Activists Make One Last Push To Restore Net Neutrality Via Congressional Review Act

from the one-more-time-around dept

Efforts to reverse the FCC's historically unpopular attack on net neutrality using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) have been stuck in neutral for several months, but activists are backing one last push in a bid to get the uphill effort over the hump.

The CRA lets Congress reverse a regulatory action with a simple majority vote in the Senate and the House (which is how the GOP successfully killed broadband consumer privacy protections last year). And while the Senate voted 52 to 47 back in May to reverse the FCC's attack on net neutrality, companion efforts to set up a similar vote in the House haven't gained much traction as the clock continues to tick. A discharge petition needs 218 votes to even see floor time, and another 218 votes to pass the measure.

But the needed votes have lingered at around 172 for months, split (quite stupidly, given broad public support) along strict partisan lines.

Hoping to push the effort over the line and drum up the needed votes ahead of the December 10 CRA deadline, net neutrality activist groups like Fight for the Future are holding one last online protest on Thursday, November 29. This time around they've drummed up the support of numerous musicians and celebrities in the hope of getting the attention of a public that's clearly weary of the entire debate:

"The effort is backed by musicians and celebrities like Hollywood star Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Hobbit, Lost), Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and EDM star Bassnectar, along with startups and major web companies like online selling platform Etsy, delivery service Postmates, publishing platform Tumblr, Private Internet Access VPN, popular blog BoingBoing, domain registrar Namecheap, search engine StartPage, and speaker company Sonos."

The problem, of course, is that all the public screaming in the world has yet to shift the thinking of well-lobbied net neutrality opponents in Congress, and adding Tom Morello or Sonos to the proceedings, while appreciated and notable, isn't likely to move the needle much. Even if the vote succeeds, it still would have to avoid a veto by Trump. And while activists I've spoken to have argued that a House vote could appeal to Trump's "populist" side and pressure him to let the restoration ride through, that's simply not very likely.

That said, it was worth trying as a hail Mary pass anyway, and there's absolute value in both naming and shaming corrupt lawmakers, something Fight For the Future has toyed with via crowdfunded billboards. There's also value in keeping the issue in the public headspace ahead of next year's Congressional battles. Still, users looking to this effort to actually restore the FCC's rules should probably temper their enthusiasm. Our existing Congress has made its disdain for the public interest abundantly clear, and the real fight for net neutrality is next year.

The best chance at saving net neutrality rests with next year's net neutrality court battle, the opening arguments for which begin next February. It's there that a handful of companies like Mozilla, and 23 state attorneys general, will make their case that the FCC ignored the public and violated the Administrative Procedure Act in aggressively dismantling popular consumer protections, while basing their entire justification for the repeal on telecom industry lobbying bullshit.

Should the FCC lose that lawsuit, the agency's 2015 rules would be restored -- though Ajit Pai's FCC isn't likely to enforce them during his tenure (however long it lasts). Should the FCC and its ISP BFFs win that case, they still need to find a way to prevent a future FCC or Congress from passing net neutrality rules (or laws) with real teeth. That's why companies like AT&T have been pushing loyal foot soldiers like Marsha Blackburn to table loophole-filled, fake net neutrality legislation with only one real purpose: preempting tougher state or federal rules.

But with a shifting Congressional makeup, and net neutrality supporters in Congress not eager to anger activists by signing garbage legislation, that gambit isn't likely to succeed. The net result: like privacy, we're going to need to have a real conversation about what a realnet neutrality law might look like. And it's going to require a Sisyphean effort to prevent countless industries and their loyal political foot soldiers (with a vested interest in uneven playing fields and turf protection) from polluting the entire process.

While many are fatigued by the entire net neutrality fight, it's worth remembering that net neutrality doesn't just live or die based on the passage or restoration of rules or laws. It's a never-ending fight that will continue for however long the broadband industry maintains a stranglehold on meaningful competition. Given telco upgrade apathy, 5G's overhype as a competitive panacea, a growing cable monopoly over next-gen speeds, and Pai-era regulatory apathy, that's a problem that's not going away anytime soon.

