[IP] EFFector Vol. 17, No. 35, September 24, 2004
EFFector Vol. 17, No. 35 September 24, 2004
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
In the 307th Issue of EFFector:
Government to Demand Passenger Records for "Secure Flight"
A New Hope for Patent Reform: Consumer and Public Interest Groups Ask
Court to Take a Narrow View of Ambiguous Patents
EFF Releases Quick Reference Guides to E-voting Machines
Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT - Section 214: "Pen Register and Trap and
Trace Authority Under FISA"
EcoPhone: Recycle Your Cell Phone, Support EFF!
BayFF Event - "E-voting and the Upcoming Election," Tuesday, October 12
MiniLinks (16): WIPO 2.0
Administrivia
Government to Demand Passenger Records for "Secure Flight"
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) this week announced
the next steps for implementing "Secure Flight," the
passenger-profiling system that will replace the highly controversial
"CAPPS II" system. The upshot is that everyone who traveled
domestically in June 2004 will now serve as a guinea pig for the new
system, with the government ordering the airlines to turn over your
personal records to match the information against terrorist watch
lists. At the same time, TSA will examine whether using additional data
about you aggregated in commercial databanks will aid in the
passenger-screening process. If Secure Flight passes this "stress test"
and gets the go-ahead from the government, TSA will proceed with the
program.
If this sounds familiar, that's because it should. Plans for CAPPS II
were scuttled over concerns about cost, effectiveness, and impact on
privacy and civil liberties. Unfortunately, Secure Flight poses many of
the same problems. For example, the watch lists currently in use have
already been shown to be inaccurate; in a recent high-profile example,
Senator Ted Kennedy was repeatedly misidentified as a suspected
terrorist. Yet it remains unclear how individuals who are improperly
flagged will be protected.
The bigger picture is even more troubling. As we noted in last week's
EFFector, there's a strong push in DC for an "integrated screening
system" that would include "a range of security check points throughout
the Nation's screening system," with access to centralized "government
databases," and "biometric identifiers" (see
http://www.eff.org/effector/17/34.php#I
). Needless to say, this doesn't bode well for travel privacy.
"TSA needs to offer solid proof that Secure Flight will protect people
and their personal information," said Lee Tien, EFF Senior Staff
Attorney. "Plus, we still don't have a good explanation of TSA's role
in the scandals over JetBlue, Northwest, and other airlines that
secretly handed passenger information over to the government. Without
openness and accountability, passenger-screening systems are a civil
liberties nightmare."
EFF is participating in government proceedings on the system and will
provide comments on the Privacy Act System of Records Notice and the
Information Collection Request and Draft Order, which are due 30 days
from their publication in the Federal Register. For the breaking news
alert on the announcement:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_09.php#001922
Government documents on the Secure Flight test phase:
* Privacy Act System of Records Notice:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Secure_Flight_SORN_9-20-04.pdf
* Privacy Impact Assessment:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Secure_Flight_PIA_Notice_9-.pdf
* Information Collection Request and Draft Order to Airlines:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Secure_Flight_PRA_Notice_9-.pdf
A New Hope for Patent Reform
Consumer and Public Interest Groups Ask Court to Take a Narrow View of
Ambiguous Patents
Washington, DC - EFF, Public Knowledge, and Consumers Union, the
publisher of "Consumer Reports" magazine, this week filed a
friend-of-the-court brief with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit in Washington, DC, arguing that ambiguous patent claims should
be invalidated and that claim terms should be interpreted as narrowly
as possible by the courts to protect the public.
Currently, courts uphold patent claims unless they are deemed too
ambiguous, and the courts interpret vague claim terms as broadly as
possible. These rules often result in improper patents of uncertain
scope and lead to overzealous threat letters and lawsuits brought by
patentees that chill innovation and deter beneficial competition.
"Aggressive patent holders are using vague patent language to cause
havoc in the software and Internet fields," said Jason Schultz, EFF
staff attorney and organizer of EFF's Patent Busting Project. "We're
asking the court to rein in these claims by limiting their scope to
only those things clearly laid out in the patent itself."
"Placing clear limits on patents will provide much- needed protection
for the public domain and create a fertile environment for
technological growth," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.
In a recent example, Acacia Research sent more than 4,000 patent demand
letters to universities and colleges across the nation, claiming its
vaguely worded patents cover all known methods of streaming
pre-recorded educational lectures over the Internet. Were the appeals
court to rule that such vague patent claims are invalid or must be
interpreted narrowly, the threatened universities and colleges could
defend or dismiss these lawsuits with far greater ease.
Amici filed the brief in Phillips v. AWH Corporation following a
request from the appeals court for industry and public opinions on
several issues of current patent law. Joshua Sarnoff, counsel of record
on the brief, said that "this may be the most important patent case
ever decided. Claim meaning is the name of the game in patent law, and
the Federal Circuit has the chance to lay down clear rules to determine
claim meaning that will benefit society."
