We are coming up to a watershed moment in the existence of the Internet and very few people seem to care. Right now there are two separate events happening that will have a direct impact on both the Internet we have right now and the one we will have in the future.

While they might seem like two disparate events they are in fact being lead by one industry. Under the guise of copyright infringement and piracy the entertainment as a whole is spearheading the adoption of the Digital Economy Bill in England and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which would be global in impact.

It is easy to shrug our collective shoulders over the Digital Economy Bill suggesting that it’s strictly a British problem and doesn’t affect the rest of at all. Well one only has to look at the persuasive use of CCTV in Britain and how it became the template for other countries like the U.S. to follow suite to see how foolish that argument is.

When I first wrote about the Digital Economy Bill here back in August of 2009 it was in light of how the original bill was changed after a weekend meeting get-together on the Greek island of Corfu. This little confab consisted of Lord Mandelson, the British business secretary, members of the Rothschild banking dynasty; who paid for the retreat, and David Geffen, an American billionaire record producer.

Prior to this retreat in sunny Corfu the Digital Economy Bill was actually a forward looking document that the British government hoped would take the country into the next millennium. After the trip though it suddenly became a totally different beast all together that saw everyone using the Internet as a criminal.

Now just this past week thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing we find out that this new Digital Economy Bill that is now before the British Parliament not only will treat web users as criminals but it is also being used to create a process that will see unelected officials able to do just about anything without Parliamentary oversight or control as long as it is done in the name of protecting copyright.

Doctorow was able to get his hands on some reliable information (via a British Labour Government source) and points to the three specific arguments that Lord Mandelson uses for justifying the revamped bill

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

As Doctorow points out in this post, and a follow-up to it, unelected officials like Lord Mandelson would have the power to create and run a private copyright police force that wouldn’t answer to anyone.

But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

Now it would be a common reaction from the rest of us in the world to shrug our shoulders saying ah it’s a British problem, if they want to let this happen it’s their own fault and carry on our way. The problem is that besides recent history showing that this is a short-sighted position to take there is also another much more subtle and potentially dangerous change to individual country laws.

Under the guise of protecting corporate copyrights a new global treaty; think WTO, WIPO, WHO etc., called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is being created and agreed to in secret. The secrecy around ACTA is so persuasive that anyone viewing the actual agreement and participating in the talks around it are forced to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even had to go to court to force the release of any documents surrounding the Treaty.

This is a treaty that has been written by the entertainment industry and then promoted to governments around the world and being the necessary way to protect the status quo in a world that is changing to fast for many people – especially in the corporate world. Both here in Canada and in the U.S. this treaty will fundamentally change the way that copyright laws are written and policed – just as we are seeing in England with their Digital Economy Bill.

In an article published in the Yale Journal of International Law (PDF version) Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze wrote

In brief, the ACTA process has been deliberately more secretive than customary practices in international decision-making bodies to evade the debates about intellectual property (IP) at established multilateral institutions. The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all.

via Cory Doctorow

In Canada Professor Michael Geist; Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has been heavily involved in trying to keep this treaty in the public eye. You can read his work in this area here at his blog but he points to the spin that the organizations and governments involved in foisting this treaty on the world are putting around the secrecy.

In their opinion this secrecy is just normal business when working on large treaties like this but the facts; and history, tell a different story.

In the face of widespread criticism of the lack of ACTA transparency, participating governments and music industry lobbyists have claimed that the transparency issue is much ado about nothing.  As governments seek to keep relevant information secret, those same governments released a joint statement last week arguing that “it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation.”

It is important to emphatically state that this is simply not the case for many multilateral agreements and the activities of international organizations that typically serve as the forum for global agreement discussions.  U.S. NGO groups have made a strong case for how ACTA’s lack of transparency is out-of-step with many other global norm setting exercises.

Michael Masnick at Techdirt also has a good post where he examines this argument that secrecy is normal and that any open discussion about ACTA is nothing more than a distraction.

A third point raised is that this isn’t a “treaty” but a “sole executive agreement,” so we shouldn’t worry since it can’t change the law. Except, by categorizing it as such, it’s actually a loophole that could potentially take Congress out of the process of reviewing or approving anything that’s in the agreement, and then just wait for the “but we must live up to our international obligations” to start pouring out of lobbyists and industry lawyers’ mouths.