Filed Under: activists, ajit pai, congress, cra, fcc, net neutrality, protest

Israeli Tech Company's Spyware Still Being Used To Target Journalists And Activists

from the buy-it-for-safety,-use-it-for-evil dept

Israeli exploit/malware developer NSO Group says its products are marketed to governments for legitimate national security and law enforcement purposes. Yet somehow it keeps ending up in the hands of governments with terrible human rights records and deployed against journalists, dissent groups, and activists.

The software sold by NSO is being deployed against journalists in Mexico -- ones looking to expose government corruption. This report by the Columbia Journalism Review provides more details on the hacks, building off Citizen Lab's exposure of NSO's "Pegasus" spyware.

Mexico has been ground zero for Pegasus’s deployment against journalists. At least six reporters have been targeted there, according to exhaustive research by both Citizen Lab and the Mexican digital rights group R3D. Those attacks coincided with major journalistic investigations that challenged the Mexican government. For example: three reporters who were targeted worked on the “Casa Blanca Scandal,” a major story exposing how Mexico’s first lady was given a mansion by a government contractor who later received lucrative contracts. Mexican television journalist Carlos Loret de Mola was targeted while he was reporting on extrajudicial killings. Although three Mexican federal agencies have access to Pegasus, the government has denied it ever launched any attacks on reporters.

This is more of the same for NSO's spyware. Citizen Lab also uncovered use of the software by notorious humans rights violators like Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and the United Arab Emirates. In many cases, deployments targeted critics and activists, rather than criminals or national security threats. The deployments are disturbing enough. The tactics are even worse:

The targets received SMS messages that included links to NSO exploits paired with troubling personal and sexual taunts, messages impersonating official communications by the Embassy of the United States in Mexico, fake AMBER Alerts, warnings of kidnappings, and other threats.

CJR's report is supposed to act as a warning for journalists around the world. They are targets, no matter what their governments say and no matter how NSO frames its pitches.

And we're not completely immune to this in the United States. Although any deployment against journalists would be viewed as a serious violation of Constitutional rights, the fact is US government agencies are seeking to purchase NSO's spyware for use in their work. The DEA has met with NSO in the recent past and the agency's own past suggests it isn't above violating rights to further its own ends. No rights violations have been seen yet but, as we've seen before, the government is willing to impersonate journalists to track down suspects. Infecting journalists' phones to track down leakers and whistleblowers isn't that much of a step forward.

Filed Under: activists, journalism, mexico, pegasus, spyware
Companies: citizen lab, nso

Facebook's Censorship Of Legit Activists Shows The Policing Of Propaganda Is Going To Be A Fucking Mess

from the everybody-loses dept

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it had uncovered a new wave of disinformation attacks ahead of the 2018 elections. To hear Facebook tell it, the new attacks pretty closely mirror Russia's Internet Research Agency attacks during the 2016 election. As in, the culprits are trying to sow distrust and amplify partisan divisions on both sides of the aisle by creating fake organizations, fake people, fake news, and rockin' memes. How much that actually accomplishes is the matter of some debate, but it's also pretty clear we don't yet understand how deep this rabbit hole really goes.

According to Facebook, this latest attack on the nation's gullible shows signs of evolution from the more ham-fisted attacks seen during the 2016 election. And while there's no hard link to Russia yet, Facebook claims there are some connections between Russian Internet Research Agency "troll farm" accounts and this new wave of disinformation:

"For example they used VPNs and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf. As we’ve told law enforcement and Congress, we still don’t have firm evidence to say with certainty who’s behind this effort. Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below."

The problem, as Twitter, Facebook (and Mike, And Tim) have made abundantly clear, these companies are absolutely terrible at policing their own platforms, and simply crying out that they should "do something" without understanding what they're doing isn't likely to work. When these platforms do attempt to address hate speech or propaganda, they repeatedly do a terrible and inconsistent job of it. Said terribleness almost always results in over-reach and collateral damage.

For example, Facebook's response to the discovery of the latest disinformation attack involved taking down at least 32 pages and numerous profiles on Facebook pushing bullshit to partisans on both sides of the aisle. Said "inauthentic operators," as Facebook called them, included groups like "Aztlan Warriors," "Black Elevation," and "Mindful Being." Most of these groups and pages were indeed bogus efforts designed to stoke existing partisan tensions by amplifying many of the most annoying aspects of extreme partisans on both sides.

