ACLU Lens: Supreme Court Finds Ashcroft Cannot Be Held Responsible for Illegal Detention of U.S. Citizen

Today the Supreme Court ruled in Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd that former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be held responsible for the wrongful arrest and detention of U.S. citizen Abdullah al-Kidd under the material witness law. The ACLU represented al-Kidd before the Supreme Court in March 2011, charging that al-Kidd’s arrest was part of a pattern of pretextual material witness arrests that occurred after 9/11, pursuant to a nationwide policy instituted by Ashcroft.


The federal material witness statute allows law enforcement to detain a witness whose testimony prosecutors believe is material at a criminal trial if it believes that witness won't testify voluntarily. Al-Kidd was arrested and detained under horrible conditions, ostensibly so he'd testify as a material witness in the trial of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, who attended the same university as al-Kidd and was charged with visa fraud. Al-Kidd was never called to testify in the case or charged with a crime.

Prior to 9/11, the material witness law was used sparingly to ensure witnesses would be available to testify in criminal cases. After 9/11, Ashcroft retooled the law to allow the government to arrest and detain individuals for whom they lacked probable cause to charge with a crime. Our lawsuit charged this Ashcroft policy violates fundamental constitutional principles and al-Kidd was a victim of that policy.
Lee Gelernt, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said in a statement today:

The Court has unfortunately let Attorney General Ashcroft off the hook, but half of the justices who participated in today’s decision expressed real questions about how the government used the material witness statute in al-Kidd’s case. Our hope is that those questions will lead to a serious examination moving forward of the use of the statute as a tool for preventative detention.

Cyber Combat: Act of War

Pentagon Sets Stage for U.S. to Respond to Computer Sabotage With Military Force

By SIOBHAN GORMAN And JULIAN E. BARNES

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact.

The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the U.S. can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military.

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence." If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation.

The War on Cyber Attacks

Attacks of varying severity have rattled nations in recent years.

June 2009: First version of Stuxnet virus starts spreading, eventually sabotaging Iran's nuclear program. Some experts suspect it was an Israeli attempt, possibly with American help.

November 2008: A computer virus believed to have originated in Russia succeeds in penetrating at least one classified U.S. military computer network.

August 2008: Online attack on websites of Georgian government agencies and financial institutions at start of brief war between Russia and Georgia.

May 2007: Attack on Estonian banking and government websites occurs that is similar to the later one in Georgia but has greater impact because Estonia is more dependent on online banking.

The Pentagon's document runs about 30 pages in its classified version and 12 pages in the unclassified one. It concludes that the Laws of Armed Conflict—derived from various treaties and customs that, over the years, have come to guide the conduct of war and proportionality of response—apply in cyberspace as in traditional warfare, according to three defense officials who have read the document. The document goes on to describe the Defense Department's dependence on information technology and why it must forge partnerships with other nations and private industry to protect infrastructure.

The strategy will also state the importance of synchronizing U.S. cyber-war doctrine with that of its allies, and will set out principles for new security policies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization took an initial step last year when it decided that, in the event of a cyber attack on an ally, it would convene a group to "consult together" on the attacks, but they wouldn't be required to help each other respond. The group hasn't yet met to confer on a cyber incident.

Pentagon officials believe the most-sophisticated computer attacks require the resources of a government. For instance, the weapons used in a major technological assault, such as taking down a power grid, would likely have been developed with state support, Pentagon officials say.

The move to formalize the Pentagon's thinking was borne of the military's realization the U.S. has been slow to build up defenses against these kinds of attacks, even as civilian and military infrastructure has grown more dependent on the Internet. The military established a new command last year, headed by the director of the National Security Agency, to consolidate military network security and attack efforts.

The Pentagon itself was rattled by the 2008 attack, a breach significant enough that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs briefed then-President George W. Bush. At the time, Pentagon officials said they believed the attack originated in Russia, although didn't say whether they believed the attacks were connected to the government. Russia has denied involvement.

The Rules of Armed Conflict that guide traditional wars are derived from a series of international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions, as well as practices that the U.S. and other nations consider customary international law. But cyber warfare isn't covered by existing treaties. So military officials say they want to seek a consensus among allies about how to proceed.

"Act of war" is a political phrase, not a legal term, said Charles Dunlap, a retired Air Force Major General and professor at Duke University law school. Gen. Dunlap argues cyber attacks that have a violent effect are the legal equivalent of armed attacks, or what the military calls a "use of force."

"A cyber attack is governed by basically the same rules as any other kind of attack if the effects of it are essentially the same," Gen. Dunlap said Monday. The U.S. would need to show that the cyber weapon used had an effect that was the equivalent of a conventional attack.

James Lewis, a computer-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has advised the Obama administration, said Pentagon officials are currently figuring out what kind of cyber attack would constitute a use of force. Many military planners believe the trigger for retaliation should be the amount of damage—actual or attempted—caused by the attack.

For instance, if computer sabotage shut down as much commerce as would a naval blockade, it could be considered an act of war that justifies retaliation, Mr. Lewis said. Gauges would include "death, damage, destruction or a high level of disruption" he said.

Culpability, military planners argue in internal Pentagon debates, depends on the degree to which the attack, or the weapons themselves, can be linked to a foreign government. That's a tricky prospect at the best of times.

The brief 2008 war between Russia and Georgia included a cyber attack that disrupted the websites of Georgian government agencies and financial institutions. The damage wasn't permanent but did disrupt communication early in the war.

A subsequent NATO study said it was too hard to apply the laws of armed conflict to that cyber attack because both the perpetrator and impact were unclear. At the time, Georgia blamed its neighbor, Russia, which denied any involvement.

Much also remains unknown about one of the best-known cyber weapons, the Stuxnet computer virus that sabotaged some of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. While some experts suspect it was an Israeli attack, because of coding characteristics, possibly with American assistance, that hasn't been proven. Iran was the location of only 60% of the infections, according to a study by the computer security firm Symantec. Other locations included Indonesia, India, Pakistan and the U.S.

Officials from Israel and the U.S. have declined to comment on the allegations.

Defense officials refuse to discuss potential cyber adversaries, although military and intelligence officials say they have identified previous attacks originating in Russia and China. A 2009 government-sponsored report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that China's People's Liberation Army has its own computer warriors, the equivalent of the American National Security Agency.

That's why military planners believe the best way to deter major attacks is to hold countries that build cyber weapons responsible for their use. A parallel, outside experts say, is the George W. Bush administration's policy of holding foreign governments accountable for harboring terrorist organizations, a policy that led to the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

<"Anything we don't like" is an act of war, thereby "justifying" torture and any other action we choose to take... thus sprak the ultimate evil.>

Tunisia bans all pornographic sites

Geoff Duncan

Tunisia might be a fledgling democracy after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stepped down in January following mass demonstrations and riots, but the country is still trying to find a balance between the power of modern technology and traditional values. According to Tunisian media, a court has ordered the Tunisian Internet Agency to block access too all sites with pornographic and adult content, following a lawsuit that argued the sites were contrary to Muslim values and posed a danger to Tunisian youth.

Under the previous regime, Tunisia operated an extensive Internet censorship program that blocked access to many sites and services. That censorship ended with the overthrow of the regime in January. However, if the current court order is upheld, it will mark the second time Tunisia has enacted Internet censorship since January. Earlier this month, a military tribunal also ordered the Tunisian Internet Agency to block access to specific sites and Facebook profiles.

The majority of Internet traffic in Tunisia is handled by a single ISP, providing a single control point at which URLs and other specific resources can be blocked.

According Tunisian Business News, seven of the top 100 sites visited by Tunisians since January are pornographic sites.

After January’s “Jasmine Revolution,” noted Tunisian blogger Slim Amamou had been named junior minister for youth in the country’s new interim government; however, he resigned this week, criticizing the country’s Internet censorship.

Twitter's 'landmark' court ruling: Why British free speech is over

By Zack Whittaker

Editorial: The conflict between privacy and freedom of speech continues, one will always win: privacy, leaving a trail of gagging court orders behind it.

My home, the United Kingdom, no longer has free speech. Questionably, without an equivalent of the First Amendment, I am not sure we ever did.

As the United Kingdom struggles to deal with the conflict between freedom of speech and the laws on privacy, privacy will innately win. One is more potent than the other, and as privacy is seemingly only a mechanism for the wealthy to invoke, the rest of us have to face the fact that freedom of speech comes second to the injunction-ridden culture we have found ourselves in.

