legal analysis, as you might expect but worth reading at least the introduction and conclusion:
"Dear Members of Congress:
We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush Administration's National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in the New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department's December 22, 2005 letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the program. Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law...
In conclusion, the DOJ letter fails to offer a plausible legal defense of the NSA domestic spying program. If the Administration felt that FISA was insufficient, the proper course was to seek legislative amendment, as it did with other aspects of FISA in the Patriot Act, and as Congress expressly contemplated when it enacted the wartime wiretap provision in FISA. One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President--or anyone else--to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable.
We hope you find these views helpful to your consideration of the legality of the NSA domestic spying program.
Sincerely,
Curtis A. Bradley
Richard and Marcy Horvitz Professor of Law, Duke University*
Former Counselor on International Law in the State Department Legal Adviser's Office, 2004
David Cole
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Walter Dellinger
Douglas Blount Maggs Professor of Law, Duke University
Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel,1993-1996
Former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, 1996-97
Ronald Dworkin
Frank Henry Sommer Professor, New York University Law School
Richard Epstein
James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Harold Hongju Koh
Dean and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 1998-2001
Former Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ, 1983-85
Philip B. Heymann
James Barr Ames Professor, Harvard Law School
Former Deputy Attorney General, 1993-94
Martin S. Lederman
Visiting Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Former Attorney Advisor, Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, 1994-2002
Beth Nolan
Former Counsel to the President, 1999-2001; Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, 1996-1999; Associate Counsel to the President, 1993-1995; Attorney Advisor, Office of Legal Counsel, 1981-1985
William S. Sessions
Former Director, FBI
Former Chief United States District Judge, Western District of Texas
Geoffrey R. Stone
Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School and Provost of the University of Chicago
Kathleen M. Sullivan
Stanley Morrison Professor, Stanford Law School
Former Dean, Stanford Law School
Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law
Harvard Law School
William W. Van Alstyne
Lee Professor, William and Mary Law School
Former Attorney, Department of Justice, 1958"
"Dear Members of Congress:
We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush Administration's National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in the New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department's December 22, 2005 letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the program. Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law...
In conclusion, the DOJ letter fails to offer a plausible legal defense of the NSA domestic spying program. If the Administration felt that FISA was insufficient, the proper course was to seek legislative amendment, as it did with other aspects of FISA in the Patriot Act, and as Congress expressly contemplated when it enacted the wartime wiretap provision in FISA. One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President--or anyone else--to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable.
We hope you find these views helpful to your consideration of the legality of the NSA domestic spying program.
Sincerely,
Curtis A. Bradley
Richard and Marcy Horvitz Professor of Law, Duke University*
Former Counselor on International Law in the State Department Legal Adviser's Office, 2004
David Cole
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Walter Dellinger
Douglas Blount Maggs Professor of Law, Duke University
Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel,1993-1996
Former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, 1996-97
Ronald Dworkin
Frank Henry Sommer Professor, New York University Law School
Richard Epstein
James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Harold Hongju Koh
Dean and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 1998-2001
Former Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ, 1983-85
Philip B. Heymann
James Barr Ames Professor, Harvard Law School
Former Deputy Attorney General, 1993-94
Martin S. Lederman
Visiting Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Former Attorney Advisor, Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, 1994-2002
Beth Nolan
Former Counsel to the President, 1999-2001; Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, 1996-1999; Associate Counsel to the President, 1993-1995; Attorney Advisor, Office of Legal Counsel, 1981-1985
William S. Sessions
Former Director, FBI
Former Chief United States District Judge, Western District of Texas
Geoffrey R. Stone
Harry Kalven, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School and Provost of the University of Chicago
Kathleen M. Sullivan
Stanley Morrison Professor, Stanford Law School
Former Dean, Stanford Law School
Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law
Harvard Law School
William W. Van Alstyne
Lee Professor, William and Mary Law School
Former Attorney, Department of Justice, 1958"
Heathrow express see through clothes scanner trial
I heard this on the radio this morning.