But in the process Facebook also shut down a group named "Resisters," which had been organizing a “No Unite the Right 2 - DC" counter-protest against a planned white supremacist rally scheduled in Washington DC on August 12. Needless to say, the legitimate activists weren't particularly pleased:

"However, activists who had worked with Resisters said the counterprotest they planned against a far-right rally was legitimate — and that Facebook was harming their ability to combat the rise of white supremacy. The event, called “No Unite the Right 2 DC” and promoted by Resisters along with other left-leaning groups, was collateral damage in Facebook’s battle against disinformation, they said.

Facebook has “delegitimized our whole event — and all the work that folks across the D.C. area have put a lot of time and effort into,” said Caleb-Michael Files, an organizer of the March to Confront White Supremacy, a group that was organized after the Charlottesville protests, and a co-host of the counterprotest event page."

Over at Facebook, one of the justifications for the removal of the page was that an account linked to the Russian IRA disinformation effort had been an administrator for the page for all of seven minutes:

"The IRA engaged with many legitimate Pages, so these leads sometimes turn up nothing. However, one of these leads did turn up something. One of the IRA accounts we disabled in 2017 shared a Facebook Event hosted by the “Resisters” Page. This Page also previously had an IRA account as one of its admins for only seven minutes. These discoveries helped us uncover the other inauthentic accounts we disabled today."

Taking down a whole, legitimate website because one IRA-linked account had admin rights for all of seven minutes seems shaky at best, and Facebook isn't clear on what additional evidence they relied on. The other problem is that Facebook notified all of the group's legitimate members about its move, undermining the effort as a whole. Facebook's blog post is also misleading, in that it suggests that these legitimate activists were somehow conned into participating in a counter-protest they would have been engaged with anyway:

"The Event – “No Unite the Right 2 – DC” – was scheduled to protest an August “Unite the Right” event in Washington. Inauthentic admins of the “Resisters” Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event. These legitimate Pages unwittingly helped build interest in “No Unite Right 2 – DC” and posted information about transportation, materials, and locations so people could get to the protests."

The event is still scheduled, but the new Facebook group created in the wake of Facebook's actions has far fewer members, and it's unclear how many people who would have otherwise attended were scared off by what feels like over-reach.

It's a bit of a master class on the terrible position Facebook suddenly finds itself in and the need for transparency as we try to craft a solution. The Washington Post quotes somebody inside Facebook that notes the company debated whether or not the bans would harm legitimate activism, but ultimately decided that the harm to these groups from being potentially co-opted by hostile foreign intelligence efforts was worse than the potential censorship.

That was cold comfort to activists, who suddenly found their efforts to undermine white supremacy derailed due to no fault of their own:

“It’s an extremely dangerous situation for free speech when politicians are screaming at web platforms to ‘do something’ about a problem that is difficult to address,” she said. “Censoring an anti-Nazi protest was a particularly egregious example of collateral damage."

The problem here is there's no real consensus on a path forward. We don't honestly know how to combat this yet.

Modern disinformation efforts clearly amplify tensions and sow distrust, and, as intended (check out Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation documentary when you have a few hours to kill some time), help contribute to the undermining of traditional media and traditional institutions, opening the door wider to future disinformation efforts. The impact isn't easily measurable, letting many dismiss the problem as over-hyped and unimportant. But if you've watched as conspiracy goes mainstream and often wanders comically close to White House policy, it should pretty clear there's a very fucking real problem here.

But Facebook and Twitter have both shown they're aggressively incompetent at regulating platforms or being transparent about such behavior. Congress can barely put its pants on in the morning. And despite some healthy debate for the better part of the year by journalists and academics alike, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody that currently has a solution to this particular problem. In part, because none of the solutions are easy, whether it involves shoring up critical thinking training in a country that consistently likes to underfund education, or reconfiguring systems to make spreading bullshit less profitable.

