Electronic Civil Liberties

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Een van de onderstaande issues was recent ook bij ons al in het nieuws:
Location privacy.
Fotograferen van kentekens zonder specifieke aanleiding en deze bewaren,
en rekening rijden.

Overigens heb ik geen enkele opmerking gezien over het feit dat de
betrokken minister pas reageerde over het fotograferen van de kentekens
door IJsselland, nadat de issue van buiten werd aangeroerd.

Pas na de persberichten vond ze het noodzakelijk te reageren, en dit
rechtvaardigt de conclusie dat ze de privacyrechten pas belangrijk vind
als ze zelf aangesproken wordt. Hierdoor ondermijnt ze de rechszekerheid.

Overigens was voor het fotograferen van de kentekens door de politie
IJsselland wel degelijk een aanleiding. Er werd herhaaldelijk binnen een
klein gebied (dacht ik) ingebroken. Toen zijn op de bruggen van
toegangswegen camera's geplaatst en de verzamelde kentekens
geanalyseerd. Daaronder zat de uiteindelijke dader.
Voor dit onderzoek was dus wel een goede aanleiding, en zou alleen
volgens een afgesproken procedure toestemming moeten worden gegeven voor
het verzamelen van de kentekens en onder welke voorwaarden.

Het verbaast me dat over het systematisch verzamelen en doorverkopen van
  emailadressen niets bekend wordt gemaakt.
Het wordt toch openlijk gedaan. ZELF ADRESSEN VERZAMELEN EN DAN HET
GEBRUIK VERKOPEN! De heer Detmer kan hier meer over vertellen wellicht?

Groet / Cees

January 13th, 2010
12 Trends to Watch in 2010
Deeplink by Tim Jones

It's the dawn of a new year. From our perch on the frontier of
electronic civil liberties, EFF has collected a list of a dozen
important trends in law, technology and business that we think will play
a significant role in shaping online rights in 2010.

In December, we'll revisit this post and see how it all worked out.

1. Attacks on Cryptography: New Avenues for Intercepting Communications
=======================================================================
In 2010, several problems with cryptography implementations should come
to the fore, showing that even encrypted communications aren't as safe
as users expect. Two of the most significant problems we expect concern
cellphone security and web browser security.

GSM, the technology that underpins most cellphone communications around
the world, uses a deeply flawed security technology. In 2010, devices
which intercept phone calls will get cheaper and cheaper. Expect to see
public demonstrations of the ability to break GSM's encryption and
intercept mobile phone calls. We hope that this will prompt the mobile
phone industry to replace its obsolete systems with modern and
easy-to-use cryptography.

SSL (in its newer versions known as TLS), the basic security technology
of the world wide web, is exhibiting similarly severe flaws. Several
powerful practical attacks against real-world SSL implementations were
published in 2009; more problems and concerns will emerge throughout
2010. SSL security must be improved.

Despite flaws in how SSL is used, it's still the best system for web
security around, and so it also needs to become more widely deployed.
Google set a fantastic example this week when it set GMail to use SSL by
default — in 2010 we hope to see other online service providers follow
its example.

2. Books and Newspapers: .TXT is the new .MP3
=============================================
Since 2000, the music industry has most spectacularly flailed (and
failed) to combat the Net's effect on its business model. Their plans to
sue, lock-up and lobby their way out of their problem did nothing to
turn the clock back, but did cause serious damage to free speech,
innovation and fair use.

These days, the book and newspaper industries are similarly mourning the
Internet's effect on their bottom line. In 2009, Rupert Murdoch changed
the tone of the debate when he called those who made fair use of his
papers' content "thieves". We think 2010 and beyond will see others in
the print world attempt to force that view, and break the fair use
doctrine by lobbying to change accepted copyright law, challenging it in
the courts, or by placing other pressures on intermediaries.

A cluster of similar battles around user control are also gathering
around e-reader products like Kindle and Google Book Search, many of
which rewrite the rules for book ownership and privacy wholesale.

So, in 2010, will the printed word step smartly into the digital future,
or will it continue to stay stuck in the denial and bargaining phase
that dominated digital music's lost decade?

3. Global Internet Censorship: The Battle for Legitimacy
========================================================
For years, the obvious benefits of an uncensored Internet have kept
advocates of Net blocking on the defensive. But new filtering
initiatives in Australia and Europe combined with growing rhetoric
around child protection, cybersecurity and IP enforcement means that
blocking websites isn't just for authoritarian regimes any more.

That's not to say tyrants aren't paying close attention to the West's
new censors. When democratic governments complain about Iran and China's
net policing in 2010, expect defenses of "we're only doing what everyone
else does".