A local council in England has taken Twitter to court in the United States in a bid to reveal the name of a tweeter, who has been accused of making libellous statements.

The court forced Twitter into handing over the names of users who had not only been directly implicated — one of the council’s own councillors, but also the names of many others who have contacted him using the social networking site.

Twitter had however, as previously stated by European boss Tony Wang, informed the user in question that court action was to be taken against him.

But as the councillor in the centre of the furore chose not to present himself in court, Twitter had no choice but to hand over the data.

Only last week, it was discussed that ‘CTB’, now known as Ryan Giggs as the soccer player who took out a super-injunction to prevent an affair from reaching the press, would have had to head to a Californian court to discover the names of Twitter users who broke the injunction.

This is not a ‘landmark’ ruling. Governments through the legal system force organisations into handing over dozens all the way through to thousands of individual’s information each year.

Many have argued against the Telegraph who reported this as a landmark ruling, but declined to mention that the councillor had not chosen to fight the legal action.

But what is not mentioned, regardless of how in-depth news coverage has gone into this, is the pressure it adds to the British legal system and the reflexive privacy versus privacy laws, which for now there is little but court-subjectivity to reign over whether one can be protected or not.

There is something tainted about a council of local government applying to a courthouse in another legal jurisdiction. Not only is it subversive and unorthodox in its very nature, it puts both legal systems in disrepute for the sender to deem their own jurisdiction as ineffective, and the other as legislatively maniacal.

For me, it feels as though this local council has wedged two fingers up at the British legal system, to fight on the home territory for where a company is based: the United States, California in particular.

However, Twitter’s move to London would make the legal tussles far easier to deal with, with British High Court judgements having to be complied with. Whether the jurisdiction of Twitter’s head office in the United States will have any inference on how effective these judgements are, it is yet to be seen.

Super-injunctions themselves are one of the most powerful acts of legislation in the United Kingdom; not determined by Parliament as it should, but by the courts, which should only have the power to amend and sanction. But these injunctions are being undermined by popular technological culture.

I find it oddly ironic that I should dedicate a year of my life constructing the argument that European data is susceptible to U.S. authorities, as a result of the wide-ranging subjectivity of the Patriot Act. Yet, though it infringes freedoms and given rights of the American people, the First Amendment holds true and cannot be manipulated or deviated from.

The First Amendment, as you will rightly know, is constitutionally bound. If a court prevents one from speaking about something, one can raise this powerful legislation and negate the courts ruling. It is how gagging orders have been overcome in long-running battles

If one is to break an injunction, a super-injunction or any court order, then one must be prepared to deal with the legal ramifications. There is no doubting this very basic premise of the legal system; often regardless of where one is in the world.

But, and here is the kicker, is that the very vast majority of those subject to these super-injunctions are unaware they not only apply to them as citizens of that jurisdiction, but are unaware of the repercussions.

Ignorance is not a defence; quite rightly so. But that this ‘landmark’ ruling which — frankly is nothing short of misinformation supplying to the wider media — does reflect and highlight the issues we have with privacy today in the online services we use, and sometimes abuse.

Yet in the British legal system, nearly 70 million people are being told not to say something, when the details of which are not disclosed for the population not to know what one is not to say, is confounding idiocy.

The focus is on the services — Facebook and Twitter; most notably the latter in this instance. It shouldn’t.

It should be focused on the fact that an entire population is gagged from saying the unsayable: like whispering ‘Voldemort’ in a Harry Potter filming.

Whether Britain should codify the unwritten constitution and align themselves with a legal framework like our American cousins, perhaps not. But it is about time where a clear, objective distinction was made between ‘private’ and ‘public — in the modern age of technology, social media and instant communications where an injunction can be broken by the collective masses in seconds.

A gay teen describes her experience at a Utah brainwashing facility

PART 1

On May 10th of 2007 at around 2:30 in the morning two strangers barged into my bedroom. I started screaming and crying, as in my mind I was sure that these two strangers had broken into my house and were going to abduct me, rape me, kill me, or in some way harm me. They immediately told me that if I did not shut up that they would handcuff me. I was not being in any way violent or threatening. I was reacting in fear for my life by being vocal and hoping that someone would come to help. I had no idea what was going on. I stopped screaming, still in fear for my life. They started going through my closet digging out clothes as I was only in a night gown. They still had not explained what was going on. I asked, frightened, what the wanted from me, trying to see if I could in some way appease them and get them to leave. They then explained that they were going to take me to a school. It took me a second to understand what they meant by this, as this was an extremely bizarre way to introduce a child to a new school. It then occurred to me that this was what my mother had arranged for my brother several years ago when she had him shipped away to Cross Creek. The two strangers were from Teen Escort Service, a for-profit company that transports teenagers, usually by force, to WWASP (World Wide Association of Specialty Programs) facilities.

I was extremely upset and cried the entire trip, but I obeyed all of their orders. Even though I was being cooperative they said it was their policy to put a belt around the bust of the child and hold the belt so that there would be no chance of attempting to run. It was so humiliating to be led around like a fucking dog around the airport. It was also extremely uncomfortable to have this strange older male putting his hand so close to my breast. I never understood how any of this was legal but definitely knew that none of it was ethical. To this day I feel extremely angered, disturbed, and violated by this entire experience. In addition to this they “forgot” all of the psychiatric medication I had been on at my house. It’s not that I am for psychiatric meds, but it certainly did not feel healthy or normal to go from taking this medication regularly, to just not having it and stopping with out tapering off of it.

From the moment I arrived at Cross Creek, I was treated as though I was broken, dirty, and inhuman. During my stay I saw many others treated this way. I had never spoken to R., the program director, before and my first experience with him was horrible. He asked me why I was there, and I told him all of the things I’d done that I could think of that could possibly be perceived as “bad”. He yelled at me, saying that I was lying and that I didn’t love or care about my parents. I was shocked and confused, unsure of what I had done to deserve this treatment from someone I had just met. To this day, the only thing I can think of that I possibly could have left out was my attraction to other females. In one of the Parent-Child seminars we were made to attend, my mother shared with me that this was one of the biggest “issues” that caused her to send me to Cross Creek. Not the drugs, not the sex (she told me she had no knowledge of me being sexually active prior to being forced to disclose it to her), not the issues with school, but just the fact that there was a possibility that one day I might fall in love with a female. Sorry for not realizing what a horrible, broken child this made me, R.

Shortly after I arrived, my “HOPE buddy” (the student they assign to “mentor” you and teach you the rules in your first few weeks) started asking me about my past, why I was there, and what issues I needed to work on. I talked briefly about my experimentation with soft drugs, my issues with depression (something I’m pretty sure most teenagers experience), and the abusive relationship I had been in with my first girlfriend. As soon as I said the words “girl” and “relationship” in the same sentence she said “STOP! STOP! We can’t talk about that.” I was filled with shame regarding my sexuality simply from the fact that I was not even allowed to talk about homosexuality in any way shape or form. Shortly after this incident I started talking to the therapist they assigned me to there about this abusive relationship I had experienced, and how it bothered me that I was not allowed to talk about a part of me that I have no control over. His response was that I DID have a choice over whether or not I was attracted to females and that I should just deal with these thoughts of same sex attraction. His opinion was that this was probably a result of some anger I had toward men, particularly my dad and that I probably just wanted to be with females because they were “safer” (even though I had been with an abusive female before!!!) He also said that ultimately this was probably just a phase and a result of my crazy teenage hormones. He believed that if I tried hard enough and ignored these thoughts and feelings one day I might marry a nice boy.

I had no interest in having a relationship with anyone there, but when other girls formed relationships with each other, the repercussions were pretty extreme. I understood why it was not allowed, as relationships are generally distracting no matter the gender of either partner, but the way people were treated was pretty unnecessary in my opinion. It usually involved lots of yelling, ostracizing, and shaming. I remember one R. meeting where two girls were being confronted about this and R. was yelling about how stupid they were being and how no one would be able to trust them now. He went on to say that he had “nothing against homosexuality, but it was not the way God intended things.” and that the Bible definitely did not condone it. These “God” and bible references were used on a regular basis, along with religious videos, praying, etc. even though Cross Creek claimed that they were not in any way religious. The rule book and protocol also appeared to be directly based off of the Mormon religion (no caffeine etc.) The program reprimanded children for telling their parents about this religious influence and regularly tried to hide it from parents. I am in no way against people having their own beliefs and following what ever religion is right for them, however I think that it’s completely and totally immoral to lie to parents about what they are getting. More on this later.

