Flickr Plans To Sell Creative Commons Photos And That's Okay...

from the permissionless-culture-is-okay dept

There appear to be a lot of people up in arms over Flickr's announced plans to sell wall art prints of various Creative Commons-licensed images on the site. The uproar is mostly because people who chose a license like Creative Commons' attribution license, and not a "non-commercial" license are not going to see any money from any images that Flickr (owned by Yahoo) sells. And that leads to angry posts like this one arguing that selling the work is "cheesy, desperate and not at all fine with me."

Except... the license that was chosen says that, yes, this is fine with you. This doesn't necessarily mean that Flickr/Yahoo's decision was smart. The way it's being done appears to be upsetting lots of people, and upsetting the core people who make your service work is -- generally speaking -- not smart. But this leads to a bigger issue, one that is highlighted nicely in a post on all of this by Tom Lee, in which he notes that part of open licensing is giving up control so that others can benefit. And this is a key point that is missed by many, unfortunately:

Open licensing is about giving up control so that other people can benefit. That’s all it will cost you: control. Having control feels nice. But you should ask yourself what it really gets you. And you should think about what others might gain if you were able to let go.

Furthermore, he notes that what Flickr is doing here really will benefit lots of folks:

Flickr’s sale of prints does not deprive photographers of their work or money. Users have the same ability to use their work that they always had. The vast majority would never have taken the steps necessary to profit from their work, so print sales do not deprive them of money. When a user really expects to sell prints, they should avoid Creative Commons licensing, which, as I’ve mentioned, is easily done.

Flickr’s sale of prints provides benefits to other people. People who work for and own Flickr make money. The vendors producing and delivering the prints make money. And people who buy prints get to enjoy works of art.

Parker Higgins posted some further thoughts on Twitter that are worth noting as well. Many of the people who are upset about this are angry that Yahoo didn't ask them about this first. But as Higgins notes, that's just bringing back the idea of permission-based culture, rather than recognizing that a big part of the value of Creative Commons (or any other such open license system or public domain) is getting beyond permission culture and recognizing that in giving up control, there are lots of benefits.

Free culture licenses aren't supposed to flag that you're a cooperative player in permissions culture. They're supposed to do the opposite.

— Parker Higgins (@xor) December 1, 2014

Now, one could make a reasonable cultural argument that Yahoo/Flickr should have approached this situation with more caution -- recognizing how some people would likely respond to this, no matter how reasonable or legal it is. If I were in charge of the program at Yahoo, that likely would have been my approach. But, the troubling end result of this is that it may just lead more people to slap a "non-commercial" license on their Creative Commons works, greatly limiting the kinds of benefits that are out there, without providing any real benefit to themselves. In some ways, this gets to the heart of the problems we've noted with Creative Commons in the past -- especially the fact that many incorrectly assume that all CC-licensed material is only for non-commercial use. It's also why we think there's a strong argument that Creative Commons should either drop or totally rebrand the non-commercial offering, so that this branding confusion is dealt with. The anger in this situation is just a rehash of that branding confusion -- and the end result is that it reinforces this idea of "permissions" culture, rather than highlighting the benefits of sharing culture without first needing permission -- even if for commercial reasons.

Filed Under: attribution, copyright, creative commons, flickr, non-commercial, photos, sales
Companies: flickr, yahoo

FISA Judge To Yahoo: If US Citizens Don't Know They're Being Surveilled, There's No Harm

from the so,-more-of-the-same,-except-retroactively? dept

A legal battle between Yahoo and the government over the Protect America Act took place in 2008, but details (forced from the government's Top Secret file folders by FISA Judge Reggie Walton) are only emerging now. A total of 1,500 pages will eventually make their way into the public domain once redactions have been applied. The most recent release is a transcript [pdf link] of oral arguments presented by Yahoo's counsel (Mark Zwillinger) and the US Solicitor General (Gregory Garre).

Zwillinger opens up the arguments by questioning the government's methods of determining who should be placed under surveillance.

Why I show this to you is because I think it's a perfectly fair question for you to ask the Solicitor General of the United States how a name gets on this list. This isn't reviewed by a -- the FISA Court. These names aren't reviewed by the Attorney General of the United States. The difference between surveilling an account and exposing someone's most private communications and not is how a name gets on this list; and all we know about it from page 47 of their brief, is that an intelligence analyst puts it on the list.

