Re: [liberationtech] Internet/IB Mandates in the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012
Andrew, Those roadblocks have definitely not been overcome, but restrictions on technology vis-a-vis Syria generally come from the Commerce Dept. while those on Iran come from the Treasury Dept. That said, doesn't surprise me in the least that Syria's ignored. That's how it's been for years - politicians and activists focus on Iran at the expense of Syria. -Jillian On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Andrew Lewis and...@pdqvpn.com wrote: Looking at the whole document revels that Syria is included, but only to add more sanctions. Does anyone on list know of any movement to add exceptions similar to the ones for Iran that will allow anti-censorship technologies or aid to go towards Syria? Or am I mistaken and those roadblocks have been already overcome? I am genuinely not up to date on what the sanctions on Syria entail at this point in time. -Andrew On Jul 30, 2012, at 10:46 PM, Collin Anderson wrote: Libtech, Foreign Policy released a copy of the compromise version of the upcoming Johnson/Ros-Lehtinen sanctions bill; expected to be legislatively passed in the next week. In true Congressional form, quite a portion of the mandates involve 'Internet Freedom' agenda items -- namely export regulation on sensitive technology, expanding content availability, International Broadcasting, and satellite jamming. * * *This is important.* The State and Treasury Department will be tasked with addressing issues of 'dual use technologies' and digital security. While I appreciate the addition of §414(7)(B) for clarifying sanctions regulations, Congress has a part to play in ensuring clarity on the political boundaries of such exports. [PDF] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/120730_MRW12361.pdf *(Introduction)* It is the sense of Congress that the goal of compelling Iran to abandon efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and other threatening activities can be effectively achieved through a comprehensive policy ... [a]mong the economic measures to be taken are— (4) a focus on countering Iran’s efforts to evade sanctions, including— (A) the activities of telecommunications, Internet, and satellite service providers, in and outside of Iran, to ensure that such providers are not participating in or facilitating, directly or indirectly, the evasion of the sanctions regime with respect to Iran or violations of the human rights of the people of Iran; *SEC. 412. CLARIFICATION OF SENSITIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR PURPOSES OF PROCUREMENT BAN UNDER COMPREHENSIVE IRAN SANCTIONS, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND DIVESTMENT ACT OF 2010. * The Secretary of State shall— (1) not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, issue guidelines to further describe the technologies that may be considered ‘‘sensitive technology’’ for purposes of section 106 of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (22 U.S.C. 8515), with special attention to new forms of sophisticated jamming, monitoring, and surveillance technology relating to mobile telecommunications and the Internet, and publish those guidelines in the Federal Register; (2) determine the types of technologies that enable any indigenous capabilities that Iran has to disrupt and monitor information and communications in that country, and consider adding descriptions of those items to the guidelines; and (3) periodically review, but in no case less than once each year, the guidelines and, if necessary, amend the guidelines on the basis of technological developments and new information regarding transfers of technologies to Iran and the development of Iran’s indigenous capabilities to disrupt and monitor information and communications in Iran. *SEC. 414. COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO PROMOTE INTERNET FREEDOM AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION IN IRAN. * Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the heads of other Federal agencies, as appropriate, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a comprehensive strategy to— (1) assist the people of Iran to produce, access, and share information freely and safely via the Internet, including in Farsi and regional languages; (2) support the development of counter-censorship technologies that enable the citizens of Iran to undertake Internet activities without interference from the Government of Iran; (3) increase the capabilities and availability of secure mobile and other communications through connective technology among human rights and democracy activists in Iran; (4) provide resources for digital safety training for media and academic and civil society organizations in Iran; (5) provide accurate and substantive Internet content in local languages in Iran; (6) increase emergency resources for the most vulnerable human rights advocates seeking to organize, share
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
