Head Of Computer Security Firm Says Anonymity Is The Enemy Of Privacy

from the you-lost-me dept

We've seen it argued that privacy is a bad thing. People like former DHS official Stewart Baker have argued that the privacy-protecting efforts of civil liberties activists are the reason we're forced to be fondled and de-shod at TSA checkpoints. Not only that, he's tried to blame the 9/11 attacks on "rise of civil libertarianism." Unbelievably, we've also had a politician recently claim that your privacy isn't violated if you don't notice the violation.

We've also seen attacks on anonymity by (anonymous) police officers and a whole slew of pundits and politicians who believe the only thing online anonymity does is provide a shield for trolls, bullies and pirates to hide behind. Efforts have been made to outlaw online anonymity, but fortunately, very few laws have been passed.

Now, try wrapping your mind around this argument being made by Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA Security and the head of EMC's security division. According to him, anonymity and privacy are at odds with each other.

A dogmatic allegiance to anonymity is threatening privacy, according to Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA.

Coviello cast anonymity as the "enemy of privacy" because it gives "free reign to our networks to adversaries" with "no risk of discovery or prosecution."

On one hand, anonymity is slowing down the pursuit of online criminals. On the other hand, companies are increasingly wary of subjecting their employees to intrusive security software.

Customers are caught in a Catch-22. They're afraid to deploy technology for fear of violating workers' privacy" even though security intelligence tools are ultimately the best way to protect personal information, Coviello argued.

How Coviello arrives at the conclusion that anonymity is damaging privacy isn't exactly clear. It may be the enemy to security (or at least, unhelpful to retributive actions), but the online anonymity shielding crooks doesn't threaten users' privacy, at least not directly. Indirectly it could, but it wouldn't be anonymity's "fault." If Coviello wants attackers to be stripped of anonymity, there's little doubt he'd like to see clients' employees stripped of their privacy. Both would make his companies' jobs easier. Attackers would be easily identified and clients would received (arguably) better protection (thanks to more, non-anonymized data gathering). Win-win for security. Not so much for those who cherish privacy and anonymity.

This isn't exactly new ground for Coviello. He did some complaining about privacy at last year's RSA conference as well.

RSA executive chairman Art Coviello has criticised privacy advocates for basing their arguments on “dangerous reasoning”, comments that have already earned him a tongue lashing from Big Brother Watch and the Open Rights Group.

Coviello, whilst noting the need for privacy, lambasted privacy groups’ “knee jerk” reactions to public and private sector attempts to improve people’s security, pointing to the “insanity” of the situation, in a keynote to open the RSA 2012 conference in London this morning.

In Coviello’s view, privacy advocates are over-reacting to measures designed to protect online identities, preferring to live in a world of danger: “Because privacy advocates don’t realise that safeguards can be implemented, they think we must expect reasonable danger to protect our freedoms,” Coviello said.

“But this is based on dangerous reasoning, a knee jerk reaction, without understanding the severity and scope of the problem.

“Where is it written that cyber criminals can steal our identities but any industry action to protect us invites cries of Big Brother.”

Not for nothing has someone noted that RSA is only a letter away from the United States' most notorious intelligence agency.

Coviello's arguments here aren't that much different than the government's opinions on the "liberty vs. security" balance. And like other defenders of intrusive programs, Coviello refers to the statements of critics as an "over-reaction." But is it? He bristles at being compared to Big Brother but his thought processes roughly align with the government's foremost proponents of intrusive programs. According to both, people just don't understand how bad things actually are, and in our unenlightened state, we're making the wrong choice between security and liberty.

Additionally, the "knee jerk reaction" he sees in privacy activists is, in reality, no different than the knee jerk reactions he fails to see in security and intelligence entities. While privacy activists are focused on retaining what's remaining and make small pushes for more, security/intelligence agencies leverage every tragedy or attack to expand their scope and dial back privacy protections.

