InternetPolicy.net

Piracy Surveillance

"The New Surveillance" by Sonia Katyal, Fordham Law School (Pub-Law Research Paper No. 46), Case Western Law Review, Vol. 54, No. 297, 2004:

"...Piracy surveillance comprises extrajudicial methods of copyright enforcement that detect, deter, and control acts of consumer infringement. In the past, legislators and scholars have focused their attention on other, more visible methods of surveillance relating to employment, marketing, and national security. Piracy surveillance, however, represents an overlooked fourth area that is completely distinct from these other types, yet incompletely theorized, technologically unbounded, and, potentially, legally unrestrained. The goals of this Article are threefold: first, to trace the origins of piracy surveillance through recent jurisprudence involving copyright; second, to provide an analysis of the tradeoffs between public and private enforcement of copyright; and third, to suggest some ways that the law can restore a balance between the protection of copyright and civil liberties in cyberspace. This paper was selected as the winning entry for the 2004 Yale Law School Cybercrime and Digital Law Enforcement Conference writing competition..."

US Senate extends net tax moratorium

Carl Hulse reports in the New York Times that "The Senate agreed Thursday [yesterday] to extend a ban on taxes on Internet access for another four years... Under the bill, which must still be reconciled with a much broader tax moratorium already approved by the House, no new taxes would be allowed on high-speed Internet access through Nov. 1, 2007. A few states that have already imposed them would, however, be able to retain them for now. In an important concession to its opponents, the bill does not extend the tax ban to any traditional phone service conducted via the Internet..."

India's "roadmap" for net growth

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) yesterday released "Broadband India: Recommendations on Accelerating Growth of Internet and Broadband Penetration." Click here to download this much anticipated 113-page "roadmap" (340kb PDF), which includes analyses of South Korea's and Malaysia's successes in this field.

TRAI identifies 11 major obstacles to broadband Internet growth in India, and makes 12 recommendations for overcoming them. The recommendations include more use of satellite and wireless links, waiving the service tax on ISPs for five years, revenue-sharing between telecom operators and ISPs, new incentives for ISPs to join India's peering exchanges, etc.

But according to a Business Line article on the Sify portal, India's ISPs were not satisfied by these proposals because TRAI did not fix wholesale bandwidth prices or give detailed orders for the dominant telco to open it's "last mile" network.

Chinese "Online Bank Robber" trojan

Interfax-China reports that "Jiangming Technology, a leading Chinese anti-virus software company, has discovered a new virus named Wangyin Dadao (Online Bank robber), which can steal passwords from online banking systems... To date, this Trojan virus has infiltrated only the online banking system of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Once a customer inputs their account password through the online banking system, the virus sends an email to an unknown party, which contains the customer's account information and password. 'We can say that it is possible for a person who uses the online banking system to lose all of the money in their account as a result of this virus,' Tao Shulong, an official from the Planning Department of Jiangming Technology, told Interfax in an interview. 'And, there is still the possibility that other banks could become infected by the same virus.'

"According to Tao, Jiangming received a sample of this new virus on April 11, at which time the company deconstructed it. However, a second version of the virus was discovered on April 18, which has also been subsequently deconstructed by Jiangming. 'From what we have seen, it seems that the maker of this virus has a good understanding of online financial systems,' Tao furthered..."

S Korea's Internet Real Name Law

Base21, Jinbonet's website for progressive news in English from South Korea, says: "Lots of civil society entities including press and human rights organizations are showing strong and united resistance against the recently passed Internet Real Name Law as We refuse to comply becomes their mantra. The Internet Real Name Law, which was passed at the plenary session of Parliament on March 9, 2004, requires Internet media and press websites to verify all names and identification numbers of authors who post messages on bulletin boards or chat rooms regarding elections... [The] Internet Real Name Law can [also] be applied to personal websites which contain materials concerning political matters as well as the websites of civil society organizations... Lee Hoon, Vice-President of [the] Association of Internet Newspapers, stressed they would refuse to obey the Internet Real Name Law. Additionally, they would request an immediate repeal of the law...

"159 organizations including human rights, academic and press organizations as well as civil society organizations have refused to obey the Internet real name law. Portal websites such as Media Daum are also participating in the disobedience declaration.... Furthermore, a petition [asserting] the law's unconstitutionality has been filed with the constitutional court requesting a review. Since it is prior censorship which is prohibited by the constitution, and it also restricts freedom of expression of the public regarding political matters, it is deemed [by the petitioners as] unconstitutional..."