The queer shaming was present in nearly every aspect of the program, including the language used. We were not allowed to use curse words such as “shit”, or “bitch”, but I never saw anyone reprimanded for saying “fag” or “faggot.” This fostered an environment in which teasing and bullying for all sorts of things were fully tolerated. I even remember a facilitator in a seminar trying to trigger a girl by calling her a “dyke.” And no, before you say something, I really don’t care about breaking confidentiality of seminars at this point because I am fed up. What these people said and did broke me down and created so much shame inside of me.

In addition to shaming people on basis of sexual orientation, they taught children that sex was evil and damaging outside of marriage, another blatantly religious notion. We were forced to regularly watch videos involving horror stories of abortions gone wrong, shown gruesome pictures of STDs that had been left unattended for long periods of time, and told that if we had sex before marriage we would likely die or get some horrible ailment. Rather than promoting safer sex methods, we were shown that abstinence was the only option that would not result in death or unwanted pregnancy.

Rigid gender roles were also a big part of the Cross Creek way of life. Many of the rules were extremely gender based. Boys were allowed to crack their backs and knuckles, though girls were not because it was “unladylike”. Boys got meal portions double the size of girls. Boys were allowed to use more curse words than girls were. The list goes on.

I remember when they moved the girls from Center 1 to Pro 1 (these are all names of the dorms we stayed in.) The boys had been living in Pro 1, and when they moved the girls in the dorms were extremely messy. Rather than having the boys come back and clean up this mess, they made the girls clean all day. This was completely, and totally humiliating. What a great way to build confidence and teach girls how to be independent and stand up for themselves.

PART 2

Before I say this next part, I want to state that it is not my intention to bash all of the staff at Cross Creek. Some of the staff were very supportive (A.D., M.C., etc.) and this is not in any way meant to be directed at you, nor is it a blanket statement. There were staff however, that made me feel very unsafe and uncomfortable. Some of the staff, in my opinion, were downright cruel, hurtful and borderline (if not blatantly) abusive. I can’t tell you how many times I saw staff make comments about myself or others insinuating that we were bad children, unclean, impure, dirty, not innocent, untrustable, the list goes on. The grievance system that was in place was, in my opinion, ineffective on the whole. From being a part of the student government system for some time that handled grievances, I observed that grievance system, like everything else at Cross Creek, put the blame on the student and diverted responsibility away from the adult.

I’d also like to mention how many times I saw staff and administration, tackle and restrain children when it was completely unnecessary. So many times I saw kids simply refuse to go to gym class or get out of bed and as punishment they were violently tackled, restrained in a painful position, and taken to a small isolation room where they were usually watched by two or three staff members. This was also what they did when a child harmed themselves. This method is extremely violent, and I remember at least one incident that happened when I was there where they tackled a girl and restrained her face down against the ground and as a result she got rug burn on her face to the point that she was bleeding and had visible scabs on her face. Another time a girl shared that being tackled and restrained gave her flashbacks of a rape she’d experienced, to which the program director responded that he felt no remorse for it and that it was really her fault for doing what ever she’d done to be restrained. You could argue that this might be appropriate in cases where a kid is being violent towards others, but from what I saw, more often than not, this was absolutely not the case and the child being restrained was not being violent. In addition to tackling and restraint being (in my humble opinion) immoral, it is unsafe, and this has been proven. If you look on the website for the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, you can see a long list of deaths that have occurred in “behavioral modification” facilities not unlike Cross Creek as a result of tackling and restraint. http://www.caica.org/RESTRAINTS%20Death%20List.htm

Cross Creek’s methods of “therapy” and recovery were also extremely invasive, humiliating, and in my opinion did much more harm than good. As someone who does intern work at a local rape treatment center and talks with victims of assault on a regular basis, as well as being someone who has survived various forms of violence and abuse, I have seen how damaging it can be to force someone to share about such delicate issues before they are fully prepared and ready. I can not speak for every one, but for me, being forced to disclose information that was not ready to come out was extremely painful and humiliating. The seminars based your success on how “emotional” you were, meaning that if you did not share some horrible part of your life or simply did not have one, or if you were not crying and sniveling while you did it, you were booted out of the seminar and forced to stay in the program another two months. The obsession the program had with “accountability” also led to them blaming people who had experienced abuse for their abusive situations. I vividly remember a facilitator yelling at a girl while kicking her out of a seminar for not participating or being “real” enough. She told her in an extremely vivid and foul language (the f-bomb included) that if she continued the behavior that got her to the program she would be raped again. She had the student write an essay on this.

I will forever be haunted by the day that I was in group and the program director barged in and started saying that it’s as if I have “ABUSE ME” written on my forehead, insinuating that I was just asking to be abused in some way by the way that I carried and presented myself. I carry so much shame from this comment, and because of it constantly have to remind myself not to blame myself for the abuse I have experienced.

The way that Cross Creek taught me to interact with people was to analyze every facial expression, action, and word, and reflect this back to them in a cold, harsh, and usually demeaning way. I feel so much remorse for the way I treated people at Cross Creek, as well as the way I allowed people to treat me. It took me a while after I graduated to discover that this method did not work at all in the real world, and that if I was to have any friends, I would need to drop the robotic, unempathetic, and borderline malicious way of interacting with others that I had learned to use for two and a half years. I’d like to sincerely apologize to those of you who spent time with me at Cross Creek that I treated this way. I feel nothing but sadness when I realize how heartless and programmed I became.

What disturbs me more than anything is that I believed all of the things I was told. When people use the word “brainwashing” to describe what went on at Cross Creek and other WWASP programs, I don’t think it is in any way exaggerating or being over dramatic when you consider all of the media we were FORCED to watch, read, and listen to. The program director used to joke about and downplay the brainwashing claims by saying that some of our brains “could really use some washing.” The “educational/emotional growth” videos we had to watch twice a day, the “motivational” tapes three times a day, the “self-help” books we were forced to read, and more than anything the “motivational seminars” with facilitators up in your face yelling about all the things you did wrong to mess up your life and land yourself in a program all contributed to this. With all of this influence coming at me from every direction at every moment I believed that following the rules, “working my program”, going to the seminars, etc. was genuinely going to improve my self esteem, my relationship with my parents, and the overall outcome of my life. I tried hard to follow the endless list of rules, be “accountable”, and when I got “dirty in my program” (another good example of shaming lingo and language that means you broke rules without giving yourself demerits) I would confess and take the consequences what ever consequences were involved.

I by no means had a perfect program, but I gave it all of my honest effort and did what I could to be a good Cross Creek student. By putting faith in this system however, I also internalized all of the stigma, shame, and religious beliefs forced upon me. I believed that maybe if I just suppressed my sexuality , as well as ignored my obvious attraction to girls, that maybe all of this would go away. My body and subconscious reacted to this. Shortly after arriving at Cross Creek, I stopped getting my period for about 8 months. This was apparently a common thing that happened in the program when girls first arrived, as the body was reacting to some serious stress. I also started wetting the bed shortly after arriving at the program. This had not been an issue for me since the age of 3 or 4. This bed wetting issue continued until I left the program. After I graduated, it stopped completely.

The program director and other administration on several occasions acknowledged that Tranquility Bay, another WWASP program that has now much to my relief been shut down, did indeed have an infamous history of reported abuse. He used this to say that we were so very “fortunate” to be in Cross Creek and not at programs like that. Yet kids who were “acting out too much” at Cross Creek were sent to Tranquility Bay as punishment. Some have said that Tranquility Bay was merely a “last resort” or that the things that happened at TB were just a “part of Jamaican culture” but I would have to strongly disagree about both of those things. Since when is abuse ever an appropriate option? It isn’t. No matter what someone has done, it’s not okay. It is also extremely racist and ethnocentric to say that abuse is just a part of the culture of Jamaica, especially when you look at American society, which I could very well say the same thing about.

Shortly after I left the program I was raped. I shared what happened with my mother, who then told me, like Cross Creek did, that it was my fault, I asked for it, and that I should have known it would happen. She then proceeded to share her own twisted version of the story with my Cross Creek therapist, who shared it with my group. I was mortified and my self-esteem was completely destroyed by this utter lack of confidentiality and complete betrayal of trust.