2010 will see the publication of Access Controlled, a new book from the
OpenNet Initiative chronicling the globalization of Internet censorship;
we're excited to see it but concerned about the ways restrictions in
different countries reinforce each other.

4. Hardware Hacking: Opening Closed Platforms and Devices
=========================================================
An increasingly active hobbyist community is figuring out how to make a
range of devices more useful and open. They are learning how to install
new software or make third-party parts, devices, and services work with
proprietary high-tech products like video game consoles, printers,
portable audio players, home entertainment devices, e-book readers,
mobile phones, digital cameras, and even programmable calculators. And,
oh yes, contending with restrictions on both cars and garage doors.

Frequently, indignant manufacturers are threatening these tinkerers with
legal troubles. Often, these threats are legally baseless — but this
hasn't stopped manufacturers from bullying hobbyists into keeping quiet
about their innovations.

It confirms the prediction that EFF board member Ed Felten made in 2006:
that the rationale offered for "Digital Rights Management" was shifting
away from hard-to-defend claims that DRM could stop copyright
infringement, and toward uses of DRM to control the functionality of
objects in general (often in ways only tenuously connected to copying
anything).

In 2009, EFF asked the Copyright Office to protect hobbyists who unlock
and jailbreak their smartphones, and we stood up for developers who
figured out how to load new operating systems onto TI programmable
calculators. EFF's panel of judges also chose to honor Limor Fried of
Adafruit Industries with a Pioneer Award in part to encourage the
hardware hacking community to continue their good work.

In 2010, phone jailbreaking will become even more mainstream, and the
concept will be routinely applied to other sorts of devices. EFF's
Coders Rights Project will have no shortage of work to do defending
users and developers who want to make their hardware do more than it was
designed for.

5. Location Privacy: Tracking Beacons in Your Pocket
====================================================
It's easier and cheaper than ever for computers to keep track of where
you are: there are so many more potential sources of information about
your whereabouts, and so many reasons it might be useful or interesting
to you, your friends, your boss, or the government.

EFF has fought for location privacy rights, including checks on the
government's ability to use your cell phone to find you and to access
the information that social networks, mobile operators, and
transportation systems collect about where you are and where you travel.

In 2010, awareness of location privacy as an issue will enter the
mainstream in the U.S. as a critical mass of end users voluntarily adopt
technologies that use or share their physical location — and start to
wonder who has access to this information. Many more courts will grapple
with these questions this year, building upon the important 2009
decisions in the Connolly case in Massachusetts and the Weaver case in
New York. EFF is awaiting the decision in U.S. v. Jones in the Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia, where we asked a court to limit
law enforcement use of these devices.

6. Net Neutrality: The Rubber Hits The Road
===========================================
Anyone who watched John Hodgman's famous Daily Show rant knows what Net
Neutrality means as an abstract idea. But what will it mean when it
makes the transformation from idealistic principle into real-world
regulations? 2010 will be the year we start to find out, as the FCC
attempts to implement the plan it adopts after its 107-page request for
input about how to ensure a neutral Net.

But how far can the FCC be trusted? Historically, the FCC has sometimes
shown more concern for the demands of corporate lobbyists and "public
decency" advocates than it has for individual civil liberties. Consider
the FCC's efforts to protect Americans from "dirty words" in FCC v.
Pacifica Foundation, or its much-criticized deregulation of the media
industry, or its narrowly-thwarted attempt to cripple video innovation
with the Broadcast Flag.

With the FCC already promising exceptions from net neutrality for
copyright-enforcement, we fear that 2010 could be the year when the
FCC's idea of an "Open Internet" proves quite different from what many
have been hoping for.

7. Online Video: Who Controls Your TV?
======================================
Like the print business, the television business is being radically
disrupted by the Internet. The disparate and powerful industries
affected — telco, cable, satellite, ISP, software, and production — are
engaged in a battle for dominance. But as big business dukes it out,
consumer rights risk being left behind.

Two especially bad initiatives to keep an eye on this year: TV
Everywhere is a new DRM-laden attempt by the mainstream television
industry to trip up innovative upstarts like Boxee. Another scheme,
Selectable Output Control, is Hollywood's latest effort to start driving
analog interfaces into extinction in favor of DRM-restricted digital
interfaces — meaning that Hollywood would decide what you can record on
your DVR, rather than you.

In 2010, expect industry to advance those initiatives, as well as to
introduce new and similarly problematic schemes along the same lines.
EFF, as usual, will be there to try to stop them.

