Intelligence Community Agrees to Let Senator Mention It Broke the Law

Yes, we're well down the path to a police state, but let us stop and smell the roses along the way. Thus shall we make the process of enslavement at least mildly entertaining.

Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, members of the Select Committee on Intelligence, for years have been expressing concerns about abuses of power by the executive branch but say they can't tell us what they're worried about because it's classified. That has led to almost-comical statements like this one (by Udall): "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry"—but for now, sadly, he must leave us in suspense. I guess we'll find out in an HBO miniseries in a couple of decades, which we will then be jailed for watching.

Apparently, though, Wyden has been bugging the intelligence community (get it? bugging! the word has a double meaning in this context, you see) to declassify some words about what it has been doing so that he, a United States Senator, could say the words in public. In a letter released on Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence agreed to let him say some of them. Specifically, he can say that while the secret FISA court has "repeatedly held" that the government has complied with the Fourth Amendment,
It is also true that on at least one occasion the [FISA court] held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

(Emphasis added.) He is also permitted to say:
I believe that the government's implementation of Section 702 of FISA has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.

"Please be advised," the letter continues, "that this declassification decision applies only to the precise three statements that you submitted for review and the other information in this letter." That is, the details of this illegal conduct, presumably the ones Wyden and Udall already know but are afraid to tell us, remain classified.

The only real news here is that the intelligence community (or as the letter puts it, the "Intelligence Community") has now admitted it broke the law. Back in 2009, Congress was already investigating reports that the NSA engaged in what was being called "overcollection." You know, when you put it that way, it really doesn't sound like a big deal. You're out there collecting stuff, and sometimes you just overcollect. Is that a problem, really?

Kind of: "Say you get an [FISA court] order to monitor a block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at a big corporation," a senior intelligence official was quoted as saying, "and instead of just monitoring those, the NSA also monitors another block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at that corporation. That is the kind of problem they had." Oh, that kind of problem. Sure, you could call that "violating a court order," or you could be a team player and call it an "overcollection problem." Whose side are you on, anyway?

According to the 2009 report, at that time the administration "said it had taken comprehensive steps to bring the security agency into compliance with the law" after the "overcollection problem" turned up. And, again, that might sound like an admission that the NSA had not previously been in compliance with the law, or, put less patriotically, had been breaking it. But however you put it, this was back in 2009 and comprehensive steps were taken to prevent any continuance of noncompliance. So, can we assume the admitted violations all happened before that?

You'll have to take their word for it, because the most open and transparent administration in history is not giving you any details, such as just how many U.S. persons its Intelligence Community has been eavesdropping on. Of course, as we saw just last month, the NSA claims it doesn't know and can't find out how many people's privacy it's violated because an investigation would violate people's privacy. (Like I said then, at least they have a sense of humor about the whole thing.)

Less comical is the fact that a United States Senator is being told by the Intelligence Community what he can and cannot say. To be clear, the price he'd pay for giving us the details would be limited to the loss of his security clearance; under the Constitution, "for any Speech or Debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other Place." Art. I, § 6. For example, a senator once read parts of the then-still-classified Pentagon Papers into the record, and the Supreme Court held it was "incontrovertible" that doing so was privileged. (This, written when Bush was the culprit, discusses the issue in more detail.)

Hopefully the current group would feel the same way. I'm a little concerned, though, that somebody's eyes might wander upward and see the exception for "treason," remember the relative lack of complaint about the treatment of Bradley Manning for leaking classified material, and get to thinking. We're not that far down the path yet, but the smell is getting more and more unpleasant.

Outrage of the Week #2! British Airways Treats All Men as Pervs

by lskenazy

Dear Readers: Businessman Mirko Fischer is disgusted with British Airways for treating all men as perverts and I hope he sues their pants off (as it were). Here’s the deal:

The airline’s policy states that a grown male is not allowed to sit next to any child he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter if the kid’s parents are elsewhere on the plane, the revolting pervert…er…possessor of a Y chromosome MUST change his seat or the plane will not take off.

I am so on Fischer’s side! His suit arises from a trip he and his 6-months-pregnant wife were taking. His wife wanted to sit next to the window to be more comfortable, so he sat in the middle seat. Next to him sat a 12-year-old boy. The steward asked Fischer to change his seat and when Fischer refused, the steward ostensibly raised his voice and Fischer felt humiliated. Eventually he did change seats, but he is suing to make his point (and he’ll donate any compensation to charity): It is wrong to treat ALL MALES as a sexual threat to children. As he put it so well:

“Statistically, children are far more likely to be abused by a member of their family. Does that mean that British Airways are going to ban children sitting next to their own parents?”

It really doesn’t surprise me that it is a British airline with this policy, as Britain already demands adults undergo background checks when they want to have ANY contact with children — be it as the class mother who brings in cupcakes, or as the mom or dad who carpools kids more than once a month.

It is a country gone crazy with pervert fear, seeing smut in every smile and depravity in every dad. But the best way to protect kids from abuse is not to separate them from the entire adult male population. It is to teach them to say no to untoward advances, and report on anyone or anything creepy.

A creepy, weird, sex-obsessed airline, for instance. — Lenore

Man on Plane Must Change Seats — He’s Next to 2 Boys. Australians Outraged!

by lskenazy

Hey Folks! Encouraging news in our war on predator panic! Over in Australia, on Virgin, a man named Johnny McGirr, 33, was seated next to two unaccompanied boys, aged about 8 and 10. The stewardess made him move because that’s the airline’s policy: Women can sit next to kids, men are apparently just too likely to pounce.

McGirr — a fireman — was understandably embarrassed. He blogged about it and now he’s everywhere in the Australian media today, saying: ”[The attitude of the airline] is ‘we respect you but as soon as you board a Virgin airline you are a potential paedophile’, and that strips away all the good that any male does regardless of his standing in society, his profession or his moral attitudes.”

He also had a new suggestion for Virgin, to keep people safe:

No male should sit next to anyone. A spare seat will be allocated next to any male at any time to ensure the safety of women and children.

Virgin — Jeez what a name for this story — is now reconsidering its policy, the way British Airways did a few years back. (Remember this incident? And its outcome?) But perhaps even better is that the Sydney Morning Herald reports more than 44,000 readers nationwide responded to an online poll about the policy, and 87 % agreed it’s ‘‘sexist and suggests all men are potential pedophiles.”

Maybe all children are not in danger from all men at all times?

How I lost my fear of Universal Health Care

By Melissa

When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.

When I got pregnant shortly after moving, I was apprehensive. Would I even be able to have a home birth like I had experienced with my first 2 babies? Universal Health Care meant less choice right? So I would be forced to do whatever the medical system dictated regardless of my feelings, because of the government mandate. I even talked some of having my baby across the border in the US, where I could pay out of pocket for whatever birth I wanted. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Midwives were not only covered by the Universal health care, they were encouraged! Even for hospital births. In Canada, Midwives and Dr’s were both respected, and often worked together.

I went to my first Midwife appointment and sat in the waiting room looking at the wall of informational pamphlets. I never went to the Dr growing up, we didn’t have health insurance, and my parents preferred a conservative naturopathic doctor anyways. And the doctor I had used for my first 2 births was also a conservative Christian. So I had never seen information on birth control and STDs. One of the pamphlets read “Pregnant Unexpectedly?” so I picked it up, wondering what it would say. The pamphlet talked about adoption, parenthood, or abortion. It went through the basics of what each option would entail and ended by saying that these choices were up to you. I was horrified that they included abortion on the list of options, and fact that the pamphlet was so balanced instead of “pro-life.”

During my appointment that day, the midwife asked her initial round of questions including whether or not I had desired to become pregnant in the first place. Looking back I am not surprised she asked that, I was depressed at the time, (even though I did not list that on my medical chart) and very vocal about my views on birth control (it wasn’t OK, ever.) No wonder she felt like she should ask if I was happy to be having this baby. But I was angry about the whole thing. In my mind, freedom was being violated, my rights were being decided for me by the evils of Universal Health Care.