This new wave of disinformation and conspiracy is much like a bacterial infection, and it's going to take time for the culture and body politic to generate an immune response. In the interim, the learning process is going to be ugly as we feel out the best path forward. Whatever that path winds up looking like, hopefully it comes with notably less censorship and a whole lot more transparency.

Filed Under: activists, content moderation, election interference, free speech, trolls
Companies: facebook

Senators Wyden & Rubio Ask Google And Amazon To Bring Back Domain Fronting

from the it's-important dept

Earlier this year we wrote about the bad decisions by both Google and Amazon to end domain fronting. Domain fronting was a (somewhat accidental) way in which services could effectively hide certain traffic to make it quite difficult for, say, authoritarian regimes in Iran or China to block the traffic. For that reason, domain fronting was an important tool in keeping services like Signal's encrypted communications platform working for activists and dissidents in such places.

Amazon and Google claimed that they never intended to allow domain fronting, and that while it helped those services work in such places it might also lead to much broader blocks by those countries trying to get at the fronted communications. Now, in an interesting move, Senators Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio have sent both companies a letter asking them to reconsider.

Both your companies have benefited enormously from the free and open internet protected by the United States and its allies. Indeed, your previous role in facilitating these internet freedom tools by permitting domain fronting was neither a mistake nor a secret. Senior Google officials have publicly referenced traffic obfuscation with admiration and support. Moreover Google even contributed financial resources to advance research in the field. This technology was a central part of an internet freedom agenda that your companies (and the technology industry more broadly) promoted as a part of its public image.

Regrettably, your recent decision to ban the practice of domain fronting will prevents millions of people in some of the most repressive environments including China, Iran, Russia and Egypt from accessing a free and open internet. Dissidents, pro-democracy activists, and protesters living under authoritarian regimes need access to secure communications enabled by domain fronting techniques to stay safe and organize.

Governments with anti?democratic agendas may put signi?cant pressures on technology companies to help enable their censorship and surveillance of the internet. American technology companies, which have ?ourished in our free and open society, must join in the effort to resist such pressure. While this may seem like a reasonable business decision in the short term, it will ultimately do far more harm to your companies and the network of which you have been a core part.

The letter then presents two specific questions the Senators would like the companies to respond to:

1. What steps did your companies take, prior to prohibiting domain fronting, to determine whether it was possible to prohibit its use by malicious actors, while still permitting positive uses, including US. government-supported internet freedom tools?

2. After deciding to take action to limit the use of domain fronting, what efforts, if any, did your companies take to minimize the disruption to US. government-supported internet freedom tools and platforms relied on by human rights activists, journalists, members of faith communities and civil society groups? What steps have your companies taken, or do you plan to take, to mitigate the effect that your decision to end domain fronting has had on internet anti-censorship tools and platforms?

It's good to see these Senators speak out against both Google and Amazon on this move. Hopefully it leads both companies to reconsider their decision on this one.

Filed Under: activists, authoritarian regimes, censorship, communications, domain fronting, marco rubio, ron wyden
Companies: amazon, google, signal

A Tale of Two Transparencies: Why The EU And Activists Will Always Disagree Over Trade Deal Negotiations

from the TTIP,-remember-that? dept

Although the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has dropped off the radar completely since Donald Trump's election, for some years it was a key concern of both the US and European governments, and a major theme of Techdirt's posts. One of the key issues was transparency -- or the lack of it. Eventually, the European Commission realized that its refusal to release information about the negotiations was seriously undermining its ability to sell the deal to the EU public, and it began making some changes on this front, as we discussed back in 2015. Since then, transparency has remained a theme of the European Commission's initiatives. Last month, in his annual State of the Union address, President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled his proposals for trade policy. One of them was all about transparency:

the Commission has decided to publish as of now all its recommendations for negotiating directives for trade agreements (known as negotiating mandates). When they are submitted to the European Parliament and the Council, those documents will in parallel be sent automatically to all national Parliaments and will be made available to the general public. This should allow for a wide and inclusive debate on the planned agreements from the start.