"The Independent reports some details about the 4 week trial of the "see through your clothes" passive millimetre wave imaging scanner which has been installed at London's Paddington mainline railway station on the Heathrow Express platform."
Spy Blog has some legitimate concerns:
"80 seconds per scan, minimum !!
Since the Heathrow Express service leaves Paddington every 15 minutes, that means that passengers (who will certainly be struggling with suitcases on their way to the airport) will miss the next train on which they have booked their tickets / reserved their seats, if there are as few as 10 or so people in the queue ahead them to be scanned...
if the "randomly selected" passengers are Children. The operators will be guilty of "creating or distributing" Child Pornography, a term which includes synthetic digital images. If children are automatically excluded, then the whole system is useless against smugglers or terrorists...
what aspect of the "technology" is being tested on the public ?
What does this prove that a group of paid experimental test subjects could not ?
The ability to see people naked throough various types of clothing ? The ability to detect various deliberately concealed items ?
How can this be a scientific test, if the data is really destroyed after each scan ?
Where is the proof that this system is safe for, say, pregnant women ?
Will people who refuse to be scanned be treated as "terrirst suspects" and stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 44 anyway ?"
"The Independent reports some details about the 4 week trial of the "see through your clothes" passive millimetre wave imaging scanner which has been installed at London's Paddington mainline railway station on the Heathrow Express platform."
Spy Blog has some legitimate concerns:
"80 seconds per scan, minimum !!
Since the Heathrow Express service leaves Paddington every 15 minutes, that means that passengers (who will certainly be struggling with suitcases on their way to the airport) will miss the next train on which they have booked their tickets / reserved their seats, if there are as few as 10 or so people in the queue ahead them to be scanned...
if the "randomly selected" passengers are Children. The operators will be guilty of "creating or distributing" Child Pornography, a term which includes synthetic digital images. If children are automatically excluded, then the whole system is useless against smugglers or terrorists...
what aspect of the "technology" is being tested on the public ?
What does this prove that a group of paid experimental test subjects could not ?
The ability to see people naked throough various types of clothing ? The ability to detect various deliberately concealed items ?
How can this be a scientific test, if the data is really destroyed after each scan ?
Where is the proof that this system is safe for, say, pregnant women ?
Will people who refuse to be scanned be treated as "terrirst suspects" and stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 44 anyway ?"
UK MPs demand WiFi
UK members of parliament are apparently demanding wifi is installed in the Houses of Parliament.
China bans Wikipedia
From the Globe and Mail, "Chinese students and intellectuals are expressing outrage at Beijing's decision to prohibit access to Wikipedia, the fast-growing on-line encyclopedia that has become a basic resource for many in China."
Blears at Ideal Government
Home Office minister has sent a short piece on the EU data retention measures to William Heath's Ideal Government blog. It's generated a fair amount of traffic in the comments. She provides an example of where access to telecoms data led to the rescue of a kidnap victim.
"Where it has been available, such information has already proven critical. When a Ghanaian individual was recently abducted in the Netherlands having travelled through the UK, Dutch, Belgian and British police were able to close in on his kidnappers because of historic phone data they analysed. The man was freed from his captors, having suffered severe torture, and arrests were made as a direct result of information from phone records that might otherwise have been deleted. Such data was also critical in the conviction of a terrorist gang who set off bombs in London and Birmingham in 2003, injuring several people and causing millions of pounds worth of damage.
The deal that was reached between all three EU institutions balances the need for action with the need to agree legislation that is necessary and proportionate and which does not impose an unnecessary burden on industry. The data retained will only be disclosed in specific cases and will be subject to strict data protection rules. Any abuse of the data will be subject to sanctions.
I believe this agreement is an important step in delivering the right to citizens across the EU to live in peace and free from the negative impact of terrorism and serious crime."
I don't know the details of the kidnap case but it would be useful to know how long the crucial data leading to the rescue had been retained for in advance of its use by the police. Also how much effort was involved on the part of the police and the relevant phone company in getting at the appropriate information? From the victim's perspective, what matters is speed and efficacy.
