Homeland Security Relies On Secrecy To Violate People's Rights And Humiliate Them At The Border

from the disappointing dept

Back in September, we wrote about the horrific and depressing story from On the Media about how one of its producers, Sarah Abdurrahman (a US citizen) along with her family and friends (all US citizens) were detained at the Canadian US border. The story involved all of them being detained under horrible conditions, with no one explaining anything to them. Their electronic devices were taken and searched. Some of them were physically searched multiple times. Perhaps the most horrific was that one guy was detained for longer while his family was told they could leave. When the guy's wife asked where her husband was, she was told that "an agency" was coming to "pick him up," implying that it was some sort of federal agency. It turned out that the guy had an unpaid ticket from seven years ago for a crooked license plate, and the Michigan State Police were called.

This past week, OTM spent its entire show looking at Homeland Security's secrecy at the border, kicking it off with replaying the original story by Abdurrahman. When I realized they were doing a full hour on the issue, I immediately figured that it would finally include some sort of explanation or some sort of response from DHS. But here's the depressing thing: months have gone by and DHS seems to simply be reveling in the fact that what it does at the border can be a black box, and it doesn't think it needs to answer to anyone. All of the attempts to find out about DHS's policies and how and why it treats people (especially American citizens) this way have resulted in dead ends. Even the few attempts by Congress to find out what's happening have gone nowhere.

The episode is actually quite depressing, because it appears that DHS has learned that as long as it keeps its collective mouths shut and with what appears to be no oversight, no one can find out about its policies or activities, and that allows it to act with impunity, to attack and humiliate people, to violate their rights, to leave people with lasting mental scars, often requiring therapy, and to never have to answer for any of it. As Trevor Timm, at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, notes, the number of stories of DHS using this process to intimidate American journalists is positively scary -- but at least journalists have an outlet for speaking out about it. An unknown number of others face equal or possibly worth treatment and there's absolutely no recourse at all.

Yes, some will say, that there are people out there who seek to attack the US. And, as such, Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers have a big responsibility. But abusing that authority to create such a horrific results at the border clearly does more harm than good. On The Media is still asking people to use their "Shed Light on DHS tool" to demand Congress do something about this, and we highly encourage you to make use of it. It makes it easy to call your representative and raise these issues with them. If enough people call, perhaps Congress will finally stop abdicating its responsibility and start looking into DHS' abusive practices at the border. To make it even easier, we'll embed the tool below. Go test it out.

Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, customs, dhs, search

NZ Customs Refuses To Answer Questions After Revelations Of Illegal Orders To Give FBI Info On Kim Dotcom For 'Brownie Points'

from the the-scandal-expands dept

The scandal around New Zealand law enforcement's illegal activities in helping the US government raid Kim Dotcom's house and file criminal charges against him keeps expanding. The raid on the house has already been declared illegal by the NZ High Court. Then there was the issue of the local equivalent of the NSA, the GCSB, illegally spying on Dotcom for the US, despite rules that forbid GCSB from spying on New Zealand residents. It seems to be getting even worse.

A few days ago, it was revealed that a document, which was illegally withheld from an earlier freedom of information request, showed that a senior New Zealand Customs official named Greg Davis, told staffers that it would "buy you many brownie points" if they shared info about Kim Dotcom with the US FBI -- despite not being allowed to share info like this. At least one of the people who received the email noted that people should "seek legal advice" before handing over such information, but it's unclear if anyone actually did that.

Now, as concerned members of the New Zealand Parliament are wondering why top customs officials were interested in handing over private information on New Zealand residents to a foreign country's intelligence agencies for "brownie points," New Zealand's Customs officials have announced that they will not answer questions about it, in an effort to -- get this -- "protect the privacy" of the guy who sent that email, Greg Davis.

Davis, by the way, was running New Zealand Custom's "Integrated Targeting Operations Centre," which collects a ton of information on travelers. Many in New Zealand had already complained about the possibility of this group to abuse its powers, but at nearly the same time Davis was proving their point, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was defending the center with that old liar's trope: "anyone who is innocent has nothing to fear." He should have added "unless US officials are interested in you -- then you're fucked."

Filed Under: brownie points, customs, fbi, greg davis, kim dotcom, new zealand
Companies: megaupload

Congress Keeps Pushing Bad Copyright Bills: Senator Stabenow Wants To Expand Treasury/ICE To Go After 'Pirates'

from the it-never-ends dept

Update: Just as we published this, news came in that this amendment was rebuffed, but the point remains: Congress keeps trying to sneak in little favors to Hollywood every chance it gets.