From this arbitrary beginning springs a wealth of errors.

[REDACTED] of the accounts we have been given do not exist. They aren't accounts at Yahoo. Whether the government is misinformed, or using stale information, we don't know; But the fact that [REDACTED] accounts do not exist raises a serious possibility that some of those accounts have already been recycled and are used by other Yahoo users, or that the information that the government has is just wrong, and the wrong is being placed under surveillance.

Zwillinger points out that Yahoo is just one provider and yet has (the number is redacted, but is at least 4 digits with a comma) a large number of accounts under surveillance. He then refers to the multiple errors again, stating that when the government screws up, it's very likely that American citizens will be mistakenly placed under surveillance.

The difference between a U.S. person and a non-U.S. person in this context could be a letter or a digit in an email address; and if they have it wrong, the consequences will likely be felt here, because more Yahoo users are from the United States than any other single country.

The judges claim minimization procedures eliminate the problem of inadvertent collections, but Zwillinger points out that the surveillance carried out under the Protect America Act actually doesn't contain protections against use of wrongly swept up US persons' communications and data.

The government's response begins by denying that US persons' data is retained. "There is no database," says Gregory Garre, before having to admit a few sentences later, that incidental data is retained (and distributed) if there is evidence of other, non-national-security-related criminal activity.

Garre then goes on to explain why the government feels it should have warrantless access to US persons' communications, routed through and stored at US servers. He refers to satellite communications -- something in use when FISA was enacted in 1978. Garre says that even though these communications may have been captured by domestic satellite receivers, it's the point of origin that matters. Outside the US? No warrant needed, even for US persons. Likewise for emails stored on Yahoo servers.

MR. GARRE: I don't think anybody would argue that the Fourth Amendment would apply to that communication, even though the email communications go to account in Sunnyvale, California. I haven't understood Yahoo to argue that the Fourth Amendment would be implicated by that.

And, similarly, the Fourth Amendment isn't --

JUSTICE SELYA: You mean the interception there by you and Yahoo would not implicate the Fourth Amendment?

MR. GARRE: That Certainly would be the government's view.

Garre also blames the large number of dead accounts in the court orders on Yahoo's refusal to immediately comply, while simultaneously spinning it as the unavoidable collateral damage of "efficient" surveillance.

So the fact that accounts have been closed is not significant, and that's particularly true given that the large number of email accounts here is reflected by the fact that Yahoo is in noncompliance for several months. So, if you go back several months, it's not surprising that several accounts have been closed.

Garre asserts that if anyone deserves the benefit of a doubt in this situation, it's the US government. He states that the Executive Branch and the intelligence community have a long-standing history of not violating the rights of US citizens -- a statement that wasn't even mostly true prior to the 9/11 attacks, and is almost laughable in the wake of what's been uncovered since then. He also points to Congressional oversight and suggests its legislative powers would have been used to rein in the NSA and others if it had actually seen signs of abuse.

In his rebuttal, Zwillinger punches holes in Garre's narrative.

You know, the Solicitor General talks about Congress spoke here, but to the extent Congress has spoken, then they turn around and admit they misspoke. And now they have a Senate report that says we failed to provide adequate protections for U.S. persons, and we are going to pass new legislation. They intentionally let the Protect America Act lapse. So to the extent congressional oversight even exists after February 16, 2008, which I'm not sure it does, it provides no check. Congress can't do anything differently. The statute has passed. The directives continue all the way until the expiration date, but the statute doesn't exist any more. It's not Congress's current view of how surveillance should he conducted.

But the most surprising assertions made in these oral arguments don't come from the Solicitor General. They come from Judge Morris S. Arnold, who shows something nearing disdain for the privacy of the American public and their Fourth Amendment rights.

In the first few pages of the oral arguments, while discussing whether or not secret surveillance actually harms US citizens (or the companies forced to comply with government orders), Arnold pulls a complete Mike Rogers:

If this order is enforced and it's secret, how can you be hurt? The people don't know that -- that they're being monitored in some way. How can you be harmed by it? I mean, what's --what's the -- what's your -- what's the damage to your consumer?