Fast forward a little past the Canadian births of my third and fourth babies. I had better prenatal care than I had ever had in the States. I came in regularly for appointments to check on my health and my babies’ health throughout my pregnancy, and I never had to worry about how much a test cost or how much the blood draw fee was. I didn’t have to skip my ultrasound because of the expense. With my pregnancies in the States, I had limited my checkups to only a handful to keep costs down. When I went in to get the shot I needed because of my negative blood type, in Canada it was covered. In fact I got the recommended 2 doses instead of the more risky 1 dose because I didn’t have to worry about the expense. I had a wide array of options and flexibility when it came to my birth, and care providers that were more concerned with my health and the health of my baby than how much money they might make based on my birth, or what might impact their reputation best. When health care is universal, doctors are free to recommend and provide the best care for every patient instead of basing their care on what each patient can afford.

I found out that religious rights were still respected. The Catholic hospital in the area did not provide abortions, and they were not required too. I had an amazing medically safe birth, and excellent post-natal care with midwives who had to be trained, certified and approved by the medical system.

I started to feel differently about Universal government mandated and regulated Health care. I realized how many times my family had avoided hospital care because of our lack of coverage. When I mentioned to Canadians that I had been in a car accident as a teen and hadn’t gone into the hospital, they were shocked! Here, you always went to the hospital, just in case. And the back pain I had endured ever since would have been investigated and cared for with whatever X-rays, Physiotherapy or even Surgery that was needed, which would have been at no cost to me. In our particular province, even chiropractic care was provided after a car accident by the provincial care insurance.When I asked for prayers for my little brother who had been burned in an accident, they were all puzzled why the story did not include immediately rushing him to the hospital. When they asked me to clarify and I explained that many people in the States are not insured and they try to put off medical care unless absolutely needed, they literally could not comprehend such a thing.

I started to wonder why I had been so opposed to government mandated Universal Health care. Almost every western country in the world has Universal Insurance of some kind, except the USA. Here in Canada, everyone was covered. If they worked full-time, if they worked part-time, or if they were homeless and lived on the street, they were all entitled to the same level of care if they had a medical need. People actually went in for routine check-ups and caught many of their illnesses early, before they were too advanced to treat. People were free to quit a job they hated, or even start their own business without fear of losing their medical coverage. In fact, the only real complaint I heard about the Universal Health Care from the Canadians themselves, was that sometimes there could be a wait time before a particular medical service could be provided. But even that didn’t seem to be that bad to me, in the States most people had to wait for medical care, or even be denied based on their coverage. Depending on where one lived and how rural the area was, one’s access to care could be limited, and that was regardless of what country one lived in. The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow. In Canada, the wait times were usually short, and applied to everyone regardless of wealth. If you were discontent with the wait time (and had the money to cover it) you could always travel out of the country to someplace where you could demand a particular service for a price. Personally, I never experienced excessive wait times, I was accepted for maternity care within a few days or weeks, I was able to find a family care provider nearby easily and quickly, and when a child needed to be brought in for a health concern I was always able to get an appointment within that week.

The only concern I was left with was the fact that abortion was covered by the Universal Health Care, and I still believed that was wrong. But as I lived there, I began to discover I had been misled in that understanding as well. Abortion wasn’t pushed as the only option by virtue of it being covered. It was just one of the options, same as it was in the USA. In fact, the percentage rates of abortion are far lower in Canada than they are in the USA, where abortion is often not covered by insurance and can be much harder to get. In 2008 Canada had an abortion rate of 15.2 per 1000 women (In other countries with government health care that number is even lower), and the USA had an abortion rate of 20.8 abortions per 1000 women.

And suddenly I could see why that was the case. With Universal coverage, a mother pregnant unexpectedly would still have health care for her pregnancy and birth even if she was unemployed, had to quit her job, or lost her job. If she was informed that she had a special needs baby on the way, she could rest assured knowing in Canada her child’s health care needs would be covered. Whether your child needs therapy, medicines, a caregiver, a wheelchair, or repeated surgeries, it would be covered by the health care system. Here, you never heard of parents joining the army just so their child’s “pre-existing” health care needs could be covered. In fact, when a special needs person becomes an adult in Canada, they are eligible for a personal care assistant covered by the government. We saw far more developmentally or physically disabled persons out and about in Canada, than I ever see here in the USA. They would be getting their groceries at the store, doing their business at the bank, and even working job, all with their personal care assistant alongside them, encouraging them and helping them when they needed it. When my sister came up to visit, she even commented on how visible special needs people were when the lady smiling and waving while clearing tables at the Taco Bell with her caregiver clearly had Downs Syndrome.

I also discovered that the Canadian government looked out for its families in other ways. The country mandates one year of paid maternity leave, meaning a woman having a baby gets an entire year after the birth of her baby to recover and parent her new baby full-time, while still receiving 55% of her salary and her job back at the end of that year. Either parent can use the leave, so some split it, with one parent staying at home for 6 months and the other staying at home for 6 months. I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard it. In America, women routinely had to return to work after 6 weeks leave, many times unpaid. Many American women lost their jobs when becoming pregnant or having a baby. I knew people who had to go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth just to hang onto their job and continue making enough money to pay the bills. Also every child in Canada gets a monthly cash tax benefit. The wealthier families can put theirs into a savings account to pay for college someday (which also costs far less money in Canada by the way), the not so wealthy can use theirs to buy that car seat or even groceries. In the province we lived in, we also received a monthly day care supplement check for every child under school age. I made more money being a stay at home mom in Canada than I do in the States working a part-time close to a minimum wage job. And none of the things I listed here are considered “welfare” they are available to every Canadian regardless of income. For those with lower incomes than we had there are other supports in place as well.

If a woman gets pregnant unexpectedly in America, she has to worry about how she will get her own prenatal care, medical care for her child, whether or not she will be able to keep her job and how she will pay for daycare for her child so she can continue to support her family. In Canada those problems are eliminated or at least reduced. Where do you think a woman is more likely to feel supported in her decision to keep her baby, and therefore reduce abortions?

Since all of these benefits are available to everyone, I never heard Canadians talking about capping their incomes to remain lower income and not lose their government provided health coverage. Older people in Canada don’t have to clean out their assets to qualify for some Medicare or Social Security programs, I knew older people who went in for procedure after procedure, and we never heard about dwindling resources, kids paying for their parents medical expenses, or being forced to use up life insurance or funeral savings in order to get the health care they needed. I heard of inheritances being left even amongst the middle classes. Something I had only heard about in wealthy families in the USA.

And lest you think that the Canada system is draining the government resources, their budget is very close to balanced every year. They’ve had these programs for decades. Last year Canada’s national debt was 586 billion dollars, the USA has 15.5 trillion dollars in national debt. Canada has about one 10th the population of the US, so even accounting for size, the USA is almost 3 times more indebted. And lest you think that taxes are astronomical, our median income taxes each year were only slightly higher than they had been in the States, and we still got a large chunk of it back each year at tax time.
In the end, I don’t see Universal health care as an evil thing anymore.

Comparing the two systems, which one better values the life of each person?Which system is truly more family friendly?

The Wedding of Corporate Person to Angela Marie Vogel

On Tuesday, July 17th, Corporate Person and Ms. Angela Vogel married at Westlake Park to highlight the ridiculousness and insidious harms of "Corporate Personhood". If you'd like to get involved in ending Corporate Personhood, please check out the I103 website, print and sign the petition and consider volunteering or making a contribution.

Below you'll find video, pictures and a copy of the beautiful sermon by Pastor Rich Lang. There are also a full set of professional photos by Alex Garland on Facebook and a full roundup of our press coverage.