Twitter has publicly apologized, though only for the fact that their employees notified NBC about the tweet: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Lina Srivastava l...@linasrivastava.comwrote: Bernard, Even if NBC were claiming libel, it probably wouldn't fly. Defamation requires the declaration of a false statement, and Adams would likely have a fairly strong argument that the first part of his tweet is an opinion, and the second part, the email address, is a fact. We're fairly narrow about defamation in the US because of the 1st Amendment. (Also, not sure defamation would constitute a cybercrime in the US, as we tend to see it largely as a civil matter-- a tort giving rise to damages, as opposed to a crime. Cyber law would likely apply, though.) This is a matter of privacy and confidentiality, if the email address were considered to be confidential, and rights of use. Lina On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Jillian C. York jilliancy...@gmail.comwrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had *posted private information*. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a real-world legal process cannot be executed. Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have expected journalists to understand it. Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea. If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously brain-dead law. If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and apologise to the guy. Now, if he has said nothing illegal on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of who's got the bigger legal team. (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to cybercrimes. To paraphrase Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace. On one hand the crimes are the same.The laws against certain practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them, are already in placeFraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US mail or the Internet.) On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David Johnson wrote: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--critic-of-nbc-has-twitter-account-suspended-after-network-complains.html -- David V. Johnson Web Editor Boston Review Website: http://www.bostonreview.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com Cell: (917)903-3706 ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech - -- Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQF5m9AAoJENsz1IO7MIrrcPwH/3Gp/JVZrYaRgx34zB1QnvJ8 fGC6+GWIOVFsdcITA3uPTrISuMTE8bngCPoz7ogjeH2ErCTsEej12UqHcN3s+bpw ffBQJ4oO5fAqtnTA25xtXOea++bA5yRfsYZ/QGfTyMPUCmCw+3dQ5gr1h+84KnLO Cmcr/bNsUzbxFvBRuX8f1lh5giLMSPiz1mR/ajO5OniE81F4a2CYGsE7k8juD75/ a+HyY15qiPEl6uislwcrrzpXN2tVDQqCI8O6R1T4g9uNmHG+SXM5dFMk9FVQ+k4g rxN42I4Rb21h/MfRMVbLwxXRlFMKcU6cQ8uEhOR3jO/S0qgeUCqTRA1vcvJI/40= =fgEp -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jillian, Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is disgraceful. Adams used publicly available information like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his account? In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF Legal want to comment? That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters self-censorship internal struggle earlier this year was an easy out for them. I hope Adams doesn't take the usual we're sorry excuse thats trotted out. Bernard On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a real-world legal process cannot be executed. Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have expected journalists to understand it. Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea. If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously brain-dead law. If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and apologise to the guy. Now, if he has said nothing illegal on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of who's got the bigger legal team. (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to cybercrimes. To paraphrase Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace. On one hand the crimes are the same.The laws against certain practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them, are already in placeFraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US mail or the Internet.) On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David Johnson wrote: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--critic-of-nbc-has-twitter-account-suspended-after-network-complains.html -- David V. Johnson Web Editor Boston Review Website: http://www.bostonreview.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com Cell: (917)903-3706 ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech - -- Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQF5m9AAoJENsz1IO7MIrrcPwH/3Gp/JVZrYaRgx34zB1QnvJ8 fGC6+GWIOVFsdcITA3uPTrISuMTE8bngCPoz7ogjeH2ErCTsEej12UqHcN3s+bpw ffBQJ4oO5fAqtnTA25xtXOea++bA5yRfsYZ/QGfTyMPUCmCw+3dQ5gr1h+84KnLO Cmcr/bNsUzbxFvBRuX8f1lh5giLMSPiz1mR/ajO5OniE81F4a2CYGsE7k8juD75/ a+HyY15qiPEl6uislwcrrzpXN2tVDQqCI8O6R1T4g9uNmHG+SXM5dFMk9FVQ+k4g rxN42I4Rb21h/MfRMVbLwxXRlFMKcU6cQ8uEhOR3jO/S0qgeUCqTRA1vcvJI/40= =fgEp -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
Bernard, 1. Not reading a post and then pontificating on assumptions is pretty lame. 2. EFF Legal is not on this, because Twitter is well within their legal rights to suspend a user for any reason. While I think that sucks, it is, in fact, the truth. 3. I very much hope that Twitter either rephrases their rules or starts investigating claims such as this in the future. I also firmly believe that they need an appeals/escalation process for situations like this. Best, Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.orgwrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jillian, Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is disgraceful. Adams used publicly available information like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his account? In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF Legal want to comment? That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters self-censorship internal struggle earlier this year was an easy out for them. I hope Adams doesn't take the usual we're sorry excuse thats trotted out. Bernard On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a real-world legal process cannot be executed. Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have expected journalists to understand it. Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea. If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously brain-dead law. If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and apologise to the guy. Now, if he has said nothing illegal on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of who's got the bigger legal team. (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to cybercrimes. To paraphrase Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace. On one hand the crimes are the same.The laws against certain practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them, are already in placeFraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US mail or the Internet.) On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David Johnson wrote: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--critic-of-nbc-has-twitter-account-suspended-after-network-complains.html -- David V. Johnson Web Editor Boston Review Website: http://www.bostonreview.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com Cell: (917)903-3706 ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech - -- Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQF5m9AAoJENsz1IO7MIrrcPwH/3Gp/JVZrYaRgx34zB1QnvJ8 fGC6+GWIOVFsdcITA3uPTrISuMTE8bngCPoz7ogjeH2ErCTsEej12UqHcN3s+bpw
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
Where is Zenkel's e-mail on that page? I've yet to see a report that substantiates it was easy to locate on the web prior to this incident. But more to the point, Twitter appears to be coming clean here. Their policy says a bona fides complaint is met with preventative suspension, followed by reinstatement after review and, if necessary, assurances. For an organisation dealing with approximately infinite transaction levels, that seems about the only workable policy. In this case they assert that their NBC-attached team acted incorrectly by proactively reviewing traffic. They also imply that, had the Trust and Safety team been advised how the complaint arose, they would likely have acted differently. They have apologised for what they did wrong, left themselves free to continue to follow their (probably correct) policy and avoided commenting on the journalist's actual (borderline) behaviour. Since I don't see it in the thread below, here's Twitter's apology, which is worth reading re-reading to get the implications as well as the details: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html S. On 31 Jul 2012, at 21:24, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jillian, Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is disgraceful. Adams used publicly available information like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his account? In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF Legal want to comment? That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters self-censorship internal struggle earlier this year was an easy out for them. I hope Adams doesn't take the usual we're sorry excuse thats trotted out. Bernard On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a real-world legal process cannot be executed. Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have expected journalists to understand it. Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea. If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously brain-dead law. If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and apologise to the guy. Now, if he has said nothing illegal on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of who's got the bigger legal team. (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to cybercrimes. To paraphrase Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace. On one hand the crimes are the same.The laws against certain practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them, are already in placeFraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US mail or the Internet.) On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David Johnson wrote: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--critic-of-nbc-has-twitter-account-suspended-after-network-complains.html -- David V. Johnson Web Editor Boston Review Website: http://www.bostonreview.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com Cell: (917)903-3706 ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here:
Re: [liberationtech] Independent Communications Platform - Need Programming Crew
Please see the Briar Project, at http://briar.sourceforge.net. We're happy to take on more resources, but yes, there are people working on things like this. E. On 2012.07.31 16.12, David Majlak wrote: Thesis: To provide an independently and individually(collectively) controlled communications platform in order to decentralize human reliance on corporate platforms and testy government infrastructure (i.e. dictatorships, censorship, etc). -- Ideas are my favorite toys. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