This isn’t a treat about securing copyrights for rights holders as much as it is a method by which the entertainment industry of the U.S. can exert a stranglehold on the Internet. James Love at Knowledge Ecology International has a list of who the White House shared the ACTA text with; under an NDA, but what is more interesting is seeing just who some of the corporations behind this push for the acceptance of ACTA are.

In this regard Michael Masnick has a list of entertainment companies that signed a letter that was sent to the government supporting ACTA; which considering that they helped draft the treaty shouldn’t be too surprising.

Advertising Photographers of America
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. (ASMP)
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI)
Commercial Photographers International
Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Evidence Photographers International Council
Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)
NBC Universal
News Corporation
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Stock Artists Alliance
Student Photographic Society
The Advertising Photographers of America
The Walt Disney Company
Time Warner, Inc.
Universal Music Group
Viacom Inc.
Warner Music Group

In combination these two seemingly disparate items might seem to be connected but the fact is that behind both of them are the powerful people in the entertainment industry that don’t want to boat rocked. In fact they are doing everything they can to get the boat back into dry dock and under lock and key.

We might like to believe that the Internet will always be open and free but the reality is that there are some strong forces at work that want to turn it into something totally different. It is my fear that with the secrecy surrounding things like ACTA and the Digital Economy Bill along with people’s seeming nonchalant attitudes we will end up with something totally different than we dream of.

That would be a sad day.

Related posts:

1. Secret ACTA International Copyright Treaty leaked to Wikileaks
2. Is there a global left wing conspiracy to kill the Internet?
3. Australian ISP iiNet sued over customer copyright infringement

Considering the fact that the US, and the rest of the world, is still trying to recover from a recession one has to wonder why a company still under government governorship hands over $1.95 million as a signing bonus to its new CFO Ross J. Kari.

Along with that he also received the following perks

These were among the tidbits that the folks over at footnoted.org found when they when through his employment contract that they had come across. As they also pointed out none of this was ever included in Freddie Mac’s press release about the appointment.

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See that slippery slope over there?

That’s the slope you will slide down President if you even consider any legislation to “rescue” the newspaper industry. It is a never ending slope that will morph into a bigger albatross around your neck than even the healthcare debate and the war in Afghanistan. With each of those two things there is a definite end point that will be reached.

The healthcare issue will either be solved or it will disappear into Congressional and Presidential history as yet another attempt as it did with Clinton. The war in Afghanistan will end at some point with either the total removal of troops due to political and public pressure or because of some type of victory – limited or otherwise.

With newspapers there is no endpoint other than withering on the vine. The industry is in a battle of Darwinian evolutionary change and no amount of ‘government’ intervention can change that. Even now predictions still suggest that the money drain isn’t slowing as the industry looks to an additional drop in advertising revenue by 25% in the third quarter.

In an interview with the editors of the Toledo Blade you said

"Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it’s paid for, is really a challenge," Mr. Obama said. "But it’s something that I think is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy."

It is not the responsibility of the government President Obama to codify into law that journalistic integrity, fact-based reporting be supported by an increasingly outmoded method of delivery. Because that is all newspapers are Mr. President – they are delivery system for something we have been doing for hundreds of years. From the Town Crier to the first newspapers printed to the revolution of the Internet we have had a basic need to share the events of the day – except now we can do it as it is actually happening.

If you are concerned about what is critical to the health of your democracy don’t look to businesses that are resistant to change to the point that they are willing to doom their profit machines to the trash heap. Instead look to those companies that want to find new economic models that will support them as we grow into a new world of information distribution. Democracy is only as strong as the people and companies that flourish under it. When democracy relies on support from business that are dying from internal rot it can become just as infected.

Part of that innovation that strengthens your democracy are the cornerstones of the new media: blogs, Twitter, Facebook and news organizations that are truly trying to come to grips with the news ways of distributing news. Yet as Michael O’Brien quotes you in a post you seem to think those things are less important than ‘traditional news’

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," he said.