By the same logic, all sorts of secret surveillance would be OK -- like watching your neighbor's wife undress through the window, or placing a hidden camera in the restroom -- as long as the surveilled party is never made aware of it. If you don't know it's happening, then there's nothing wrong with it. Right? [h/t to Alex Stamos]

In the next astounding quote, Arnold makes the case that the Fourth Amendment doesn't stipulate the use of warrants for searches because it's not written right up on top in bold caps… or something.

The whole thrust of the development of Fourth Amendment law has sort of emphasized the watchdog function of the judiciary. If you just look at the Fourth Amendment, there's nothing in there that really says that a warrant is usually required. It doesn't say that at all, and the warrant clause is at the bottom end of the Fourth Amendment, and -- but that's the way -- that's the way it has been interpreted.

What's standing between US citizens and unconstitutional acts by their government is a very thin wall indeed.

Filed Under: fisa court, fisc, gregory garre, mark zwillinger, morris arnold, nsa, paa, prism, protect america act, section 702, surveillance
Companies: yahoo

More Yahoo vs. The NSA: Government Tried To Deny Standing, Filed Supporting Documents Yahoo Never Got To See

from the blindfolded-and-pickpocketed dept

After having the court documents unsealed and the gag order lifted, Yahoo is finally free to talk about that one time when the government wanted to fine it $250,000 a day [!!] for refusing to comply with a FISA court order to turn over data on its customers. Two of the lawyers (Mark Zwillinger and Jacob Sommer) who represented Yahoo in that court battle, have written a post detailing the behind-the-scenes activity.

First off, they note that it's kind of amazing they're even able to discuss it at this point.

Having toiled in secret until recently, and having originally been told we would need to wait 25 years to tell anyone of our experience, it is refreshing to be able to write about the case in detail.

That's the normal declassification schedule, which at this point would still be nearly 18 years away. Fortunately, Ed Snowden's leaks have led to an accelerated schedule for many documents related to the NSA's surveillance programs, as well as fewer judges being sympathetic to FOIA stonewalling and exemption abuse.

We've talked several times about how the government makes it nearly impossible to sue it for abusing civil liberties with its classified surveillance programs. It routinely claims that complainants have no standing, ignoring the fact that leaked documents have given us many details on what the NSA does and doesn't collect. But in Yahoo's case, it went against its own favorite lawsuit-dismissal ploy.

First, the government's prior position on standing may be a bit of a surprise. In more recent cases, like Clapper, it has argued that only the provider has standing to challenge surveillance orders under the FISA Amendments Act, not individual users who may have been caught up in the surveillance. But, in this fight, the government argued that Yahoo had no standing to challenge a directive on the basis of the Fourth Amendment rights of its users.

The government definitely would prefer the swift removal of cases rather than actually having to defend its programs' Constitutionality -- so much so that it attempted to push the argument that no one has standing to challenge its collections. But that wasn't the government's only angle. The courts refused to entertain this sudden shift in the government's "standing" argument, so it moved on to levying fines.

A very short time frame to respond was granted to Yahoo, something made even shorter by the government's foot-dragging.

The FISC issued its decision on April 25, 2008, but we were not permitted to inspect the order until April 29, 2008 (and even then were not allowed to take notes), and did not receive a copy until May 5, 2008, when the government demanded that Yahoo give a same-day answer whether it would comply with the surveillance demand.

Shortly after Yahoo's response, the government moved for contempt charges and fines. $250,000 per day was the minimum. It asked for constantly-escalating fines that would double each week until Yahoo complied. Even for a tech giant, this fee scale could turn into real money incredibly quickly.

Simple math indicates that Yahoo was facing fines of over $25 million dollars for the 1st month of noncompliance, and fines of over $400 million in the second month if the court went along with the government’s proposal. And practically speaking, coercive civil fines means that the government would seek increased fines, with no ceiling, until Yahoo complied.

While the government was threatening Yahoo with massive fines, it was also filing secret briefs and motions in support of its admittedly "coercive" levies, stating that the company's resistance was causing "great harm," apparently on a daily basis.