Tracking web surfing, of course, is not the same and phone communications traffic data. The web surfing can reveal a lot more about an individual. So wouldn't there be more of a case for targeting the tracking of the web surfing of suspect individuals rather than blanket tracking of everyone. Without powerful, intelligent aggregating tools, law enforcement don't have the capacity to find out a huge amount about everybody but they will have the capacity to dig deeply into the surfing habits of a limited number of people.
When the Open University introduced an online communications environment as part of our teaching over ten years ago, there was genuine concern about the privacy in individual conference areas and the potential for big brother monitoring of tutoring duties, which up until that point had been in the traditional classroom and correspondence context. During the busiest period of the past ten years I have been responsible for about 155 associate lecturers, who in turn looked after about 3000 students. There were thousands of conference areas and millions of messages. I could not possibly monitor it all.
On that subject, though the technology did fundamentally change the nature of the distance education paradigm and my role as a facilitator of the process, my abiding memory of the toughest times is the reinforcement of the knowedge that what the technology really complimented was the process of putting people in touch with people that makes the high quality brand of distance education supplied by the OU possible; and the hundred-plus hours a week I'd spend in front of my computer screen, attempting to support the amazing folks trying to get to grips with integrating these tools into their teaching and learning. By and large most OU students and staff are fantastic people and the place works because we're good at getting those people together to help each other out.
Getting back to Ms Blears posting, William has some very sensible questions:
"- can they use comms data to investigate relatively rare instances of serious crime without mass systematic data retention?
- if so with what safeguards?
- how can we discuss and debate these issues before bouncing everyone into EU legislation?
- where do we go from here on this policy, which does strike me as an balance sinister and likely to further erode trust in on-line society."
"Where it has been available, such information has already proven critical. When a Ghanaian individual was recently abducted in the Netherlands having travelled through the UK, Dutch, Belgian and British police were able to close in on his kidnappers because of historic phone data they analysed. The man was freed from his captors, having suffered severe torture, and arrests were made as a direct result of information from phone records that might otherwise have been deleted. Such data was also critical in the conviction of a terrorist gang who set off bombs in London and Birmingham in 2003, injuring several people and causing millions of pounds worth of damage.
The deal that was reached between all three EU institutions balances the need for action with the need to agree legislation that is necessary and proportionate and which does not impose an unnecessary burden on industry. The data retained will only be disclosed in specific cases and will be subject to strict data protection rules. Any abuse of the data will be subject to sanctions.
I believe this agreement is an important step in delivering the right to citizens across the EU to live in peace and free from the negative impact of terrorism and serious crime."
I don't know the details of the kidnap case but it would be useful to know how long the crucial data leading to the rescue had been retained for in advance of its use by the police. Also how much effort was involved on the part of the police and the relevant phone company in getting at the appropriate information? From the victim's perspective, what matters is speed and efficacy.
Tracking web surfing, of course, is not the same and phone communications traffic data. The web surfing can reveal a lot more about an individual. So wouldn't there be more of a case for targeting the tracking of the web surfing of suspect individuals rather than blanket tracking of everyone. Without powerful, intelligent aggregating tools, law enforcement don't have the capacity to find out a huge amount about everybody but they will have the capacity to dig deeply into the surfing habits of a limited number of people.
When the Open University introduced an online communications environment as part of our teaching over ten years ago, there was genuine concern about the privacy in individual conference areas and the potential for big brother monitoring of tutoring duties, which up until that point had been in the traditional classroom and correspondence context. During the busiest period of the past ten years I have been responsible for about 155 associate lecturers, who in turn looked after about 3000 students. There were thousands of conference areas and millions of messages. I could not possibly monitor it all.