Video of the Wedding

Video of the Marriage License

The Sermon: 
PRELUDE

PROCESSIONAL

THE DECLARATION

I greet you in the name of Mammon and invite you to enter into this “holy time” with glad and generous hearts as together we celebrate the wedded immortality of Corporate Person with the mortal flesh of Angela Marie Vogel. We gather knowing that the love that binds them together will end in the grief and tragedy of Angela’s mortal death even as Corporate Person lives on marrying again and again with the adoration and support of shareholders world-wide. But today we celebrate this moment, this consummation of ecstasy and attraction. We celebrate these bonds of affection as Corporate Person with stony indifference evokes yet another merger of yet another possession --- this one, like others before her and others that will come after, beautiful, unique and highly desired … full of potential and full of hope. Angela of flesh, blood and bone offers herself to Corporate Person as yet another object to be used, abused and cast away when no longer profitable. But deliriously expectant that this time Corporate Person will be different!

For Angela, dear, sweet victim of corporate propaganda, she has been swept up in a love that knows no boundaries, nor limits, nor moral concerns … what really does it matter that Corporate Person is merely a legal fiction? What really does it matter that he will look upon her as a business interest to be exploited and sacrificed for greater interests and profit? What really does it matter --- for Angela has found her Rock, the one who will secure and protect her … and even though Corporate Person cannot himself display ecstasy, adoration and actual concern for another life-form, he can still produce Viagra, pornography and sex-toys as distractions of amusement. In the end Angela comes before us, as has millions before her full of hopes and dreams and expectations … but at least in this case Angela knows they can never be fulfilled -- so since a girl can’t have everything she might as well have unlimited amounts of corporate cash. We celebrate this common sense wisdom, this worldly craftiness, this cold characteristic of capitalism as each, Corporate Person & Angela Marie Vogel, marry for their own self interest.

Let us pray:

PRAYER Oh benevolent Mammon for whom all of life bows and submits just to increase your influence --- we shareholders within your commonwealth of greed come now before Thee seeking blessing and grace for our fictional friend Corporate Person and his soon to be cast-aside wife Angela Marie Vogel. Pour out your Moneyed Spirit upon them so that they might unite both Corporate and Human energies to defeat any challenges to their union: through your power in them smite Initiative 103 and all other attempts to limit Corporate control, smite all attempts to grant human rule, human reason, or human desire, the priority of care. We are so grateful to you Creator Mammon for corrupting democracy and buying off politicians, we are thankful that through you we can now give up on that old quaint experiment of human beings as independent actors ---today we celebrate our absorption into the new image of corporate commodification of all flesh, blood and bone. As Angela offers her life in submission, may we also offer our own. All in the name of the brave new world, the brave new future, the brave new evolution of corporate control in whom we seek security.

Amen.

THE QUESTIONS

Corporate Person, do you choose this mortal woman to be your wedded wife, to live with her in the commodified state of matrimony? Will you insert her into your purposes, structure her life to increase your value, receive her adoration as chains to enslave her? Will you silence her voice, surveil her movements, monitor her vagina, and restrict her opinions while increasing the illusion of her choices as long as she remains your property, an object of your lack of affection?

(shareholders respond WE WILL)

Angela, do you choose this legal fiction to be your wedded husband, to live with him in the commodified state of matrimony? Will you love, honor and serve him in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in poverty, will you practice kindness and consideration toward him, will you defend his reputation and continually give up your time, talent, treasure and trophies for his pleasure and gain, will you forsake all other loyalties and priorities, being faithful only unto him as long as you shall live? (I will)

WILL THE CONGREGATION PLEASE STAND? Will you give your blessing to Corporate Person and Angela Marie Vogel and promise to do all that you can to support them in their marriage of corporation and flesh?

OBJECTIONS:

Is there any fool here who might object --- anyone that might have reason to be concerned with this commodified union? (Jeff Reifman I-103)

PASTORAL BLESSING:

Let us not be inhabited by such a fool ---turn away from him, go back to shopping, distract yourself with amusements, don’t worry ---BE HAPPY and have a nice day!

In celebration of this merger let us each reach deep into our pocketbooks and take out a symbol of that which is most sacred and holy of all --- let us show the benevolent power of our Corporate Lords & Masters by taking out a $1 bill ---

Is there anyone here among us who is homeless? Down & out? In need of a buck? In need of moneyed love? ---If so could you just raise your hand and those around such a one just give that person a wedding gift of love … give that a person your dollar of luv ---your sacred gift of treasure.

Receive this gift as a small token of the benevolence of the Corporate-Government-Military –Market merger that now rules the land of the once free.

Let us say AMEN !!!

THE PRONOUNCEMENT Because Corporate Person and Angela Marie Vogel have consented together in commodified matrimony, having pledged to each other their faithfulness before Mammon and this public politically enslaved gathering: on behalf of our true religion, the worship of the dollar, and in compliance with the laws of this land, I pronounce that they are, from this day forward, husband and wife, one corporate flesh to the glory of Mammon and to the devastation of all the earth and its resources.

Corporate Person and Angela may your children become sacrifices in war for greater market gain, may your wealth be without end, may your desire for more always be insatiable. May you begin every day in expectation of profit, and end every night resting secure in each other’s bank accounts. May your continuous lies never be revealed, may your lawlessness never be held accountable, may your theft be forgiven, and may you own this nation lock, stock and barrel until freedom is no more.

You may kiss and merge --- and we may applaud.

Rev. Rich Lang (rich@utemple.org) is Pastor of University Temple United Methodist and a columnist for Real Change. www.utemple.org

Learning From Norway’s Tragedy

By JONAS GAHR STORE

One year ago Sunday, Norway experienced one of the worst extremist attacks Western Europe has witnessed since World War II when Anders Behring Breivik systematically killed 77 people and injured hundreds of others.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s reaction was unequivocal. He declared that Norway’s strongest weapon in responding to this was to employ more openness and more democracy.

Norwegians took up his call. Neither politicians nor the media turned it into a partisan political issue. The public reacted with grief but did not call for extraordinary measures. And the state chose to prosecute Brevik in an ordinary public court with full media coverage.

Many outside Norway have questioned this. Does not responding with openness allow an extremist to broadcast his fanatical views? Does it not risk strengthening extremist movements? Why not create a special, closed legal setting?

As Norway’s foreign minister, I have been frequently confronted with these questions over the past year. Without prejudice to the ongoing legal proceedings, I believe these are key questions. How we, as independent nations and as an international community, should fight violent political extremism is at the heart of politics in the 21st century. I also believe that Norway’s experience after the attack has important lessons that may be relevant beyond our borders.

The last decade has shown us that ideology can never fully explain why specific groups or individuals commit unimaginable acts. Social, psychological and individual factors always play crucial roles. Yet political extremism does not grow in a vacuum. Ideas are the oxygen that allows it to flourish and spread. Extremist perspectives win sympathy and recruits because they offer narratives that claim to identify deep injustices and enemies.

Without this fuel, the blaze of extremism is quickly extinguished. Al Qaeda networks were nourished by the ideas of Islamic fundamentalists just as Breivik invoked and may have drawn sustenance from the ideas and stories of other Western extremists.

Confronting and undermining the narratives and ideas of extremism must therefore be one of our key tasks. To do this, we must retain the courage of our convictions in the face of extremism.

Virtually all modern forms of extremism accuse liberal Western democratic systems of being hypocritical and, ultimately, weak. Al Qaeda portrays the West as anti-Islamic imperialists masquerading as promoters of democracy. Right wing extremism suggests the West is committing cultural suicide through its lax judicial system and naïve multiculturalism.

Both have committed horrific acts designed to bait us into betraying our values and making them martyrs. In fact, it is remarkable to see the many similarities between these two sorts of extremism in their disdain for diversity and their indiscriminate violence against civilians.

In this context, it is a mistake to treat crimes committed by extremists as exceptions, subject to special processes. They must be held accountable in accordance with and to the full extent of the law. Hiding suspects from public view merely dehumanizes the perpetrators and undermines any moral or judicial lessons.