I find this dichotomy of thinking hard to understand given that it was your use of these very tools and services that helped propel you into the White House. Yet you would have us believe that blogs aren’t capable of doing the same, or better, jabs as newspapers do. Michael Masnick from Techdirt eloquently provides a counter argument:

First, it seems odd to lump the medium in with a certain type of reporting. There are plenty of "real reporters" who do plenty of "serious fact-checking" within the blog world too. Blogs are just a publishing medium. Yes, because there’s a lower barrier to entry, you do end up with a much larger absolute number of bloggers, many of whom are just giving opinion. But the idea that there aren’t blogging reporters is pure folly. In fact, I’d argue that the serious blogs on certain subjects to a lot more to "put stories in context" than your average newspaper reporter, who writes up a quick take and moves on to the next big thing. Topic-specific blogs are often much more accurate, much more detailed, and much more willing to focus on context than newspaper reporting.

The idea that newspapers are some sort of paragon of virtue and independence is ridiculous as we have seen with major organizations being hit by plagiarism and increasing polarization. To suggest that just because a single individual who devotes their time and energy in a particular news niche is of any less value or brings less to the table than any news organization is wrong. Blogs and even services like Twitter are the beginnings of a new news distribution and a re-alignment of the economics surrounding the reporting and delivery of the news.

For too long now ‘traditional’ news media have behaved as if they have some iron grip on the news when in fact their head in the sand approach to new technology has only hastened their demise that as Jack Shafer suggests started happening before the “new media” of the Internet began hitting its stride.

Remember, the decline of newspapers is multifactorial, and it didn’t start yesterday. As early as 1992, Warren Buffett was counseling investors against newspapers, saying they had already lost their economic advantage. This was a full three or four years before the commercial World Wide Web took off.

Just as you campaign on the idea of “a coming change” so to must the news industry finally realize that no amount of government help, non-profit classification, or instituting paywalls is going to stop the coming change that will sweep them up as well. Just as there is suppose to be a separation between church and state there also needs to be a separation between government and journalism.

Journalism will always survive and will continue to a cornerstone of democracy as you phrase it. It will survive because it is an integral part of our DNA – the desire to collect and share information – to let our fellow citizens know what is happening in our world. That desire has nothing to do with archaic delivery methods and no amount of intervention will change that.

So Mr. President do yourself, us, and the industry a favor – stay out of the newspaper business.

Related posts:

1. Obama prepares ground for newspaper bailout at White House Correspondents Dinner
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Under the guise of Project Indect, a five year research program that includes: Police Service of Northern Ireland, computer scientists at York University, and fellow researchers in nine other European Union countries, The EU wants to develop “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behavior or violence”.

These programs are meant to act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and individual computers. The project has already received £10 million in funding from the EU and is a part of its ever expanding role in crime fighting, terrorism and managing travel of people. Already this year the EU has increased its budget in these areas by 13.5% or nearly £900 million.’

This is all suppose to help develop what the European Commission is referring to as a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU over the next five years.

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

It talks of the "construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive".

Source: Telegraph Online – EU funding ‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

The program isn’t without its detractors however. Among them is Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty a human rights group, and Stephen Booth, and analyst with European think tank Open Europe.

Chakrabarti considers the massive type of surveillance that Project Indect and Adabts – the acronym for Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior and Threats in crowed Spaces, a separately funded program by the EU to the tune of nearly £3 million so far – are sinister steps for any country to be taking. Chakrabarti added that this type of action is absolutely chilling consider the it is to include all European Union countries.

For Stephen Booth the scale is “Orwellian” to say the least.

According to the Open Europe think tank, the increased emphasis on co-operation and sharing intelligence means that European police forces are likely to gain access to sensitive information held by UK police, including the British DNA database. It also expects the number of UK citizens extradited under the controversial European Arrest Warrant to triple.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded "Orwellian" and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

"This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them," he said.

"The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked ‘is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?’"

Source: Telegraph Online – EU funding ‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

As well Open Europe believes that all this data collected by the likes of the Project Indect could be used by a little known EU agency called the EU Joint Situation Control (SitCen) which it believes is the beginnings of an EU secret service. It has been referred to by others as “Europe’s CIA”.

a big hat tip to papa

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In the past week unsolicited HP and Compaq (another HP brand) laptops have been showing up at various US Governement agencies, with about 5 laptops arriving at each location in West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, and Washington.