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_09.php#001920
Amicus brief in Phillips v. AWH Corporation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/CU-EFF-PK_Phillips1_amicus_brief.pdf
EFF's Patent Busting Project:
http://www.eff.org/patent/
EFF Releases Quick Reference Guides to E-voting Machines
San Francisco, CA - EFF has released the results of research conducted
jointly with the Verified Voting Foundation and American Families
United into the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular models of
electronic voting machines. Organized into one-page quick reference
guides, this research gives voters critical information about widely
deployed machines, such as the Diebold Accuvote TS and the ESS
iVotronic. In the guides, EFF takes users through a step-by-step
process for using each model properly and lists problems people have
had with the machines in past elections. The reference sheets represent
one of the nation's first "Consumer Reports"-style analyses of several
different types of e-voting machines.
"It's extremely important that people vote, despite any concerns that
they have about new voting machines," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt
Zimmerman. "The more people know about the voting machines they'll be
using, the better prepared they'll be on election day."
It's estimated that one-third of the country will be using e-voting
machines in the upcoming presidential election.
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_09.php#001921
"E-Vote Fears Soar in Swing States":
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65044,00.html
Register to vote to today:
http://www.yourvotematters.org/EFF
Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT - Section 214: "Pen Register and Trap and
Trace Authority Under FISA"
This week marks the return of "Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT," our ongoing
EFFector series explaining what's wrong with particular PATRIOT
provisions and why it should either be repealed or allowed to expire.
Today, we profile Section 214, which, in combination with Section 216,
makes it easier for the FBI to monitor the private Internet
communications of people who are not suspected of any terrorism or
espionage activities.
Below is a brief synopsis of the profile plus a link to the complete
analysis:
How Section 214 Changed the Law
Before PATRIOT, a special "pen-trap" order under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was something government agents
used to capture "non-content" telephone information, such as dialed
numbers. Agents could only get a pen-trap order when the communications
were likely to be either (1) those of an international terrorist or spy
or (2) those of a foreign power or its agents relating to the criminal
activities of an international terrorist or spy. PATRIOT 214 threw out
this requirement. Now, any innocent person's communications can be
monitored with a pen-trap so long as the FBI says it's "for" an
intelligence "investigation."
While Section 214 lowered the standards for a pen-trap order, Section
216 expanded their scope. Unlike regular wiretaps authorized under much
stricter standards, pen-traps aren't supposed to collect the actual
content of your communications, such as what you say on the telephone.
But Section 216 expanded the definition of a pen-trap to include
devices that monitor Internet communications - without clarifying what
portions of Internet communications are "content," requiring a full
wiretap order, versus "non-content," which can be legally acquired only
with a pen-trap order.
At the very least, this change means that the government can use a
pen-trap to see the email addresses of people you're sending email to
and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the
timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can also monitor the
IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet
and capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular
website. Under the vaguely written statute, the government may even be
able to capture the URL of every web page that you read. This kind of
information conveys significantly more "content" than a telephone
number.
Why Section 214 Should Sunset
The FISA court operates in total secrecy, hearing argument only from
the Department of Justice. It does not publish any details about the
surveillance it authorizes, nor does it publish any of its opinions. As
a result, there's no way for citizens to know how often FISA pen-traps
are authorized, whether and to what extent they're being used to spy on
Internet communications, or how the court interprets the distinction
between "content" and "non-content" when it comes to Internet
communications.
This secrecy, along with FISA's lower standards for authorizing
surveillance compared to those required in regular criminal cases, was
originally premised on the assumption that the Executive Branch should
be given extra leeway when investigating foreign threats to national
security. Yet PATRIOT Section 214 completely eliminated the requirement
that the target of the surveillance must actually be a foreign spy or
international terrorist. Such unrestrained power to engage in secret
surveillance of innocent citizens is unjustified and antithetical to a
free society, as well as representing a serious threat to privacy and
freedom of expression on the Internet.
For the complete analysis of Section 214:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=254
For previous "Sunset" analyses:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=255
Take action - tell Congress to review PATRIOT, not renew it:
http://action.eff.org/patriot_review
EcoPhone: Recycle Your Cell Phone, Support EFF!
Save on taxes
Save the environment
Help EFF
Donate your old cell phone!
Remember your first cell phone - the one that weighed 2 pounds and
barely got a signal? If you've managed to move on to something more
compact and versatile, but your old phone is still functional, then
please consider donating it to EFF. We've found a place that recycles
old phones, and the more working cell phones we collect, the more
funding we'll have for protecting your civil liberties. We'll be
collecting phones until December 15, so bring your old cell to the next
EFF event, drop it off at our office in San Francisco, or mail it to us
at the following address. Be sure to include your contact information
if you would like us to send you a thank-you letter for tax purposes.
EcoPhone Campaign
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA
Thank you for your support!
BayFF Event - Join Us for "E-voting and the Upcoming Election" on
Tuesday, October 12
Sometimes activism can be fun. Come join EFF at the 111 Minna Gallery
in downtown San Francisco to talk about e-voting and the upcoming
election, as well as share food and drink and listen to live music by
talented local artist Samantha. This event is free and open to the
public, so be sure to invite your friends and colleagues!