An interesting article on Borderlex explores why moves to open up trade policy by the European Commission did not and probably never will satisfy activists who have been pushing for more transparency, and why in this area there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the EU politicians. In contrast to Juncker's limited plan to publish negotiating directives in order to allow "a wide and inclusive debate on the planned agreements", this is what activists want, according to the article:

timely release of textual proposals on all negotiating positions, complete lists and minutes of meetings of Commission officials with third parties, consolidated texts, negotiating mandates, and all correspondence between third parties and officials.

Activists are keen to see what is happening in detail throughout the negotiations, not just some top-level view at the start, or the initial textual proposals for each chapter, but nothing afterwards. The article suggests that this is not simply a case of civil society wanting more information for its own sake, but rather reflects completely different conceptions of what transparency means. Transparency is intimately bound up with accountability, which raises the key question of: accountability to whom?

These two different views reflect a seminal academic distinction between 'delegation' and 'participation' models of accountability in international politics. In a 'delegation' model, an organisation (such as the Commission) is accountable to those who have granted it a mandate (in the EU: the Council, the [European Parliament] and national parliaments). Transparency and participation should first and foremost be directed to them. Extending managed transparency to the wider public can be instrumentally used to increase trust.

In a 'participation model', in contrast, organisations are accountable to those who bear the burden of the decisions that are taken. If contemporary trade policy impacts people's daily lives, the people -- directly or through civil society organisations that claim to represent them -- should be able to see what is going on, and be able to influence the process. Therefore, there is a presupposition for openness, disclosure, and close participation.

The article's authors suggest that for activists, transparency is a means to an end -- gaining influence through participation -- and it is the European Commission's refusal to allow civil society any meaningful role in trade negotiations that guarantees that token releases of a few policy documents will never be enough.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: activists, eu, trade negotiations, transparency, ttip

Whistleblower Says UK Police Worked With Hackers To Access Activists' Email Accounts

from the redefining-'terrorism,'-one-abuse-at-a-time dept

Here come even more revelations of surveillance abuse by UK law enforcement. To date, various law enforcement agencies have been exposed as participating in very broad readings of very broadly-written anti-terrorism laws to spy on journalists and activists. The latest abuse detailed by The Guardian concerns the surveillance of activists by UK law enforcement on behalf of a foreign government.

The police watchdog is investigating allegations that a secretive Scotland Yard unit used hackers to illegally access the private emails of hundreds of political campaigners and journalists.

The allegations were made by an anonymous individual who says the unit worked with Indian police, who in turn used hackers to illegally obtain the passwords of the email accounts of the campaigners, and some reporters and press photographers.

[...]

Hacked passwords were passed to the Metropolitan police unit, according to the writer of the letter, which then regularly checked the emails of the campaigners and the media to gather information. The letter to Jones listed the passwords of environmental campaigners, four of whom were from Greenpeace. Several confirmed they matched the ones they had used to open their emails.

This is more of the same for any UK agencies with access to surveillance tools and easily-abusable laws. These complaints are adding to the pile sitting in front of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Not that the Commission will ever get to the bottom of this, as it's finding its oversight being thwarted by the agencies it's assigned to oversee.

Last month the IPCC said it had uncovered evidence suggesting the documents had been destroyed despite a specific instruction that files should be preserved to be examined by a judge-led public inquiry into the undercover policing of political groups.

The letter claimed that the shredding “has been happening for some time and on a far greater scale than the IPCC seems to be aware of”. The author added that “the main reason for destroying these documents is that they reveal that [police] officers were engaged in illegal activities to obtain intelligence on protest groups”

It's unclear what the Indian police -- who used hackers to obtain account passwords -- were looking for or why they turned to Scotland Yard for assistance. Those whose accounts were accessed were far from dangerous individuals. Although the activists may be vehemently opposed to UK government policies and the actions of several major corporations, the worst of the worst of those confirmed to be surveilled did 80 hours hard time community service stemming from an incident where unwanted solar panels were forcibly installed on a deputy prime minister's house.

Presumably, the valuable info snagged from hacked accounts gave police on both sides heads up on planned demonstrations, as well as any other non-protest-related conversations the activists might have had. Considering what flows into the average email account, police could have gained access to financial transactions, medical information, and conversations between activists and those with zero interest in making the world a subjectively better place.