Anti-CALEA groups comment at FCC

"A diverse group of companies, trade associations and public interest groups from across the political spectrum filed a joint statement at the Federal Communications Commission urging rejection of an FBI petition to extend controversial wiretap design mandates to the Internet," according to our colleagues at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. Click here for a copy of the "Joint Statement of Industry and Public Interest Groups (27 April 2004)."

ACLU sues FBI over letters to ISPs

The Associated Press' Curt Anderson writes: "The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the FBI's use of expanded powers to compel Internet service providers to turn over information about their customers or subscribers. A lawsuit challenging secret FBI national security letters was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in New York but not made public until Wednesday [yesterday] because of its extraordinary sensitivity.

"The FBI can issue national security letters, or NSLs, without a judge's approval in terrorism and espionage cases. They require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers. People who receive the letters are prohibited by law from disclosing to anyone that they did so. Because of this legal gag order, the ACLU was forced to reach an agreement with the Justice Department before a heavily edited version of the lawsuit could be unsealed.

" 'We believe the public has a right to know much more about this lawsuit,' said Ann Beeson, ACLU associate legal director. Justice Department and FBI officials declined comment on the case...

"The lawsuit contends that NSLs are unconstitutional because of the gag order, because a recipient has no way of challenging their validity and because the government is not forced to justify its reasons for not notifying the target about the records being sought..."

Click here for more from the ACLU about this case.

Cybercrime in the Middle East

Robert Smith writes in the Gulf Daily News ("The Voice of Bahrain") that "Cyber-crime is on the rise across the Middle East, according to a leading British expert on Internet fraud. UK-based Zentelligence managing director, Simon Moores... blamed poor IT security measures and below-par legislation for turning the region into a breeding ground for hackers...

" 'I would characterise the Gulf region as being more malicious vandal types of attacks,' he told the GDN yesterday. 'Over the last month or so most of the virus and worm attacks coming into my system have come from the region. Most recently from Oman, but a lot of them come from Kuwait.' Kuwait is understood to have one of the highest ratios of hackers in the world in relation to its population...

"There is currently no law in Bahrain to prosecute hackers, according [to] local lawyer Abdulla Hashim... Mr Moores - who has worked as Technology Ambassador for the British government... thinks the problem is so serious here that he has called for a regional IT security seminar to push the issue further up the agenda... Bahrain in particular has been advised to act to protect the hundreds of financial institutions operating out of the country..."

Cybercrime hearing today in UK parliament

"Should UK citizens ever have the right to launch a hack attack against a computer or a network? That is the question up for debate by a group of tech-savvy MPs, as the All-Party Internet Group (APIG) launches an investigation into Britain's cybercrime laws." So writes Graeme Wearden for ZDNet UK.

"APIG has recognised that the Computer Misuse Act (CMA), which came into law in 1990, needs to be updated to cover attacks upon the internet and on other computer networks. Like many experts, the group is concerned that the existing legislation may not apply to denial-of-service attacks... APIG has already received written evidence from interested parties, and is taking further oral evidence at a session in parliament on Thursday [today]. The Home Office has said it is revising the CMA at present, and APIG wants to feed the views of the UK IT industry into this process. And while [Richard Allan, the joint vice-chairman of APIG] is adamant that tough action is needed against denial of service attacks, he's also keen to examine whether ethical hacking should be protected in law... 'When the Chinese government blocked access to the BBC website, people very rightly sought to subvert that censorship. As a legislator, am I prepared to support legislation that says benign hacking can result in several years in prison?'..."

Details about time and place, and a list of those scheduled to testify, can be found here. The hearings are open to the public.

Jobs for citizens of new EU Member States

The European Commission is advertising some great jobs open only to citizens of the 10 countries joining the EU on 1 May:

• Director General, DG Informatics: "The Directorate General has a staff of 675 and manages a budget of EUR 110M. It has units based in both Brussels and Luxembourg. The Director General will be based in Luxembourg."
• Director, DG Information Society: to manage "one the four Directorates in charge of the Information Society Technologies (IST)...Research and Development. Typically, a Directorate...has between 100 and 160 staff and manages between EUR 150 and 200 million per year."

The closing date to apply for either job is 14 May 2004.