On that subject, though the technology did fundamentally change the nature of the distance education paradigm and my role as a facilitator of the process, my abiding memory of the toughest times is the reinforcement of the knowedge that what the technology really complimented was the process of putting people in touch with people that makes the high quality brand of distance education supplied by the OU possible; and the hundred-plus hours a week I'd spend in front of my computer screen, attempting to support the amazing folks trying to get to grips with integrating these tools into their teaching and learning. By and large most OU students and staff are fantastic people and the place works because we're good at getting those people together to help each other out.
Getting back to Ms Blears posting, William has some very sensible questions:
"- can they use comms data to investigate relatively rare instances of serious crime without mass systematic data retention?
- if so with what safeguards?
- how can we discuss and debate these issues before bouncing everyone into EU legislation?
- where do we go from here on this policy, which does strike me as an balance sinister and likely to further erode trust in on-line society."
iTunes is watching you
Cory is annoyed that a "new version of Apple's iTunes for Mac appears to communicate information about every song you play to Apple, and it's not clear if there's any way to turn this off, nor what Apple's privacy policy is on this information...
I wouldn't buy a stereo that phoned home to Panasonic and told it what I was listening to; I wouldn't buy a shower radio that delivered my tuning preferences to Blaupunkt. I certainly am not comfortable with Apple shoulder-surfing me while I listen to digital music, particularly if they're doing so without my meaningful, informed consent and without disclosing what they intend on doing with that data.
At very least, Apple must deliver information about whether iTunes gathers and transmits your data when the Mini-Store is switched off, and about what it does with the data the Mini-Store transmits when it's loaded."
I wouldn't buy a stereo that phoned home to Panasonic and told it what I was listening to; I wouldn't buy a shower radio that delivered my tuning preferences to Blaupunkt. I certainly am not comfortable with Apple shoulder-surfing me while I listen to digital music, particularly if they're doing so without my meaningful, informed consent and without disclosing what they intend on doing with that data.
At very least, Apple must deliver information about whether iTunes gathers and transmits your data when the Mini-Store is switched off, and about what it does with the data the Mini-Store transmits when it's loaded."
Junk phone calls counter script
This is excellent:
"Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance."
I have a lot of sympathy for many of the folks who work in telemarketing call centres. I still get bothered and irritated by these kinds of calls even though my number is supposed to be on the do-not-call list but my approach is to politely say I'm not interested and hang up. With the persistent types, if I'm feeling patient, I'll say that I know they're just doing a job but they're probably on commission and their time will genuinely be better invested talking to someone else. With the persistent, pushy obnoxious types I don't tend to waste time with them at all and hang up but this script would be a nice response if you have two minutes and your dinner has been interrupted anyway.
"Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance."
I have a lot of sympathy for many of the folks who work in telemarketing call centres. I still get bothered and irritated by these kinds of calls even though my number is supposed to be on the do-not-call list but my approach is to politely say I'm not interested and hang up. With the persistent types, if I'm feeling patient, I'll say that I know they're just doing a job but they're probably on commission and their time will genuinely be better invested talking to someone else. With the persistent, pushy obnoxious types I don't tend to waste time with them at all and hang up but this script would be a nice response if you have two minutes and your dinner has been interrupted anyway.
P2P users set up new political party in Sweden
Ian Brown reports that P2P users are setting up a new political party in Sweden to tackle what they consider to be draconian intellectual property laws.
ID cards an IEEE Loser
The IEEE have branded the UK government's ID card scheme a "loser" in their "winners & Losers 2006" awards for the best and worst technology projects.
Kim Cameron's astonishment
Kim Cameron was more than a bit surprised, following an interview with John Fontana of Network World, to read the subsequent article describing him as an identity god and credited with being one of teh 50 most powerful people in networking.
"I’ve really appreciated the interest and support of our writer colleagues - people who know how to find the story in our reality, and then, to tell it. When John Fontana called me about doing a profile, I thought it would be a way to move our identity project forward. In fact, it’s a long time since I’d done anything quite so personal - but knowing what a straight-shooter John is, I went with the flow.
Even so, I hope people can imagine my complete astonishment when, the day after Christmas, I read the following:
But let me reassure everyone I that I don’t really think of myself as an identity god. If I were, we’d have an identity layer for the internet by now...