By contrast, prosecuting extremists who have committed crimes in a public courtroom makes it all the more shockingly clear that their horrific acts were undertaken by human beings, and that all of us must work every day to combat the ideas of extremism.

It has been remarkable to observe that the younger generation of Norwegiens — and especially the young survivors of the island massacre — have expressed their trust in Norway’s open approach to dealing with the affair. They know that a political system based on the rule of law cannot turn its back on its standard procedures on an ad hoc basis; that doing so would only provide extremists with evidence of the supposed double standards of democracy.

I believe that the same basic principle holds true in the global fight against terrorism. Osama bin Laden successfully provoked the West into using exceptional powers in ways that sometimes have been in conflict with its commitment to human rights and democracy. This only strengthened the case of extremists, and it shows that we should try to avoid exceptionalism and instead trust in the open system we are defending.

This is not a soft approach. It requires and allows for tough security measures. But it is firmly anchored in the rule of law and the values of democracy and accountability.

That the open public square can be an impressive antidote to extremism should not be surprising. This is not only a bedrock democratic principle. We also have ample historic evidence that extremist views thrive best when confined to the gutter.

Open debate is our strongest tool in standing up to extremism. The far more dangerous avenue is to force extremist ideas underground, where they can fester without competition.

Besides, in a globalized world where ideas and networks circulate beyond the control of states, we have little choice but to forcefully present our strongest counter-arguments and embrace the challenge of fighting extremism in the open. Jonas Gahr Store is the Norwegian minister of foreign affairs.

UNESCO Says Monopolization of Information Puts Barriers to a Better Life

By Carolina Rossini

Governments are pushing for stronger intellectual property measures that excessively favor entertainment and pharmaceutical industries through international fora such as World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - by trying to create new rights for Broadcasters, and more pressingly, through international agreements such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Many of us in civil society are fighting back and are calling attention to the crucial need to enable and facilitate content to enter the public domain. UNESCO has been a big supporter of this initiative, standing up against the privatization of knowledge and the great risk it poses to improving quality of life around the world.

Information, media, and educational professionals, as well as government executives and members of the public met at the International Conference Media and Information Literacy for Knowledge Societies in Moscow, Russia last June. UNESCO, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and other state and non-state agencies held this conference in order to raise awareness of the significance, scale, and topicality of media and information literacy advocacy.

This document was produced through a collaborative process involving participants from 40 countries:

" The changing media landscape and the rapid growth in information are affecting individuals and societies now more than ever. In order to succeed in this environment, and to resolve problems effectively in every facet of life, individuals, communities and nations should obtain a critical set of competencies to be able to seek, critically evaluate and create new information and knowledge in different forms using existing tools, and share these through various channels. This literacy creates new opportunities to improve quality of life. However, individuals, organizations, and societies have to address existing and emerging barriers and challenges to the free and effective use of information, including, but not exhausted by, the following:
This literacy creates new opportunities to improve quality of life. However, individuals, organizations, and societies have to address existing and emerging barriers and challenges to the free and effective use of information, including,
but not exhausted by, the following:
* Limited capacities, resources and infrastructure;
* Censorship, limited information in the public domain, commercialization, privatization, and monopolization of information;
* Lack of respect for cultural and linguistic diversity;
* Excessive and inappropriate legal barriers to accessing, distributing and owning information;
* Lack of awareness of long-term preservation of information, particularly personal digital information; and
* Lack of cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary collaboration among stakeholders (between librarians and media educators, between mass media outfits and academic organizations, etc.)"
Moscow Declaration, June, 2012 [PDF]

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is one of the core supporters of the declaration and has stated:

Media and Information Literacy is a basic human right in an increasingly digital, interdependent, and global world, and promotes greater social inclusion. It can bridge the gap between the information rich and the information poor. Media and Information Literacy empowers and endows individuals with knowledge of the functions of the media and information systems and the conditions under which these functions are performed. 

The final declaration is now available. The set of presentations and texts that provided the background leading to the declarati

Man booted from airplane for wearing anti-TSA shirt

While trying to board a flight out of Buffalo, New York recently, a PhD student at Arizona State found out the hard way that being on a no-fly list isn’t the only way to attract the attention of the TSA — wearing a funny shirt will do the trick, too.

In a post published to his personal blog on Tuesday, a 31-year old doctoral candidate named Arijit recounts the horrors he experienced while attempting to fly from Buffalo-Niagara International Airport to Phoenix over the weekend after attending a funeral. In around 3,000 words he goes into great detail about being booted from a domestic flight, getting stuck renting a car and scrounging for overnight accommodations — something he argues most likely wouldn’t have happened if authorities didn’t make such a big fuss over his t-shirt.

The article of clothing that caused such a concern was a red t-shirt that featured a mock-up of the US Department of Homeland Security’s seal, surrounded with phrases such as “Bombs ZOMG,” “ZOMG Terrorists” and “Alert level bloodred — run, run take off your shoes.”


Arijit says he made it through the Transportation Security Administration’s standard screening routine without incident and that he was only questioned after arriving at his departure gate. There, he says, a supervisor from Delta Airlines started inquiring about the clothing, and soon after Arijit was quickly interrogated by others. He writes that he was then surrounded by agents with both the TSA and a crew from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the law enforcement agency that patrols Western New York’s mass transit system.

“I politely explained that it was ‘mocking the security theater charade and over-reactions to terrorism by the general public,’” Arijit writes. A supervisor for Delta Airlines, however, argued that it had made numerous passengers and employees “very uncomfortable.”

After being vigorously screened and questioned multiple times, Arijit says he was finally given permission, once more, to board his plane. The pilot of the aircraft, however, had had enough of the whole ordeal and asked the Delta supervisor to relay the message that, due to the discomfort the shirt had caused, neither Arijit nor his wife would be allowed to board the aircraft.

“Passengers on the plane supposedly felt uncomfortable with my very presence on the flight,” Arijit writes, “And the Delta manager went out of his way to point out that he wholeheartedly agreed with the pilot’s decision.”

“You’re f------ kidding me,” Arijit says he responded. “Why can’t I board? What’s the concern?”

“Just use your imagination,” the Delta supervisor informed him.

On his blog, Arijit says his reaction is still the same a few days later: “Wow.”

“Whatever I do, I am suspicious. Why?” he asks. “[It’s not] because the shirt I’m wearing presents some sort of legitimate threat. Not because I have weapons or potential bomb-making tools in my luggage. And not because I’ve shown any other indication of any sort that I’m a potential terrorist.Rather, the pilot and some Delta rep can project upon me their worst fears of what I am possibly capable of.”

“If that’s the case,” he continues, “why even bother with the bloated security apparatus — since Delta pilots have discretion to kick off passengers who've passed multiple checks, after all?”

By the time his entire ordeal was over, Arijit and his wife were forced to rent a car and find a place to stay for the evening on their own — they were rebooked for a flight the following morning.

Not before being interrogated further, though, and this time by local law enforcement officers with the NFTA. Even after being booted, Arijit says that transit cops questioned him relentlessly, asking him about where he got his shirt and for details about his family.

According to Arijits account, an NFTA officer named Mark radioed in on his walkie-talkie for permission to further interrogate the dangerous potential terrorist.

“He gave a stupid answer,” Arijit recalls hearing the officer say to a supervisor. “And he looks foreign.”

“Certainly he wasn’t implying that dark-skinned people are not real Americans and that white people are the only true Americans,” Arijit writes in part of his snark-filled synopsis. “Fortunately, Mark’s request was denied. Apparently, someone at NFTA recognized this bigoted meathead for the bigoted meathead he was and that nationality is simply a concept that exists solely on paper and cannot be discerned from just looking at someone.”

In the end, though, the alleged racism on the part of the NFTA was just a sliver of a seriously troubling ordeal that Arijit could assume is likely to occur again and again. On his personal Twitter account, he writes that that, although he might not agree with it, he certainly learned a lesson: “mock the security charade or offend racists by being brown and @Delta won't let you fly.”

