Bush Moves To Quell Privacy Concerns
“Alex Joel’s appointment to his new role as U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence is one of several steps the Bush administration is taking to soothe concerns about civil liberties. Under siege for compromising privacy rights, most recently because of a National Security Agency program to monitor communications between people in the U.S. and overseas terrorist suspects, the administration is creating several privacy-related posts at government agencies.
“In February, the Justice Department named Jane Horvath its first chief privacy and civil-liberties officer, making her responsible for developing and ensuring compliance with privacy and civil-liberties policies, specifically as they relate to counterterrorism and law-enforcement efforts. The Department of Homeland Security splits the job between a chief privacy officer and an officer for civil rights and civil liberties. Mr. Joel’s role is even broader because numerous intelligence agencies report up to the director of National Intelligence.
“While even critics of the administration applaud the effort, they question what authority these officials have. Unlike inspectors general at federal agencies, these privacy officers lack the subpoena power necessary to conduct investigations and don’t report to Congress.”
Anne Marie Squeo. New U.S. Post Aims to Guard Public’s Privacy. The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Yahoo! Accused of Caving to Chinese Pressure
“Third time unlucky? Yahoo!, like several other giants of the Web, has seen its share of criticism about the way it juggles both its Chinese business and requests from Beijing. Now the group led by Chief Executive Terry Semel is in the thick of it again, and this for the third time. A free press advocacy group has published a verdict from Chinese authorities that may implicate Yahoo! as having provided evidence for the Communist state to prosecute one of its users for subversion.
“Jiang Lijun, 39, is serving a four-year prison term after being convicted in November 2003. The verdict published on the Reporters Without Borders Web site and translated by the Dui Hua Foundation said that Jiang Lijun had ‘used the Internet… to promote so-called Western-style democracy,’ and ‘advocate that our country implement a multiparty system.'”
See also:
Reporters Without Borders. Yahoo! Implicated in Third Cyberdissident Trial — U.S. Company’s Collaboration With Chinese Courts Highlighted in Jiang Lijun Case. April 19, 2006.
Associated Press. Group: Yahoo Helped China, Again. Wired News. April 19, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Auto Makers Trademark the Alphabet
“For decades auto makers preferred to give comprehensible names to their cars. To lend an air of prestige, Lincoln called its top-of-the-line model the Town Car. Cadillac was already playing that game, with models including the DeVille and Eldorado. But in the past several years, car companies, particularly luxury auto makers, have favored combinations of letters and numbers, like the BMW X5 and Lexus LS 450. Their thinking is that this build the image of a whole brand, not just one model.
“But with a finite number of letters available, and some of them way sexier than others, car makers find it more and more difficult to think up letter combinations they can call their own and that haven’t been take by products in other industries.”
Gina Chon. “Henry Ford’s Model A Would Be at Home in Car-Name Game.” The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2006. p. A1.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
PATRIOT Act Used As Pretext For Photo Ban
“Since 2003, the NYPD has been filming protesters at political demonstrations, regardless of whether anything illegal’s going on. City lawyers were in court last month defending the practice, arguing that what happens in public view is fair game.
“But police evidently aren’t so keen on surveillance when the cameras are turned on them — particularly when those cameras show them abusing free-street-parking privileges.
“On March 27, two volunteers from the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives (TA) were detained for taking pictures of police officers’ private cars, which were parked on the sidewalk outside the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown. The volunteers say they were held and questioned at the precinct for about 20 minutes and instructed to erase the pictures.
“A researcher for the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, who took pictures for a survey on TA’s behalf, says the officers listed several reasons they could not photograph cops’ personal vehicles—including concerns that if the license plate numbers were published online, gang members could track police to their homes. And he mentioned the Patriot Act.”
Sarah Ferguson. Watching the Detectives. The Village Voice. April 10, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Will Copyright Office Address Rootkits Via DMCA Rulemaking?
“When Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, it threw one small bone to those who feared the new law imperiled fair use rights. It mandated the U.S. Copyright Office to conduct a rulemaking process every three years to study and correct any adverse effects the law might have. And since we all know that the DMCA has had little but adverse effects ever since, it certainly leads one to wonder when the Copyright Office is going to do something about it.
“Although the DMCA and some grudging exceptions produced in the Copyright Office’s 2000 and 2003 rulemaking do have some limited protections for security researchers, Princeton University professor Ed Felten and doctoral candidate Alex Halderman are asking the Copyright Office for a clear rule this time. The current rulemaking isn’t first time the Copyright Office has been asked in its Congressionally mandated role to fix the DMCA in order to protect the researchers who are trying to protect us.”
The Gripe Ling Web Log. How the Copyright Office Protected Sony’s Rootkit. April 14, 2006.
See also:
Electronic Frontier Foundation. Unintended Consequences: Seven Years Under the DMCA. April 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Freedom to Tinker Is Issue in French iTunes Law
“Apple Computer has captured the lion share of the global digital music market through its ubiquitous iPod and hugely popular iTunes download service. However, many consumers have been reticent to take the plunge due to compatibility concerns.
“Apple, along with rivals such as Sony and Dell, use proprietary formats that limit consumers’ ability to easily transfer songs between competing devices. Some music fans are fearful that their investment in digital music files will permanently be consigned to a single device that may become obsolete.
“Emboldened by consumer groups, the French parliament recently attracted Apple’s wrath when it sought to address those concerns by passing legislation mandating the interoperability of digital products.
“Many commentators have panned the legislation, suggesting that Apple might choose to exit the French market altogether rather than comply with the law. The French parliament may have indeed gone too far since it could likely have achieved the same goal by merely establishing the right of competitors to tinker with Apple’s technology so that they could develop their own compatible devices.”
Michael Geist. Rights and Wrongs of the Digital Age. BBC News. April 18, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
U.S. Mulling Mandatory ISP Data Retention Laws
“The explosive idea of forcing Internet providers to record their customers’ online activities for future police access is gaining ground in state capitols and in Washington, D.C. Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate.
“Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months. And some proposals would require providers to retain data that ordinarily never would have been kept at all. The European Parliament’s vote in December for a data retention requirement that seems to have attracted broader interest inside the United States.”
Declan McCullagh. ISP Snooping Gaining Support. News.com. April 14, 2006.
See also:
U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Legislative Affairs. Draft Legislation: Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006. (.pdf) April 20, 2006.
Anne Broache. U.S. Attorney General Calls for ‘Reasonable’ Data Retention. News.com. April 20, 2006.
Center for Democracy & Technology. Digital Search & Seizure. (.pdf) Feb. 22, 2006.
Jo Best. Europe Passes Tough New Data Retention Laws. News.com. December 14, 2005.
Declan McCullagh. Your ISP As Net Watchdog. News.com. June 16, 2005.
State of Colorado. A Bill for An Act Concerning Child Exploitation Offenses, And Making An Appropriation In Connection Therewith. (.pdf)
U.S. Code Annotated. Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Record Access (18 U.S.C.A. sec. 2703). (Requires Internet service providers to preserve any data “record” for 90 days.)
Updates:
Declan McCullagh. Congress May Consider Mandatory ISP Snooping. News.com. April 28, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
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