PART 3

It has taken me so much time to recover and de-program myself from all of the lies I was fed at Cross Creek. It took me a while to realize just how badly and inappropriately I and others had been treated at this facility. It’s not to say that there were not a few small kernels of wisdom that I can still use from the program, but they came at such a huge cost. My soul feels wounded from the things I saw and experienced at Cross Creek and healing will be a continual process.

If there was one thing that I gained from my experience at Cross Creek, it was realizing that no one regardless of their past or current actions deserves to be treated the way this program and other WWASP facilities treated me and so many other students. Abuse is abuse, no matter how you slice it. This realization along with other life experiences is partially responsible for my current carreer path regarding abuse prevention and recovery, as well as my involvement and activism in the human rights movement.

Even if you choose not to believe me or anything that I have written, there are piles of evidence to support the idea that there is mistreatment at Cross Creek and other WWASP affiliated facilities. A little bit of research will reveal that this lawsuit is not the first that WWASP or Cross Creek has faced. My therapist used to use a phrase when he suspected that kids were “dirty in their program.” He used to say “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire...” That is certainly the case with WWASP and Cross Creek. There is a reason that the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, Community Alliance for The Ethical Treatment of Youth, and many other organizations like them exist. There is a reason why seventeen WWASP affiliated schools have been shut down. There is a reason there have been so many lawsuits. Clearly if all of this has happened, I must not be completely insane.

The rebuttal against this argument has included that Cross Creek is no longer a part of WWASP. This argument is pretty much void seeing as they are still directly affiliated in that all of the WWASP affiliated programs still use the same seminars as each other, the same escort service, the same billing company, and are all still a part of Teen Help LLC, the marketing arm of WWASP and the entity that processes admissions paperwork. They also refer to each other and send children to other WWASP affiliated facilities when one facility can’t handle them. I don’t think it would be at all presumptuous to conclude that the people who ran WWASP are the same people who are still raking in all of the money with these programs.

WWASP officials claim that the organization itself is out of business, probably because of their infamous history of abuse, but clearly all of the WWASP programs are still affiliated and WWASP has not completely faded out. Many schools have changed their names multiple times, including Cross Creek (formerly Browning Academy) and it’s clear to me that there is a lot of shadiness and hiding goes on with in these programs. It seems as though WWASP and it’s affiliates are trying to sweep some things under the rug, and outright lie to parents, students, former students, and the general public.

Here’s a bit about the history of WWASP and Cross Creek. WWASP was founded by Robert Browning Lichfeild. He started Browning Academy, now Cross Creek, the first WWASP affiliated school in 1987, at a time when he had little money and was living in a small apartment with his wife and four children. His field of study was in business (he attained absolutely no credentials or education in psychology, therapy, or education) though he never graduated college and within several years he had become a very rich individual and had added many more schools to his chain of “behavior modification”/”tough love” schools. He was indeed mormon and has, in several interviews stated that God was his inspiration in starting these schools and one of his goals was to “get kids in touch with their higher source.” He is also a major contributor to the Republican party, donating thousands of dollars each year http://www.city-data.com/elec2/elec-LA-VERKIN-UT.html. From what I’ve read his massive sum of money and big political influence have gotten him and his colleagues out of the situations in which he and his criminal organization have been questioned. But please, do not take my word for it. Do your own research. This information is readily available to those who are willing to look.

If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. – Thomas Jefferson

"...to protect and serve... and heal"

13 reasons why the Infringing File Sharing Act is bad for you

by Christopher Wood

Many of you have been asking what the big deal is about the new copyright legislation (Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill 119-2). Isn't it a good measure for stopping illegal downloads? The answer is quite clear: No.

First, in case you missed the news: http://www.3news.co.nz/Govts-Skynet-legislation-becomes-law/tabid/412/articleID/206882/Default.aspx

There are so many problems with this law. I've listed thirteen here. There are others more fundamental especially relating to what the law should be expected to achieve, the polarised debate over the intention of copyrights and what should be protected under them, which is a natural consequence of the birth of the information society, but that's a big subject with a lot of history (that I hope to write about some other time).

Some reasons are legal, some ethical, and some technical but nonetheless crucial:

1. Presumed guilty on accusation

Despite the revision committee trying to fudge the issue, this law does work via the presumption of guilt. If the accused party has had their 3 warnings and goes to the Copyright Tribunal, they have to give reasons why the warnings were invalid. But if the accused party is innocent, what reasons can they have, apart from "I didn't do it"?

Presumption of guilt is rife for abuse, as has happened overseas under similar laws. In the digital realm evidence is often very temporary, complex, and easily fabricated, so providing evidence of your innocence could be very difficult, depending on how much is required. Providing evidence of your guilt is almost as difficult, but why should that mean an advantage should be given to accusers? New Zealand intellectual property lawyer Rick Shera says the law is grossly unfair, out of place and unnecessary in this analysis: http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/nzs-copyright-proposal-guilty-until-you-prove

When a new law contradicts the Bill of Rights it better have an extremely good reason... and protecting the entertainment industry isn't one.

2. Unsupported accusations

New Zealand Judge David Harvey has noted that 30 per cent of copyright litigation fails due to a failure to prove ownership of copyright, or due to the copyright in question not being governed by New Zealand law. Yet this law encourages more copyright infringement accusations, and puts the onus on the accused to prove themselves. There is no penalty for making spurious accusations.

3. Stifled creativity and innovation

People are often accused of infringing copyrights unreasonably, for instance quoting a section of a work to comment on it, or for sampling or making a parody of a copyrighted work. This is why US law has the concept of "fair use" (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fair_use) - in NZ it is called "fair dealing". The Creative Freedom Foundation, a charity representing thousands of Kiwi artists, has written a short explanation of copyright and how the new law will stifle creativity: http://creativefreedom.org.nz/copyright.html

Some copyright owners frequently make claims of infringement even when the use is fair because users are likely to forgo their use of the work rather than spend money defending themselves - see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation.

Even without accusations, creativity is stifled by laws like this. YouTube continually removes videos that have no right being removed, simply at the request of a copyright owner.

4. Disproportionate penalties

Firstly, if found guilty you could potentially be fined $15,000 for downloading a single song - there's no clarity in the law about what a appropriate fine would be. The purported cost of copyright infringement is very arbitrary: Overseas, people have been ordered to pay millions of dollars for downloading a small number of songs, for instance this mother of four charged US$1.9m for downloading 24 songs: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Capitol_v._Thomas

5. Insufficient warning

The minimum time between the first accusation being made your last strike is 20 working days. It could be easy to miss both warnings, there's nothing in the law about making sure you actually receive the notices. You could even go on holiday for a month, come back and find you have to go to the Copyright Tribunal for alleged file-sharing from a week before you left.

6. The law is ill-defined

I've already mentioned how the law doesn't define the level of proof required to rebut the presumption of guilt, nor how to determine fines.

The technical definitions are particularly useless. For instance, it defines file-sharing as where:

(a) material is uploaded via, or downloaded from, the Internet using an application or network that enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users; and

(b) uploading and downloading may, but need not, occur at the same time

Downloading from a network using a network? That's meaningless. Besides that, it is very loose, any internet activity could conceivably be covered by this. That's clearly not the intent. This kind of thing is very difficult to define - still, it needs to be better than this. There are other things such as the change from using the term ISP (Internet Service Provider) to IPAP (Internet Protocol Address Provider), a change which will become meaningless in the next few years as IPv6 makes everyone potentially an IPAP. So not only is it loosely defined, it's already outdated (this last would most likely would have been fixed if the law had gone through the proper process).

7. ISP costs

Compliance with this law is going to cost ISPs. Although accusers are required to pay ISPs a fee, there is no consideration for the capital expenditure required to setup the system. And they only have four months to get it up and running. This could be very significant for smaller ISPs.

So you can expect your internet connection to be more expensive than it would otherwise be.

8. Violated human rights

More importantly, your internet could be terminated. This law was passed just two days after Tim Berners-Lee (credited with the invention of the Internet) declared "access to the web is now a human right" (https://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041211-mit-berners-lee.html). The UN has proposed that internet access should be a human right, and it already is in France, Finland, Estonia and Greece.