Still, this identity thing is hard, and has taken a long time. Nor is it over yet. There are still a lot of things that can go wrong. It can’t be done by any one person, or any one vendor, or any one government or country. But I really think that with all our Identity 2.0 friends we can get to our destination.
Finally, thanks to John Fontana and his editors for this wonderful honor.
Update: Kim got the Networked MVP award from Dave Kearns just before Christmas too.
"I’ve really appreciated the interest and support of our writer colleagues - people who know how to find the story in our reality, and then, to tell it. When John Fontana called me about doing a profile, I thought it would be a way to move our identity project forward. In fact, it’s a long time since I’d done anything quite so personal - but knowing what a straight-shooter John is, I went with the flow.
Even so, I hope people can imagine my complete astonishment when, the day after Christmas, I read the following:
Kim Cameron: Identity’s godWell, the cat’s out of the bag. Now everyone knows I’m not 39.
Chief architect of access at Microsoft has galvanized an industry behind his ‘Seven Laws of Identity.’...
But let me reassure everyone I that I don’t really think of myself as an identity god. If I were, we’d have an identity layer for the internet by now...
Still, this identity thing is hard, and has taken a long time. Nor is it over yet. There are still a lot of things that can go wrong. It can’t be done by any one person, or any one vendor, or any one government or country. But I really think that with all our Identity 2.0 friends we can get to our destination.
Finally, thanks to John Fontana and his editors for this wonderful honor.
Update: Kim got the Networked MVP award from Dave Kearns just before Christmas too.
IPRSOnline
IPRsonline.org is an excellent internet portal on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and Sustainable Development, which points to all kinds of interesting projects and resources like Dr. Johanna Gibson's project at the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Institute, Patenting Lives and many more.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Doctors don't trust govt. flagship NHS IT system
John Carvel, social affairs editor at The Guardian, reports that doctors have littels faith the the UK government's flagship NHS IT project.
"Health ministers face a crisis of confidence among GPs and hospital consultants over the £6.2bn programme to build the most sophisticated medical IT system in the world, a Guardian poll of more than 1,300 doctors has revealed.
It shows most doctors think the Connnecting for Health programme is a waste of money and only 1% feel it is making good progress. Doctors are concerned that patient confidentiality will be compromised when records are transferred to an electronic system open to clinical staff.
Only a minority of GPs expect to be using the Choose and Book system for making hospital appointments by the end of the year, despite government assurances that it will be available by then in every family doctor's surgery in England.
The survey by the medical pollsters Medix suggests the government has not made sufficient effort to win doctors' support for a scheme that it billed as the biggest civil IT programme in the world."
As a friend of mine used to say, "aye, until the next one", which in this case will be the ID card scheme.
"Health ministers face a crisis of confidence among GPs and hospital consultants over the £6.2bn programme to build the most sophisticated medical IT system in the world, a Guardian poll of more than 1,300 doctors has revealed.
It shows most doctors think the Connnecting for Health programme is a waste of money and only 1% feel it is making good progress. Doctors are concerned that patient confidentiality will be compromised when records are transferred to an electronic system open to clinical staff.
Only a minority of GPs expect to be using the Choose and Book system for making hospital appointments by the end of the year, despite government assurances that it will be available by then in every family doctor's surgery in England.
The survey by the medical pollsters Medix suggests the government has not made sufficient effort to win doctors' support for a scheme that it billed as the biggest civil IT programme in the world."
As a friend of mine used to say, "aye, until the next one", which in this case will be the ID card scheme.
Verizon music comes with a catch
People buying into Verizon's new music service for mobile phones will find they will no longer be able to play MP3 files on those phones.
"The company's new song download service, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, is being built around Microsoft's digital-media technology. As part of that service, Verizon decided to eliminate the phones' previous ability to play MP3 files, hoping to keep the phones' music features simple, a company spokesman said...