8. Congress: Postponed Bad Legislation Returns
==============================================
In retrospect, 2009 wasn't disastrous for online civil liberties in
federal technology law. With Washington entirely distracted by health
care reform, a lot of the most problematic proposed federal technology
legislation was delayed, postponed or temporarily forgotten.

In 2010, we may not be so lucky. Key provisions of the Patriot Act,
having recently been granted a three-month extension, are up for
re-authorization before April 1. The Snowe-Rockefeller Cybersecurity
Act, which would grant the President the power to disconnect the
Internet, is likely to return sometime in 2010. And, with immigration
reform considered a top priority for Congress this year, we can expect
to see the national identification card scheme REAL ID (or its twin,
PASS ID) again soon.

9. Social Networking Privacy: Something's Got To Give
=====================================================
For some, social networking sites are the Internet. Facebook now has
over 350 million accounts — roughly the same as the total number of
Internet users worldwide a decade ago. That means that the bad guys who
were exploiting security weaknesses in the wider Net in the last decade
will now turn in force on the bigger networking sites. And by bad guys,
we mean everyone from criminals, to unethical data-mining companies, to
ISPs who can't resist snooping on that remunerative personal data
passing down their pipes, to governments seeking new ways to track their
citizens.

Will a major privacy scandal or two fix the social networking sites'
casual attitude to their customers' personal data? Will new laws? Or
will technologists and increasingly sensitive Net users find a their own
way to protect their privacy?

10. Three Strikes: Truth and Consequences
=========================================
In countries across the globe, the entertainment industry has been
pushing for laws requiring ISPs to terminate their users' connection at
the whim of the entertainment industry. In 2009, they got their wish —
in France and South Korea, at least. This year will see the spin battle
over what is actually happening in those countries.

Expect media industry reports describing amazing local declines in
filesharing, aimed at policymakers in other nations considering the
same. And look out for local press reports from these three strikes
ground zeroes, documenting the calamitous consequences of
disconnections, the lack of financial return to working artists, and the
political blowback for the politicians who championed these unjust laws.

11. Fair Use of Trademarks: Mockery At Risk
===========================================
Parody and mockery have long been favorite tools for online political
expression and activism. But the powerful entities being mocked
sometimes lack a sense of humor about the situation. Increasingly,
they're turning to trademark law to badger would-be jokers into silence.

Of course, abuse of copyright law, which governs ownership of content,
is nothing new. But until recently, we haven't seen as much abuse of
trademark law, which governs ownership of names and logos. Fair Use
principles, which allow creative re-use of intellectual property, apply
to trademarks just as they apply to copyrights. In either case, IP
bullies are just as happy to ignore those principles and make bogus
legal threats.

Recently, trademark threats have been levied against activists like The
Yes Men, who mocked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They've targeted
NYTimes.se, which mocked The New York Times and corporations like
DeBeers. They've targeted The South Butt, a clothing line which mocks
The North Face. And, only a few days ago, they targeted environmental
activist Brian DeSmet for mocking Peabody Energy.

In 2010, expect to see plenty of similar bogus threats. Some of them
will lead to litigation, and those battles could in turn lead to
important new legal precedents with serious implications for free
expression online.

12. Web Browser Privacy: It's Not Just About Cookies Anymore
============================================================
In the late 1990s, when the conventions for the modern web browser were
being determined, certain expectations were established for web browser
privacy. Users who wished to take extra measures to protect their
privacy could simply choose to de-activate or limit their browser's use
of cookies. This would protect them from most of the worst online
tracking practices.

And that's how it remained for some time. Or so most web users thought.

As it turns out, corporations seeking to track individuals' use of the
web were hard at work developing new and unexpected methods of
profiling. For a long time, many of these methods either remained
unexamined or were simply performed covertly and hidden from the public.
But as we enter 2010, awareness and scrutiny of them is on the rise.

Try browsing the web while using a tool like the Firefox add-on
RequestPolicy, and you'll see that many major sites share your web
activity with dozens of advertisers and advertising networks. With few
technical or legal restrictions on the ability to track you around the
web, companies you may never have heard of may have profiles of you
which include things about your web use that you don't even remember.

This year the Federal Trade Commission is taking a fresh look at privacy
and the use of profiles to target ads based on individuals' behavior on
the web. We'll be participating in the process by providing testimony to
the FTC, as well as launching our own study of just how easy individual
browsers are to track, and how they can be made more privacy-protective.

Related Issues: Analog Hole, Broadcast Flag, Cell Tracking, Coders'
Rights Project, Digital Books, Digital Rights Management, Digital Video,
DMCA, DMCA Rulemaking, Free Speech, Innovation, Intellectual Property,
International, Locational Privacy, Privacy, Real ID, Search Engines

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