But where his argument against privacy (and anonymity) ultimately falls apart is in his belief that collecting and storing large amounts of private data is the best solution for all involved.

To “suggest the only way to protect against cyber crime is to sacrifice privacy and civil liberties is absurd,” Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, told TechWeekEurope. “It is a simple fact that if data has not been collected, it cannot be stolen, lost or misused. The best safeguard for consumers and businesses is for data not to be collected unless it is absolutely essential, and then deleted as soon as it is no longer required.”

As for his complaints about anonymity? It's pretty much all or nothing. You can't whip up statutes and laws that allow anonymity and their privacy protections unless you're a criminal. Either you take the good with the bad or you eliminate it for everybody. No one's going to agree with that last one, so security groups and companies will just have to deal with the fact that their adversaries will be cloaking their identities. Cops may wish robbers wouldn't wear masks when committing crime, but that's the way it goes. You can't ban the sale of masks simply because someone holds up a bank wearing one.

I'm sure he understands this, but he's in a field where security is valued over privacy. But that's the expected mindset for someone is his position. The problem is that those with his mindset expect others to come to the same conclusion -- and when they don't, they're portrayed as part of the problem.

To be fair, Coviello at least had this to say about the jargon being deployed by government security officials and advisors.

"I absolutely hate the term 'Cyber Pearl Harbor'," he said. "I just think it's a poor metaphor to describe the state we are really in. What do I do differently once I've heard it? And I've been hearing it for 10 years now. To trigger a physically destructive event solely from the internet might not be impossible, but it is still, as of today, highly unlikely."

Coviello may not like this particular FUD, but claiming anonymity and privacy are standing in the way of security isn't that far removed from the panicky assertions of the "cyber Pearl Harbor" types.

Filed Under: anonymity, art coviello, privacy, security
Companies: emc, rsa

Sports Radio Blowhard Blowhards After Parody Twitter Account

from the take-a-joke dept

Look, I get it, if you're a celebrity or organization of any stature and you were busy looking at yourself in the mirror when God was handing out sense of humor, a parody Twitter account might seem like a royal pain in the ass. Or almost-Royal, as in the case of Pippa Middleton, who tried to go all John Grisham on a parody account that appeared to enjoy poking fun at a book she wrote. As for organizations, you may recall that the Olympics did its best impression of itself by getting Twitter to take down a parody account. The problem is that these heavy-handed attempts at keeping people from engaging in time-honored tradition of mocking stuff on the internet has a tendency to backfire, streisanding the mocking like a combo-multiplyer in the world's funniest fighting game.

But getting egg on your face for this kind of thing doesn't actually require going legal. No, you can make yourself look silly while simultaneously drawing more attention to that of which you're vexed with just your everyday threats. Take for instance Mike Francesa, best known for his sports talk radio show, on which he performs his best caricature of a sports talk radio host. He was understandably miffed when The Daily News used a tweet from a Twitter account set up to parody Francesa, complete with his over-the-top East Coast drawl. His choice of response? To lose his mind and threaten to expose "the names and professions" of the people behind the silly parody Twitter account.

Here's the problem. First, everyone who isn't a duck-billed platypus high on ether knows the handle in question is a parody account. The text of the tweet makes it obvious to anyone who isn't even familiar with Francesa. Secondly, all this threat does, broadcast on his own show in New York, is draw even more attention to the tweet in question, the parody account, and anything the guys behind it might put out later. Thirdly, all this really accomplishes is to make Francesa look like a humorless blowhard who can't take a little gentle ribbing. That ain't New York tough, Mike. And, finally, the threat itself sucks. Promising to out people for who they are and what they do for a living, when you've already admitted they're just everyday guys, is about as terrifying as a poodle with a cough. All that would do is bring these guys even more attention.

And he's not just limiting his criticism to those guys, but he's attacking Twitter as well:

Twitter, which is gonna go public here next month, has gotta do something about the process of people's names being able to be used without their say so. OK? You can't control what the people say. This account's in my name.

