Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, big brother, corruption, cyber emergency, cyber terrorism, DHS, Dictatorship, egypt, egypt revolution, Empire, eqyptian revolution, free speech, homeland security, internet, internet 2, internet blackout, internet freedom, internet police, Joe Lieberman, kill switch, martial law, nanny state, obama, obama deception, one party system, orwell, Police State, problem reaction solution, propaganda, surveillance, susan collins, us constitution, War On Terror, Washington D.C.
Internet ‘Kill Switch’ called ‘Internet Freedom’ bill
I love it how the scum in Washington D.C. like to use doublespeak like ‘freedom’ and ‘patriot’ in draconian legislation like this, again more propaganda against the masses to accept their own lobotomy.
- A Senate proposal that has become known as the Internet “kill switch” bill was reintroduced this week, with a tweak its backers say eliminates the possibility of an Egypt-style disconnection happening in the United States.
As CNET reported last month, the 221-page bill hands Homeland Security the power to issue decrees to certain privately owned computer systems after the president declares a “national cyberemergency.” A section in the new bill notes that does not include “the authority to shut down the Internet,” and the name of the bill has been changed to include the phrase “Internet freedom.”
“The emergency measures in our bill apply in a precise and targeted way only to our most critical infrastructure,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said yesterday about the legislation she is sponsoring with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn). “We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government finally realizes the importance of protecting our digital resources.” Source
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1st amendment, copyright, copyright police, DHS, Dictatorship, Empire, free speech, global government, global police, global police force, homeland security, ICE, internet enforcement, internet police, IP, IP enforcement, john morton, new world order, Police State, Rojadirecta, spain, us constitution, us customs, Victoria Espinel, world government, world police
Homeland Security Seizes Domain Names From Other Countries
Tech Dirt
February 1, 2011
It appears that Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, and their incredibly sloppy domain seizure operations, have moved on to the next phase — as was promised by both ICE boss, John Morton, and IP Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel. The timing on this one is particularly bizarre — and politically stupid.
That’s because the the domain seizure is for the Spanish streaming site Rojadirecta. Yes, ICE seized the domain name of a foreign company. And it gets worse. Rojadirecta is not just some fly-by-night operation run out of someone’s basement or something. It’s run by a legitimate company in Spain, and the site’s legality has been tested in the Spanish courts… and the site was declared legal. The court noted that since Rojadirecta does not host any material itself, it does not infringe.
So, a full-on trial and legal process that took three years in a foreign country, and involved a series of appeals leading to a final judgment…. all totally ignored by a bunch of US customs agents.
You might think some folks in Spain would have a pretty serious issue with this move.
And the timing is especially ridiculous, given that the US has been pushing very, very hard for Spain to implement a new copyright law, driven in large part by Hollywood. With many in Spain already furious about US meddling in their own copyright laws, I can’t imagine that having US customs agents reaching across the Atlantic to just out and out seize a Spanish company’s domain name is going to go over very well.
Imagine if a Spanish law enforcement agency did that to a US company? How quickly would we see American politicians screaming about this “international incident.” Yet, here we have Homeland Security reaching out to seize the domain name of a foreign company that has been explicitly declared legal, after going through a lengthy trial and appeals process in its native country. And, in typical Homeland Security fashion, no one bothered to contact the company and let them know or express its concerns. Instead, it just seized the domain.
I would imagine that doing so may upset Spanish citizenry even more than the attempt to rewrite copyright laws in Hollywood’s favor.
And of course, it appears that, despite the serious questions raised about the last domain seizures, in particular of blogs with substantial non-infringing uses, ICE has also seized another blog, called StrikeGently, which appears to have included lots of other content. Yes, it did also include some links to downloads hosted on other sites, but did not host any content directly itself, and appears to have included plenty of other content beyond the links to downloads. Once again, no one is saying that the site is clearly legal. It may, in fact, be liable for inducement. However, that’s something that’s supposed to be determined at trial, and not after the government steps in with no notice whatsoever and takes the domain name away.
Apparently, Homeland Security and ICE have decided that the mistakes it made last time are so minor that it will repeat them again and again, even if it involves shutting down protected speech and interfering in international relations.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, 4th amendment, big brother, Communism, cybercrime, department of justice, Dictatorship, DOJ, Empire, fascism, free speech, internet police, internet snooping, justice department, justice system, nanny state, nazi, Oppression, orwell, Police State, precrime, prison industrial complex, surveillance, War On Terror
Justice Department seeks to have all web surfing tracked
Raw Story
January 25, 2011
The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.
“Data retention is fundamental to the department’s work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,” US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.