Private justice: How Hollywood money put a Brit behind bars

Industry-funded prosecution leads to 4-year sentence for SurfTheChannel owner.

by Timothy B. Lee

Anton Vickerman, 38-year old owner of the once popular link site surfthechannel.com (STC), was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday by a British judge. But the prosecutors sitting across the courtroom from him didn't work for the Crown—they were lawyers for the movie studio trade group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

FACT, not public officials in the UK, was the driving force behind Vickerman's prosecution. Indeed, FACT effectively took on the role of a private law enforcement agency. Private investigators hired by FACT first identified Vickerman as the administrator of STC and built the case against him. His assets were frozen at FACT's request by a government agency—which was itself funded by FACT. And when the UK's public prosecutors decided not to press charges against Vickerman at all, FACT initiated a criminal prosecution on its own dime.

This is a new development for anti-piracy efforts. Organizations like the MPAA, RIAA, IFPA, and FACT have long lobbied law enforcement officials to prosecute "rogue sites" and have provided them with information and logistical support to do so. But public prosecutors generally have the final say on who will be indicted. In the Vickerman case, the public prosecutors concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to merit prosecution. FACT disagreed and invoked what one lawyer told us is an "archaic right" for a private organization to bring criminal prosecutions against other private parties.

Vickerman posted a lengthy testimonial to his site after he was convicted. In it, he describes FACT as a lawless conspiracy to shut down his site for the benefit of competing video sites, and he portrays Judge Evans as an "imbecile" who didn't understand the legal issues in the case. While many of the accusations seem overwrought, Vickerman did include a cache of documents that came out during his trial. From them we can paint a clear picture of just how far one private party was allowed to go in its bid for justice.

FACT confirmed the authenticity of the court documents for us but declined to get into the specifics of Vickerman's account—arguing that his conviction by a jury of his peers speaks for itself.

Surfthechannel.com grew rapidly—so rapidly that it soon came to the attention of Hollywood. The site hosted no videos, but its meticulously organized collection of links made it popular with those seeking infringing content. And plenty of people were interested. At the site's peak in mid-2009, STC attracted hundreds of thousands of users per day, earning Vickerman up to £50,000 ($78,500) per month in advertising revenue.

FACT wanted to shutter the site, but first it had to find out who was running the thing. Vickerman had kept a low profile, registering the domain through an anonymizing service and purchasing server space offshore. Undeterred, FACT hired an investigator named Pascal Hetzscholdt to pose as a potential investor who lured Vickerman to a London hotel on July 10, 2008. While the two ate lunch, a surveillance team recorded the encounter from a nearby table. Investigators working for FACT then tracked Vickerman back to his home 250 miles north of London in Gateshead.

The contents of that lunch discussion are disputed. Vickerman insists that he "did not discuss anything whatsoever about movies, illegality, or other such matters." Hetzscholdt has a different recollection. In a report filed after the meeting, he stated that Vickerman discussed plans to "experiment with using the BitTorrent network as the infrastructure to offer popular current films through STC." The whole thing was recorded, so the truth should have been a simple matter to verify—but FACT says that no audio of the meeting exists, making it impossible to check Hetzscholdt's story. Vickerman suspects foul play.

"I am firmly of the belief that such an audio recording did exist but that it was 'disappeared' by FACT Ltd due to it containing nothing controversial," he wrote.
Enlarge / Form seeking authorization under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to conduct "directed surveillance" of Vickerman during the London hotel meeting. Contrary to FACT's claims, Vickerman was not in the business of selling counterfeit DVDs.

FACT soon discovered that the home Vickerman shared with his wife was for sale. So, two days after the London meeting, another FACT agent posed as a potential buyer in order to access the residence. The agent covertly recorded the home walk-through and filed a detailed report on the operation.

Meanwhile, FACT was busy collecting other information about Vickerman. The group asked the satellite provider BSkyB for information about the couple's satellite TV subscription, for instance. An investigator tailed Vickerman's wife Kelly on a day's errands. The Guardian reports that "other private eyes had already obtained detailed information about his bank accounts, cars, and telephone records." FACT was nothing if not thorough.

On August 18, 2008, Northumbria police raided the Vickermans' home. Vickerman says that FACT agents participated in the raid and that they were "clearly directing the police." A FACT spokesman declined to comment to us on this allegation, but court documents do indicate that FACT was heavily involved in planning the raid. FACT, for instance, hired the forensic investigator used in the case.

In an e-mail sent a week prior to the raid, FACT's Colin Tansley outlined a plan for FACT's investigators to take down STC and replace it with a seizure notice. Vickerman says this plan failed because FACT believed, inaccurately, that the STC servers were located inside Vickerman's house. (The servers were actually located in Sweden, beyond the reach of FACT and the Northumbria police.) When we asked, FACT again refused to comment on Vickerman's allegations.

During the search, Vickerman and his wife were both arrested. Vickerman told both police and FACT investigators that the STC site was, in his view, legal; it acted "as a search engine" and was exempt from liability, he said.

The Vickermans were soon released on bail, but the other shoe was about to drop. Their cash was about to be seized.
Enlarge / Work order requesting forensic investigator to take down STC site and replace it with a FACT logo.

Asset freeze

Two weeks later, on September 1, investigator Alan Connolly from the Bedfordshire Trading Standards Financial Investigations Unit showed up at the Vickermans' home. He knocked on the front door and presented them with an "asset restraint order," which the unit had taken out at FACT's request. Vickerman claims that he and his wife were then barred from accessing any of their funds, aside from £125 per week, per person, to cover living expenses. As a result of the order, Vickerman says that he "started to default on my bills and rapidly started spiraling into severe financial problems."

The Bedfordshire Trading Standards Financial Investigations Unit (BTSFIU) has a grandiose name but a strange history—and it's hardly the impartial agent of government justice its name might suggest. A statement on the agency's website explains that, in 2007, the "Bedfordshire Trading Standards Service was approached" by FACT and "offered a unique sponsorship opportunity" to create the Financial Investigation Unit. With FACT's generous support, the BTSFIU was soon able to focus on conducting piracy-related property confiscations.

Indeed, so deep is the partnership that, on the form used to request an asset confiscation, the agency states that "priority will be given to those referrals that involve cinematic piracy." Vickerman says he filed a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed that "BTSFIU had made 23 similar restraint order applications in 2008, all on behalf of FACT."

In a Tuesday interview, FACT spokesman Eddy Leviten brushed off any suggestion that the financial ties between FACT and the BTSFIU created a conflict of interest, however.

"The banking industry in the UK funds the check and credit bureau in the Metropolitan Police," he told us. "It's something that happens in the UK where private industry can fund specific units within law enforcement to take on a specific role. Those units still have to withstand the same scrutiny" as any other law enforcement agency. We e-mailed two BTSFIU agents seeking comment on the relationship but never got a response.

Unable to spend his own funds on legal representation, Vickerman borrowed money from his father to hire an attorney who challenged the asset freeze. According to Vickerman, "It turns out it is unlawful for BTS to act outside of Bedforshire County," so the asset freeze was cancelled about a month after it had been put into place.

And the news got even better for Vickerman. It soon emerged that the government had no interest in charging him with a crime. Indeed, the government wasn't even convinced he had committed one.
Enlarge / The instructions of the BTSFIU asset confiscation form notes that priority is given to piracy cases.

"I cannot advise any prosecution"

Vickerman was referred to Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the arm of the UK government responsible for criminal prosecutions. CPS chose not to prosecute him, explaining its decision in a letter dated December 12, 2008.

