Privacy Digest

Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans - Tonight on Nightline - Via ABC News: Nightline :

U.S. Officers' "Phone Sex" Intercepted; Senate Demanding Answers

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.  read more »

The Presidency & the Courts [Ashbrook Center & Federalist Soc.] - Via JURIST - Video Monitor:

Conference on the Presidency and the Courts with keynote address by President George W. Bush, Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs & Federalist Society, October 6, 2008. Microsoft Silverlight, 136 minutes. Watch recorded video.

(Read Original Article - Via JURIST - Video Monitor.)

Supreme Court Review - Via JURIST - Video Monitor:

Professors Chris Schroeder, Curt Bradley, Guy Charles, and Ernie Young reviewed the most significant decisions of the past term of the U.S. Supreme Court., Duke University School of Law, September 17, 2008. RealPlayer, 49 minutes. Watch recorded video.

(Read Original Article - Via JURIST - Video Monitor.)

Salon Radio: ACLU's Mike German on new FBI spying powers - Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald:

Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced that the FBI -- with four months left in the Bush administration -- was adopting new regulations for itself which would vastly increase its power to investigate and spy on American citizens, on U.S. soil, even in the absence of any suspicion that the targeted citizen is involved in any wrongdoing. My guest today on Salon Radio is former long-time FBI agent and current ACLU Policy Counsel Michael German to discuss those new regulations, why they are both so dangerous and counter-productive, the ways in which FBI Director Robert Mueller is spouting clearly misleading statements to justify them, and what the prospects are for stopping their implementation. Speaking about these new regulations, German said in the interview:  read more »

YouTube Anti-Scientology Takedowns: Good News, Bad News - Via EFF.org Updates:

Now that the dust has settled on the anti-Scientology video takedown controversy, it's time to take stock. For those of you who missed this one: on September 4th and 5th, hundreds and possibly thousands of videos critical of the Church of Scientology were taken down as a result of DMCA notices reportedly sent by by American Rights Counsel, Dr. Oliver Schaper, the Schaper Company, Media House Enterprises, and ContentFactory America. It rapidly became clear that these entities did not hold the copyrights to the materials they claimed to be infringed, including footage from a Clearwater City Commission meeting and a man-on-the-street interview. In addition, many of these videos were obvious fair uses, such as independent news reports.

Here’s the good news: YouTube quickly realized something was fishy, and began investigating. Within days, YouTube suspended the accounts that had sent out the allegedly fraudulent DMCA takedown notices, reinstated the accounts that had been suspended for multiple allegations of copyright infringement, and put most of the videos back up on YouTube, all without waiting to receive DMCA counter-notices from YouTube users who had had their videos taken down.  read more »

Ed Felten & David Robinson - Center for Information Technology Policy - Via IT Conversations:

Information technologies weave their way into every aspect of our personal, professional, and civic lives. There's a growing need for informed public discussion of their public policy implications. Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is one emerging forum for that conversation. Ed Felten and David Robinson speak with host Jon Udell to explore the goals and activities of the CITP.

(Read Original Article - Via IT Conversations.)

Educate Your Peers About Net Neutrality: Produce A Radio Show - Via Threat Level:

If you're passionate about the issue of net neutrality and think MSM hasn't done a good job of covering it, here's your chance to influence the debate: Tell New York City public radio show producers who they should talk to, what they should read, and how they should frame the discussion.

WNYC's influential morning radio show host Brian Lehrer is crowdsourcing his Friday editions through the show's "30 Issues in Thirty Days" wiki.

This Friday's edition will focus on Barack Obama and John McCain's positions on net neutrality.  read more »

Mike German Talks About the Updated Attorney General Guidelines for the FBI - Via The American Civil Liberties Union:

The FBI is overhauling five types of existing guidelines. Under the new guidelines, a persons race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. The guidelines would also give the FBI the ability to use intrusive investigative techniques before public demonstrations. The rewritten guidelines have been drafted in a way to give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized threat is enough to use certain techniques.Visit www.aclu.org/podcasts for all the latest audio from the ACLU.

(Read Original Article - Via The American Civil Liberties Union.)

Lawrence Lessig - Coding Against Corruption - Via IT Conversations:

Government corruption affects all aspects of society. At the 2008 O'Reilly ETech Conference, Lawrence Lessig discusses government corruption, especially in the United States Congress. What does government get right, wrong, and where does dependence compromise effective government? Also, Lessig announces a new project designed to signal congress' support for reform, called Change Congress.

(Read Original Article - Via IT Conversations.)