Of course, that ignores that Twitter actually has just such a policy, though it's arguable whether or not the parody account fully complies with the policy requirements. Still, it's impossible to look at that account or any single one of its tweets and not realize it's a parody account.

I expected more from a media veteran, but I guess I'll just sit back and wait for the next chapter in this story, which will surely be titled: 2 Anonymous People Get Famous Because Mike Francesa Made It So. Of course, next up, perhaps he'll take on the guy who created a hilarious parody of Mike Francesa if he were on the air in 1776 at the start of the Revolutionary War. Does YouTube "gotta do something" too?

Filed Under: anonymity, free speech, mike francesa, parody, streisand effect, twitter

NSA Trying Hard To Compromise Tor, But It's Still Mostly Safe

from the good-news dept

The latest from the Guardian out of the Ed Snowden leaks shows that the NSA and GCHQ have been trying desperately to target Tor, even though Tor is largely funded by the US government. The good news is that they basically haven't been able to attack the underlying Tor network, but rather rely on exploits elsewhere, such as within Firefox to try to target certain individuals.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor "the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity".

In response to all of this the NSA put out one of its typically bland and empty statements about how what it does is "authorized by law" and it should be no surprise that it's seeking information on bad people.

Filed Under: anonymity, attacks, gchq, nsa, nsa surveillance, tor, vulnerabilities

Anonymous Cop Claims Anonymity Is Bad, Proposes National Email Registry For Internet Users

from the hope-you-saved-a-receipt-for-that-Irony-Detector dept

Online anonymity is a feature, not a bug, as we've pointed out several times here at Techdirt. True, being faceless and nameless can often bring out the worst in certain people. Anonymity may make a bad things worse, but anonymity, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing.

Ask any website that has battled back by routing comments through third parties like Facebook, Google+ and Disqus. Requiring registration before commenting tends to result in fewer commenters. It also doesn't eliminate the trolling issue as many people are just as willing to troll away post-registration. It does make it easier to ban troublesome commenters, but it rarely raises the level of discourse.

There are nearly as many "solutions" as there are varieties of trolls but until the problem of human nature can be solved, trolls will troll. Editors of websites will continue to fight a battle that's pretty much unwinnable, shedding quality users along with a few trolls with every implemented system.

There's one plan that hasn't been considered yet (and for good reason). Via kenichi tanaka comes this alternative to online anonymity, courtesy of Officer Anonymous, puportedly answering a question that must have been phrased very badly (if it was asked at all) at KSL.com's "Ask A Cop" column.

Here's public enemy #1 as described by Officer Anon.

I am speaking about the spineless bottom feeders who sit at their computer all day bullying other people with inflammatory comments and remarks. A troll's sole purpose in life is to comment about an article, statement, question in a forum or other Internet venue so that comment will upset the target person or persons to the point where they are yelling at their computer and punching the monitor... These arguments tend to be typed in all caps lock. There are professional troll organizations where this becomes a quasi profession. Lame, I know.

Officer Anonymous wants to beat back the troll horde with cliches, it would appear. He (or she) sounds like one of those people who reside just outside the sphere of discussion. Officer Anon's depiction of trolls and their lives is all broad brushstrokes, the kind that appeal to other people like himself (we'll just say it's a "him" to save keystrokes) -- the kind of people who label anyone who can safely browse the web without picking up extra toolbars as losers simply because "the internet isn't real." It's like Andy Rooney reading Dilbert strips and spending his next segment trying to twist laughs out of cubicle farm stereotypes, bypassing any sort of subtlety and just generally banging out easy hits -- slapstick discourse.

Here's more:

Some actually think they are providing a source of entertainment. Unfortunately the people who do find this funny are trolls themselves. I can just imagine two pasty skinned trolls, one hand in a bag of Funyun's, spraying crumbs on their overly used keyboard as they laugh at each other's wit.