"I understand that the investigation into the suspects was prompted by FACT and in effect this is an enquiry that has been undertaken almost entirely by FACT although with the assistance of the Northumbria Police," the letter explained. The CPS prosecutor then continued:

I understand from [Northumbria Detective Constable] Watkin that there have been no other successful prosecutions that he is aware of where we could point to this type of website being classified as amounting to "making available... by electronic transmission," the legal standard needed to find Vickerman guilty of copyright infringement. At present it appears uncertain if in fact what the suspect has done does infringe this particular legislation. Certainly on the evidence thus far provided it is impossible for me to determine if this is the case and therefore I cannot advise any prosecution on the evidence presented.

CPS also pointed to additional problems with prosecuting STC. "It is obvious that this suspect does not put copyrighted material on the Internet itself," said the letter. "His 'crime' is to make it easier for others to find what is already there. This begs the rather obvious question of why he is being pursued rather than those who actually breach the copyright by displaying the material."

The agency also wondered whether there are "civil law remedies available perhaps including an injunction to close offending websites down," and if those remedies existed, why they weren't being pursued. (Such civil process has been used in the US to shut down Napster, Grokster, LimeWire, and many others, though such cases have been less successful in the UK.) CPS also noted that "such well established sites as YouTube occasionally fall foul of copyright and that they are not prosecuted in the manner suggested here."

The letter concluded that "the evidence provided is too vague to establish what actual offences are alleged and thus I cannot advise any charge at this stage."

It sounded like the end of the case, and in most cases would have been—but FACT badly wanted Vickerman in jail and was willing to do the work itself if necessary.
Going it alone

In the United States, public prosecutors generally have the power to decide when criminal prosecution is appropriate. Eleanor Lackman, a copyright attorney at the New York firm of Cowan DeBaets, Abrahams, and Sheppard, told Ars that "criminal liability generally is only prosecuted by government entities" such as the Department of Justice. A private party can request a copyright prosecution—as in the Megaupload case—but the final decision rests with the government.

 
Enlarge / Vickerman outside the courthouse with an unidentified companion.

United Kingdom law differs. There, private parties can initiate criminal prosecutions if they're willing to cover the costs out of their own pockets. FACT was, and so it bypassed CPS and brought criminal charges against Vickerman directly. "It is now our intention to run a private prosecution," FACT's Colin Tansley wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues on December 12, 2008.

Litigation dragged on for years. Vickerman charges that FACT withheld key documents from him, including the CPS letter recommending against prosecution, that he says would have bolstered his case. Indeed, he became so concerned with FACT's conduct that he actually petitioned government prosecutors to take over the prosecution. The request was rejected.

"In July 2010, the stress and strain of the nightmare we have endured for nearly two years finally breaks our marriage," Vickerman wrote. "Myself and my wife separate. FACT Ltd's decision to charge my wife as well, despite them knowing she has no involvement in STC, has bore them fruit." But to FACT, and even to the judge in the case, the problems and the prosecution were of Vickerman's making.

"You didn't bother to check with the copyright owners"

The trial finally commenced in May 2012. Vickerman was optimistic because he thought he had a key precedent on his side. In its 2008 letter, CPS noted that "FACT are currently involved in a prosecution of others involved in a similar website known as tvlinks." By the time the STC case reached trial in 2012, another judge had ruled that TV-Links had not infringed copyright.

But a jury found Vickerman guilty of "conspiracy to defraud" (rather than of facilitating copyright infringement) and the judge pronounced sentence. In his Tuesday remarks, Judge Evans made a curious reference to the TV-Links case, saying that Vickerman "pressed on, knowing that TV-Links had been taken down following the intervention of FACT on the basis that what it had been doing was unlawful."

Of course, the courts, not FACT, determine what is and isn't unlawful—and the courts had ultimately found that TV-Links had not violated the law. Judge Evans seems to have believed that FACT's simple accusation of unlawful conduct should have been sufficient basis for Vickerman to shut down his website.

"Your arrest and the interviews that followed did not act as any kind of warning about the criminal activity in which you were engaged or as any sort of barrier to the continued operation of STC," Judge Evans said. "With an arrogance of a kind that you displayed repeatedly during your evidence at the trial you carried on as before and indeed only shut down STC days before this trial began in May."

In March 2009, Judge Evans said, STC had two million links, of which "in excess of 5,500 links" were to infringing movies. "You insisted that you couldn't know if it was infringing copyright, that the studios might have granted right holder licences to the films of which you had no knowledge," Judge Evans said. "That was certainly true and bound to be true if you didn't bother to check with the copyright owners and check you most certainly didn't."

Vickerman places blame for his conviction squarely at the feet of Judge Evans. "We were about to enter a parallel universe in which there were two prosecutors, FACT Ltd and Judge Evans," Vickerman wrote in his Tuesday statement. It was a universe "in which the Judge had no grasp of the Internet or copyright law and in which evidence that would never have normally made it up the courtroom steps due to its dodginess was readily accepted as factual here.... I was surprised to find that I was more upset about the way FACT Ltd had won rather than the actual fact that they had won."

But Evans was having none of it. "You demonstrate a complete absence of remorse," he told Vickerman. "In the trial, you levelled criticism of virtually everyone involved in this investigation. You would not countenance, and it’s evident from your demeanor now that you still do not countenance, the idea that you were doing anything wrong. I’m bound to say that in all the years I’ve worked in this court I have never encountered arrogance of the kind that you displayed during the trial... The vast majority of the material made available through that website infringed copyright."

The privatization of justice
Enlarge / In 2008, FACT compiled a lengthy dossier on Anton and Kelly Vickerman.

Ars sought comment from David Cook, a solicitor who successfully represented defendants connected to two other websites: OiNK and FileSoup. Those cases were formally handled by CPS rather than private groups, but even so Cook regarded the degree of industry involvement as "an abuse of the Court process as a result of the involvement of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) at all stages of the investigation and subsequent prosecution."

Those cases, he said, were "brought by the CPS, with the trade bodies malevolently lurking in the shadows but with their fingerprints all over the evidence." In the STC case, by contrast, the industry dispensed with the "lurking" and drove the case itself from start to finish. Cook describes the right of private parties to initiate criminal prosecutions as "archaic."

He argues that the ability of private companies to bring criminal charges opens the door to abuses. For example, Cook questions whether it is right for the "police to be able to use the powers that are specifically bestowed to them to seize a person’s property, only to then decide not to do anything themselves and simply pass the material to an 'interested third party'" like FACT. (Cook concedes that this transfer of evidence was ruled legal by a UK appeals court.)

FACT's Leviten disagreed. He told us there's a "rich historical precedent" for private parties bringing criminal prosecutions. He compared FACT to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which brings criminal animal welfare cases. Private criminal prosecutions, he said, are "part of the democratic system in the UK."

But Cook worries that the "enormous financial resources and clout" of organizations like FACT, and the lack of public oversight of their activities, could deprive defendants of a fair trial.

"There is no doubt that copyright holders deserve the full protection of the law," he told me. "But I still think that the manner in which they conduct these prosecutions is offensive."

Content Industry War on Sharing Claims Another Victim

LendInk, an innovative site dedicated to helping readers share their legally purchased ebooks with one another, has chosen to shut down in the face of legal intimidation. Despite the fact that the site was apparently operating within the terms of service of the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook, its hosting company was targeted with "hundreds of threats," including cease-and-desist letters.

LendInk didn't even host any ebooks itself: it simply connected users seeking a particular title with other users who had a legally-purchased ebook to lend. The site planned to eventually make money by providing links to purchase books through the Amazon affiliate program, but for the past year it had been operating without income.

This shutdown sets a dangerous precedent for the future of innovation in the ebook world. It creates confusion for consumers about what behaviors are actually legal and will likely have a chilling effect on entrepreneurs that could otherwise create new businesses — and new profit centers for the publishers. In an interview with Digital Media Machine, LendInk's owner Dale Porter expressed his disappointment in having to shutter his business:

I am simply a hard working guy that was trying to provide a legit service. ... Sadly, it appears that my American Dream has been left as road kill at the hands of misguided individuals.