Terminating internet in response to infringing copyright is worse than the post office stopping deliveries to your house because you sent photocopies to someone. The earlier law was revised due to protests over internet termination. The new bill disables that penalty for the moment, however it can be re-enabled with an order-in-council, not needing any public consultation or parliamentary vote.

Which leads on to the problems relating to how this law came to be:

9. Political precedence of law ambush

Urgency is supposed to be for urgent issues. National has passed 17 laws under urgency in the last two years, most of them completely unjustified (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10719268). The passing of this law without proper process sets a particularly bad precedent.

This law has made headlines throughout the tech world, along with comments on the sucker-punch nature of its passing, and how equivalent laws overseas have been pushing through in a similar way (eg. UK's Digital Economy Act 2010):


Groups like Creative Freedom NZ, which helped lead protests against the initial bill, were taken by surprise. "The item has been due to go through the house for a while now, but has been fairly low on the list," said the group. "We are surprised to find out that it is being rushed through under urgency, and we're not alone; MPs who have been involved in the process are surprised as well."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/guilty-until-proven-innocent-new-zealand-rushes-ahead-with-p2p-bill.ars

Using the Canterbury earthquake as an excuse to push through a law in response to the entertainment oligopoly complaining about supposed lost profits, is shameful.

10. Lawmakers who don't understand the law, let alone basic technical facts

Next, it was blatantly obvious that most of the voting MPs didn't understand what they were talking about. In what the National Business Review called "a debate that often sunk to almost surreal levels of technical ignorance", MPs made fools of themselves saying things like:

"It is really important to remember that file sharing is an illegal activity."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJdPkrpFXBM

Katrina Shanks took the prize for worst speech. Jonathan Young made a joke:

"Do you remember the movie "The Terminator"? I'm sure that you do. And the computer system... yes... the computer system called Skynet that ruled the world. It's like the Internet today."

http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-MP-Jonathan-Young-compares-the-internet-to-Skynet/tabid/419/articleID/206944/Default.aspx

Oh the perfect irony of analogizing the internet-enabled masses as evil robot overlords, and the government and corporates trying to control the internet as underdog freedom-fighters...

Topping the irony charts was Melissa Lee. Her speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IIyk1y9o_8) actually had an interesting point about how the multi-billion dollar Korean movie industry was made possible through blatant copyright infringement by the Chinese. Yet she then went on to talk about the damage done by lesser forms of piracy like file-sharing and how infringing copyrights is always an intentional illegal act. The kicker is, just hours before making her speech, she tweeted about a music compilation a friend copied for her! (https://twitter.com/melissaleemp/status/57764856488669184) When confronted about it, she replied that the songs were legally downloaded and paid for - proving that either she's a hypocrite, or worse, she doesn't know what the current copyright law is, despite voting on the law, and holding herself up as an example of an unintentional pirate.

Then there are the technical issues with copyright enforcement:

11. Trojaned machines

There are millions of computers infected with viruses which hackers use to do whatever they want - for instance, sending spam, hacking more computers, or sharing copyrighted files via file-sharing networks. (Yet another reason to make sure you install your updates and don't visit dodgy websites or install untrusted applications - not that this is proof against hackers, it just makes exploits less likely.) You should not be held liable for what a hacker does with your computer without your permission. But how can you prove you were hacked? Viruses can remove themselves after acting. And if being hacked is a reasonable defence, pirates can use it as a defence too, just by claiming it or perhaps purposefully allowing themselves to be hacked. (Now there's an interesting new reason for hackers to make viruses: a viral file-sharing network, where some people would be users without their permission - thus giving plausible deniability to all users.)

12. Shared connections

How can copyright holders identify people who infringe? One way is through file-sharing programs where users have accounts. It may be possible to track these to a person in New Zealand. But most piracy isn't done through any account except an internet account. Most internet connections are shared between many people. So how would copyright holders know which person to accuse? They can't. Your ISP can only trace web traffic to your router (often only with a lot of work) - they can't see where traffic goes after that. So the copyright holder can only accuse the account holder. So if your flatmate infringes, you might be the one having to prove your innocence. Likewise companies have to take responsibility for all their employees - an excellent encouragement for companies to enact draconian firewalls against their employees. When an employee is accused, it may take a great deal of effort to track down which employee it was - if it is even possible. Similarly with any company providing a connection, like hotels, caf?s and airlines.

Expect company-provided internet access to be more restrictive and better monitored.

13. Real pirates don't get caught

The most problematic pirates - the ones who upload unreleased movies or sell pirated copies - are very unlikely to be caught. They use anonymizing techniques and encryption to make their downloading untraceable. The same goes for hackers or anyone with the technical know-how. Or anyone connecting via an internet hotspot or public wi-fi. Or those who just download without using peer-to-peer software. So those caught are much more likely to be accidental and small-scale infringers, not those the law is primarily intended to stop.

The Copyright Tribunal will have only 5 people, so it can hardly handle a large number of cases. A small number of unlucky people will be made an example of, which will dissuade the most casual pirates - i.e. the kind of people whose piracy probably earns creative industries more in advertising than they lose in profits (but that last part is an argument I don't have space to explain here).

That's 13 reasons why this new law is bad and why law-abiding citizens will be worse off under it.

What you can do

There's a list of ways you can protest the law at: https://www.facebook.com/notes/opposing-the-copyright-infringing-file-sharing-amendment-bill/information-on-what-you-can-do-to-help/141454075923884

Robots learning to share

DNS filtering: absolutely the wrong way to defend copyrights

By Matthew Lasar
 
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called the PROTECT IP Act "a threat to our economic future and to our international objectives." He characterized its predecessor as a "bunker-busting cluster bomb when what you really need is a precision-guided missile." The bill would force Domain Name System (DNS) operators to stop correctly resolving the names of so-called "rogues sites."

Is this sort of monkeying with the DNS a problem? Yes, say DNS experts in a new report (PDF) on the practice. In their view, DNS filtering provisions would make the Web less secure—and do little to stop illegal filesharing sites.
DNSSEC is being implemented to allow systems to demand verification of what they get from the DNS. PROTECT IP would not only require DNS responses that cannot deliver such proof, but it would enshrine and institutionalize the very network manipulation DNSSEC must fight...

These rerouting measures "would weaken this important effort to improve Internet security," the paper contends. They would "enshrine and institutionalize the very network manipulation" that DNS security components fight "to prevent cyberattacks and other malevolent behavior on the global Internet, thereby exposing networks and users to increased security and privacy risks." Their widespread use would "threaten the security and stability of the global DNS" and create "significant risk of collateral damage, with filtering of one domain potentially affecting users' ability to reach non-infringing Internet content."

And in the end, they would do little to stop digital piracy. The authors say filters are easily evaded and would be of minimal help when it comes to cutting down on copyright infringement online.

The report is signed by five DNS experts from Shinkuro, Verisign, Georgia Tech, ICANN's Security Council, and the Internet Systems Consortium, and it appeared just before the PROTECT IP ACT was placed on hold in the Senate at Wyden's request.

The authors say that they have no beef with strong enforcement of intellectual property rights, but this kind of IP policing makes them cringe. Here's why.
Such text shall specify

First, a quick primer on DNS. It's the reason why, if you want to visit the United States Senate's website, you can type "senate.gov" rather than its Internet Protocol address: 156.33.195.33. Domain name servers distributed around the world keep track of who has what IP number, aided by millions of recursive servers that make the number-to-name process much faster.

"Security and Other Technical Concerns Raised by the DNS Filtering Requirements in the PROTECT IP Bill"

What PROTECT IP would do is authorize the feds to serve a court order on an ISP, demanding that it take action against a US based website accused of engaging in intellectual property theft. Specifically, the ISP would be required "to prevent the domain name described in the order from resolving to that domain name's Internet protocol address"—in other words, filtering or rerouting it elsewhere.

Wherever users would wind up, elsewhere-wise, they'd see a government announcement explaining the move. "Such text shall specify that the action is being taken pursuant to a court order obtained by the Attorney General," the bill says.

What these security folks especially don't like about this DNS redirection business is that it will mess with an up-and-coming extension for the system, called DNSSEC, which encrypts DNS records, making them more secure. DNSSEC's main objective is to protect consumers and sites from so-called "Man-in-the-Middle" attacks, in which a miscreant intercepts a digital conversation, and, pretending to be a trusted source, fleeces the user of her security data.