Note: For those of you participating in our EcoPhone fundraising
campaign, bring your old cell phones to donate to the cause!
WHAT:
BayFF discussion: "E-voting and the Upcoming Election"
Democracy is government by the people, and the right to vote is
critical to determining what each of us wants of our government. Nearly
one quarter of American voters - more than 35 million people - will
exercise that right using electronic voting (e-voting) terminals in
this election. Unfortunately, due to equipment that has been hastily
developed and poorly tested, your right to vote is in greater jeopardy
than ever before. There are widespread reports of voting-terminal
failures, and growing concern about the (in)security of these machines
is fueling fierce debate over how to ensure the integrity of our
elections. EFF is working to ensure that votes are verifiable and to
train poll workers about what to do when the machines fail. Come listen
to our team leaders talk about the latest developments, and share your
thoughts on how we can make sure that every vote is counted.
WHO:
Cindy Cohn, EFF Legal Director
Matt Zimmerman, EFF Staff Attorney
Ren Bucholz, EFF Activism Coordinator
Samantha - www.samanthamusic.com
WHEN:
Tuesday, October 12th at 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time
WHERE:
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA. 94105
Tel: (415) 974-1719
or contact Katina at EFF (415) 436-9333, ext. 129,
katina@xxxxxxx
This event is free. Food and drink will be served (no host bar).
111 Minna Gallery is accessible via BART. Get off at the Montgomery
station and use the exit marked 2nd and Market. Walk south on 2nd
street for a block and a half, and take a right down the Minna Street
Alley. Minna is between Mission and Howard.
miniLinks
miniLinks features noteworthy news items from around the Internet.
WIPO 2.0
Public interest groups and developing nations are endorsing a new
direction for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO),
aimed at unlocking its considerable power to spur innovation,
strengthen competition, and help humanity. Read the declaration below
and email geneva_declaration@xxxxxxxxxx to become a signatory:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/genevadeclaration.html
"PATRIOT II" On Deck
The GOP hopes to revive the controversial bill by attaching it to the
coat tails of the 9/11 Commission Report:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=258
(AP; registration unfortunately required.)
Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Others Release New CD
And check this out: it's *meant* to be copied/remixed/shared:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=257
(WSJ)
Hollywood Misfires at Linux Australia
The MPAA sent cease-and-desist notices to Linux Australia for providing
access to two copyrighted movies: "Grind" and "Twisted." Only what
Linux Australia actually did was provide access to a download of the
Twisted framework written in Python, and Valgrind, a tool for
developers to locate memory management:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=259
(ZDNet)
Microsoft Would Like to See Your Registration, Sir
The OS giant is introducing a program that would require customers to
provide proof-of-purchase in order to get security patches:
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5371664.html
SCO No! Yet Another Open Source Lawsuit!
In eery copycat fashion, a small software company is suing companies
that use open source software in which it claims to have exclusive
rights:
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5372087.html
Enormous Group of Technology Heavy-Hitters Oppose Induce
The list includes Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, EarthLink,
Verizon, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE-USA), and Radio Shack. Still think it's just about file sharing,
Senator Hatch?
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64997,00.html
More Flaws in Diebold Code
We're *so* relieved that we're not in charge of that company's PR:
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65031,00.html
GREAT song A+++++ WOULD LISTEN AGAIN!!!!
You guessed it: eBay will offer digital music downloads:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=256
(Forbes)
Microsoft - Net Radio Station K-O-P-Y
Microsoft is copying radio station playlist selections and broadcasting
them sans DJ chatter - even using real station call letters to promote
the material:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64984,00.html
Inducing America to Give Up Innovation
Guy Kewney, a UK journalist, hopes that if the misguided Induce Act
becomes law, the chill will remain within US borders - leaving
companies in the rest of the world free to out-innovate us:
http://www.vnunet.com/comment/1158300
What the Next President Thinks About Tech Policy
PC Magazine provides answers from the Bush and Kerry on the PATRIOT
Act, broadband, file sharing, and a host of other techie topics:
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,1761,a=135747,00.asp
How the iTunes Pie Is Divided
This article claims that about $0.10 of each iTunes song goes to the
artist:
http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=253
(PlaylistMag.com)
Pretty Version of Cory Doctorow's DRM Talk
Our dear colleague Cory Doctorow gave a wonderfully written and
received speech on digital rights management this year, and now the
folks at "Change This" have turned it into a great-looking PDF:
http://www.changethis.com/pdf/4.03.DRM.pdf
$1 Billion to Turn Off Your TV
Your *old* TV - the government wants to use that money so you can get a
new, spiffy, digital one:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65041,00.html
Administrivia
EFFector is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
http://www.eff.org/
Editor:
Donna Wentworth, Web Writer/Activist
donna@xxxxxxx
Membership & donation queries:
membership@xxxxxxx
General EFF, legal, policy, or online resources queries:
information@xxxxxxx
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged.
Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To
reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for
their express permission. Press releases and EFF announcements &
articles may be reproduced individually at will.
Current and back issues of EFFector are available via the Web at:
http://www.eff.org/effector/
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