I'm sure Ofc. Anon. can "imagine" this scenario. Anyone can. It's the "internet user" archetype, one that has been converted into a horse, killed and beaten nonstop for nearly 20 years straight. Snacks? Check. Crumbs? Check. Pasty? Check.

At this point, Anonymous Cop answers a question no one asked, not even himself. The answer he comes up with is surprising, not because it adds some previously unseen nuance to his argument, but because it's so mindblowingly horrible.

So why should trolls go to jail? They are causing or inciting a riot plain and simple.

At this point I would add some commentary, but I really think it's best that AC keep speaking for himself. Here's the "riot."

The victims of these trolls are upset the rest of the day. They are driving aggressively on the roads, yelling at their co-workers and being consumed with a way to find out who that person on the Internet was.

This is not good for public safety.

If you go through this post and replace the word "victim" with "Officer Anonymous," the picture starts to take focus. (Nothing harder on public safety than an angry, aggressive cop.) This isn't an editorial. This is a police officer attempting to get even with the internet and using the only weapon he has: authority.

Anyone who wants to comment or post anything needs to do this with their official email address registered by the government. This will be verified in person at your local driver's license division. No more anonymity on the Internet. Every time you post anything, your picture and name will pop up.

Wow. Where do we go to sign up? The Dept. of Public Safety? Do we need to wait until we're 15 or 16 and get an adult's permission to acquire a provisional Internet License? Or do we have to wait until we're 18? If you're old enough to vote, you're old enough to have an opinion. Just sign up for the draft and the Internet, all in one stop!

Won't a registry like this just add to the problem? If someone's pissed off enough and knows exactly where their tormentor lives, wouldn't they be more likely to respond with violence or vandalism or some criminal action more serious than trolling?

Officer Anonymous touts the benefits of his Internet-as-police-state plan. No more phishing. (Really?) No more email scams. (Really?) No more catfishing. (Possibly...) Somehow the possibility that those seeking to scam others will be stopped by internet registration escapes this cop, who surely must be aware of things like identity theft, underage drinking and unlicensed gun sales. Making something illegal doesn't stop it from happening. It can deter it, but those truly wishing to break the law will just route around the roadblocks. And while they do, good citizens using government-approved Commenter's Licenses will have their every online action scrutinised, if not by the State then by their fellow Licensed Commenters.

How refreshing it would be to see who actually posted those racially charged comments. It would be interesting to see if they posted at all. Do you think those same people are making those same remarks in person? I don't think they are. It would take awhile for them to adjust to sunlight, or being around people. I bet it would be nice for their parents to have access to their basements again. They could finally put in that game room they always wanted.

Oh, LOL. Internet users live in Mom's basement. How droll. One last shot at Internet users from Officer Anon before he wraps up his incalculably stupid editorial. Aversion to sunlight? Check. Anti-social? Check. Basement? Check.

These cliched shots at a world that seems weird and scary to Officer Anon could have come from any number of other "authority figures" whose failure to comprehend the internet has lead directly to cheap, hollow mockery. See also: former NSA director Michael Hayden and Sen. Mike Rogers.

You may be reading this, flabbergasted by my own hypocrisy. I am aware that I am writing these articles through the safety of anonymity. But if you guys are willing to come forward, then so am I. Let's break down the barriers of the Internet and come forward showing our true selves with no judgment. I can't wait to see the national email registry!

I'll admit I am flabbergasted, and your anonymity is only part of it, Officer Anonymous. Your offer of shedding your anonymity is contingent on citizens (those without power and authority) shedding theirs first. How convenient.

By the end of this exhausting glimpse into the mind of a cop, one is almost inclined to believe the post itself is guilty of trolling. Certainly it fits the description of trolling (via The Urban Dictionary) Officer No Name quotes earlier:

The art of deliberately, cleverly and secretly angering people, usually via the Internet, using dialogue…

The most essential part of trolling is convincing your victim that ... you truly believe in what you are saying, no matter how outrageous.