"We don't view this as restricting functionality," said Jesse Money, Verizon's director of consumer multimedia services. "We wanted one music player on the phone with a simple and consistent look and feel throughout the player. If we were to leave (the MP3 support intact), then there would be two players with different experiences.""
Out goes the old, open MP3, in comes the new, proprietary, locked-up Microsoft format.
"The company's new song download service, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, is being built around Microsoft's digital-media technology. As part of that service, Verizon decided to eliminate the phones' previous ability to play MP3 files, hoping to keep the phones' music features simple, a company spokesman said...
"We don't view this as restricting functionality," said Jesse Money, Verizon's director of consumer multimedia services. "We wanted one music player on the phone with a simple and consistent look and feel throughout the player. If we were to leave (the MP3 support intact), then there would be two players with different experiences.""
Out goes the old, open MP3, in comes the new, proprietary, locked-up Microsoft format.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Cornelia Kutterer, senior legal advisor at BEUC, the European consumer organisation, has been explaining why they have launched a campaign focussing on the dangers of developments in intellectual property policy at EU level. She says that the blurring of the boundaries between commercial and non commercial intellectual property infringement by EU policy makers is a fundamental problem.
"Today, it appears that the Commission no longer distinguishes these two different types of infringement. But blurring these boundaries leads to excessive reactions that may have deep, irreversible and adverse effects on our society, technological development and the private sphere.
In a highly controversial and often hostile debate about the scope of IP protection, recent developments in the political debate tend to be excessive, disproportional, lop-sided and do not take into account the existence of many discussions on how to improve creativity, access to knowledge and the legal use of technology. Instead, the law of unintended consequences is being provoked. Some examples:
Criminalization of consumers
In a recent proposal adopted by the Commission in July 2005, the Commission aims at introducing and aligning national criminal law provisions against infringements of IPRs. Under the proposal, infringements of any intellectual property rights are treated as criminal offences if undertaken intentionally and on a commercial scale. Similarly, attempting, aiding and inciting such infringements are considered criminal acts.
The problem is that the definition of "commercial scale" is not set out, and does not explicitly require financial benefits, profit or a commercial motive for activities to be identified as taking place on a "commercial scale"..."
She goes on to talk about the EU data retention proposals and drm standards that routinely incorporate user tracking and concludes:
"These recent developments and initiatives show that the balance between the rights of the right holders and the rights of consumers is neither achieved nor maintained but instead ever more threatened. Consumers’ organizations have to be very vigilant in the near future. The European Commission has announced a review of a set of directives related to copyright, in particular the reform of copyright levies applied to equipment and media used for private copying and a review of copyright term, above all, term for sound recordings are included in the review. Consumers’ organizations will also need to look at the contractual side and pay high attention to abusive terms in services. An initiative report on consumer protection in the digital environment by the European Parliament could certainly help to address this issue.
A good sign came recently from The German Federal Supreme Court. It stated that "the necessary balance between the constitutionally protected rights of the right holders to exercise their rights and the constitutionally protected interest in competition, i.e. to be able to evolve freely outside that protected scope, would not be guaranteed anymore if the right holder could claim protection to an extent to which he is not entitled…" (BGH 2005). The court adds that this objective distinction between the scope of IP protection and the freedom of competition must also be balanced in regard to the means of enforcement. We believe that the statement is fundamental and should be reflected in all initiatives at hand."
"Today, it appears that the Commission no longer distinguishes these two different types of infringement. But blurring these boundaries leads to excessive reactions that may have deep, irreversible and adverse effects on our society, technological development and the private sphere.
In a highly controversial and often hostile debate about the scope of IP protection, recent developments in the political debate tend to be excessive, disproportional, lop-sided and do not take into account the existence of many discussions on how to improve creativity, access to knowledge and the legal use of technology. Instead, the law of unintended consequences is being provoked. Some examples:
Criminalization of consumers
In a recent proposal adopted by the Commission in July 2005, the Commission aims at introducing and aligning national criminal law provisions against infringements of IPRs. Under the proposal, infringements of any intellectual property rights are treated as criminal offences if undertaken intentionally and on a commercial scale. Similarly, attempting, aiding and inciting such infringements are considered criminal acts.