Congress continues to show that it learned absolutely nothing from the SOPA/PIPA mess earlier this year. While we've been focused on the problematic IPAA bill in the House, which would create a high level IP Enforcement "deputy assistant" within the Commerce Department, over in the Senate, Debbie Stabenow is looking to create another such role in the Treasury Department. We just mentioned an effort by the Senate Finance Committee to actually make the Special 301 report useful by having it go after internet censorship... but according to Politico's Morning Tech, Senator Stabenow has very quietly introduced an amendment to that effort, which would increase the role of the Treasury Department as Hollywood's private police force:

A tweak by Sen. Debbie Stabenow made available last night would add to the trade bill her own measure, the Protect American Innovation Act. Among other things, the amendment would establish the position of "director of Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement" at Treasury, while boosting the ability of Customs and ICE to find and seize infringing materials entering the country or to be exported.

Stabenow actually introduced this "Protect American Innovation Act" last year, in the midst of the fight over SOPA and PIPA, and very few people noticed, since all of the attention was on those two bills. But if you look at the details, it's just more of the same. It would increase the Treasury Department's role in intellectual property enforcement, first by establishing a "director of intellectual property rights enforcement" withing the Treasury. That position would be tasked with working closely with ICE -- and ICE would get its own new "coordinator of intellectual property enforcement." You remember ICE. Those are the folks famous for censoring websites based on no evidence, just the RIAA's say-so. Oh, and remember Dajaz1? That's one of those sites that ICE erroneously censored. One of that site's admins lives in Michigan -- Stabenow's home state. But, apparently, Stabenow would rather carry water for Hollywood than protect her own constituents from gross overreach by the US government.

Given how badly ICE screwed up that job, it's amazing that Stabenow wants to increase their authority. But that's what's happening. The bill defines "piracy" as "activities related to production of or trafficking in unauthorized copies or phonorecords of works protected under title 17, United States Code, or related laws." And we thought "piracy" was defined as "an act of criminal violence at sea." But, notice just how broad that text is there. Any production of "unauthorized copies" of works protected under the copyright act. Yeah, if you make a copy... the Treasury Department and ICE might be able to target you.

The bill also says that Treasury/ICE/Customs should get training in new technology for "detecting and identifying, at ports of entry... pirated goods." Given how broad this is, you could read this to mean that your phones, MP3 players and laptops may get scanned at the border for all of the music and movies you have. There was talk of such things in ACTA, but they were rejected when people spoke up -- and now they're back in a bill from Senator Debbie Stabenow who apparently slept through what happened in response to SOPA/PIPA and ACTA.

The bill also gives law enforcement within Treasury/ICE/Customs pretty broad powers, including issuing fines for importing "pirated" goods, and says that such fines "may not be mitigated" unless ordered by a court or "pursuant to regulations issued by the Commissioner." And such fines "may not be dismissed or vacated." In other words, if they catch you with pirated works, they may be required to issue fines. In fact, it says that the mitigation, dismissal or vacation of such fines can only happen for "extraordinary cases." Having a few unauthorized songs on your iPhone isn't extraordinary.

But wait... there's more. While the IPAA, as discussed, would increase US diplomatic efforts to push for IP enforcement abroad... and so would this bill, though in a different area. Rather than IP attaches, now ICE and Customs would be tasked with spreading Hollywood-style maximalism to other countries by increasing staffing to provide training and assistance to other countries in "detecting" such "pirated goods."

There are also a ton of small changes to copyright law, which would take quite a few hours to dig in and see what they actually do. As is typical of these kinds of bills, they don't tell you what the bill would actually now say -- they just say things like "strike from [phrase y] to [phrase x] and insert [random string of terms]." And, sometimes (including here), even these phrases then point you to other laws that you have to piece together as well. You have to sit down, pull up the original, figure out what's being taken out, what's being inserted and what it all means. There appear to be about a dozen such changes which we'll have to go through later, but it wouldn't surprise me to find more trouble in there.

For example, just a quick look at Section 143 of this bill might appear like a minor textual change. It says you have to add the following to a different bill (19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(2)). What's that? Oh, it's the rules for the government forfeiting your property. And what's the text?

‘(G) it is a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof the importation of which is prohibited under section 1201(a)(2) of title 17, United States Code.’.

Okay piece that back into the bill above, and you see that what it's actually doing is increasing the types of things that can be forfeited by ICE and Customs. But how so? Well, you have to jump over to section 1201(a) of Title 17, which is the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA.

When you sit back and parse it all together, you realize that they're now allowing ICE/Customs to forfeit any circumvention device. Considering how many "circumvention devices" you already own without realizing it, you should be concerned.