“Some records are kept for weeks or months; others are stored very briefly before being purged,” Weinstein said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
He said Internet records are often “the only available evidence that allows us to investigate who committed crimes on the Internet.”
Internet and phone records can be “crucial evidence” in a wide array of cases, including child exploitation, violent crime, fraud, terrorism, public corruption, drug trafficking, online piracy and computer hacking, Weinstein said, but only if the data still exists when law enforcement needs it.
“In some ways, the problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse,” he told lawmakers.
Weinstein noted inconsistencies in data retention, with one mid-sized cell phone company not keeping records, a cable Internet provider not tracking the Internet protocol addresses it assigns to customers and another only keeping them for seven days.
Law enforcement is hampered by a “legal regime that does not require providers to retain non-content data for any period of time” while investigators must request records on a case-by-case basis through the courts, he said.
“The investigator must realize he needs the records before the provider deletes them, but providers are free to delete records after a short period of time, or to destroy them immediately,” Weinstein added.
The justice official said greater data retention requirements raise legitimate privacy concerns but “any privacy concerns about data retention should be balanced against the needs of law enforcement to keep the public safe.”
John Morris, general counsel at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology, said mandatory data retention “raises serious privacy and free speech concerns.”
“A key to protecting privacy is to minimize the amount of data collected and held by ISPs and online companies in the first place,” he said.
“Mandatory data retention laws would require companies to maintain large databases of subscribers’ personal information, which would be vulnerable to hackers, accidental disclosure, and government or other third party access.”
Kate Dean, executive director of the Internet Service Provider Association, said broad mandatory data retention requirements would be “fraught with legal, technical and practical challenges.”
Dean said they would require “an entire industry to retain billions of discrete electronic records due to the possibility that a tiny percentage of them might contain evidence related to a crime.”
“We think that it is important to weigh that potential value against the impact on the millions of innocent Internet users’ privacy,” she said.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, big brother, censorship, cybersecurity, Dictatorship, Empire, internet ban, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, obama, obama deception, orwell, Police State, White House
Obama Plans National Internet ID System
Washington Times
January 13, 2011
Federalized security screening at airports has been such a success that President Obama wants to apply the same government “expertise” to the realm of online commerce and commentary. The White House cybersecurity adviser joined Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Jan. 7 to announce what amounts to a national ID card for the Internet.
Their plan is straightforward. Instead of logging onto Facebook or one’s bank using separate passwords established with each individual company or website, the White House will take the lead in developing what it calls an “identity ecosystem” that will centralize personal information and credentials. This government-approved system would issue a smart card or similar device that would confirm an individual’s identity when making online credit-card purchases, accessing electronic health care records, posting “anonymous” blog entries or even logging onto one’s own home computer, according to administration documents.
Officials insist this would be a voluntary program and deliver significant benefits to the public. Mr. Locke explained last week that “robust identity solutions can substantially enhance the trustworthiness of online transactions. They can not only improve security, but, if done properly, can enhance privacy as well.”
Put another way, Mr. Locke is saying, “Trust us, we’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Congress, the technology industry and the public need to run as far away as they can from this purported assistance. The government is no more capable of securing information than it is of protecting airports. Just look at the WikiLeaks case, in which a disaffected private was able to grab hundreds of thousands of classified documents from U.S. Army computers. Agencies ranging from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Department of Veterans Affairs have proved equally incapable of dealing with personal data.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), for example, lost a hard drive crammed with material about the Clinton White House and its employees. The same agency sent a hard drive containing the Social Security numbers of about 75 million veterans to a private contractor for “recycling” without bothering to delete the personal information. To this day, the agency is unable to determine what happened to the device. “While each case of data breach, loss or undue risk of loss represents a unique stanza, the chorus of the song remains the same,” Paul Brachfeld, NARA’s inspector general, said in a 2009 congressional hearing. “Internal control weaknesses, lapses and exercises of questionable judgment tied to other incidents I have spoken of today regularly leave me and my staff frustrated and bewildered.”
There’s little reason to think Mr. Brachfeld’s frustration will ever be eased. Civil-service employees, who can’t be fired, have little reason to be careful with sensitive medical records, or even nuclear secrets. A careless attitude pervades federal agencies, rendering the government particularly unsuited to the task of directing an identity-assurance program. Like most ideas dreamed up around a multiagency boardroom table, this one will never accomplish its stated goal.
Centralizing access to personal information only makes it easier for the bad guys because it means they only need to steal one key to unlock a vast wealth of financial and personal information. It’s likely that the real motivation for this is to ensure the feds always have backdoor access into what people are doing in the online realm. Congress should take steps to ensure this Big Brother scheme is
deleted.
noworldsystem.com 