And just to be clear, Simon, this is where Zenkel's email address was found: http://www.fidei.org/2011/06/boycott-nbc-removed-under-god-from.html The post is fron June 2011, thus the information was indeed previously posted on the Internet before being put on Twitter. On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Jillian C. York jilliancy...@gmail.comwrote: Mashable says it's 8 Google pages in: http://mashable.com/2012/07/30/twitter-journalist-suspended/ Twitter's rules contain this sentence: *If information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation of this policy.* * * If Twitter wants to remove that sentence from their rules, that's their prerogative, but until they do, they're full of it on this one. On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Simon Phipps webm...@gmail.com wrote: Where is Zenkel's e-mail on that page? I've yet to see a report that substantiates it was easy to locate on the web prior to this incident. But more to the point, Twitter appears to be coming clean here. Their policy says a bona fides complaint is met with preventative suspension, followed by reinstatement after review and, if necessary, assurances. For an organisation dealing with approximately infinite transaction levels, that seems about the only workable policy. In this case they assert that their NBC-attached team acted incorrectly by proactively reviewing traffic. They also imply that, had the Trust and Safety team been advised how the complaint arose, they would likely have acted differently. They have apologised for what they did wrong, left themselves free to continue to follow their (probably correct) policy and avoided commenting on the journalist's actual (borderline) behaviour. Since I don't see it in the thread below, here's Twitter's apology, which is worth reading re-reading to get the implications as well as the details: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html S. On 31 Jul 2012, at 21:24, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jillian, Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is disgraceful. Adams used publicly available information like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his account? In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF Legal want to comment? That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters self-censorship internal struggle earlier this year was an easy out for them. I hope Adams doesn't take the usual we're sorry excuse thats trotted out. Bernard On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a real-world legal process cannot be executed. Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have expected journalists to understand it. Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea. If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously brain-dead law. If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and apologise to the guy. Now, if he has said nothing illegal on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of who's got the bigger legal team. (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to cybercrimes. To paraphrase Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace. On one hand the crimes are the same.The laws against certain practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them, are already in placeFraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US mail or the Internet.) On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
Thanks for that pointer - it didn't come up in the searches I tried. While it would be fun to argue about whether mentioned on some nutjob's web site that Google doesn't list is a good definition of public, I think it misses my point. That point is I believe Twitter already has an adequate and pragmatic policy and I've not seen a good description of a better one that takes account of their scale. Their policy says: Check if a complaint is in good faith (if not, or if complaint withdrawn, skip to 4) If it is, suspend the erring account pending remediation Check with the user for either good cause (already posted for example) or a commitment to not repeat Re-instate user It's no more reasonable to expect Twitter to exhaustively search the internet and make a judgement call on privacy before responding to every complaint they receive than it is to expect them to scan Twitter for violations. The fault in this case does not appear to be the Trust and Safety team's actions, which appear to have been conducted correctly (although perhaps slower than the lynch mob wanted). It's that a team working on their NBC account acted improperly. In a world of dodgy corporations, Twitter is one of the very few that I feel I can still give the benefit of the doubt. I do hope that doesn't change; this incident shook my confidence in them for a while. S. @webmink, +1 415 683 7660 On 31 Jul 2012, at 22:52, Jillian C. York wrote: And just to be clear, Simon, this is where Zenkel's email address was found: http://www.fidei.org/2011/06/boycott-nbc-removed-under-god-from.html The post is fron June 2011, thus the information was indeed previously posted on the Internet before being put on Twitter. On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Jillian C. York jilliancy...@gmail.com wrote: Mashable says it's 8 Google pages in: http://mashable.com/2012/07/30/twitter-journalist-suspended/ Twitter's rules contain this sentence: If information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation of this policy. If Twitter wants to remove that sentence from their rules, that's their prerogative, but until they do, they're full of it on this one. On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Simon Phipps webm...