Finally, the documents that were recently released by the ODNI (and Yahoo itself) contain many that Yahoo -- who was directly involved in this court battle -- had never seen before August 22.

The government filed ex parte documents in support of its surveillance program, many of which Yahoo had no access to during the legal struggle. Not only did the government force Yahoo to respond on its own schedule, but it kept the company in the dark about its justifications and other aspects of its programs. Yahoo couldn't ask for these documents in discovery, nor did it even know these existed.

[P]erhaps most importantly, a FISC decision from January 15, 2008 regarding the procedures for the DNI/AG Certification at issue, which Yahoo had never seen. It examines those procedures under a “clearly erroneous” standard of review – which is one of the most deferential standards used by the judiciary. Yahoo did not have these documents at the time, nor the opportunity to conduct any discovery. It could not fully challenge statements the government made, such as the representation to FISCR “assur[ing the Court] it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons, and there is no evidence to the contrary.” Nor could Yahoo use the January 15, 2008 decision to demonstrate how potential flaws in the targeting process translated into real world effects.

When it comes to the nation's security, apparently no legal deck can be stacked high enough. The government forces those who challenge its secret programs to wage courtroom battles with only the barest minimum of information. And, should it decide the defendant isn't moving fast enough, it can pursue exorbitant (and admittedly coercive) fines until it gets the cooperation it's seeking.

Filed Under: doj, fines, fisa, fisa court, nsa, paa, prism, privacy, standing, surveillance, threats
Companies: yahoo

Yahoo Threatened With A Secret $250,000 Per Day Fine If It Didn't Comply With NSA PRISM Demands

from the how-do-you-explain-that-one? dept

Back in 2013, a week after the whole PRISM program was first revealed thanks to Ed Snowden's leaks, it was then revealed that Yahoo had fought a secret legal battle against the program, based on a predecessor to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 called the Protect America Act of 2007. Yahoo took this fight to the FISA court and then lost. The company was ordered to begin handing over information, even though the company believed the requests were unconstitutional. Late yesterday, Yahoo noted that the FISA Court was finally declassifying many of the documents from that legal fight. James Clapper's office quickly provided its spin on the 1,500 pages worth of documents in the fight. We're digging through all the documents and will likely have more to say once we've had a chance to read through them more carefully.

However, we wanted to comment briefly on the story that's already been making the rounds -- which was called out by Yahoo in its announcement about this. And it's that the government threatened Yahoo with a $250,000 per day fine for refusing to comply with the demands to turn over the information. That specific threat can be seen in the government's motion for an order of civil contempt, after Yahoo sought to appeal the original decision against Yahoo. Yahoo asked for a stay of the original ruling while it appealed, but the government insisted that the court should not allow a stay and should order Yahoo to hand over the data or pay the $250,000 per day fine -- which even the government refers to as a "coercive fine."

$250,000 per day is a lot. Yes, that number can add up pretty quickly, but the truly stunning thing about all of this is that you have to remember all of this was done in total secrecy (it's only come out now, about seven years after it happened). As a company making billions, perhaps it would be able to hide millions of dollars in fines, but somewhere along the line it would have had to have raised alarm bells from someone -- whether an accountant for the company or even someone on the board, wondering why giant chunks of money were going to the government based on absolutely no explanation. And making it even more bizarre is that almost no one in the company itself would have even been allowed to know what was going on. While it never actually got to that point, imagine the financial mess such a secret fine from a secret court would cause.

FISA Court judge Reggie Walton denied Yahoo's request for the stay, meaning Yahoo would likely have been found in contempt if it didn't start handing over data. Thus, even though the company was still trying to appeal the decision (unsuccessfully), it was forced to start handing over the data anyway.