Fortunately, the documentation backing up the hacking accusations is still in the hands of repentant hackers, rather than headed for the Scotland Yard shredder.

Filed Under: activists, hackers, scotland yard, uk

French Government Using State Of Emergency As An Excuse To Round Up Climate Change Activists

from the mission-creep dept

In response to the attacks in Paris earlier this month, the French government has enacted a state of emergency. Like the War on Terror itself, this "state of emergency" has no discernible end in sight. The government has given itself an incredible amount of power for an indefinite period of time. When this power shift happens, abuse follows.

The Guardian is reporting that the nation's law enforcement agencies are straying far from their original targets: those responsible for the attacks, along with anyone who appears to be sympathetic to the cause. The government now appears to be authorizing the arrest of anyone it can brand a troublemaker.

At least 24 climate activists have been put under house arrest by French police, accused of flouting a ban on organising protests during next week’s Paris climate summit, the Guardian has learned.

One legal adviser to the activists said many officers raided his Paris apartment and occupied three floors and a staircase in his block.

French authorities did not respond to requests for comment but lawyers said that the warrants were issued under state of emergency laws, imposed after the terror attacks that killed 130 people earlier this month.

The French now understand what it's like to be Spanish. Of course, it must be pointed out that very few countries, even a country once at the forefront of personal freedoms, would handle this situation any differently.

The Garland (TX) attack ushered in several months of stepped-up use of 24/7 monitoring on suspected ISIS supporters. FBI Director James Comey has described the period between May and July as one that stretched the FBI's resources, and that isn't sustainable. Dozens of arrests were made, in many cases not for terrorism-related charges if the FBI couldn't gather enough evidence of a plot.

"In some cases we just needed to get people off the streets," one senior law enforcement official said.

A few of the targeted activists have been placed under house arrest. Others have been handed restraining orders by local judges. Police have also been confiscating computers and personal documents during these raids.

Some might argue that until everything calms down in France, the best plan for activists is to lay low. This could prevent the hijacking of a cause as cover for a violent attack motivated by a different ideology. But this sort of advice only makes sense if the government had expressed a fear of large gatherings in general.

Some protesters argue that the permission granted to football matches, trade fairs and Christmas markets in Paris over the summit period suggests that the authorities’ real concern is to suppress dissent.

This makes the orders some received to limit participants to less than 50 look hypocritical, at best. At worst, it looks like the government is using its state of emergency powers to protect itself from vocal and highly-visible criticism.

Filed Under: activists, arrests, authoritarianism, climate change, france, free speech, paris attacks, police state, surveillance

Did You Hear About How ISIS Has A Sophisticated Training Manual For Encryption? Yeah, It Was Actually A Pamphlet For Journalists And Activists

from the fud-fud-fuddy-fud-fud dept

Did you hear that story about how ISIS is so sophisticated with encryption that they have a special "opsec" manual on computer security protocols? You might have, because last week it was all over the internet. Yahoo kicked it off with a story, claiming it was the secret manual ISIS "uses to teach its soldiers about encryption." Wired followed up with its own story, as did The Telegraph. The "manual" was "discovered" by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, based out of the US Military Academy at West Point. Thankfully, Buzzfeed has the details, noting that the guide, created by a cybersecurity firm in Kuwait, named Cyberkov, is actually a guide for journalists and activists to protect their communications from oppressive governments. And there's nothing particularly secret about it, as apparently it's basically just repurposed stuff from the EFF's website:

“Our guide is based on publicly available tools, instructions and best practices. The guidelines in our manual are sourced from the EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] and other sources of privacy organizations,” wrote CyberKov CEO Abdullah AlAli to BuzzFeed News in an email. He said his organization had no idea its guide had been repurposed by ISIS. He was surprised to see it cited in articles, many of which have been updated since they were originally posted to note the document’s origin, and “even more shocked to see the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point simply Google-Translated it and claimed it as ISIS’s.”

Now, it does appear that some folks in ISIS may have sent around versions of the guide, but it sort of undermines the idea that they had created their own special set of guidelines to avoid being tracked, when all they're doing is picking up publicly available information on security best practices.

Filed Under: activists, encryption, isis, journalists, privacy, tech manual, tor