Federal Bureau of Investigation Oversight 281139-1 - Via C-SPAN Video Library:

FBI Director Robert Mueller outlines new surveillance proposals to help investigators track security threats as he answers questions before the House Judiciary Cmte. The announcement of the new guidelines, made on Friday, was met with criticism by civil liberties groups but are expected to be finalized and fully implemented in the coming weeks.

(Read Original Article - Via C-SPAN Video Library.)

UPDATE(2008/09/16 - 4:00 PM: I've been trying to give the archive of this session a listen, but it seems that there are large gaps in the audio. If you can read lips, the video is fine. Hopefully this will be fixed by C-Span at some point. I'd be interested in hearing your experience with this.

Salon Radio: ACLU's Caroline Frederickson - Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald:

My guest today is Caroline Frederickson, the ACLU's National Legislative Director. We discuss the virtually complete invisibility of civil liberties and constitutional issues in the presidential campaign, as well as the ACLU's new campaign to change that (which you can join here). Frederickson also provides the latest updates on the ACLU's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

The discussion is roughly 25 minutes. It can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below, and a transcript is here.

It is common for people to assert, without citation to any polling data, that Americans don't care about civil liberties protections or that they sanction abridgments of core constitutional liberties if those abridgments can be remotely justified by appeals to greater security.  read more »

Scenes from St. Paul -- Democracy Now's Amy Goodman arrested - Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald:

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI - Update VII - Update VIII)

Following up on this weekend's extreme raids on various homes, at least 250 people were arrested here today in St. Paul, Minnesota. Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 -- with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured. I'll have video of the day's events posted shortly.

Perhaps most extraordinarily, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now -- the radio and TV broadcaster who has been a working journalist for close to 20 years -- was arrested on the street and charged with "conspiracy to riot." Audio of her arrest, which truly shocked and angered the crowd of observers, is here. I just attended a Press Conference with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Police Chief John M. Harrington and -- after they boasted of how "restrained" their police actions were -- asked about the journalists and lawyers who had been detained and/or arrested both today and over the weekend. They said they wouldn't give any information about journalists who had been arrested today, though they said they believed that "one journalist" had been, and that she "was seemingly a participant in the riots, not simply a non-participant." I'll have video of the Press Conference posted shortly.  read more »

Mythbusters Gagged: Credit Card Companies Kill Episode Exposing RFID Security Flaws - Via Consumerist:

Credit card companies successfully nixed a Mythbusters segment exposing RFID's security flaws, according to Arbiter of Truth and Mythbusters co-host, Adam Savage.

Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They were way, way outgunned and they absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it.

Editor: Interesting video with the article. Go to original site for that [...]

(Read Original Article - Via Consumerist .)

Google, EFF Applaud Veoh DMCA Ruling - Via Threat Level:

Online video sharing service Veoh scored a major victor in a copyright case when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a gay porn distributor claiming the upstart's site facilitated the infringement of its copyrighted works.

The case, brought by IO Group, is similar to lawsuits by other rights holders against YouTube, MySpace, MP3tunes and others. The allegations are  basically the same: they claim the sites facilitate wanton copyright infringement.

But this is the first lawsuit to be concluded at the trial-court level, and the outcome favored the file sharing site.

In dismissing the case Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Howard Lloyd of San Jose ruled (.pdf) that San Diego-based Veoh -- financially backed by Time Warner and Michael Eisner – complied with the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called safe harbor provisions.

While the first-of-its-kind decision is not binding on other courts, YouTube chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, said  "it is great to see the court confirm that the DMCA protects services like Youtube that follow the law and respect copyrights."  read more »

David Isenberg - Network Neutrality is Not Enough - Via IT Conversations:

During past few years we have witnessed a drastic reduction in competition for network services in the US. David Isenberg, author of the essay "The Rise of the Stupid Network", a paper that shook the telecom world in 1997 and continues to have an impact today, puts the blame squarely on decisions made in Washington DC. This short but pointed talk discusses how this trend is likely to stifle future innovation if it isn't stopped, and what can be done about it.

(Read Original Article - Via IT Conversations.)

Video: IOC backs off DMCA take-down for Tibet protest | The Industry Standard - Via The Industry Standard:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has backed away from a DMCA take-down request to remove a YouTube video of a Tibetan protest at the Chinese consulate in New York.

The video in question (see below) was clearly not an example of copyright infringement. YouTube and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) both pushed back against the IOC, which then withdrew their complaint. As the EFF notes, however, the inaccurate title of the video was "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony," so in all likelihood, the IOC was filing DMCA notices for Olympics content, which has been springing up on YouTube faster than they can take it down.  read more »