There are so many things wrong (and seemingly unconstitutional) in this entire setup -- and I'm sure we'll have more to say on it after we've gone through the documents. But what kind of constitutional democracy are we living in when this kind of thing is considered to be perfectly acceptable by those in power?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, doj, fisa amendments act, fisa court, fisc, nsa, prism, protect america act, surveillance
Companies: yahoo

EU Regulators Want Google To Expand Right To Be Forgotten Worldwide And To Stop Telling What Links Have Been Forgotten

from the worldwide-censorship dept

We've been covering the ridiculous ruling in the EU on the "right to be forgotten," which was interpreted to mean that search engines could be forced to delete links to perfectly truthful stories (and even if those stories are allowed to be kept online). Google has been trying to comply with the over 90,000 requests it has received -- nearly half of which it has approved -- and removed from its European searches. The company has been struggling to figure out how to comply with the ruling, and those struggles continue. Originally, it was going to place a notice on search results pages where links had been removed (like it does with copyright takedowns) alerting people that stories were missing. However, regulators told Google that would defeat the purpose. So now, Google's European search results show a message on nearly every search on a "name" that results might have been removed.

Either way, once Google started removing the requested stories, it did the right thing, alerting the websites that links were being removed. Of course, that just resulted in many of those publications writing about it, and bringing the original news back into the public eye.

In response to all of this, European regulators are apparently quite angry again, summoning representatives from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (but mainly Google) to argue that the removals should be global, not just for Europe and that the companies should stop informing websites if their stories were removed. One hopes that these three companies would fight strongly against either such proposal. The idea that Europe can dictate how search engines in other parts of the world work is dangerous. We've already noted that a Canadian court seems to think it has similar powers, and that's going to create a huge mess. Any time courts and regulators in one country think they can dictate how websites work in other countries, that is creating a massive jurisdictional mess (where contradictory rulings may run into each other), as well as allowing oppressive states to claim they, too, have the right to dictate how the web works in more open countries.

As for blocking sites from being informed, that would clearly go against basic transparency principles, and lead to yet another huge mess for websites which will (quite reasonably) wonder why their stories have gone totally missing from Google searches (especially if forced to extend it around the globe).

Of course, the real problem here is with the original ruling. The idea that public information that is widely disseminated already can magically be made private because someone thinks it's embarrassing and that it's no longer important is simply a ridiculous assertion in the first place. All of the problems that have come in implementing this are because the initial premise -- trying to disappear public information -- is so messed up.

Filed Under: eu, jurisdiction, regulators, right to be forgotten, transparency
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

One More Benefit From Snowden: Companies No Longer Lulled Into Helping NSA Without Legal Basis

from the sunshine-does-amazing-things dept

One of the earliest Snowden revelations wasn't just that the big telcos were closely cooperating with the NSA, but that they had sometimes proactively volunteered to hand over much more information than the law required. So far, there has not been any evidence that tech/internet companies were quite so cooperative, but it does seem clear that many were, at the very least, incurious concerning what the NSA was up to and somewhat apathetic concerning actual requests that came in from the NSA. While there were a few companies (not many) that appeared to push back in a few circumstances (again, not many), for the most part, when someone from the federal government showed up with requests, companies were pretty quick to comply.

To some extent, you can understand why: not only is it easy to assume that government officials demanding information from you have some sort of serious reason for doing so, all of it happened in secret -- meaning that the "benefits" to pushing back often seemed slight, while the costs could be tremendous.

Ed Snowden changed that cost-benefit equation in a big, big way.

And it's most obvious in this simple way: companies are now proactively doing everything possible to counteract the NSA, realizing that they actually have to think about the impact on their customers when (not if) these programs become public. What used to be a simple relationship, with a lot of help from various companies, has changed to something much more approaching a directly adversarial relationship.

As fast as it can, Google is sealing up cracks in its systems that Edward J. Snowden revealed the N.S.A. had brilliantly exploited. It is encrypting more data as it moves among its servers and helping customers encode their own emails. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking similar steps.

After years of cooperating with the government, the immediate goal now is to thwart Washington — as well as Beijing and Moscow. The strategy is also intended to preserve business overseas in places like Brazil and Germany that have threatened to entrust data only to local providers.

[....]

A year after Mr. Snowden’s revelations, the era of quiet cooperation is over. Telecommunications companies say they are denying requests to volunteer data not covered by existing law. A.T.&T., Verizon and others say that compared with a year ago, they are far more reluctant to cooperate with the United States government in “gray areas” where there is no explicit requirement for a legal warrant.

There is still a long way to go, but just the fact that companies now have to take into account "how will this look when splashed across the internet" means that they're already going much, much further in protecting the privacy of their users and customers.