That those misguided individuals were able to target his site so effectively is a potent reminder that free speech is only as strong as the weakest link. In this case, the threats took the form of cease-and-desist letters to his hosting service — and as a result, he hasn't even had the opportunity to review the notices himself. As he told Digital Media Machine, it's not even clear yet whether the notices are from authors, publishers, or both.

But it's clear that the individuals are misguided, because LendInk only enabled activities that had already been approved by the rightsholders. In fact, all of the lending enabled by the site took place through the built-in Kindle and Nook lending features, which are extremely limited in comparison to a traditional book. Not only is it limited to ebooks that have been explicitly "lending-enabled," but each copy of the ebook may also only be lent exactly once for a total of 14 days. Loans can only be initiated by a user in the United States, but may be unsuccessful if the recipient is in a country with additional geographic restrictions.

Of course, these barriers come from contracts, not from limitations in the technology. It's clear that while ebooks could in theory be more flexible and versatile than paper books, prohibitive licenses have prevented that from happening.

As author and EFF Fellow Cory Doctorow has put it, "Everyone knows that it's a bug and not a feature that if one person is reading a book, someone else can't." Instead of trying to patch the bugs that afflict traditional books, publishers use DRM software and restrictive licenses to suppress the potential new features.

Some of these efforts even attempt to unravel the first sale doctrine, which has long been a cornerstone of U.S. copyright law. That principle means that "if you buy it you own it," and it's the way used bookstores can exist. Indeed, it is essential to real-world book-sharing communities like BookCrossing and BookMooch.1

The legal threats against service like LendInk are not about sales. Rather, they are just the latest efforts in a wrongheaded campaign to crush any segment of the content distribution chain that lies outside of the rightsholders' traditional direct control. The same mindset drove Warner Brothers to sue Redbox, the kiosk-based DVD rental operation, even though it was perfectly legal under the first sale doctrine. It's led Capitol Records to sue an emerging marketplace for "second-hand" digital music, even though used music sales have existed for decades. It's even behind the Association of American Publishers' stubborn opposition to a treaty that could end the "famine" of accessible books that devastates the visually impaired community.

Needless to say, this mindset can only result in less innovation. And that's bad for readers, it's bad for platform developers, and in the end it's bad for publishers, too.

License plates scanned at border, data shared with car insurance group

National Insurance Crime Bureau, though, says it's only interested in stolen cars.

by Cyrus Farivar

As public scrutiny continues to mount against the use of license plate readers (LPRs) across the country, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has now released government documents showing that such data, which includes precise GPS location, date, and timestamps, in addition to the plate in question, are shared with an auto insurance umbrella organization.

The documents, published on Tuesday as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, include a six-page memorandum of understanding (MOU) from 2005 between the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) and the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

The NICB is a nonprofit organization funded by hundreds of American auto insurance corporations around the country, which "partners with insurers and law enforcement agencies to facilitate the identification, detection, and prosecution of insurance criminals."

Ars, as part of its recent investigation into the use of LPRs, also has a pending FOIA request with CBP, but has yet to receive a response beyond a perfunctory acknowledgement of the request.

The revelation has certainly raised some eyebrows, but the NICB now says that while insurance companies are members of the organization, they do not automatically gain access to the LPR data.

Roger Morris, the NICB's chief communications officer, clarified by e-mail that only authorized "Special Investigations Units" personnel from NICB member companies have access to such data "for theft prevention activities."

Every 24 hours, the NICB receives an electronic data transfer from all border stations, providing LPR details on all cars that have crossed in and out of the country. Mainly, the NICB says it's looking for cars that have been (possibly fraudulently) reported stolen, but were spotted at a border.

Morris added that the CPB's LPR data—"roughly 15 million reads a month"—is kept for 12 months. That means the CBP makes approximately 500,000 LPR reads at the borders every single day, and passes that data along to the NICB.

"Thousands of vehicles are stolen in the U.S. each year and taken to Mexico," he added. "LPR data helps insurers and law enforcement verify that a vehicle that has been reported stolen has been taken into Mexico and helps NICB and law enforcement in attempts to recover the vehicle and repatriate it back to the U.S. These stolen vehicles represent millions of dollars in insurance losses and recovering as many as possible helps reduce the impact of theft on insurance rates."

Future privacy challenges likely

Ginger McCall, an attorney with EPIC, said that she found it surprising that a government agency was providing LPR data to a private organization.

"People have the right to know what data is being collected, how it’s being shared," she told Ars. "You could imagine a situation where a plate was mis-scanned or what mis-entered into the database. Or perhaps insurance rates may go up? Who knows how industry is going to use this."

McCall also argued that under this year’s Jones v. United States case, where the Supreme Court unanimously found that law enforcement does not have the right to warrantlessly track someone’s car via a GPS device placed on the car, that there may be room for future legal challenges.

"[Justice] Scalia didn’t rule out the possibility that there would be a wider implication here," she said. "If you look at concurrence by [Justice] Sotomayor, there are great implications over privacy data and this sort of signals from the court that it was going to look at these issues more closely."

NICB: It's CPB's data, not ours!

Other legal scholars who have watched the evolution of LPRs have also raised questions about the collection, transmission, and disclosure of LPR data by and from private companies and organizations.

The MOU also allows the NICB to sub-contract management of this data to a "data processing service," and requires that any misuse of the LPR data be reported to the NICB, and then reported on to the CBP.

"In short, US Customs is granting a private company access to what it admits is 'highly sensitive commercial, financial, and proprietary information,' and then further allowing the private company to outsource the management of that 'highly sensitive' data to yet another private company," wrote Kade Crockford, the director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU Massachusetts, in a Wednesday blog post.

"The only auditing and accountability mechanisms required are self-policing and self-reporting. These documents reveal a growing problem that extends far beyond the management of license plate data. The government is increasingly collecting vast quantities of information about ordinary people accused of no crime, and increasingly it is relying on private contractors to manage, sort, and analyze this data looking for crime or even 'pre-crime' trends. The sharing of our license plate data with private companies should be viewed as but one troubling example of this much larger problem."

But the ACLU isn't the only group raising questions.

"These documents are illustrative of why individuals often feel so helpless with information that is shared with others or in public—it is very difficult for us to police the use of our information ‘downstream,’" wrote Woodrow Hartzog, a law professor at Samford University, in an e-mail sent to Ars.

"Not only does the lack of transparency in such information sharing make the discovery of information misuse difficult, our current legal regime is not well-suited to address the problems arising from our slow but steady creep towards ubiquitous public surveillance."

Frank G. Scafidi, an NICB spokesperson, also told Ars he was not sure if motorists could query the NICB to examine, verify, or edit records that it held.

"That information is coming from CBP," he said. "That’s where it’s coming from. That’s not our data. They share it with us for a specific purpose. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but unless there’s a method for doing that, it’s not for us to decide at this point in time."

Facebook Terrorism? Ex-Marine arrested, 9-11 conspiracy posts ruled 'terrorist in nature'

The FBI, Secret Service and the Chesterfield Police 'swarmed' Brandon Raub, a former U.S. Marine and decorated veteran, before Raub was allegedly arrested and taken to a psychiatric hospital. Raub believes 9/11 was an inside job and wrote about the coming 'Revolution.' An FBI agent reportedly claimed, 'The threats that he was making were terrorist in nature.'

 By Ms. Smith.

There are conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don't really follow that news, but can people be arrested after saying so online, exercising their First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech? On August 16, the FBI, Secret Service and the Chesterfield Police arrested a decorated former U.S. Marine for "airing his critical views of the U.S. government on Facebook." Is there such a thing as Facebook terrorism?

(See Raub's posts on Facebook or click here to see larger.) According to Salem-News, an FBI agent claimed, "The threats that he was making were terrorist in nature."

