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Good and interesting news…

“Twitter just sued the federal government over restrictions the government places on how much the company can disclose about surveillance requests it receives.”

“Twitter’s ability to respond to government statements about national security surveillance activities and to discuss the actual surveillance of Twitter users is being unconstitutionally restricted by statutes that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider’s disclosure of the number of national security letters (“NSLs”) and court orders issued pursuant to FISA that it has received, if any.”

Wired: Twitter Sues the Government for Violating Its First Amendment Rights »

Youtube link »

Lately, the Italian EU Presidency has demonstrated that policy making is something rather random. A policy can easily be decided on even if it is contrary to experience, judicial realities and common sense.

In this case the Presidency suggest that the EU beefs up the much criticized Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, IPRED.

In plain English: To significantly step up the fight against illegal file sharing.

That would be in conflict with EU consultations, damaging implementation reports, the ECJ ruling against data retention–and it would kill our (fairly) free and open Internet.

EDRi sums it up…

“However, having established that the current legislative framework is not fit for purpose, the best thing that the Presidency can think of proposing is to expand and deepen the failed, not fit for purpose enforcement measures that are currently in force. The Italians apparently hope that, if they do the same thing over and over again, different results will be produced.”

So far this is just policy making, not law making. But it might be a signal from the Council to the Commission to remove the dust cover from IPRED 2.

Read more and find links to documents at EDRi: Italian position on IP Enforcement – the essence of insanity? »

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Finally there seems to be real evidence that some fractions of the EU Commission has been acting behind the scenes–with the US–to water down EU data protection laws.

According to the human rights organisation Access, recently released documents show that outgoing EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström fed Americans information they needed to undermine privacy issues in the EU data protection package.

For many who have been following the E.U. privacy reform debate closely, this trans-Atlantic cooperation was an open secret. However, until now, it has not been possible to demonstrate DG Home’s maneuvers. Beyond the implications for the Data Protection Reform, the contents of the acquired document give cause for concern about Ms. Malmström’s suitability for leading EU negotiations with the USA on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), given that she has recently been chosen E.U. Commissioner-designate for Trade.

When considering this information one should also keep in mind that Commissioner Malmström has pushed back on the European Parliaments request to suspend the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP), giving the US intelligence bureaucracy access to bulk data on European bank transactions.

Also Malmström took a quite distant attitude, when information came to light that the US spy organisation NSA had broken into the EU based SWIFT database (handling much of the worlds bank transactions).

There is a rather telling hearing on mass surveillance in the European Parliament, from September 24th last year–with Commissioner Malmström, Europol Director Rob Wainwright and Blanche Petre from the General Council of SWIFT. Commissioner Malmströms unwillingness to protect European interests or to do anything that might upset the Americans is obvious. (Link/video»)

I would like to think that Commissioner Malmström and her staff was just a bit to naive and friendly with the US when it comes to EU data protection. But Malmströms paper trail is consistent. For example she was a member of the Swedish cabinet that made Sweden the closest NSA partner outside the Five Eyes-group. And as Commissioner she has been a strong proponent of Passenger Name Records (PNR), giving the US access to personal data about air passengers.

So, no. I’m not convinced that Cecilia Malmström is on the same side as the European people.

Links:
EU home affairs chief secretly worked with US to undermine new privacy laws, campaigners claim »
Big brother’s little helper inside the European Commission »

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Update: This actually lead to a decision to vote on Malmströms candidacy in the EP Trade Committee, tomorrow, Tuesday.

Update 2: After todays letter from Malmström, she was approved by the EP Trade Committee.

Update 3: This is not over yet… »

Julian Sanchez from the Cato Institute on the surveillance state. With Trevor Burrus and Matthew Feeney in a podcast from Libertarianism.org.

( Direct link @ Soundcloud » )

This is interesting and worth watching: TV writer and presenter Tom Scott at the dConstruct 2014 conference on the future of a connected world and privacy.

(Direct link @ Youtube »)

Over at Torrentfreak, Rick Falkvinge explains the right to private communication in the simplest possible way–with the old-fashioned letter: anonymous, secret in transit, under mere conduit and untracked. So obvious in the physical world, yet so disputed when it comes to electronic communications.

“All of these characteristics, which all embed vital civil liberties, have been lost in the transition to digital at the insistence of the copyright industry – so that they, as a third-party, can prevent people from sending letters with a content they just don’t like to see sent, for business reasons of theirs.”

Read the article here »

In Australia, the entertainment industry is strongly supporting data retention–to fight online piracy.

Content industry lobbying is globally coordinated, so we should expect something similar if this issue is to be reopened in the EU.

That might happen soon–as the European Court of Justice has suspended the EU data retention directive, finding that it violates human rights.

Some EU countries have declared blanket data retention now being an obsolete concept, while others like the UK and Sweden have no intentions to stop the practice.

This will lead to competition issues on the single European market, for the EU Commission to tackle. (Competition issues was the pretext for an EU directive in the first place.)

There is also a slight possibility that the Commission backs of–and leaves the data retention dilemma to the respective member states. That would move the fight from Brussels to 28 national parliaments.

But we can be pretty sure that there will be a battle, as the copyright lobby has locked on target.

Read more: How film studios want to use data retention to crack down on piracy »

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The European Parliament and the EU Ombudsman have been denied access to a report drafted by the EU:s own police agency Europol–because the US say so.

The purpose of the report is to evaluate how the EU-US terrorist financial tracking programme (TFTP) is being implemented, including handling of data about European bank transfers.

Earlier evaluations have been heavily redacted, but have still managed to point out serious problems with the TFTP (a.k.a the SWIFT agreement). There is reason to believe that the US don’t keep their part of the agreement. And there is information that the NSA has broken into the SWIFT bank transfer system anyway.

The European Parliament has demanded that the TFTP should be suspended–because of US mass surveillance and the fact that the US doesn’t respect the “safe harbour” agreement (regulating how US companies should protect personal data about European customers).

However, the European Commission has refused to do anything of that sort–so the TFTP agreement is still in effect.

This is so wrong… The people’s elected representatives are not allowed to scrutinize the TFTP. And they are not allowed to revoke the agreement on their own. All they can do is to watch when data about European citizens and companies bank transfers are shipped in bulk to the US.

The Dutch liberal member of the European Parliament Sophie In’t Veld comments the latest TFTP information cover up in the EU Observer…

“If the US says ‘No disclosure’ then it won’t be disclosed, which is ridiculous because we are EU citizens, we vote, we pay taxes, we have EU laws, and we decide what happens on this continent. Nobody else.”

Read more over at the EU Observer: Europol chief takes instructions on document access from Americans »

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Update Sept. 9th: Techdirt »

NSA mass surveillance has not led to one single terrorist being sentenced in a court of law. Not one.

NSA did not manage to foresee the Russian annexation of Crimea. And it does not seem to give western leaders any assistance of substance when it comes to predicting Russian moves in eastern Ukraine.

NSA did not manage to predict the sudden rise of IS in Iraq and Syria.

NSA apparently had no clue when it came to the uprising in parts of the Arab world during the Arab Spring. And the agency seems to be of little help when it comes to keeping the western world in touch with developments as that spring turns into autumn and winter.

NSA do, however, manage to keep track of the telecommunications of millions and millions of ordinary people–who are not suspected for doing anything wrong or dangerous at all. And the NSA has succeeded in causing resentment among some of the US most important allies.

I feel sorry for the US taxpayers.

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