Filed Under: companies, ed snowden, nsa, surveillance, voluntary assistance, warrants
Companies: at&t, facebook, google, microsoft, verizon, yahoo

Big Tech Calls On Senate To Stop NSA's Bulk Surveillance Program

from the speak-out dept

In honor of the Reset the Net campaign, and the one-year anniversary of the first Ed Snowden revelation, a bunch of big tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, DropBox, LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL, have published an open letter to the Senate asking it to pass real surveillance reform, rather than the weak sauce that the House passed in its massively watered-down USA Freedom Act. At the same time, a lobbyist representing a group of big tech companies specifically warned the Senate that the House version was too weak and needed to be much stronger. This is a good first step, but we need to see the pressure on the Senate ramp up even more.

Filed Under: nsa, reset the net, senate, surveillance, usa freedom act
Companies: aol, apple, dropbox, facebook, google, linkedin, microsoft, twitter, yahoo

DC District Court Overrides Judge John Facciola's Orders, Grants DOJ Request For Gag Order On Subpoenaed Companies

from the throwing-a-shoulder-into-the-government dept

It appears Washington, DC magistrate judge John Facciola is still making the government earn everything it asks for. Facciola is the judge who has been sending the government back to its desk to rewrite overly broad warrants seeking electronic data. In one of these cases, the government decided that it would rather go "judge shopping" all the way across the country rather than narrow its request, but was shot down by a California district court judge.

Facciola's orders are the basis for two memorandums recently issued by DC District Court Judge Richard Roberts concerning a case still mostly under seal as part of federal grand jury investigation. (The government also asked for these to be filed under seal, but that has obviously been declined.)

The government challenges two orders issued by Magistrate Judge John Facciola regarding the government's application for an order under 18 U.S.C. The first order invited Twitter, Inc. to intervene as a respondent and file a notice with the court on whether Twitter intended to be heard on the merits of the government's application. The second order instructed the government to file a public, redacted copy of its application and draft order.

Facciola also issued a similar order for Yahoo, the other company being subpoenaed. Both sets of orders invited the companies to challenge both the gag order preventing them from informing their customer(s) of the government's interest in their data. The government understandably wasn't thrilled with these orders and filed an appeal (of sorts) seeking to have Facciola's orders vacated. The District Court notes that the judicial system -- at this level -- doesn't exactly work this way.

On March 27, 2014, the government filed what it styled as an appeal from the magistrate judge's two orders regarding the government's application for an order under 18 U.S.C. The government moved to vacate the orders issued by the magistrate judge and moved for the district court to grant its application for a nondisclosure order. In addition, the government moved to seal the appeal and resulting order.

This faux pas by the government is explained a bit further in a footnote, as is the judge's rationale for treating this as an "objection," rather than an "appeal."

The government styles its challenge as an appeal, but the reference is a misnomer. With the exception of authority granted by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 58 concerning misdemeanor proceedings handled by a magistrate judge under 18 U.S.C. 3401, the district court does not exercise appellate power. See, United States v. Choi, 818 F. Supp. 2d 79, 85 (D.D.C. 2011) ("The magistrate judge is not an inferior court, and the district court does not stand in an appellate capacity over the magistrate.") For the reasons explained below, the government's appeal will be considered as an objection to the magistrate judge's two orders.

Several more pages of judicial rationale follow, pointing out that grand jury deliberations are not subject to transparency and that Facciola erred by suggesting Twitter and Yahoo could either challenge the gag order or inform their customers. Judge Roberts points out that there's very little either company can offer in terms of judging the "merit" of the government's gag order, or the subpoena itself. Further discussions also defer to "government knows best" mentality, suggesting that any notification would "jeopardize" ongoing investigations. That this investigation is tied to a grand jury slams the door shut on any appeal of the gag order.

Because the express terms of 18 U.S.C. 2705(b) and applicable legal precedent governing public access to grand jury proceedings and materials do not support the first order inviting Twitter [and Yahoo] to intervene or the second order instructing the government to file a public, redacted copy of the non-disclosure application, the orders will be vacated.