The problem is that the definition of "commercial scale" is not set out, and does not explicitly require financial benefits, profit or a commercial motive for activities to be identified as taking place on a "commercial scale"..."
She goes on to talk about the EU data retention proposals and drm standards that routinely incorporate user tracking and concludes:
"These recent developments and initiatives show that the balance between the rights of the right holders and the rights of consumers is neither achieved nor maintained but instead ever more threatened. Consumers’ organizations have to be very vigilant in the near future. The European Commission has announced a review of a set of directives related to copyright, in particular the reform of copyright levies applied to equipment and media used for private copying and a review of copyright term, above all, term for sound recordings are included in the review. Consumers’ organizations will also need to look at the contractual side and pay high attention to abusive terms in services. An initiative report on consumer protection in the digital environment by the European Parliament could certainly help to address this issue.
A good sign came recently from The German Federal Supreme Court. It stated that "the necessary balance between the constitutionally protected rights of the right holders to exercise their rights and the constitutionally protected interest in competition, i.e. to be able to evolve freely outside that protected scope, would not be guaranteed anymore if the right holder could claim protection to an extent to which he is not entitled…" (BGH 2005). The court adds that this objective distinction between the scope of IP protection and the freedom of competition must also be balanced in regard to the means of enforcement. We believe that the statement is fundamental and should be reflected in all initiatives at hand."
Sunday, January 08, 2006
£2500 fine planned for ID card evasion
The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that that proposed fine for not having an ID card will be £2500. A Conservative party constitutional affairs spokesman said
"There is growing concern among the public about Labour's use of invasive 'Big Brother' computer databases - without transparency or clear backing from the public - such as for the forthcoming council tax revaluation.
I believe local residents will be alarmed at the further prospect of town hall bureaucrats being told to investigate people's homes for ID cards, backed up with the threat of thousand-pound fines."
Local electoral registration officers will be required to police the scheme.
"There is growing concern among the public about Labour's use of invasive 'Big Brother' computer databases - without transparency or clear backing from the public - such as for the forthcoming council tax revaluation.
I believe local residents will be alarmed at the further prospect of town hall bureaucrats being told to investigate people's homes for ID cards, backed up with the threat of thousand-pound fines."
Local electoral registration officers will be required to police the scheme.
The down side of opening up innovation
John's been thinking about the down side of the Internet's end to end architecture in the new Berliner style Observer.
"The downside was that this freedom to innovate applied also to unsavoury geniuses. For every Tim Berners-Lee there were a thousand virus-writers or spammers enjoying the same intoxicating freedom to release their products on to the net. And because of the design principles built into the architecture, there was no way of stopping them.
There still isn't, which is why the problems will get worse. Security cannot be retro-fitted to the current design, so we need a new architecture. We can't go on patching the internet as if it were just a global version of Windows XP. The $64 trillion question is whether in reinventing the internet we can avoid throwing out the end-to-end baby with the virus-infested bathwater."
Jonathan Zittrain has some excellent ideas on how we should be tackling this and doing it now before it's too late. The essay is based on a book due to be published soon, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It.
"The downside was that this freedom to innovate applied also to unsavoury geniuses. For every Tim Berners-Lee there were a thousand virus-writers or spammers enjoying the same intoxicating freedom to release their products on to the net. And because of the design principles built into the architecture, there was no way of stopping them.
There still isn't, which is why the problems will get worse. Security cannot be retro-fitted to the current design, so we need a new architecture. We can't go on patching the internet as if it were just a global version of Windows XP. The $64 trillion question is whether in reinventing the internet we can avoid throwing out the end-to-end baby with the virus-infested bathwater."
Jonathan Zittrain has some excellent ideas on how we should be tackling this and doing it now before it's too late. The essay is based on a book due to be published soon, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It.
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