HAX

“Fear is a by-product of luxury”

By HAX on July 27, 2017 in Big Brother, War on Terror

The recently approved dragnet surveillance powers will only increase the number of false accusations. “Data mining is probably an ineffective method for preventing terror attacks”, wrote the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) in their 2016 report “Big data in a free and safe society” (“Big data in een vrije en veilige samenleving”). “Because each terror attack is unique, it is nearly impossible to create an accurate profile. Combined with the small number of attacks, this results in an unusably high error rate.”. If you don’t look Middle-Eastern, you might be able to convince yourself that it is better to be safe than sorry. However, a Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen demonstrated the short-sightedness of this argument already ten years ago in his book “A Philosophy of Fear”. According to Svendsen, Europe lives in a culture of fear: we believe that we are more and more often exposed to increasing danger, from epidemics to terrorism. In reality we are safer than ever, but precisely for this reason we can afford to be worried about dangers that will probably never materialise. Fear is a by-product of luxury.

EDRi ENDitorial: Draconian anti-terrorism measures instil terror »

ECJ rejects EU-Canada PNR

By HAX on July 27, 2017 in Big Brother, Civil rights, EU, Privacy

The EU Court of Justice ruled this morning that the agreement on the transfer of passenger data (PNR) between the EU and Canada is incompatible with EU law. (…)

Sophie in ‘t Veld MEP, ALDE Group first vice-president, commented today:

“Two and a half years after the European Parliament raised serious concerns, the Court has made it crystal clear that the EU Canada agreement cannot be adopted in its current form. The agreement provides insufficient protection and safeguards for Europeans. The use of personal data is not rejected as such, but sensitive data relating to, for example, religious beliefs, cannot be collected without suspicion. Additionally, the data cannot be accessed without judicial authorisation and has to be deleted after the passenger has left Canadian territory.”

ALDE: EU Court rejects passenger data deal with Canada as it violates EU law »

The law cannot be upheld by breaking the law, said Joe McNamee, Executive Director of European Digital Rights. Reckless data retention and profiling have no place in a democratic, law-based society. Literally every independent body that has spoken out on the subject supports this analysis. The European Commission and EU Member States must now, at long last, take all necessary steps to abandon all illegal data retention laws and practices.

EDRi: EU Court rules that draft EU/Canada air passenger data deal is unacceptable »

Meanwhile, in Norway…

By HAX on July 27, 2017 in Big Brother, Civil rights, Law enforcement

On 5 April 2017, the Norwegian government proposed an amendment to the Norwegian code of criminal proceedings to allow the police to compel the use of biometric authentication. After two quick debates, the Norwegian Parliament passed the proposition into law on 21 June. (…)

The lack of specificity of an “electronic system” means this law has an extremely wide scope. We can, for example, envision that access to a personal device such as a mobile phone, which stores the access credentials to several cloud storage services, essentially gives away a more or less complete description of a person’s life. To entrust such decision to a single police officer with no due process means that an act with very far reaching consequences may be performed in a matter of seconds. (…)

There is also no reference to proportionality of the use of force. Although there is no reason to suspect this would be used in a disproportionate way, the lack of such a limitation means that we don’t know how far the use force might be taken.

EDRi: Norway introduces forced biometric authentication »

Meanwhile, in China…

By HAX on July 24, 2017 in Big Brother, China, Civil liberties, Free Information, Human rights, Police state, Privacy, surveillance

In Xinjiang, China, citizens are being forced to install a targeted surveillance mobile app called Jingwang. Additionally, the government has set up random checkpoints on the streets to check whether the spyware is properly installed on your smartphone. On July 10th, mobile phone users in the region received a notification letting them know that they had 10 days to download and install the Jingwang spyware. Failure to install the app is punishable by up to 10 days imprisonment, according to the notice. According to the government, the spyware app has benign functions.

PI: In Xinjiang, China, police have set up checkpoints to ensure that the government-mandated “Jingwang” spyware is installed

EU to kill Creative Commons?

By HAX on July 20, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Copyright, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Human rights, Intellectual Property, Internet

The EU is in the process of hammering out a new copyright directive. Here is a leaked amendment from the European Parliaments Committee on Culture and Education (CULT)…

1. Member States shall ensure that, when authors and performers transfer or assign the right of making available to the public of their works or other subject-matter for online on-demand services, they retain the right to obtain fair remuneration derived from the direct exploitation of their works present in the catalogue of those services.

2. The right of an author or performer to obtain fair remuneration for the making available of his/her work as described in paragraph 1 cannot be waived.

This is totally absurd.