So, the government gets its win, but it had to put in a little extra paperwork. It hoped these documents would be sealed as well, but you can't win them all, especially when memos in question contain only one redactable sentence each. If this is how the last few months have gone in Facciola's court, it's little wonder the government has been making road trips to other venues.

Filed Under: dc district court, doj, gag order, john facciola, richard roberts, subpoenas
Companies: twitter, yahoo

Over 100 Internet Companies Call On FCC To Protect The Open Internet

from the don't-fail-us-fcc dept

As the net neutrality debate has kicked into overdrive, over 100 internet companies -- including most of the big names such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Ebay, Reddit, Automattic, Yahoo, Kickstarter, as well as many smaller names, such as us here at Floor64/Techdirt -- have all signed onto a letter to the FCC asking it to actually suck it up and protect the open internet. Consider this a warning shot to the FCC from the internet community. The community knows what's at stake in this fight and it's watching closely what the FCC does. Having helped to get some of the companies to sign on, I can say that many leaders at companies are both very informed on the topic, and very engaged about it. If the FCC thinks it can sneak one by the tech community, that may be more difficult than it expects.

Along those lines, one FCC commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, has suggested that the FCC should put the brakes on its net neutrality plans to think things through a bit more carefully -- though apparently FCC boss Tom Wheeler has rejected that idea and plans to move forward with his rule-making proposal next week.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, net neutrality, open internet, silicon valley, tech industry, tom wheeler
Companies: amazon, automattic, ebay, facebook, floor64, google, kickstarter, microsoft, netflix, reddit, twitter, yahoo

Tech Companies Increasingly Telling Users When Law Enforcement Comes Asking For Data

from the good-for-them dept

In the past, we've noted that Twitter, alone among major tech companies, had made it a corporate policy to not just roll over when law enforcement came asking for user data, even alerting users that law enforcement was seeking their data, and giving them the chance to try to block the requests. Apparently, now a bunch of other big tech companies have started doing the same thing:

Google already routinely notified users of government data requests but adopted an updated policy this week detailing the few situations in which notification is withheld, such as when there is imminent risk of physical harm to a potential crime victim. “We notify users about legal demands when appropriate, unless prohibited by law or court order,” the company said in a statement.

Lawyers at Apple, Facebook and Microsoft are working on their own revisions, company officials said, although the details have not been released. All are moving toward more routinely notifying users, said the companies, which had not previously disclosed these changes.

“Later this month, Apple will update its policies so that in most cases when law enforcement requests personal information about a customer, the customer will receive a notification from Apple,” company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said.

If you're looking for who to thank about this turn of events, there are two places to point. First: the good folks at EFF. For the past few years, it's been publishing its Who Has Your Back? chart looking at how companies respond to government requests for data. Each year, this list has convinced more and more companies to improve how they protect their users, and how they push back on government requests. And, the reason why so many companies are rushing to change their policies is because the EFF is about to release its latest version. Yet another reason to be happy the EFF exists.

Second, of course, is Ed Snowden. While not entirely directly at issue here -- since things like FISA Court Orders and National Security Letters are subject to gag orders barring companies from telling their users -- the generally heightened interest in government access to information provided to internet services has certainly created a culture where these companies can't get away with just rolling over for the government any more.

Of course, you could argue that it's taken these companies too long to get here -- and that's absolutely true -- but better late than never.

Oh yeah. Guess who's really upset about all of this:

The Justice Department disagrees, saying in a statement that new industry policies threaten investigations and put potential crime victims in greater peril.

“These risks of endangering life, risking destruction of evidence, or allowing suspects to flee or intimidate witnesses are not merely hypothetical, but unfortunately routine,” department spokesman Peter Carr said, citing a case in which early disclosure put at risk a cooperative witness in a case. He declined to offer details because the case was under seal.

Once again, it seems like the DOJ and others think that anything that makes their job harder is somehow wrong. But that's incorrect. The whole point of protecting freedom is that it's supposed to be hard for law enforcement to spy on people and arrest them. That's how it's supposed to work.

Filed Under: doj, law enforcement, privacy, protecting users, subpoenas, tech companies, warrants
Companies: apple, eff, facebook, google, microsoft, twitter, yahoo