Ironically, PROTECT IP bears strong resemblance to such a hack, except that it is authorized by the government, the experts note.

"DNSSEC is being implemented to allow systems to demand verification of what they get from the DNS," they write. "PROTECT IP would not only require DNS responses that cannot deliver such proof, but it would enshrine and institutionalize the very network manipulation DNSSEC must fight in order to prevent cyberattacks and other miscreant behavior on the global Internet."

Defeat and circumvention

The first practical concern is that PROTECT IP redirection would defeat the primary purpose of DNSSEC:

The only possible DNSSEC-compliant response to a query for a domain that has been ordered to be filtered is for the lookup to fail. It cannot provide a false response pointing to another resource or indicate that the domain does not exist. From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific.

But while this mandated filtering would subvert DNSSEC's mission, rogue sites could still easily evade the purpose of the law. DNS filtering doesn't actually eliminate Internet content. It just points users away from a specific site. So the allegedly offending service can simply move to a new domain.

The paper notes that when US Customs Enforcement grabbed TVShack.net, the company just jumped to another domain. When authorities seized rojadirecta.com, the outfit relocated to rojadirecta.es, "which quickly reached levels comparable to that of the former domain."

Users can alter their computer to change the location of their DNS server to circumvent a redirect. But, more ominously, they can also have it changed for them by a website: "It is likely, if not inevitable, that infringement sites would use the same strategy, allowing a single site to instantly, silently, and permanently change a user's DNS path and evade DNS filtration and filtering." And these new DNS paths will likely lead to far less safe and secure websites outside of the United States.

Will consumers try to avoid this fate? The authors of this paper don't think so. Users seeking pirated content are often more interested in getting the content than the reputation of the provider. And besides—in many instances, they won't know that they are switching DNS servers.

"Those promoting pirate sites will simply create websites and postings that ask: 'Frustrated by getting filtered when you try to watch movies? Click here to fix the problem'," the article notes. "Long experience shows that high numbers of users will simply do just that; they will 'click here' and thereby quickly circumvent the intended roadblock through automated processes such as DNS changers."

Increased vulnerability

This potentially significant transfer of Web activity to far-less secure sites around the world will make cyberspace more dangerous in a variety of ways. First, the trend could expose many more consumers to malware sites:

In households with shared computers, one user (say, a teenage music sharer) may redirect the DNS settings, but then those settings would carry over to when the parent later did online banking on the same computer. The teenager's redirection also could redirect banking information and put it in jeopardy. The effects of increased security vulnerability will be felt not just by users, but by U.S. networks and businesses, including banks and credit card companies, which will internalize the costs of botnet disruptions, identity theft, and financial fraud.

And this insecurity could spill over not only to business and financial sites, but to government portals as well. 

Second, the rush to compensate for and work around PROTECT IP Act redirection would harm the ability of ISPs to keep their own networks secure. DNS traffic pattern data helps ISPs keep track of threats, especially denial-of-service attacks, botnet hosts, and compromised domains.

"As users increasingly turn to other DNS servers to avoid the DNS filtering, ISPs have less and less ability to manage security threats and maintain effective network operations," the paper warns. "By losing visibility into network security threats, ISPs will be less able to identify customer computers that have been infected by a virus and come under the control of a criminal botnet."

Third, reroutes of delivery to offshore servers could compromise the effectiveness of Content Delivery Networks (an example of a CDN would be Level 3, employed by Netflix to stream its video).

"To such networks, US users who have changed their DNS resolvers for all lookups will appear to the CDNs to be browsing from abroad," the writers contend. "As a result, these users could be routed to offshore servers not just for DNS queries, but also for content, undermining precisely the benefits CDNs provide by optimizing traffic distribution to account for proximity of client and server."
Collateral damage

Finally, there is the prospect of innocent sites getting caught in the crosshairs of a PROTECT IP redirect. For example, if example.com's DNS service is provided by isp.net and the latter is subject to a government ordered filter, the move could "quite powerfully affect the usefulness" of the former.

And if an operator "filters the DNS traffic to and from one IP address or host, it will bring down all of the websites supported by that IP number or host," the authors contend. "The bottom line is that the filtering of one domain name or hostname can pull down unrelated sites down across the globe."

Then there is the problem of subdomains, examples of which abound in the blogspot kingdom:

For example, blogspot.com uses subdomains to support its thousands of users; blogspot.com may have customers named Larry and Sergey whose blog services are at larry.blogspot.com and sergey.blogspot.com. If Larry is an e- criminal and the subject of an action under PROTECT IP, it is possible that blogspot.com could be filtered, in which case Sergey would also be affected, although he may well have had no knowledge of Larry’s misdealings.

A less hypothetical example would be that of the government redirect of mooo.com over child pornography charges. Within moments, 84,000 sites that shared the mooo domain name were displaying a child porn warning. The company repaired the problem, but warned mooo users that the warning banners might not go down for three days.

"We strongly believe that the goals of PROTECT IP are compelling," the paper concludes. But "we believe that the goals of PROTECT IP can be accomplished without reducing DNS security and stability, through strategies such as better international cooperation on prosecutions and the other remedies contained in PROTECT IP other than DNS-related provisions."

Bottom line: "We urge Congress to reject the DNS filtering portions of the Act."

Fresh outrage at doll that lets little girls 'breastfeed'

Rob Beschizza

A doll that lets little girls pretend they are breastfeeding is the hot thing in toys this year, provoking outrage among those to whom breastfeeding means boobs means sexy. My favorite complaint is a column at Yahoo! Contributor Network that reads a little like it blew in from Yahoo! Answers:
[That it might] "stimulate their imagination" are what concern me. The breast milk baby will more than likely result in questions from young girls to their mothers and/or fathers asking why a baby feeds from her breast

I plan to buy one and nurse it calmly in Wal-Mart.

If you're feeling a sense of deja vu, it's because there was a similar wave of media-led anger when the toy was first released in Europe a few years ago. That time, columnist Eric Ruhalter apologized to nursing advocates after comparing the idea of it to having kids act out alcoholism, erectile disfunction and prison rape.

Bebe Gloton Breastfeeding Doll [Amazon]

Is DNA computing going to terminate Internet banking?

By Chris Lee
 
In computer science and mathematics, problems can be broadly categorized as hard or easy. This doesn't refer to the complexity of programming an algorithm to solve a problem, but rather to how the size of the problem influences the time it takes to find a solution. The existence of hard problems forms the very bedrock of computer security, so any paper that claims to be on the path to an efficient way of finding solutions to hard problems deserve some scrutiny.

Which is why a paper entitled "DNA-Based Computing of Strategic Assignment Problems" drew my skeptical eye. The paper implies (but does not actually state) that the strategic assignment problem falls into the category of hard, and claims that computing using DNA may efficiently solve such problems. Is that really so?
All math is hard, right?

Is the difference between hard and easy problems really so important? It is, and the difference allows us to engage in secure communications over the Internet (think online banking). Easy problems scale in a polynomial way, so if you have an eight-bit problem, then the time to solve it might scale as 83. If you increase the problem to a 16 bit problem, then the time taken to solve it increases to 163. Hard problems scale exponentially, so our eight-bit problem might be 38, and increasing to 16 bits increases the time taken to solve the problem to 316.

To illustrate the difference between hard and easy problems, let's take a specific example. Imagine that finding the prime factors of an eight-bit number takes 512 seconds. If this is an easy problem, then we can estimate that going to 256 bits will extend the computation time to 17 million seconds on the same computer. That seems like a large increase, but, in fact, you're looking at just a few years of computation time, ignoring any increase in computation speed. If it is a hard problem, however, the 256 bit problem will take 4.6×1087 seconds.

So you can see how such scaling is problematic. The difficulty of tackling a hard problem is what makes public-private key systems, such as the ones used in Internet banking, so secure at the moment. Now, if someone were to claim that they could solve a hard problem efficiently—that is, take a problem that scales exponentially and show that their solution scales polynomially—then that would be very surprising, and quite worrying.

The paper from Shu, Wang, and Yong, based at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, doesn't make that explicit claim. But you would have to be unable to read between the lines to not get that idea from the paper.

