While the European Court of Justice has decided against data retention – Europol would like to expand it.
Statewatch » More “going dark” problems: Europol wants data retention to ease identification of individual internet users »
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Proton Mail strikes back
ProtonMail, the privacy-focused email business, has launched a Tor hidden service to combat the censorship and surveillance of its users.
The move is designed to counter actions “by totalitarian governments around the world to cut off access to privacy tools” and the Swiss company specifically cited “recent events such as the Egyptian government’s move to block encrypted chat app Signal, and the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act in the UK that mandates tracking all web browsing activity”.
The Register: ProtonMail launches Tor hidden service to dodge totalitarian censorship »
Utopia or dystopia?
Ida Auken at World Economic Forum: Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better. »
Until the end, Obama expands mass surveillance
New rules issued by the Obama administration under Executive Order 12333 will let the NSA—which collects information under that authority with little oversight, transparency, or concern for privacy—share the raw streams of communications it intercepts directly with agencies including the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to a report today by the New York Times.
An absurd battle over free speech
As you may have heard, last week we were sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. We have written, at great length, about his claims and our opinion — backed up by detailed and thorough evidence — that email existed long before Ayyadurai created any software. We believe the legal claims in the lawsuit are meritless, and we intend to fight them and to win.
There is a larger point here. Defamation claims like this can force independent media companies to capitulate and shut down due to mounting legal costs. Ayyadurai’s attorney, Charles Harder, has already shown that this model can lead to exactly that result. His efforts helped put a much larger and much more well-resourced company than Techdirt completely out of business.
So, in our view, this is not a fight about who invented email. This is a fight about whether or not our legal system will silence independent publications for publishing opinions that public figures do not like.
And here’s the thing: this fight could very well be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely on the right side of the law.
Manning: Presidential pardon – or not?
Chelsea Manning, the Army soldier who was handed a 35 years prison sentence in 2010 for leaking military files to Wikileaks, may be on President Obama’s short list of sentence commutations before he leaves office.
This comes from NBC News, which cited an unnamed Justice Department official. The report said a decision on Manning could come as soon as Wednesday, though Obama has until his last day in office to do so. High profile or controversial pardons and sentence commutations, as this would be, typically come at the end of presidents’ terms.
Vocativ: Chelsea Manning Is Reportedly On Obama’s Commutation Short List »
Boingboing: Chelsea Manning on the short list for commutation: call the White House at 202-456-1111 to help her »
Germany towards a centralised Police State?
German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere has announced a series of proposals that revolve around giving the German federal government more power over security agencies, cyber attacks, policing and deportations; permitting the deployment of the military internally; expanding the scope of the proposed EU Entry/Exit System and loosening the the EU definition of “safe third countries”.
There is this German proverb: History does not repeat itself. But it rhymes.
Statewatch » Interior ministry “wish list”: strengthen central government security, policing and deportation powers »
“Apple Removes New York Times Apps From Its Store in China”
Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month.
The move limits access to one of the few remaining channels for readers in mainland China to read The Times without resorting to special software. The government began blocking The Times’s websites in 2012, after a series of articles on the wealth amassed by the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister, but it had struggled in recent months to prevent readers from using the Chinese-language app.
NYT: Apple Removes New York Times Apps From Its Store in China »
Italian call for state censorship
Pitruzzella, head of the Italian competition body since 2011, said “EU countries should set up independent bodies — co-ordinated by Brussels and modeled on the system of antitrust agencies — which could quickly label fake news, remove it from circulation and impose fines if necessary.”
Zerohedge: Italy Urges Europe To Begin Censoring Free Speech On The Internet »
EU copyright reform: Oettinger’s legacy
These proposals will cause major collateral damage – making many everyday habits on the web and many services you regularly use downright illegal, subject to fees or, at the very least, mired in legal uncertainty.
Julia Reda, Pirate MEP: 10 everyday things on the web the EU Commission wants to make illegal »