We are many who publish text, pictures, video and music under various Creative Commons licenses. Meaning that we waive parts of our copyright – making our works available for everyone to share freely. (Some CC licenses do and some don’t allow free commercial use; some state that the creator should be attributed; et cetera.)

According to point two above, in some cases, licenses such as CC=BY, CC=NC, and CC=0 will not be legal.

To take one example, this blog is published under a CC=BY license. Anyone could quote or share the text, as long as it is attributed to the 5 of July Foundation (or me). And we do hope you do. Even for commercial use, non-public sites, in the media, or on-demand.

If the amendment above becomes EU law – this might no longer be possible or legal.

Furthermore, not being allowed to freely share one’s creative work on certain sites surely is an unacceptable limitation when it comes to the artist’s rights.

If there is something like intellectual property (which the EU claims) – this must be a grave violation of the artists property rights.

To hinder creators from freely distributing their works must also be a serious limitation of freedom of speech.

And it doesn’t have to be about Creative Commons. Some artists just want to share their work for marketing purposes or just to be nice to their fans. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to?

This ill-conceived idea must be stopped before it becomes EU law.

/ HAX

• EFF: Secret New European Copyright Proposal Spells Disaster for Free Culture »
• EFF: Do Last Week’s European Copyright Votes Show Publishers Have Captured European Politics?

• Learn more about Creative Commons »

EU: You cannot – or should pay extra – to store your music in the cloud

By HAX on July 20, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet

Under the CULT “compromise amendments”, it would no longer be possible to store legally acquired music recordings video files or any other copyrighted content on European cloud storage services. This is despite the fact that Europeans already pay hundreds of millions every year in levies (3,2 billion euro in the first half of this decade) to compensate rightsholders for making copies of legally obtained copyrighted works. Despite this, European cloud services would have to install filters to either block uploads or pay “fair” licenses for any copyrighted material that was uploaded. (Non-European services, on the contrary, would have nothing to worry about.)

EDRi: No, you can’t enjoy the music you paid for, says EU Parliament Committee »

No to (some) secret EU court proceedings

By HAX on July 19, 2017 in Big Government, Civil rights, Data Retention, Democracy, ECJ, EU, Free Information, Hacktivism, Rule of law, Transparency

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg today ruled in favour
of the German civil liberties activist and pirate party member Patrick
Breyer (Commission vs. Breyer, C-213/15 P): It ordered the Commission
to give the press and the public access to the pleadings exchanged in
completed court proceedings. In the present case Breyer successfully
demanded the Commission disclose Austrian pleadings concerning the
non-transposition of the controversial EU Data Retention Directive.
However the Court fined Breyer for publishing the written submissions in
his own case on his homepage.

Pirate Times: EU Court rules on transparency of EU justice »

»EU copyright reform goes from bad to worse«

By HAX on July 19, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Big Media, Copyright, EU, Free Information

For example, the “snippet tax” would require commercial sites that quote even tiny portions of online press publications to pay a licensing fee for each one. Given the way social networks constantly quote and cross-link information, that’s clearly absurd. And yet the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee of the European Parliament has come up with a cunning plan to make it even worse. It wants the snippet tax to apply to physical publications as well as digital ones. (…)

Just as the ITRE committee wants to make the snippet tax even worse, so the Culture and Education (CULT) committee of EU politicians has come up with a way to make the upload filter dramatically more ridiculous. If the CULT committee’s amendments are adopted in the final law, EU citizens will no longer be able to upload copies of copyright material to the cloud, even if they have acquired them legally.

Glyn Moody @ PNI: EU copyright reform goes from bad to worse »

EFF: Do Last Week’s European Copyright Votes Show Publishers Have Captured European Politics? »

In Turkey, using encryption gets you arrested

By HAX on July 18, 2017 in Big Brother, Civil rights, Cryptography, Free Information, Human rights, Police state

Privacy International is particularly concerned that suspicion of membership of the Gülen movement is based on the use of encryption, specifically a freely available messaging service called Bylock which the government claims is the communication tool of choice for Gülen supporters and was used to organise the coup. There is very little information about Bylock; it is not widely known among security experts or outside of Turkey, it is no longer available from any app store and its origins and developer are something of a mystery.

Privacy International @ Medium » Encryption At The Centre Of Mass Arrests: One Year On From Turkey’s Failed Coup »

EU Child Protection Online – another fine mess…

By HAX on July 16, 2017 in EU, Free Information, Internet

The EU is in the process of implementing new regulations aimed for Child Protection online.

To nobody’s surprise, this is a can of worms – where seemingly conflicting principles are at stake. There is a strong possibility that it will all end up restricting the Internets free flow of information, without doing any good to actually protect any children.

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