@gmail.com wrote: Where is Zenkel's e-mail on that page? I've yet to see a report that substantiates it was easy to locate on the web prior to this incident. But more to the point, Twitter appears to be coming clean here. Their policy says a bona fides complaint is met with preventative suspension, followed by reinstatement after review and, if necessary, assurances. For an organisation dealing with approximately infinite transaction levels, that seems about the only workable policy. In this case they assert that their NBC-attached team acted incorrectly by proactively reviewing traffic. They also imply that, had the Trust and Safety team been advised how the complaint arose, they would likely have acted differently. They have apologised for what they did wrong, left themselves free to continue to follow their (probably correct) policy and avoided commenting on the journalist's actual (borderline) behaviour. Since I don't see it in the thread below, here's Twitter's apology, which is worth reading re-reading to get the implications as well as the details: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html S. On 31 Jul 2012, at 21:24, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Jillian, Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is disgraceful. Adams used publicly available information like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his account? In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF Legal want to comment? That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters self-censorship internal struggle earlier this year was an easy out for them. I hope Adams doesn't take the usual we're sorry excuse thats trotted out. Bernard On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote: Bernard, Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted, however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire case. -Jillian On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8...@ei8fdb.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV) Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to amaze me when people disconnect their real world brains from their Internet brains. I would be the first person to complain if someone's
[liberationtech] Comments from Chile
To the security community focused on helping social strugglers all over the world. First, thanks for all your efforts on building tools for human and social liberation, this is a feedback from Chile written as suggestion from some of you and we hope you enjoy. Several parts from this material wasn't taken in a legal way, I'm not going to offer any proofs about this as that can means tracking the people who helped to get this information, making them face jail charges and torture on interrogations. If you want to check if this statements are true, check the provided links and ask about this to people in Chile. Note: Even if we know your work is mostly focused on the middle east, several tools you have made had helped on simple daily stuff like privacy. We are not facing the same conditions or circunstances as some comrades in the middle east are. We are trying to created a new world away from capitalism values and with the total erradication of heriarchy. We assume an offensive step for this in everywhere, and you can judge as much as you want for this. On Agust 14th of 2010 several squats were raided. 14 comrades were put in prison for beeing anarchists and squatters, but facing charges of terrorism association. The police had been investigating for 4 years a serie of bomb explosions in Santiago, and decided that those 14 comrades were responsibles for that. When i said decided it's because several proofs were lies, some whitness were paid, but we only knew this in 2012, when the 14 were set free without charges. The man in charge of this operation is now a high range person in government, as a price for what hi did, but the State didn't thought every proof they had were going to fall after the truth about them were found. That was the context Some people (can be one, can be two, can be three, should be infinte) decided to check the facts of this. They got a copy of several investigation books and a list of more than 200 people beeing investigated. That list was published on Hommodolars website on May 2011 (http://www.hommodolars.org/web/spip.php?article4031). The list included several anarchists, native people supportes and media activists as people suspected for the explosions. All this people had their phones tapped for years, without any resistance for a telephone company, but all of them with a justice call. None of the phones were tapped on al illegal way for Chilean law, but the privacy of this 200 people was breached and none of them related to the explosions. The investigation books had inside several interesting stuff about the local police behavoir, but for you this in what you need to know: First ship of books (to 2010): - There were pretty close photographs of every investigated person. The books had more than 200 suspects. - There were transcripts of several phone conversations, also hotmail's menssenger chat. - There were screenshots taken from hotmail.com accounts from files obtained using Forensic Toolkit software, the bottom line of the files reveals those were temporary files. At least one person got this. - There were screenshots taken from hacked passwords from gmail.com accounts. At least 4 people got this. - There were several supperficial analysis of webservices and webpages: flickr.com, blogspot.com, entodaspartes.org, santiago.indymedia.org, valparaiso.indymedia.org, nodo50.org wordpress.com, indymedia.org, riseup.net. The data included physical location to html tags used, related names, and that kind of stuff. - There were examples of transcribed chats using OTR, and mails using PGP in ascii. They were not cracked. As the case was going to nowhere, the investigation continued. There are more than 400 persons in the investigation list. This is what was found. Current ship of books (to 2012): What is inside: - At least 4 crypto.cat chats were intercepted and transcribed. (Feb 2012) - More than 20 gmail.com accounts accessed. (2010-2012) - Several facebook.com account accesed, but most of the data transcribed. (2010-2012) - Several complaints against OTR and PGP on internal memos. They asked for help to FBI to break them, no more data about this. - Deeper investigation of websites, including visits by police to some people who work on alternative media projects. There is a strong analysis for riseup.net... from software used, location, email contacts, source code and groups that use them. What is not inside: - No mentions for tor, i2p or freenet. - No mentions for riseup.net hacked accounts. - No mentions how they got that data. But we can always ask the affected ones. The most interesting here for you is how they got access to crypto.cat chatlogs. That chats were taken from 7pm to 11pm on 4 different days. We don't know how they got them but we reducted the possibilities to two scenarios. The first one that a chilean computer got infected by some spyware, as they got confiscated (the raids continued until now, not yet to somebody related to the bombs case) we can