The Jeenyus Corner noted, "Brandon Raub is a former U.S. Marine, decorated combat veteran, and he founded the Richmond Liberty Movement, based in Virginia. Brandon was arrested by government officials last night over some 'terroristic' posts he made on Facebook. To be clear, he was arrested for speaking his mind about his opinions, which is supposed to be a constitutional right in our country. He is currently being 'held' at John Randolph Psychiatric hospital in Hopewell VA." The site republished Raub's 'The Truth' article from November 2011 which began with "America has lost itself. We have lost who we truly are. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave."

On Facebook, Raub talked about the Illuminati, a shadow organization in which "some of the leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers" and the "great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government." He said people may think he was going crazy, but a "civil war," the "Revolution" is coming. "I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting." On July 24, he said he was at a "great crossroads. As if a storm of destiny is about to pick me up and take me to fight a great battle." On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them. On August 13, he wrote, "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads." On August 14, Raub wrote, "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it." On August 15, Raub wrote, "And they will say he said it to the NSA first." To know all that was said, please read it for yourself here or on Facebook.

In this video, Raub's mother says the authorities showed up "in a swarm" to arrest him before taking him to John Randolph Psychiatric Hospital. She said her son does not suffer from PTSD. Raub allegedly was arrested by Chesterfield Police after he "assaulted an officer and resisted arrest," but "Chesterfield PD said Raub has not been charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer." Here are links to many more videos regarding Raub. There are five articles written by Raub that were published on Don't Tread on Me. Here, DeathRattleSports asked whether Raub was the NDAA's first victim.

Many times in the past, we've looked at ridiculous FBI or DHS you-might-be-a-domestic-terrorist-if lists which seem to indicate that otherwise innocent acts may flag you as potentially suspicious. Sadly, our nation's veterans are potentially suspicious, according to some of these lists. To me, a terrorist is someone or a group who inflicts terror and is actually out to hurt us, the USA's citizens or our critical infrastructure; terrorists who plot evil with intentions of killing people, blowing up or otherwise destroying things. However, I recently read about the Global Terrorism Database, which is "an open-source database with information on more than 98,000 terrorist attacks and terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2010." START is "tasked by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate" and defines terrorism as "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation."

To better understand this, it's important to look at "Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States (PPT-US) Codebook" as well as "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008" [PDF] by START (Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). The report lists the categories of ideological motivation in terrorism as:

Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one's personal and/or national "way of life" is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.

Extreme Left-Wing: groups that want to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes. This category also includes secular left-wing groups that rely heavily on terrorism to overthrow the capitalist system and either establish "a dictatorship of the proletariat" (Marxist-Leninists) or, much more rarely, a decentralized, non-hierarchical political system (anarchists).

Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.

Ethno-Nationalist/Separatist: regionally concentrated groups with a history of organized political autonomy with their own state, traditional ruler, or regional government, who are committed to gaining or regaining political independence through any means and who have supported political movements for autonomy at some time since 1945.

Single Issue: groups or individuals that obsessively focus on very specific or narrowly-defined causes (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-nuclear, anti-Castro). This category includes groups from all sides of the political spectrum.

However, please note that the latest START report [PDF] from July states, "To be clear, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) does not classify individuals as terrorists or extremists based on ideological perspectives." And "at no point has any START study defined persons 'suspicious of centralized federal authority' and 'reverent of individual liberty' as terrorists. Instead, we assigned ideological classifications only to groups that have already carried out completed or attempted terrorist attacks."

If there were ever such a "revolution," such as Raub supported, that caused riots like were seen in London, Public Intelligence previously posted the U.S. military's plans for the "use of deadly force, detention and interrogation of U.S. Civilians" and alleged military plans to squash civil unrest in the USA. It might also be a good time to recall Social Media Monitoring on Gov't Steroids: Anything might come back to bite you or the list of hot keywords monitored by DHS. Things are still unfolding in regards to Raub, but it is alarming if his constitutional right to free speech, his right to talk conspiracy theory smack, is considered potential terrorism.

Questioning Copyright's Trade-Off

The idea behind copyright is simple — it is supposed to be a balance in the service of the public interest. There's a trade-off: for accepting a restriction on certain speech, the public benefits from the production of more new creative works each year. That delicate equation is complicated by many factors, and the right policy should find the balance of copyright scope and duration, limitations and exceptions like fair use, and the appropriate remedies in case of infringement.

But in fact, copyright policies almost universally lack the serious cost-benefit analysis that must precede any evidence-based proposal. And indeed, while the unintended costs are clear to anybody who has observed abuse of, say, the DMCA takedown system, the evidence that these policies create incentives — or even prevent harm — is less forthcoming.

Last week Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute posted a thought-provoking piece that questions the similar calculation at the core of national security rhetoric. In the area of security, he asks, are we actually getting a "trade-off" for all the costs we incur to the country’s budget and our personal liberty? Sanchez convincingly argues that we haven’t been working towards a balance between those two ideas at all. Liberty is consistently discarded in the name of “security,” and the resulting policies don't actually make us safer. A dialogue that focuses only on striking a balance between these two ideas fails to address more fundamental questions about our policy.

So, too, with copyright. The right copyright policy should serve the constitutional purpose of promoting "the progress of science and the useful arts" while respecting the ideals of the First Amendment. The need for such a balance is well recognized from all corners of the copyright discussion. In a post about the misguided Supreme Court opinion in Golan v. Holder this January, for example, EFF referred to the "traditional copyright balance between public and private interests"; and while EFF doesn't always see eye-to-eye on copyright issues with content lobby groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), its chief executive Cary Sherman has also described "the careful balance struck within" copyright law.

It makes sense, then, that one typical response to bad copyright policy developments — and there are many — is to say that those developments skew this balance the wrong way, favoring the incentives and rewards for rightsholders more than is necessary to maximize creative production. But that approach overlooks the fact that many of the worst copyright proposals, like those that come out of content lobbying groups like the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) do worse than a skewed balance. Rather, they fail to strike any kind of balance at all, curtailing speech and fundamental online rights without a corresponding increase in the incentive to create new works.

By and large, in the legislature, in the courtroom, in the White House, and in the backroom negotiations for international treaties, balance does not seem to be the real goal. This year's protests against SOPA and ACTA were certainly historic demonstrations of online activism, but those proposed laws were just the latest in a long line. Even as ACTA met defeat in Europe, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was being negotiated with industry representatives behind closed doors, with guardians of the public interest on the outside. SOPA was an egregious and over-the-top wishlist of Hollywood demands, but it was hardly new: its Senate counterpart, PIPA, was a re-write of a bill from two years earlier called COICA. And Congress has passed dozens of other one-sided copyright laws over the last thirty years.

If it were simply a matter of striking the wrong balance, SOPA's cost in terms of threatening human rights, curtailing freedom of speech, and damaging the economy would have to be offset by gains to the content lobby backing the bill. It wouldn't be the right trade-off, but it would make sense in the context of a balance. In reality, though, the benefits for the content lobby simply weren't there. In January, Sanchez himself calculated that the size of the foreign "pirate" movie market targeted at Americans — the kind of activity SOPA was written to address — was orders of magnitude below the MPAA claims. And for their part, the RIAA recently revealed in a leaked report from April that despite its public rhetoric, it felt SOPA was "not likely to have been [an] effective tool for music" even if it had passed.

Similarly, when the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act — sometimes called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" because it kept the world's most famous rodent out of the public domain — was challenged in the Supreme Court, some of the world's leading economists lined up in a brief [pdf] to question the premise that the public benefited from retroactive term extension at all. Once again, the costs to the public are clear: we all suffer from a poorer public domain with no clear gains in return. Worse, these examples are the rule and not the exception. Many elements of policy today — from DMCA's problematic section 1201 to the unconstitutional ICE seizures of websites — and dozens more failed proposals — like the "Hollywood Hacking bill" or the broadcast flag — fit this pattern.

Compared to the trade-off of security and liberty, the question at the heart of copyright policy is an easy one: How do we optimize the incentive to create new works while minimizing the cost to our freedom of speech and ability to innovate? Unfortunately, sane policy developments that work toward this end are all too rare.