The problem that Shu and colleagues have focused on is the strategic assignment problem, for which there is little information on the Internet—I suspect that it may have an alternative name that is more common, but I was unable to find it. They give a good (and historic) example in the paper. Imagine that you have three horses that you are going to race pair-wise against a competitor. Before the races begin, you observe that your competitor's fastest horse is faster than your fastest horse, and his second-fastest horse is faster than your second-fastest horse, and his slowest horse is faster that your slowest horse.

The problem, then, is how can you arrange them to win the majority of races? The answer is to race your fastest horse against your competitors second-fastest horse, your second-fastest horse against their slowest, and your slowest horse against their fastest horse. Baring injury, you should win two out of three races. The problem, very simply put, boils down to matching between items in pairs of lists.


A DNA computer program? Getting a solution to the problem via DNA turns out to be relatively easy. First, the researchers assigned a set of single-stranded DNA sequences to each item in each list. To control processing, they ensured that each assignment contains a sequence that is recognized by one of five different DNA-cutting restriction enzymes. They also assigned some additional sequences to denote stopping points. The researchers then generated all these sequences separately, and then mixed them together to allow them to become double stranded DNA. The DNA strands were then stitched together to create all possible sequences.

Most of these sequences are garbage, and the real work comes from finding the right bit of DNA. The first step is to only choose those sequences that start with the right list—the solution matches items from list A to items in list B, so if a sequence begins with list B, it should be thrown out. To do this, the researchers use a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the DNA strands that started with one of the items in list A and ended at one of the stop sequences.

The next step is to choose only those strands that may have each sequence only once—the correct solution will have each list item only once. This is done by running the DNA through a gel that sorts the DNA strands by length, allowing the researchers to pick out the DNA band that corresponds to the right length. Unfortunately, the selected DNA may have repeated list items, and these must be eliminated.

This is what the restriction enzymes are for. The researchers add one of the restriction enzymes to the collection of DNA that was taken out of the gel. The enzyme breaks the DNA up wherever it finds a specific sequence. Any of the DNA strands that contain a specific list item more than once ends up being cut more than once, and thus is much shorter than the rest.

The solution containing these DNA fragments is then divided up and each solution has one of the remaining restriction enzymes added. These different restriction enzymes cut off different stretches of DNA—ultimately the strands that had the right solutions in a specific order end up being cut down to a particular length. Now, in this particular case, the order of the matches doesn't matters, so it is enough to run another gel and separate out the DNA corresponding to 100 base pairs (in this example).

Sequence those 100 bases, and you have your solution. I should also note that figuring out the right length to look for is not difficult, since it is simply one less than the number of items in the list. I think that's pretty cool. It's a smart, sophisticated, and elegant version of DNA computing. By itself, it warrants attention, but it probably isn't as general a result as the authors would like to think.


And that is fast and scalable? The authors claim this is fast and scaleable. I am skeptical. As it stands, we have two gels and one PCR step to go through, as well as two digestion steps—not even getting into generating the sequences and then sequencing the result. The nice thing is that most of these steps require a fixed amount of time, independent of the size of the problem. So in that respect, yes, at some point, DNA computing may well beat traditional computation.

But I worry about scalability in terms of the actual computing process. This was possibly the simplest version of their example of DNA computing. The choice of DNA restriction enzymes and the fact that the order of the matches doesn't matter were both critical to making this example work. I suspect that figuring out a sequence of DNA restriction enzymes to apply is itself a hard problem. If that is true, then this work simply transforms one hard problem into another hard problem with little gain. To make matters worse, if the order of the matched pairs was important, then I suspect that it's impossible to find a set of restriction enzymes that provide a solution.

So, the answer to the title of this post is: no, not now, and probably not ever. To be a little less flippant: the researchers now need to show that this method can, even in principle, be used for a wide range of problems—can it be turned into a universal computer? They also need to explain why the selection of restriction enzymes is an easy problem to solve. If they can show that, then the world of commerce will tremble at their feet.

Revised 'Net censorship bill requires search engines to block sites, too

By Nate Anderson | Published 15 days ago

Surprise! After months in the oven, the soon-to-be-released new version of a major US Internet censorship bill didn't shrink in scope—it got much broader. Under the new proposal, search engines, Internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign "rogue sites"—and such court orders would not be limited to the government. Private rightsholders could go to court and target foreign domains, too.

As for sites which simply change their domain name slightly after being targeted, the new bill will let the government and private parties bring quick action against each new variation.

Get ready for the "PROTECT IP Act."

Targeting Google

A source in Washington provided Ars with a detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, which takes its acronym from "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property." This beats the old acronym, COICA; who can be against protection? The actual legislation should be introduced shortly.

The bill is an attempt to deal with foreign sites which can be difficult for US enforcement to reach, even when those sites explicitly target US citizens.

The PROTECT IP Act makes a few major changes to last year's COICA legislation. First, it does provide a more limited definition of sites “dedicated to infringing activities.” The previous definition was criticized as being unworkably vague, and it could have put many legitimate sites at risk.

But what the PROTECT IP Act gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. While the definition of targeted sites is tighter, the remedies against such sites get broader. COICA would have forced credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa to stop doing business with targeted sites, and it would have prevented ad networks from working with such sites. It also suggested a system of DNS blocking to make site nominally more difficult to access.

The PROTECT IP Act adds one more entity to this list: search engines. Last week, when the Department of Homeland Security leaned on Mozilla to remove a Firefox add-on making it simple to bypass domain name seizures, we wondered at the request. After all, the add-on only made it easier to do a simple Google search, and we wondered "what the next logical step in this progression will be: requiring search engines to stop returning results for seized domain names?"

Turns out that's exactly what's being contemplated. According to the detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, this addition "responds to concerns raised that search engines are part of the ecosystem that directs Internet user traffic and therefore should be part of the solution."

Rightsholders also score a major victory with the new legislation, which grants them a private right of action—something Google publicly trashed as a terrible idea earlier this year. Copyright and trademark holders don't have to badger the government into targeting sites under the new bill; they are allowed to seek court orders directly, though these orders would only apply to payment processors and advertising networks (not to ISPs or search engines).
Help us out, please

The emphasis here is on forcing intermediaries to get involved in policing such sites. Rightsholders have had difficulty suing the millions of end users engaged in infringement, and they have had difficulty suing the sites themselves when they are based abroad. But MasterCard and Google? Those are easy, US-based targets who will comply will any law Congress passes.

The PROTECT IP Act goes even further than forcing these intermediaries to take action after a court order; it actively encourages them to take unilateral action without any sort of court order at all. The bill summary makes clear that ad networks and payment processors will be protected if they “voluntarily cease doing business with infringing websites, outside of any court ordered action.” If a search engine decides that the next YouTube is a copyright infringer—and rightsholders have often sued sites like Veoh and YouTube in the past—it can simply cut off advertising for that reason and be immunized under the law. So can Visa.

The bill also encourages everyone—domain name registries, search engines, payment processors, and ad networks—to cut off access to infringing sites that "endanger the public health." That is, online pharmacies (which are often hotbeds of counterfeiting).

Given the strong opinions elicited by the earlier COICA, the expansion of powers here is a bit surprising, but the continued presence of the legislation is not. That's because, no matter how much power and money Congress devotes to intellectual property, rightsholders are back every couple of years for more—as the NET Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PRO-IP Act, and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remind us. Each is "essential"—but somehow never quite enough.

Deaf Men Stabbed At Hallandale Beach Bar

Attackers mistook sign language for gang signs, witnesses say

Two hearing impaired men were stabbed in a Hallandale Beach bar Saturday night when another patron mistook their sign language for gang signs.

By Janie Campbell

Two deaf men were stabbed in a Hallandale Beach bar Saturday night when another patron mistook their sign language for gang signs.

31-year-old Alfred Stewart, who is deaf and mute, and three others including a bouncer are recovering in hospital from non-fatal wounds suffered at the Ocean's Eleven Sports Lounge and Grill on Federal Highway, where Stewart and his friends were celebrating a birthday.

Police say Barbara Lee became angry when she thought Stewart's party, all of whom are deaf, were throwing gang signs at her.

The 45-year-old confronted Stewart and his friends and made gang signs to them. Witnesses say they motioned for the "aggressive" woman to leave them alone.

Instead, Lee left and then shortly returned to the bar with a juvenile and 19-year-old Marco Ibanez, who is accused of pulling out a knife and stabbing the men.