[liberationtech] How Cooperatives Could Fix Social Media's Net Censorship Problem
http://liberationtech.tumblr.com/post/28442687690/how-cooperatives-could-fix-social-medias-net How Cooperatives Could Fix Social Media’s Net Censorship Problemhttp://liberationtech.tumblr.com/post/28442687690/how-cooperatives-could-fix-social-medias-net Recently, a scandal broke outhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/31/guy-adams-twitter-nbc-olympics_n_1724597.html over Twitter’s and NBC’s collusion to censor users as a result of a flurry of criticism about NBC’s Olympic coverage, which culminated with journalist Guy Adams https://twitter.com/guyadams/ being suspended over a tweet disclosing the corporate email address ofGary Zenkelhttp://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/sports/nbcsports/executives?bio=contents/biographies/ExecutiveBios/V_Z/Zenkel_Gary.xml, the man in charge of NBC’s Olympic coverage, even though Zenkel’s address was already publicly available. Adams’s suspension generated such a massive outcry that Twitter was forced to revoke it. The incident, however, has left me feeling as though all of us social-media users are living in the movie “Groundhog Dayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film).” We have seen this script play out many times before, whether that company is Facebook, Google, Twitter, or others. Even in politics, we see the same phenomenon play out in the recent NationBuilder flaphttp://techpresident.com/news/22556/nationbuilders-mammoth-deal-state-level-republican-committee-sparks-calls-boycott. And the script often unfolds in the same way: Company censors user. Users complain en masse. Company apologizes, usually by saying that such incidents are rare. The company and users then go back to business as usual but no substantive changes are made. Instead, as in “Groundhog Day,” we continue to wake up every morning to the same flap, with different actors being censored and different companies doing the censoring, with the same symbolic verbal responses but no substantive action. Why? The fundamental problem lies in the legal template that is used for organizing startup firms in Silicon Valley, that of a for-profit corporation. *Silicon Valley’s For-Profit Model* Say that you are a programmer/hacker, and you have written some very cool code for reinventing the social-media space and perhaps even changing the world with it for the better. So what do you do? You’ll meet others in Silicon Valley who will tell you that you need to start up a new venture. But how do you do that? Typically, the process will end up in a legal firm. The lawyer will speak to you in a foreign language that you barely comprehend and give you lots of forms to sign that you sign because “that’s the way things are done around here.” Lo and behold, you now have a for-profit corporation and can get down to the business of enhancing your code and getting users. What are you in fact signing when you agree to found a for-profit firm? In short, you are saying that the sole goal of your organization is to make money. You are selling the cheapest product at the most expensive price. Or in the language of economics, revenue maximization with cost minimization yields optimal profits. Legally, you are also saying the following things: You (and your co-founders) own this firm, you will most likely seek investors and offer them stock so they become shareholders, you will seek customers to monetize http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetization (a fancy Silicon Valley way of saying “to make money”), you will hire people to work for you, and you will pay taxes on your profits. Legally, your company will only be accountable to its owners, who are usually you and your co-founders and any investors you bring in as shareholders. Some of you will serve on the board, which will run the firm and appoint its officers. Notice what is NOT mentioned above. There is no mention of changing the world, empowering your users, making a difference, or creating public goods. There is also no mention of your customers and consumers (or users). Customers only matter to the extent that they bring in revenues. This implies that not all customers are created equally. Those customers who bring in more revenues more quickly at the most affordable cost become more important to the firm than those who bring in less revenues over a longer time horizon at a higher cost. This translates into a focus on large corporate customers at the expense of individual users. To get Procter Gamble as a customer means millions of dollars in revenue, an amount that would be much more time-consuming to get if you focused on thousands of mom and pop stores, or millions of individual users. Silicon Valley knows this and has discovered over time that millions of user accounts can bring in large corporate accounts like Procter Gamble, leading technology firms to treat their users’ personal data as the product being sold. *Social Media User Ideals Myths* So why were Twitter users so angry about the company’s censorship? The simple reason