Now it has recently been learned that the gesture in at least three of those cases were made by an unscrupulous source using stolen credit cards.

The laptops were never used and in some cases were sent to local officials for investigation. While it appears they were delivered directly from HP some local law enforcement agencies are worried that malicious spyware may have been installed on the machines, spyware that in turn could be used to steal state secrets. [via Engadget]

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Either has somebody has a really big heart and is trying to help out cash strapped governors some free HP laptops or some creative soul is trying a new way to source government secrets. It turns out that officials in 10 states have received free laptops which needless to say has drawn the attention of State Police and the FBI.

In West Virginia laptops were received at the governor’s office and after checking their records to find that they hadn’t order them. State officials in Vermont say that they have received the same kind of unsolicited laptops.

The laptops sent to the Wyoming governor’s office arrived in two separate shipments on Aug. 3 and Aug. 6, according to Cara Eastwood, a spokeswoman for Governor Freudenthal.

"We received one package, opened it and realized that it was an error since no one in our office had ordered them," she said. "The next day we received another package. At this point we realized that they needed to be turned over to law enforcement."

Although there is no evidence that the computers contain malicious code, HP confirmed Thursday that there have been several such orders and that they have been linked to fraud. "HP is aware that fraudulent state government orders recently have been placed for small amounts of HP equipment," spokeswoman Pamela Bonney said in an e-mail message. "HP took prompt corrective action to address the fraudulent orders and is working with law enforcement personnel on a criminal investigation."

Source: The Standard – FBI investigating laptops sent to US governors

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I just saw this flash across my Twitter feed an thought it would be interesting for those Facebookers out there who want to keep up with what is happening at the White House. It appears that you can now watch live feeds from the Obama White House.

The app included the embedded Live Streams video from the White House as well as a chat area for either everyone watching along with you or just your friends.

You can find the White House Live app here – enjoy

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Which ever way we turn we are seeing the hand of technology and the Web effecting change in ways we might not have considered even five years ago. Communities are being built on Facebook that have been responsible for both corporate and government policies. News as it is happening is coming at us as fast as Twitter or Friendfeed can get it to us – usually within seconds of it being written.

Technology is returning the power of information to the people rather than consolidated corporations, of government agencies is some restrictive countries, who have for many years claimed sole ownership. We are seeing a world where technology and the human based power of the Web are saying that we have a voice in how, where and when we chose to get our news and information.

Out on the fringes though we are seeing the beginnings of yet another change, and maybe an ever more powerful one. What we are seeing is a shift in the politics of government, not just in policies but in who is taking part in making those policies in the first place.

As with all major groundswells of change this one was laughed of as being just a silly idea that would go nowhere. Then the Swedish Pirate Party won 2 (second one will come after the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified) seats in the European Parliament, which for a party that was only found a short three years ago, 2006, is pretty incredible.

Now we see that Switzerland will also be fielding a Pirate Party (Parti Pirate Suisse) of their own in an upcoming election. These two countries are not alone as there are affiliate parties popping up all around the world.

Don’t mistake this just as a bunch of young rabble rousers looking to shake up their countries politics just so they can change the laws and keep getting copyrighted goods for free. At its root this “Pirate Party” movement is more about the equality of technology for everyone. It is about telling the old guard that technology is just the money making plaything of the rich and powerful in order to maintain their grip on that money and power.

As Rick Falkvinge, Sweden’s leader of the country’s Pirate Party, said when asked about the win

“Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it,” Falkvinge said. “This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it’s time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples’ lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities’ mass-surveillance,” he added.

Source: Torrent Freak

We have a generation of young people very quickly coming up to the age where people start thinking about becoming politically active. These young people aren’t just happy with sticking with the old way of doing things, they want to make changes to how their world is governed and their place in that world.

Previously to the incredible rise of the Web and now Social Media it was difficult to become involved and actually see changes being made within one’s lifetime. Now though this is no longer the case. An example of this is that the Pirate Party has been active for less time that the Green Party (those government parties based around environmental issues) and yet has achieved more. In Sweden alone the party was responsible for an increase in voter turnout – something that no other party can claim.

