Stello's Choice

Slight break in the mayhem of finals studying to relay this bit of news that is not making the rounds in the echo chamber as it probably should.

EFF has a great write up here.

Ars also covered the story here.

How many customers?  Not sure, but it looks like customers were "pinged" for their location data over 8 million times through a web site available to law enforcement.

This is according to a graduate student's blog covering his trip to the Intelligence Support Systems gathering, who has the MP3 recordings to back up his claim.

It helps to view this in light of the ongoing NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy.

• EFF posts a good update on the ACTA.
• Reporters want copyright law to repay them for costly news gathering.
• Obama Admin. wants to keep things in the dark.
• Chicago Police want to keep disciplinary records under wraps.
• Washington Post will close its last remaining US national newsrooms.
• ABA endorses the Federal Shield Law, so does Obama.

RCFP says:

Under the revised version of the law, a journalist will not be required to be a salaried employee of a media company, but rather a person gathering news for the purpose of disseminating the information to the public, which could include unpaid online journalists. A person who is reasonably believed to be claiming the privilege to cover a crime of terrorism or aiding a terrorist organization will be excluded from the definition.

Why am I thankful this year?  Because if we lived in Azerbaijan, we could be charged with hooliganism.

Or better yet, if we were Iraqi we could be beaten by the government.

Meet the ACTA.
Ars has a good write up here.
BoingBoing says:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

It is not clear how accurate these accounts are, but these conjectures aren't a far cry from other US supported trade agreements.

This semester is starting to get heavy.  Here are a few key developments:

• White House alters its stance on a federal shield law.
• That same shield law has been de-fanged and will no longer include independent reporters and bloggers.
• Mere FTC endorsement rules for blogs . . .
• Or are they limits on free speech?
• Military bans photos of war dead . . officially

Also, while newspapers are having trouble, blogs continue to thrive.