Re: [liberationtech] Comments from Chile
Hi, I just tried to send a reply to the sender of this email but got an error message in return - user unknown. In case the author(s) is/are reading the list or someone who's subscribed knows how to get in touch: I'd like to know whether this information can be published and/or wether it has been already, or even parts of it? (In English, that is) Best, Anne Am 01.08.12 01:22, schrieb radioactiv...@riseup.net: To the security community focused on helping social strugglers all over the world. First, thanks for all your efforts on building tools for human and social liberation, this is a feedback from Chile written as suggestion from some of you and we hope you enjoy. Several parts from this material wasn't taken in a legal way, I'm not going to offer any proofs about this as that can means tracking the people who helped to get this information, making them face jail charges and torture on interrogations. If you want to check if this statements are true, check the provided links and ask about this to people in Chile. Note: Even if we know your work is mostly focused on the middle east, several tools you have made had helped on simple daily stuff like privacy. We are not facing the same conditions or circunstances as some comrades in the middle east are. We are trying to created a new world away from capitalism values and with the total erradication of heriarchy. We assume an offensive step for this in everywhere, and you can judge as much as you want for this. On Agust 14th of 2010 several squats were raided. 14 comrades were put in prison for beeing anarchists and squatters, but facing charges of terrorism association. The police had been investigating for 4 years a serie of bomb explosions in Santiago, and decided that those 14 comrades were responsibles for that. When i said decided it's because several proofs were lies, some whitness were paid, but we only knew this in 2012, when the 14 were set free without charges. The man in charge of this operation is now a high range person in government, as a price for what hi did, but the State didn't thought every proof they had were going to fall after the truth about them were found. That was the context Some people (can be one, can be two, can be three, should be infinte) decided to check the facts of this. They got a copy of several investigation books and a list of more than 200 people beeing investigated. That list was published on Hommodolars website on May 2011 (http://www.hommodolars.org/web/spip.php?article4031). The list included several anarchists, native people supportes and media activists as people suspected for the explosions. All this people had their phones tapped for years, without any resistance for a telephone company, but all of them with a justice call. None of the phones were tapped on al illegal way for Chilean law, but the privacy of this 200 people was breached and none of them related to the explosions. The investigation books had inside several interesting stuff about the local police behavoir, but for you this in what you need to know: First ship of books (to 2010): - There were pretty close photographs of every investigated person. The books had more than 200 suspects. - There were transcripts of several phone conversations, also hotmail's menssenger chat. - There were screenshots taken from hotmail.com accounts from files obtained using Forensic Toolkit software, the bottom line of the files reveals those were temporary files. At least one person got this. - There were screenshots taken from hacked passwords from gmail.com accounts. At least 4 people got this. - There were several supperficial analysis of webservices and webpages: flickr.com, blogspot.com, entodaspartes.org, santiago.indymedia.org, valparaiso.indymedia.org, nodo50.org wordpress.com, indymedia.org, riseup.net. The data included physical location to html tags used, related names, and that kind of stuff. - There were examples of transcribed chats using OTR, and mails using PGP in ascii. They were not cracked. As the case was going to nowhere, the investigation continued. There are more than 400 persons in the investigation list. This is what was found. Current ship of books (to 2012): What is inside: - At least 4 crypto.cat chats were intercepted and transcribed. (Feb 2012) - More than 20 gmail.com accounts accessed. (2010-2012) - Several facebook.com account accesed, but most of the data transcribed. (2010-2012) - Several complaints against OTR and PGP on internal memos. They asked for help to FBI to break them, no more data about this. - Deeper investigation of websites, including visits by police to some people who work on alternative media projects. There is a strong analysis for riseup.net... from software used, location, email contacts, source code and groups that use them. What is not inside: - No mentions for tor, i2p or freenet. - No mentions for
[liberationtech] The OpenWatch Minisummit - Aug 19, 2012 - Oakland, CA