The turnout at the elections is 43 percent, a little higher than the at the 2004 elections. This would mean that roughly 200,000 Swedes have voted for the Pirate Party. This is a huge increase compared to the national elections of 2006 where the party got 34,918 votes.

Source: Torrent Freak

Just as the world of old media has, and continues to, change so will our governments. As our use of technology and everything Web related becomes more ingrained in our society the bigger the chance of the way we are governed. As our children grow and discover the power that they really have over their place in society and the growing power of their voices because of technology and the Web the bigger the change will be.

I would wager that even as soon as ten years from now a technology based government powered by the voices of our children will be more of the norm rather than just a one off called the Pirate Party. We’ll see who will be doing the laughing then.

[a big hat tip to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing]

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While the reports of data breaches are probably only a fraction of the real number of times your personal data has been stolen from companies the fact that it happens is almost an accepted fact. However there is a far worse type of use of your personal data that we don’t hear about, except maybe from those “kooks”. It is also the scenario that many security minded computer experts worry about as we try to move more and more of our data into those large corporate databases in the sky.

Whether it being health companies turning down applicants based on databases searches or data sharing with other companies we can never be sure that our personal data isn’t being misused. Now before your start making up that tinfoil hat for me to wear you might be wise to first take into account a news story out of Vancouver, British Columbia.

It appears that the province’s own insurance company, Insurance Corporation of B.C. (ICBC), has been found to be checking the accident claims histories of jurors in a recent civil court case. This checking of jurors is a total breach of the province’s freedom of information and privacy laws. It has also prompted the judge, Justice Malcolm Macaulay, to schedule a special hearing with ICBC’s corporate lawyer and the defense lawyer. At question here according to the judge is whether ICBC has done the same thing in the past and why it was even doing it in the first place.

On the fourth day of the trial, with the jury absent, the judge was told that a settlement had been reached.

What came next, however, staggered the judge.

Scott Macfarlane, corporate counsel for the insurance company, asked the judge for permission to address the jury, saying he wanted to tell them that some of their claims histories had been disclosed to defence counsel.

When the judge asked if it was standard practice for ICBC to check jurors’ driving records, Macfarlane said it was the only incidence he was aware of, but he promised the court there would be a review of the corporation’s files.

Source: Vancouver Sun

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Hurricane Katrina is now five years into our past and yet the cost in terms of being a social disaster and human tragedy continues on through until today and shows no sign of changing. While the hurricane itself was a brief show of strength by Mother Nature the cost in terms of lost human dignity is still climbing. In the months immediately following the hurricane the relief efforts were fraught with scandal and some of the worst examples of greed one could imagine.

Granted some of that greed and abuse happened on both sides, those needing help and those providing that help, but that won’t change how history looks upon how we treated the survivors of one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history. Now though is it only a faded memory of powerful images that flashed across our screen. Yet there are still people, mostly the very poor, who are being victimized day after day even now.

Stories of contractors who either did shoddy below standards work or just left once they had the money, to FEMA official who say one thing to the press and something totally different to the affected people are told to whoever will listen. Most of the time though it seems that no-one wants to hear because nothing changes, except maybe for the worse

Once more this horrendous treatment of Katrina survivors gets front page press not because of changes being made but because they are once more being victimized by the very agency tasked with helping them. As of the end of May FEMA will be taking back the trailers provided to survivors following Katrina, following many delays mind you. For the 3,000 people currently living in these trailers they are the only home that they have, or will have. In turn FEMA will be either selling off the trailers for a fraction of what they are worth or – scrapping them.

Of those in trailers, more than 2,000 are homeowners who fear that the progress they are making in rebuilding will come to a halt if their trailers are taken.

“They had helped me out up until this point, and I couldn’t believe that they suddenly decided, no, we’re not going to let you finish the house, we’re just going to take the trailer, and you can sit here on an empty lot,” said Philipp Seelig, 70, a retired handyman. He said he was about two months from being able to move back into his duplex in the Broadmoor neighborhood. A grant to elevate his house to the required height did not come until December.