In the ensuing melee, the deaf men suffered stab wounds to the torso and back while the intervening bouncer whas struck on the head with a bottle.

Lee and Ibanez were taken into custody and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

City of Dallas steals $2,000 from child

Rob Beschizza

In February, teenager Ashley Donaldson found $2,000 in an envelope in a Dallas shopping center. She did the right thing, turning it in to the city: after three months, they promised it would become hers should they not find the original owner. However, the city decided to confiscate it when the time came.
On Tuesday, police said under a new city policy, the unclaimed money will go into Dallas' general fund -- not back to the person who found it, as in years past. "We appreciate your honesty," said Dallas police spokesman Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse. "We're going to put the money to good use. It's not going to be wasted, but put to good use for the City of Dallas."

Enjoy watching Janse blink and sweat nervously through that canned statement of his at WFAA's news segment.

Ashley's father told reporters that it "wasn't the lesson her parents wanted her to learn." As the 5-child family reportedly lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, it's one she won't soon forget.

Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture

By John McCain

Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.

Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.

I know those who approved and employed these practices were dedicated to protecting Americans. I know they were determined to keep faith with the victims of terrorism and to prove to our enemies that the United States would pursue justice relentlessly no matter how long it took.

I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be. I am one of the authors of the Military Commissions Act, and we wrote into the legislation that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted. I don’t think it is helpful or wise to revisit that policy.

But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey recently claimed that “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” That is false.

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.

Though it took a decade to find bin Laden, there is one consolation for his long evasion of justice: He lived long enough to witness what some are calling the Arab Spring, the complete repudiation of his violent ideology.

As we debate how the United States can best influence the course of the Arab Spring, can’t we all agree that the most obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a nation that holds an individual’s human rights as superior to the will of the majority or the wishes of government? Individuals might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that respect to others.

All of these arguments have the force of right, but they are beside the most important point. Ultimately, this is more than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is about who we are.

I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we confuse or encourage those who fight this war for us to forget that best sense of ourselves. Through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss, we are always Americans, and different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us.

The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona.

All Your Pics Are Belong to Us: at image hosting services, Terms and Conditions always apply

Glenn Fleishman

Smartphone apps make it trivial to snap a photo, upload it to a host, and post a link to Twitter, sometimes in a single step. But by storing a photo on a hosting service to display via Twitter and beyond, you're assigning some subset of your copyright to that sharing site. Since the 1970s, copyright is inherent in the act of creation, no matter whether it's a snapshot or your life's work. There's a conflict when you present some license for your work to parties which you have only a slender thread of a relationship.

This came to a head last week and this due to changes made at the popular TwitPic service. On May 4th, TwitPic updated its terms of use. Before May 4th, the statement about copyright read:
All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners.

This was modified to include a lengthy section on copyright that raised hackles because it seemed to give TwitPic an enormous grant of rights, even while assuring users that they owned their work. The motivation was likely to clarify policies after Agence France-Presse (AFP) used Haitian photographer Daniel Morel's images of the aftermath of the earthquake without permission. Morel uploaded images to TwitPic, which were then duplicated by another person, and AFP distributed them. A lawsuit is long underway. TwitPic's copyright information shown at that time was more ambiguous about who owned what.

Nonetheless, the new copyright terms raise more questions than they bury. One point of contention was a sloppy paragraph that said once you'd uploaded a picture to TwitPic you couldn't license it to the media, agencies, or other parties and have those groups retrieve it (with your permission) from TwitPic. On May 10th, the terms were revised again and that graf removed.

But other troubling rights assignments remain. While TwitPic still says, "You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to TwitPic," it also receives a free worldwide non-exclusive license to reproduce your works. Ostensibly, that's to cover its ass in duplicating your images to its servers, pushing them to smartphone apps, and covering other future uses. But it's awfully broad. With those rights, TwitPic could publish books, license your photos, and otherwise reap financial rewards without additional permission or any compensation. (The full copyright terms excerpt is below.)

And a deal announced with World Entertainment News Network (WENN) shows at least one worst-case scenario. WENN, which has a deal with Plixi as well, will act as a licensing agency for TwitPic. WENN's CEO told Amateur Photography in January in relation to the Plixi deal that he "did not rule out selling on other types of Twitter images to the wider media, such as pictures of a breaking news story, if it were brought to its attention, whether featuring a celebrity or not."

Ostensibly, the celebrities will be participants in such licensing and cut in on deals for their photos. But there's no discussion of that in either article, and it may explain the rise of WhoSay, an invitation-only photo-hosting site designed specifically for the famous (and their publicists) to manage and distribute photos for social media and handle associated rights.

Now, I am not a lawyer, although I've been reading copyright agreements for decades and have amassed non-systematic knowledge of the subject. I called Carolyn E. Wright, who goes by the moniker Photo Attorney. Wright, an accomplished nature photographer, publishes regular free advice for shooters on her site, and works closely on rights licenses with her clients. She's highly concerned about TwitPic's terms and similar terms from other organizations.

"I've been trying to warn my blog readers for a long time, you need to read the terms of service, you have to be sure they're not getting too broad a license," she says. She doesn't impute that TwitPic has ulterior motives. "Sometimes I think that this is just poor writing on the terms of service. Or, it's an aggressive lawyer, and it's just the safest thing to do." But the way the current revised terms are written, she says to photographers, "don't use that service."

Wright cites Mobypicture as an example of a copyright statement that she feels protects photographers' rights. That site's terms note, "All rights of uploaded content by our users remain the property of our users and those rights can in no means be sold or used in a commercial way by Mobypicture or affiliated third party partners without consent from the user."

Wright says that while professionals may have the most to lose, casual photographers could be equally exploited.

TwitPic didn't respond to a request for comment for this article.

The question at stake here isn't whether we trust TwitPic or other services or not to explain their intent. The intent is in the contract we agree to when we upload our images. If push comes to shove, that's where those firms' lawyers point, and that's where we lose. I've always said in negotiating contracts, "I trust you, or I wouldn't sign a contract with you. But I'm also signing a contract with the person who replaces you in your job, or the company that buys you. It's them I'm worried about."

I've taken a set of scissors to collect the copyright section of the terms of service for many popular services below to compare. Many have quite similar language to TwitPic; others foreswear all rights.

TwitPic
All content uploaded to TwitPic is copyright the respective owners. The owners retain full rights to distribute their own work without prior consent from TwitPic. It is not acceptable to copy or save another user's content from TwitPic and upload to other sites for redistribution and dissemination.

By uploading content to TwitPic you give TwitPic permission to use or distribute your content on TwitPic.com or affiliated sites.

To publish another TwitPic user's content for any commercial purpose or for distribution beyond the acceptable Twitter "retweet" which links back to the original user's content page on TwitPic, whether online, in print publication, television, or any other format, you are required to obtain permission from TwitPic in advance of said usage and attribute credit to TwitPic as the source where you have obtained the content.

You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to TwitPic. However, by submitting Content to TwitPic, you hereby grant TwitPic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and TwitPic's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service provided that any sub-license by TwitPic to use, reproduce or distribute the Content prior to such termination may be perpetual and irrevocable.

You understand and agree, however, that TwitPic may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your media that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable. Deleted images are only accessed in the event of a legal issue.


Flickr
Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Yahoo! Services. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

...With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.


img.ly
The images shared on img.ly are belongings of their respective owners.


Instagram
Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post on or through the Instagram Services. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.


Mlkshk
We do not claim ownership of the materials you post on, upload to or otherwise place on the Site. However, by posting, uploading or placing such material, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use material. This license ends when you delete the material or your account unless the material has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.


Mobypicture
All rights of uploaded content by our users remain the property of our users and those rights can in no means be sold or used in a commercial way by Mobypicture or affiliated third party partners without consent from the user.


Posterous
You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous's business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.


Yfrog (ImageShack)
By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the ImageShack Services, you hereby grant to ImageShack and other users a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content marked "private" will not be distributed outside the ImageShack Services. ImageShack and/or other Users may copy, print or display publicly available Content outside of the ImageShack Services, including without limitation, via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content). After you remove your Content from the ImageShack Website we will cease distribution as soon as practicable, and at such time when distribution ceases, the license to such Content will terminate. If after we have distributed your Content outside the ImageShack Website you change the Content's privacy setting to "private," we will cease any further distribution of such "private" Content outside the ImageShack Website as soon as practicable.