Either way, I'm sure there's more in there, but this is just a quick read, because, again, this effort was announced yesterday for markup today. And, yes, while Stabenow released this bill last year, it got little attention because no one thought it was going anywhere. To suddenly jump the line and try to attach it to a separate, important bill, shows the same sort of attempt to sneak through laws for Hollywood without public scrutiny.

Filed Under: congress, customs, debbie stabenow, ice, ip enforcement, piracy, senate, treasury

Former Cybersecurity Czar Thinks DHS Should Spy On All Internet Traffic Crossing Our Borders... Because Of Chinese Pirates?

from the um,-no dept

Richard Clarke, the former cybersecurity czar in the White House -- and a huge, huge, huge proponent of pushing for greater legislation for spying on Americans under the guise of "cybersecurity" (it used to be "cyberwar" but that term was so laughable, it's been downgraded to "cybersecurity) -- has written one of the most ridiculous defenses of new internet spying proposals, claiming that Chinese hackers are stealing all our intellectual property by hacking into computers online. He has no evidence of this. He tells apocryphal stories of Chinese hackers somehow getting all the data from a "$1 billion research program copied by hackers in one night." The whole thing is fear-mongering in the extreme, using the specter of evil "Chinese pirates" hacking computers and stealing important US intellectual property. That's wrong for a variety of reasons that we've discussed multiple times. But where it gets downright silly is in his assertion that (1) the US could magically "stop" these mythical hackers from "stealing" data, and (2) that Homeland Security already has the authority to spy on all internet traffic as it comes over the border:

If given the proper authorization, the United States government could stop files in the process of being stolen from getting to the Chinese hackers. If government agencies were authorized to create a major program to grab stolen data leaving the country, they could drastically reduce today’s wholesale theft of American corporate secrets.

[....]

Under Customs authority, the Department of Homeland Security could inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace. Customs already looks online for child pornography crossing our virtual borders. And under the Intelligence Act, the president could issue a finding that would authorize agencies to scan Internet traffic outside the United States and seize sensitive files stolen from within our borders.

And this does not have to endanger citizens’ privacy rights. Indeed, Mr. Obama could build in protections like appointing an empowered privacy advocate who could stop abuses or any activity that went beyond halting the theft of important files.

Almost everything stated above is ridiculous. As law professor James Grimmelman points out, with this article "Richard Clarke disqualifies himself from participating in any serious discussion of cybersecurity."

Indeed. It's scary to think that Clarke was ever seen as an expert in cybersecurity. He seems to be under the assumption that the internet really is a series of tubes, in which customs agents can simply stop all that data at the border and inspect it. And the idea that appointing a single "privacy advocate" would magically stop abuses? You'd think he just stepped off the turnip truck, rather than having spent many years in government where privacy was regularly abused, despite much more significant safeguards in place. Who does he think he's kidding?

Will we ever have people driving policy discussions on regulating the internet who actually understand the internet?

Filed Under: customs, cybersecurity, dhs, hackers, richard clarke

New Bill Seeks To Let DHS Agents Coordinate More With Private Companies In Seizing Property (Like Domains)

from the this-again dept

The federal government seems to have a real blindness for the fact that companies given government-granted monopoly privileges in the form of trademarks, copyrights and patents might seek to abuse those rights beyond what is reasonably allowed. Instead, they seem to assume that private companies will always properly limit any efforts to use those laws against true violators. Of course, we know that's not true, and that such monopoly holders regularly abuse the laws to block or shut down competitive activity or activity that the IP holder just doesn't like. And yet, the government continues to ignore that this happens. Last year, the White House put forth a bunch of suggested changes to IP law, some of which showed up in SOPA.

One of the ones that didn't show up in SOPA has now made its way into a new legislative proposal, H.R. 4216: Foreign Counterfeit Prevention Act, introduced by Reps. Ted Poe and Steve Chabot. The text of the bill seems simple enough. It changes 18 USC 1905, which currently forbids federal officials from revealing to private parties' information that they come across during investigations. The new bill seeks to make an exception to that: allowing Homeland Security/Customs & Border Patrol agents to share pre-seizure info or products with trademark and copyright holders.

Now, on its face, this might make sense. It's a way for CBP officials to ask copyright and trademark holders if their rights are being abused by potentially infringing products. But, as we noted when the White House first asked for this law, this hasn't always worked out so well in the past, in part because copyright and trademark holders are often not particularly truthful when asked if they infringe -- and they rarely, if ever, give any thought to fair use or other legitimate uses of their copyrights and trademarks. In fact, one of the reasons why the federal government screwed up so badly in seizing Dajaz1 was because it relied on bad claims by the RIAA, who insisted that works that were not infringing were infringing. Organizations like the RIAA have little incentive to get these things right. And this bill encourages greater coordination with those private parties?

The simple fact is that infringement is determined not by the copyright or trademark holder, but through a court process and adversarial hearing. Having Homeland Security sharing more info with private companies seems like a situation that is ripe for abuse. We've already seen how Homeland Security sometimes appears to act as the the private police force of certain private companies. Are we sure that we really want to create a situation that encourages more such activities?

Filed Under: coordination, customs, dhs, private companies, seizures

Homeland Security Denies Entrance To UK Tourist Because Of Twitter Joke

from the so-sorry,-too-bad dept

I am actually writing this post sitting in a French airport, getting ready to board my flight back to the US... but I think I'll hang onto it and post once I'm back in town. That's because it's about some UK tourists who were taking a little vacation to the US... until Homeland Security refused them entrance, because one of them had joked on Twitter about digging up the grave of Marilyn Monroe and "destroying" America (by which he meant partying). Apparently, DHS has figured out how to monitor Twitter... but hasn't figured out what a sense of humor is. (And yes, I made it home and through customs without any trouble).

Filed Under: border patrol, customs, homeland security, jokes, tourists

Zappos Gives Up On Canada Due To Customs Problems

from the abandoned-great-white-north dept

A few years ago, when I was in Toronto, I remember being shocked when a friend there told me how difficult it was to get any sort of serious e-commerce there. Because of problems with customs and other issues, many of the big e-commerce players wouldn't ship to Canada, or made it quite difficult. This particular friend would order stuff to be shipped to a relative in the States, to be "delivered" later. It appears that Zappos has had enough. Rob Hyndman points us to the somewhat surprising news that Zappos has bailed out on Canada, saying it will no longer ship there, due to issues with customs:

We have made the difficult decision to shut down the canada.zappos.com site and stop shipping to Canada. One of our core values is to "deliver WOW through service". That means the best selection of brands and products that can meet just about every individual’s needs as well as fast, free shipping and free returns, all at competitive pricing. Our Canadian customers know that we have not lived up to these service levels.

Product selection on canada.zappos.com is limited due to distribution agreements with the brands we sell in the United States. In addition, we have struggled with general uncertainty and unpredictability of delivering orders to our Canadian customers given customs and other logistics constraints.

While this is just one e-commerce outlet (albeit a subsidiary of Amazon.com), combined with what I'd heard in the past, it really does seem like a pretty major issue for Canada. If people there can't reliably order e-commerce products, then Canadians are missing out on quite a big part of what the internet enables. You would think there would be a more concerted effort to make things right, rather than spending so much time doing things like passing laws that Hollywood wants, which will limit consumers even more.

Filed Under: canada, customs, shipping
Companies: amazon, zappos

US Customs & Border Patrol Protecting America From Chocolate Toy Eggs (And Charging You For The Privilege)

from the feeling-safer? dept

We're still waiting for a good explanation of why Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement group is involved in internet copyright issues that have nothing to do with either immigration or customs enforcement, but it appears that those sharp border patrol folks are really doing their job protecting Americans from... chocolate toy eggs. Tim Good alerted us to this story of how the US Border Patrol did a random search on a Canadian woman's car as she crossed the border into Minnesota, and told her she had illegal contraband in her car in the form of a Kinder Surprise Egg. I'd never heard of this before, but apparently it's a confection with a chocolate shell and a toy inside.

According to US border patrol, they told her that it was a choking hazard and on the list of "prohibited items" in the US, though, as the folks at Reason (reasonably) point out:

A gander at the image... suggests you'd have to be awfully intent on getting that chocolate into your system not to notice the huge, bright yellow plastic capsule inside.

Take a look for yourself: Of course, that's not the end of the story, either. After leaving the chocolate egg and toy to the US border patrol agents, and figuring it was just a nuisance, the woman was somewhat surprised to receive a letter a week later, asking her if she was planning to come back to retrieve the egg. They noted if she did not, and she wanted to fight the seizure of the egg, she would need to pay the US government $250 in "storage costs" for the egg.

Is this really the best use of border patrol?

Filed Under: border patrol, customs, homeland security, kinder surprise egg

Customs' Hamfisted Attempts To Intimidate Wikileaks Volunteers

from the witch-hunts dept

Computer security expert (and US citizen) Jacob Appelbaum, who is well known for his work on Tor, had been having some issues lately concerning his involvement as a volunteer with Wikileaks. He was among those who had their info requested by the Feds via Twitter. And he's been having issues traveling to and from the US lately. Last July, he was detained upon flying into the country and it looks like something similar has happened again, where he was detained, searched and questioned after flying into Seattle from a vacation in Icleand.

He was careful to travel with no computers or gadgets whatsoever, other than some USB keys with encrypted versions of the Bill of Rights. He noted that the initial customs agent, to whom he handed over the declaration form was friendly until she pulled up his account, and from there things went sour. He asked to speak to a lawyer, which was denied on the grounds that he wasn't being arrested.

Apparently he was told initially that he was pulled aside as part of a "random" search, which leads Appelbaum to joke about the actual randomness -- which was also shown to be false when one of the agents mentioned his pre-flight Twitter activity.. He also pointed out that those detaining him were disappointed that he wasn't traveling with computers or mobile phones, and that Iceland had plenty of computers, such that he didn't need to bring his own.

In the end, after about half an hour's detention and search, they did let him go. Some might consider that to not be that big of a deal, but it clearly has something of a chilling effect. He notes that the mental stress of being in such a situation is not at all enjoyable. This is unfortunate. If he's done something wrong, arrest him. If he has not, harassing him every time he crosses the border is just obnoxious.

Filed Under: customs, detained, jacob applebaum, searches
Companies: wikileaks

Homeland Security Admits That It's The Private Police Force Of The Entertainment Industry

from the your-taxpayer-money-at-work dept

We've been quite concerned about the legality of Homeland Security's domain name seizures -- especially in cases where they took down sites that had a ton of legitimate content, such as various hip hop blogs, with no due process and no adversarial hearings. One other concern was where Homeland Security's direction on this was coming from. As we noted, in an earlier similar domain name seizure situation, Homeland Security announced the seizures from Disney's headquarters -- which should raise lots of eyebrows. As we said at the time, imagine any other government agency announcing a third party action that benefits a particular company from that company's offices. For example, imagine the FTC announcing antitrust actions against Google from Microsoft's offices. Wouldn't people question the legitimacy of that?

Well, apparently, Homeland Security and the folks in its Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) group have no qualms at all about being quite upfront and frank about both the fact that they're acting as Hollywood's private police force and that they have little concern for due process. Entertainment Weekly spoke with Erik Barnett, the "assistant deputy director" for ICE, and he readily admitted that they were taking orders from the industry:

"In general, what we can say is, there are specific complaints from rights holders that these sites were infringing on copyrights."

That alone should give you pause. Rights holders have a long and very detailed history of greatly over-exaggerating when their rights were supposedly being "infringed" upon. Remember Jack Valenti of the MPAA claiming that the VCR was the Boston Strangler to the movie industry? Why didn't Customs "swoop in" and block all VCRs from being sold? Why? Because that would be ridiculous. So why is it effectively doing the exact same thing here?

As for due process, Barnett apparently doesn't care, and pretends that due process is basically ICE says you're guilty, so you are:

"I mean, when we're conducting criminal investigations, we don't notify criminals that you need to abate your criminal conduct or there's going to be an enforcement action against you," says Barnett. He is not particularly sympathetic to bloggers who might feel that the shutdowns have damaged their livelihoods without due process. "I understand that this is a question that gets raised," he says. "But from a law enforcement agency standpoint, there's criminal activity. The process that's set up to address that is a law enforcement agency investigates, which is what Homeland Security Investigations does. The Justice Department determines if the elements of the criminal statute have been met. And then a judge determines if the enforcement action that's proposed -- in this case, a seizure warrant -- is appropriate. So that's the process.”

Notice he never mentions an actual trial where the other side gets to put forth its arguments. Of course, for those of us who actually understand due process -- as opposed to just Barnett's cowboy process, we understand that normally you have an adversarial hearing where the other side gets to present its case before summarily being declared guilty. If there's "criminal activity" (and even that's questionable -- as it's difficult to see how what these blogs did goes beyond civil infringement, if it really was infringing at all), then you arrest them and put them on trial. You don't just seize the domains.

Barnett also claims that this is no different than Customs seizing shipments of counterfeit goods as they enter the US, but that's a huge stretch. Customs' job is to guard what crosses the borders. That's it. Seizing entire domain names because there may be some infringing material on the site (which, again, was never established at a trial) has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the borders. And the very fact that Barnett's already admitted to relying on the industry's say so that these things are infringing is downright scary. Why are our tax dollars being used to protect legacy entertainment industry companies that refuse to adapt?

Filed Under: customs, due process, homeland security, ice, police force