Source: Shaila Dewan – New York Times

As we head into another hurricane season I can only hope that we don’t see a repeat of that deadliest season but given the continuing tragedy that is the Katrina aftermath I don’t hold out much hope.

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What strikes me as rather strange is that all you are hearing is the sound of crickets in the tech blogosphere, or even mainstream media for that matter, over this announcement from Google. As it is I only heard about this from reading a post about on Silicon Valley Watcher where Tom Foremski makes an interesting point

[…] this is the first time Google has ever done this.

It’s corporate philosophy states: "…we have a responsibility to protect your privacy and security." And its top executives and representatives have often spoken about Google’s commitment to privacy and free speech on the Internet.

What’s the point in Google portraying itself as company with strong principles when it won’t stand up and defend them? What would it be losing if it refused?

Now mind you the fact that the South Korean government is promising Google 1.2 billion yen (about $892,000USD) for research and development when the company enters the South Korean market just might have something to do with it. Seems like a pretty cheap price though for corporate integrity.

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Not happy with pushing the EU Data Retention Directive which would make ISPs store communication data for 12 months Vernon Coaker, the U.K. Home Office security minister, now wants all social networking sites and IM messaging service monitored as well. The Interception Monderisation Programme (IMP) is the government proposal for legislation to use mass monitoring of traffic data as an antiterrorism tool.

The IMP has two objectives; that the government use deep packet inspection to monitor the Web communications of all U.K. citizens; and that all of the traffic data relating to those communications are stored in a centralized government database. The problem is that social networking sites aren’t covered by the directive

"Social-networking sites such as MySpace or Bebo are not covered by the directive," said Coaker, speaking at a meeting of the House of Commons Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee. "That is one reason why the government (is) looking at what we should do about the Intercept(ion) Modernisation Programme, because there are certain aspects of communications which are not covered by the directive."

Source: Security – CNET News

There is some opposition to this move but given the country’s predilection to treating everyone as a subject of surveillance it is hard to see this not happening.

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I don’t imagine that Chris Paget is the most popular person with the State Department or the proponents of RFID enhanced passports and driver’s licences. Especially since he has proven that with as little as $250 worth of off the shelf components and some time driving around you to can become an identity farmer.

The device which Chris built in his spare time operates out of his car and contains everything needed to sniff out and then clone RFID (radio frequency identification tags) tags. In a recent example he drove around for 20 minutes in downtown San Francisco and successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners.

"It’s one thing to say that something can be done, it’s another thing completely to actually do it," Paget said in explaining why he built the device. "It’s mainly to defeat the argument that you can’t do it in the real world, that there’s no real-world attack here, that it’s all theoretical."

Source: The Register

Here is  the video showing his little excursion

Currently the range of Paget’s device is about 30 feet but he says with a little modification it could read the tags up to a mile away. Apparently the Feds are to concerned with this as they say they have no plans to overhaul the technology being used. So not only do we have to worry about excessive government intrusion with this new technology but we also have to worry about our identity being stolen.

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One of the areas where this is easily abused is in the ability of government agencies to spy on our daily lives and our communication with others. Whether it be making deals with telecommunication companies like AT&T or place people with opposing political beliefs on watch lists we will find abuses. One such case has come to light and as usual it involves a government agency operating outside of its mandate.

According  to a report coming out of ABC the NSA has been routinely listening in on Americans’ phone calls in Iraq as they call back to the US. The people being targeted include government officials, journalists, aid workers and the soldiers who are putting their lives on the line every day to supposedly keep their country safe. The problem with this is twofold with the first being that the NSA isn’t suppose to listen in on any American in any fashion unless they get clearance from high ranking officials. The second problem is that Congress has continually been reassured that the NSA was not spying on Americans when the opposite seems to be the rule of thumb.

As bad as this is what is even more disgusting is that according the ABC it is a regular thing for NSA monitors to share the more private moments between the Americans they are spying on

 

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

 

“Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News.

 

I find this kind of thing totally repugnant and as Ryan Singel from the Threat Level blog says in a post about this

If the allegations are true, they show that when the government secretly tossed aside the decades-old credo that the NSA doesn’t spy on Americans, it did not simply make one or two exceptions — it shredded the it.

Yup that good ol’ Patriot Act has done a lot good eh.

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