Howdy, folks! It is my honor and privilege to invite you to the very first OpenWatch Summit, to be held on Sunday, August 19th, 2012 in Oakland, California. For those of you who don't already know, The OpenWatch Projecthttp://openwatch.netis a *scientific citizen journalism* project which creates *free and open source digital tools* for *ordinary people* to collect evidence of their encounters with authority figures. It is our mission to collect *documentary evidence* of authority enforcement across the globe so that we can analyze regional trends in enforcement, expose brutality and corruption and celebrate proper conduct. Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe use the software tools we have produced to record their encounters with the police, we have partnered with major legal and activist organizations and we have been profiled by major media outlets. This next year will be a very exiting one for us! Since so many people who have contributed to the project are in the Bay Area, we thought that it would be *extremely productive and fun* if we could all gather in one place for an afternoon for a general assembly of sorts. We can all meet each other and discuss the project, the challenges it faces and the problems which we'd like to solve as we move into the future. Also, a unique funding opportunity has presented itself for OpenWatch which needs input and discussion. There are potentially some paid opportunities to continue to develop our technology and organization. Hopefully, we will leave with a real blueprint of things which we will be able to accomplish with resources as they become available. There is a space in Oakland to house the event and food and drinks will be provided during. There will also be a *fun-ass party *afterwards at a TBD location in Oakland or Berkeley. Since space is limited, please email me off-list for more detailed information. There are a lot of things which need to be discussed: *NEW TECHNOLOGY* * *Streaming media upload* - Many users have requested the ability to stream to a remote server, and some of the developers have expressed interested in this. If we could figure out a way to do this without wasting resources and decreasing the signal to noise ratio, this would be a killer feature. ** Notarizing documents* - In an effort to make the data produced by OpenWatch more useful in court cases, I have begun working on a project called *CitizenMediaNotary * (https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary). How can it be deployed, integrated and improved? ** Voip/SIP/Mesh/WebP2P relaying* - How can we get data out in low-connectivity environments? ** Local event alerting* - Should our tools be able to alert other nearby users of important events nearby? ** Security // Reap prevention // Counter-Reaping* - The police are well aware of citizen media at this point, and are actively using tools which turn a user's phone into a weapon against them. How can we prevent this and potentially use this as a vector to gather information about police enforcement? ** Skunkworks Tech* - Disposable surveillance hardware? Police radio interception? Anonymous document capturing and publishing? Bring your most far out ideas and we'll bounce them around. *DATA PROCESSING* ** Cleaning of data* - The data we receive is still noisy. Can we use automatic tools or manual human intervention to attempt to solve this problem? ** Transcription* - In the same vain, data transcription is time consuming. Can this process be improved with automatic tools? ** Translation* - At this point, OpenWatch has tens of thousands of international users and many recordings we receive are not in English. What can be done about this? ** MTurk* - Can we use the Mechanical Turk or some similar product to outsource the processing of collected data? ** Cartography* - OpenWatch now has a map interface which allows visitors to witness police events near where they are. How can this idea be expanded upon? * *Analysis* - More than anything else, we need to be able to analyze and report about the data which we receive. How can this process be improved? FUNDING** ** Crowd Funding Model* - Can we build an economic support system for OpenWatch? Can we integrate with the Android-PayWhatYouWanthttps://github.com/Miserlou/Android-Pay-What-You-Wantand iOS-DonationWall https://github.com/andrewljohnson/Pledge-Wall libraries? ** Business Development* - Can we run compartments of OpenWatch, such as the voice and video streaming capture or the donation backend, as a revenue-generating service? ** Partnerships * - We have successfully partnered with the ACLU of New Jersey and are now working with various other ACLU chapters and activist organizations. How can we expand our reach and streamline our white-labeling process? *
Re: [liberationtech] Independent UK Critic of NBC has Twitter account suspended after network complains
I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter stream, then he is still bound by real world laws. Which laws are enforced here? A private complaint from a news provider and terms of service based termination of a super-dominant micro-messaging service. Dangerous development. But here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9440137/London-Olympics-2012-Twitter-alerted-NBC-to-British-journalists-critical-tweets.html Twitter employees alerted NBC staff to a British journalist’s tweets and showed them how to file a complaint against him, the television network has revealed I was made aware certain Olympic athlets have been sanctioned for inappropriate tweets. http://z6mag.com/sports/papachristou-and-michel-morganella-racist-tweets-gets-them-expelled-from-olympic-games-1612953.html And then there is the Tom Daley tweet police: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9440235/Police-investigate-Tom-Daley-Twitter-troll.html http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tom-daley-17-year-old-boy-arrested-1192492 Daley retweeted a message from user Rileyy69 which said: You let your dad down i hope you know that. ... Dorset Police confirmed it was investigating the incident. -- A ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech
