After Pulling An All-Nighter, Negotiators Finish TPP; But Don't Expect To See The Text For A While

from the wait-and-wait-and-wait-and-wait dept

After negotiators failed to complete negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement a few months ago in Maui, there was some concern as to whether or not they'd ever be able to finish the agreement. They called a special negotiating session in Atlanta that began last week, and was supposed to last just a few days to "iron out the details." Except that got extended. And then extended again. And after promises of an announcement last night, they apparently brought in boxes of pizza and told reporters they were going to pull an all nighter to complete the agreement.

Because, of course, when trying to complete an agreement that could reshape global norms on investment, regulations, intellectual property and a little bit of trade... staying up all night sounds like a grand idea.

And just like you after staying up all night before your college finals, negotiators think that this all-nighter worked. This morning they announced a final deal.

But also that it won't be public for maybe a month or so. And then there will be some debate over it, but thanks to Congress caving in on fast track authority, Congress has almost no ability to point out flaws in the agreement. They can only give it a clean yes or no vote. In the announcement, negotiators (not surprisingly) played up all the tariffs that will be wiped out by this agreement. That's the one part that I'm fine with. Trade tariffs are a mostly bad idea, and getting rid of them is fine. But the TPP is not about trade. That's just a pretext.

The key parts are really about regulations and investment. Indeed, two of the big sticking points concerning patent-like exclusive rights on certain new pharmaceutical compounds ("biologics"), where the US was pushing for at least 12-year exclusivity periods to drive up the price of drugs around the globe, while Australia and other countries were pushing for five years. It sounds like there was a compromise that allows for a range from five to eight years, but, again, who the hell knows until we see the details. At the press conference, negotiators refused to give any details, other than suggesting they came up with text that pretends to satisfy everyone. That is, officially it's five years but there are "other regulations" that bring things closer to the US's demanded 12 years. Another point of contention was on the infamous corporate sovereignty provision, officially called "investor state dispute settlement" (ISDS), which is a boring sounding name for saying that foreign companies can take entire countries to special tribunals if they feel that new regulations in those countries negatively impact profits. These tribunals are a joke and put corporate interests over sovereign country interests.

The one real "compromise" here is that the agreement apparently excludes tobacco companies. As we've noted a few times in the past, tobacco companies have used these corporate sovereignty provisions in other trade agreements to sue countries that pass anti-smoking laws of any kind. Last year, the US floated this compromise idea, that if tobacco companies were excluded, the rest of ISDS would remain in place. And it sounds like that's what happened.

Either way, at some point the final text will be revealed and then there will be lots of shouting and screaming, but rest assured that the USTR and the Obama administration are going to fight like crazy to get this approved, because they (very stupidly) see this as part of Obama's "legacy." The compromises may make things a bit more difficult, because the compromises on pharmaceuticals and tobacco will piss off two of the biggest lobbyists in support of the agreement.

From the sound of things, the rest of the intellectual property chapter hasn't changed much since the May version leaked. It's unclear if the USTR ever did push for clearer fair use provisions as was rumored. Chances are they're not in there, but, again, we won't know for a bit, because... "secret trade deal."

And, really, the most sickening part in all of this, beyond the efforts to increase drug prices globally, beyond the efforts to extend copyright terms, beyond the efforts to limit fair use, beyond the efforts to give companies corporate sovereignty over nations... is the ridiculous willingness of the US government to look the other way on human trafficking/slave labor. As you may recall, part of the fast track authority was that this agreement could not include countries designated as human trafficking hot spots. Malaysia, one of the negotiating countries was included in that list. But, no problem, the State Department, for purely political purposes, upgraded Malaysia, even though the country has shown no improvement at all, and just two months earlier police had found 139 mass graves found along a path where migrant workers had been trafficked.

What a "legacy" for President Obama: "compromising" in a way that helps big companies sue countries that pass bad legislation, drive up the price of drugs, decrease access to culture... and look the other way on human trafficking. And now it's a "done" deal.

Filed Under: australia, corporate sovereignty, drug prices, human trafficking, isds, malaysia, tpp, transparency, us, ustr

Malaysia To Introduce RFID Tracking For Every Vehicle

from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept

Here on Techdirt, nationwide tracking schemes tend to raise a red flag. In Malaysia, by contrast, there seem to be no such worries, as ambitious plans to introduce RFID tagging for all vehicles, reported by The Sun Daily, indicate:

A new vehicle security tracking system suitable for all types of vehicles -- the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) -- will be implemented nationwide by the Road Transport Department (JPJ) by 2018.

According to the article, there are plenty of advantages of doing so:

This new system will enable the police and other authorities to effectively track down criminals

And:

the RFID technology will herald a new era for vehicle security in Malaysia and it could be the answer to combat vehicle theft and cloned vehicle syndicates.

Moreover:

the RFID can also be used to provide real-time monitoring on road traffic situation.

And if you're worried that ne'er-do-wells might seek to avoid being tracked simply by ripping off said RFID tags, fear not, Malaysia has that covered:

theSun understands that the RFID tag is designed to shatter should any one attempt to tamper with it and can transmit a warning to the JPJ and police, should any one try to remove the sticker.

Sounds pretty foolproof. So why aren't other countries rushing to adopt this approach?

Interestingly, RFID technology has been criticised in many countries for its effectiveness to track vehicles movement and citizens. It has been widely accused for invasion of privacy in Belgium, Italy, UK and US.

I just can't imagine why.

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

Filed Under: cars, driving, malaysia, privacy, rfid, surveillance, tracking

Senators Up In Arms Over State Department Plan To Deliberately Ignore Malaysian Mass Graves Just To Get TPP Deal

from the maybe-fast-track-wasn't-such-a-good-idea,-huh? dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about a troubling move by the US State Department to "upgrade" Malaysia from a "tier 3" country to a "tier 2" country regarding human trafficking. This move came despite a near total lack of evidence of any improvement by Malaysia. In fact, just two months ago 139 mass graves were discovered for migrant workers who had been trafficked and/or held for ransom. And the US ambassador to Malaysia had publicly criticized the country for failing to tackle its massive human trafficking problem.

So why would the State Department magically upgrade Malaysia? Well, because of a tiny provision in the fast track "Trade Promotion Authority" deal that Congress recently passed. It noted that fast track authority would not apply to trade deals involving countries that were categorized as "tier 3" by the State Department. In other words, this should have given the US tremendous leverage to push Malaysia to really tackle the problem. Instead, because it appears that the administration is so focused on getting the TPP officially finished and ratified, it got the State Department to just magically upgrade Malaysia, and effectively spit on the graves of those murdered migrant workers.

It appears that this may have been a move too far for some Senators, as 19 of them are demanding some answers from Secretary of State John Kerry about this decision to "upgrade" Malaysia.

In the letter, senators said that upgrading Malaysia would weaken the U.S. government's international credibility on human rights issues.

"Fighting human trafficking is one of the great moral challenges of our time," the senators wrote. "It is therefore with grave concern that we now hear Malaysia may be upgraded in this year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report based on developments that occurred after the end of the review period. A premature upgrade of Malaysia would undermine the integrity of the TIP report process and compromise our international efforts to fight human trafficking."

You think? But, really, to this administration is the integrity of a program on things like human trafficking really that important when compared to getting the TPP agreement and its bundle of gifts to corporations moving forward again? In the grand political calculus, migrant workers in Malaysia get screwed over again. But, no worries, at least Phillip Morris can sue countries that try to warn people about the dangers of smoking. Either way, it's just poor helpless people getting totally screwed over, while giant corporations get richer. No big deal, I guess.

Filed Under: fast track, human trafficking, malaysia, tip, tpp, trade deals

White House So Desperate To Get TPP Approved, It Agrees To Whitewash Mass Graves & Human Trafficking In Malaysia

from the disgusting dept

At the end of last month, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), better known as "fast track" for various trade agreements, was approved after a series of back and forth procedural moves by Congress. This means that Congress no longer has the (Constitutionally-provided) power to have a say in the trade deals the administration is creating, other than a single up-or-down vote when everything is set in stone. There was, however, one tiny poison pill that Senator Bob Menendez supposedly hid in the TPA concerning the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. And that was that it could not be used if the trade agreement included countries that were listed as a "tier 3 nation" by the State Department when it comes to human rights violations. Malaysia, one of the countries that is a part of the TPP, has been designated a "tier 3 nation" by the State Department for a while now, due to serious human trafficking problems.

Some trade deal supporters in Congress tried to quietly remove this provision, but failed. And that left a big Malaysia-shaped problem in front of the TPP. But, the Obama administration is nothing if not resourceful in trying to make sure the TPP gets approved and big corporations get their expanded power over national governments around the globe.

It just decided to upgrade Malaysia from a tier 3 country to a tier 2 country. Because it could. Not because of anything done by Malaysia to improve its record on human trafficking. But because it was politically necessary. The details are simply nauseating:

There is essentially zero evidence Malaysia has done anything to earn this reclassification. Just two months ago, police found 139 mass graves along the Malaysian border that contained migrant workers that had been trafficked or held for ransom.

Since the 2014 TIP report, Malaysia has actually convicted fewer smugglers. As recently as mid-April, the US ambassador to Malaysia publicly criticized the government there for not doing more to combat trafficking.

Also sketchy: the State Department's report was actually due out last month, but was mysteriously delayed until after the whole mess with fast track was concluded. It's almost like the State Department chose to wait until it saw whether or not this provision was included to determine what Malaysia's status would be.

And if you want further evidence that this late decision to magically upgrade Malaysia to tier 2 wasn't in the cards originally, how about this:

Menendez’s office said Friday that an interim report was delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March on Tier 2 countries only, and Malaysia was not included.

In short, the State Department does not really think that Malaysia has improved its terrible record on human trafficking. It did not think so in March when it released an interim report. And then it made the political decision to hold off on releasing its June report until the middle of July to see how the fast track path proceeded.

Finally, rather than take this tool and use it force Malaysia to actually improve things, it gave the country a total free pass, just for the sake of finalizing TPP. I don't care where you stand on the various other provisions of the TPP, but this sort of cynical move -- where real lives are at stake -- is horrifying. And it shows the "who gives a fuck, get it done" attitude of our government right now. This isn't a theoretical issue. This is one where it's clear that people right now are being harmed, and rather than do anything about it, the government has deliberately chosen to turn a blind eye to the problem just so it can get this questionable trade deal passed.

This, of course, also is likely to confirm the fears of many who were opposed to the TPP all along. The Obama administration and US Trade Rep Michael Froman keep insisting that the TPP has a number of features to help raise labor standards in various countries. Yet, if they're happily willing to not just look the other way over Malaysia's human trafficking, but to actively whitewash it, what does that say for the seriousness with which it will enforce any labor practice rules?

Filed Under: bob menendez, fast track, human rights, human trafficking, malaysia, state department, tpp, trade agreeements, ustr

Wikileaks Reveals Super Injunction Blocking Reporting On Massive Australian Corruption Case Involving Leaders Of Malaysia, Indonesia & Vietnam

from the no-free-press-for-you dept

We've written about the problems of so-called super injunctions in the past (though mainly in the UK). This legal process not only keeps certain details under wraps concerning a lawsuit, but actually forbids the media from reporting on anything related to the case at all. Such a thing would be clear prior restraint and not allowed in the US, but apparently is considered legal in other parts of the world. However, Wikileaks has now revealed what appears to be a super injunction against reporting on a massive corruption case in Australia, involving the leaders of Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, along with people at Australia's central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia:

The super-injunction invokes “national security” grounds to prevent reporting about the case, by anyone, in order to “prevent damage to Australia's international relations”. The court-issued gag order follows the secret 19 June 2014 indictment of seven senior executives from subsidiaries of Australia's central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). The case concerns allegations of multi-million dollar inducements made by agents of the RBA subsidiaries Securency and Note Printing Australia in order to secure contracts for the supply of Australian-style polymer bank notes to the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries.

The suppression order lists 17 individuals, including "any current or former Prime Minister of Malaysia", “Truong Tan San, currently President of Vietnam", "Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (also known as SBY), currently President of Indonesia (since 2004)", "Megawati Sukarnoputri (also known as Mega), a former President of Indonesia (2001–2004) and current leader of the PDI-P political party" and 14 other senior officials and relatives from those countries, who specifically may not be named in connection with the corruption investigation.

The document also specifically bans the publication of the order itself as well as an affidavit affirmed last month by Australia's representative to ASEAN Gillian Bird, who has just been appointed as Australia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. The gag order effectively blacks out the largest high-level corruption case in Australia and the region.

It's the reasoning given that's most troubling:

The purpose of these orders is to prevent damage to Australia's international relations that may be caused by the publication of material that may damage the reputations of specified individuals who are not the subject of charges in these proceedings.

It's difficult to see how that's a legitimate reason to completely hide the entire case from public view, when it appears to cover a variety of important matters of which the public should be aware. If some people may be embarrassed about this, even as they're not subject to the charges in the proceedings, then they should easily be able to explain that fact. There are lots of lawsuits that will embarrass some people (even those not directly subject to the case). But we don't hide them when they deal with everyone else. The decision to do it here really smacks of the "high court" / "low court" distinction between the treatment those in power receive vs. what those not in power do.

Filed Under: australia, corruption, free speech, gag order, indonesia, journalism, malaysia, super injunction, vietnam
Companies: rba, reserve bank australia

Malaysian Politician: Ban GTA5, Just Like The British and Americans

from the wait,-what? dept

By now, I think everyone agrees that politicians lie. Sometimes they lie about spying on us as we take selfies with our camera phone, sometimes they lie in court, and it seems like sometimes they lie just for the fun of it. Many people talk about how awful it is that politicians lie. They think that politicians need to lie less. I disagree. I think that our best hope is to elect politicians so completely full of shit that their BS is instantly recognizable as such, which means we actually know the opposite is the truth. It's sort of a governance by photographic negative philosophy.

But what would such a politician look like, you ask? Well, probably a great deal like Malaysia's Reezal Merican ('Merican!) Bin Naina Merican (totally 'Merican!). See, Reezal doesn't like video games all that much, primarily because he thinks they are anti-Islam, and he's currently advocating banning Grand Theft Auto 5 (of course). Fortunately for him, he has some international partners in this ban. Namely the UK and his namesake, 'Merica.

In Malaysia, a member of Parliament named Reezal Merican Bin Naina Merican is asking his government to ban Grand Theft Auto V due to violence. His rationale is that the United States and the United Kingdom have already banned the game. They have? Oh really?

Confused? Me too, because just last night I was happily playing GTA5 while coincidentally shouting "'Merica!" with each and every gunshot fired from my avatar. I thought perhaps I was playing a banned game, which actually only made me revel in its glory all the more, but then I remembered that Reezal is a politician. One, I might add, who seems to be putting my super-liar government philosophy into practice.

Because, of course, GTA5 certainly isn't banned in the UK or 'Merica, something which I'd guess Reezal knows full well. But if you're going to lie, I say go big. At worst you'll get called out on it, but at best we all get to have a laugh and at least one politician becomes infinitely more transparent through the power of bullshit.

Filed Under: gta5, lying, malaysia, politicians

Discontent With Secrecy And One-Sided Nature Of TPP Spreads Among Participating Nations

from the partnership-of-the-unequal dept

Last week Mike wrote how frustration at the unremitting secrecy surrounding TPP, and the refusal to allow members of the public in whose name it is being negotiated to express their views, has led to the creation of a new participatory Web site by the "Fair Deal Coalition." Many of the best-known groups fighting for more balanced copyright laws in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have signed up, including Techdirt.

But they are not the only ones that have had enough of this lack of transparency. An interesting article in the leading Malaysian newspaper The Star shows that people there too are getting fed up with being kept in the dark, even as negotiations are taking place in their country behind closed doors:

Based on a blog post last week, [former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad] seems to be more vehemently opposed to the talks than the 70 other NGOs against it.

"A partnership of the unequal, of the strong to take advantage of the weak," he wrote.

Twelve countries, including Japan, the latest to join the group are involved in the 18th round of talks targeted to be concluded by October.

The United States and the others -- Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile and Canada -- are believed to have concluded discussions on 14 of the 29 chapters.

For those who are against it, the major point of contention is the lack of transparency.

But it's not just about the secrecy. The same article notes that another high-ranking figure has come out against TPP for different reasons:

Chile's former chief negotiator [for TPP], Rodrigo Contreras, who quit in February, dropped a bombshell by openly denouncing the pact.

"It is a threat to our countries. It will restrict our options for development in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, design of public policies and the transformation of our economies," he wrote in Peru's Caretas weekly.

If enough influential people in other countries taking part in the negotiations start to voice their concerns, meeting that October deadline for finalizing the agreement will start to look even more unrealistic than it does now.

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

Filed Under: concerns, malaysia, tpp

Malaysian Government Holding Service Providers Liable For The Actions Of Their Users

from the what-could-go-wrong dept

The idea of holding service providers responsible for the actions of their users is pretty absurd. Mostly because a website owner or ISP has very little control over what their users do, and to hold the providers responsible for potentially harmful or illegal actions of users would be akin to holding a hammer manufacturer or hardware store responsible when someone kills someone else with a hammer.

Of course this hasn't stopped people from attempting to drag service providers into legal complaints. For instance, we have the occasions when Twitter is sued for the actions of its users because it is mistakenly thought to be the publisher of the tweets. Or when the entertainment industry wants to hold Google responsible for Android apps that may allow for file sharing. There are many many more stories like these. Luckily, courts and most law makers understand that service providers cannot or should not be held liable for the actions of their users. Most, anyway.

Jeffrey Nonken Has alerted us to a recent law passed in Malaysia that would hold everyone from the website to the ISP to the coffee house with open wifi to the owner of a borrowed computer responsible for the online postings of a single person.

Section 114A of the bill seeks “to provide for the presumption of fact in publication in order to facilitate the identification and proving of the identity of an anonymous person involved in publication through the internet.” In other words, the section makes it easier for law enforcement authorities to trace the person who has uploaded or published material posted online.

According to the amended law, however, the originators of the content are those who own, administer, and/or edit websites, blogs, and online forums. Also included in the amendment are persons who offer webhosting services or internet access. And lastly, the owner of the computer or mobile device used to publish content online is also covered under section 114A.

This language had the internet-using public in Malaysia in an uproar, and they protested this law in much the same fashion as the protests over SOPA and ACTA. When these protests were finally heard, the Prime minister had the law reviewed, but to no avail.

When the petition was ignored by the government, netizens and media groups organized an online blackout on August 14, which succeeded in mobilizing thousands of internet users. The global attention which the action generated was likely what convinced the Prime Minister to agree to have the cabinet review the controversial amendments. Although this announcement was initially welcomed by opponents of the amendments, the Cabinet ultimately upheld the amended law.

As we know, these kinds of laws have a strong potential for abuse -- one of the primary reasons US citizens opposed SOPA and CISPA. Giving a government the ability to prosecute a whole string of people only tenuously connected to a potential crime is a recipe for disaster. It will open up the ability for the government to stifle free speech even if it doesn't have to lift a finger. What will happen is that sites will now over-filter comments to avoid liability. Businesses that offered free wifi will potentially cut the service in an effort to avoid prosecution. This law will cause damage to the ability of Malaysian citizens to communicate freely over the internet.

This move to apply such harsh secondary liability is nothing surprising from a nation that supports internet filters which it promises will not be used to punish political dissent. Or the country whose courts, as part of a sentence for defamation, ordered a man to post his apology 100 times on Twitter. With the record that Malaysia has on internet freedom, it is no surprise that the outcome was what it was. However, we hope that the citizens of Malaysia continue their protests, and that those who support and passed this law will repeal it. 

Filed Under: isps, malaysia, secondary liability, third party liability

Malaysian Government Backing Away From TPP Support: Worried About Locking Up Medicine

from the good-for-them dept

As the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations move forward, it appears that some more members are expressing concerns. In the past, we'd noted that politicians in Chile were questioning what benefit there was to being locked into the US's rules. And, now, another TPP negotiating member, Malaysia, seems to be questioning the agreement. The report claims that the government is now against TPP, though the actual article really only highlights the (significant) concerns from Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, who claims that TPP "would be detrimental to the local medical industry."

"We are against the patent extension. According to the agreement, if a medicine is launched in the US, and then three years later it is launched in Malaysia, the patent would start from when it is launched here and not when it was launched earlier in the US," said Liow. "This is not fair."

The end result, he warns, is that the TPP would make healthcare less affordable to citizens of Malaysia. Hopefully he really does represent the views of the Malaysian government and they really are considering dropping out over this issue.

Filed Under: malaysia, medicine, patents, tpp