Everything about the post, from the casual use of outdated tropes to the notion that anyone (other than the author) would actually consider a national email registry to be a good thing, screams "troll." This gives the cop an easy out should the complaints and comments make him angry enough to "drive aggressively" or "punch his monitor."

"I was just trolling to make a point, etc."

No one should give him this out. Decrying anonymity from behind the two sets of protection -- anonymity and the blue line -- is more than simply disingenuous, it's dangerous.

Filed Under: anonymity, free speech, internet, law enforcement

Former NSA Boss Claims Terrorists Use Gmail, Anonymity Is Awful And The US Built The Internet, So Of Course It Should Spy On It

from the tone-deaf dept

Michael Hayden is the former NSA and CIA boss, whose claim to fame is that he oversaw the illegal warrantless wiretapping of Americans under President George W. Bush. He's pretty consistently managed to stick his foot in his mouth concerning everything regarding the latest NSA leaks every time he speaks. He claimed that Ed Snowden was worse than every American revealed spy in history (despite the fact that, unlike actual spies like Benedict Arnold and the Rosenbergs, Snowden focused on informing the public, rather than selling secrets to our enemies). He brushed off Snowden's supporters as internet shut-ins who can't get laid. Though, perhaps he should talk to a geek or two, because he doesn't even understand what data mining means.

His latest is no better. On Sunday he gave a speech where he revealed that (he claims) terrorists love Gmail:

"Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: "I don't think you're going to see that in a Google commercial, but it's free, it's ubiquitous, so of course it is."

Of course, if this is true (and seeing as he hasn't been in the government for a while, I'm not sure how he'd actually know that), it would seem like that statement alone is much worse than anything that Snowden revealed, because General Hayden basically just told every terrorist "don't use Gmail any more, because we're on to you." Of course, from all reports so far of the way that Al Qaeda brass communicates, it appears they learned that lesson since before Gmail existed. It seems highly unlikely that any sophisticated terrorist would be using a service like Gmail, since it's long been suspected that the US government monitored it anyway.

Hayden didn't stop there. He also flat out admitted that the US was "militarizing" the internet (though he called it the web), which is another thing that the government has been trying to deny until Hayden just blurted it out.

Hayden also conceded that the United States. "could be fairly charged with the militarization of the World Wide Web."

Hayden also reveals the rather ridiculous sense of entitlement that the intelligence community has towards snooping on the internet. He argues, effectively, that since the internet rose out of a US government project, then of course it should be able to spy on everything on it.

"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."

Of course, that totally ignores the status of the internet today, and how much has changed since the old ARPANET days. Also, as the Washington Post notes, having intelligence community officials say ridiculous crap like that is more or less telling the rest of the world (and many Americans) to stop doing business with American internet companies. Is whatever minor intel the NSA picks up really worth losing many billions to the US economy?

And, of course, Hayden once again made it clear that if he had his way, the NSA would be able to track anything and everything, because anonymity is bad.

At one point, Hayden expressed a distaste for online anonymity, saying "The problem I have with the Internet is that it's anonymous."

Given that, I'd like to challenge Michael Hayden to release his browser history from the past three months. After all, I'm sure he wouldn't want anyone to think he's a hypocrite who surfed the web anonymously, now would he?

Filed Under: anonymity, email, internet, michael hayden, nsa, nsa surveillance, terrorists

Questionable Court Order Says Twitter Must Reveal Owner Of Political Parody Account

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

Here's another wacky one involving some parody Twitter accounts. Apparently some local aldermen (city council) in Starkville, Mississippi have become upset about some parody accounts on Twitter. One of them, David Little, filed a police complaint leading to a wacky investigation that appears to include a police detective setting up a fake Twitter account himself, claiming to be a reporter, and asking the guy behind one of the parody accounts to call him -- giving out the known phone number of the detective. Either way, the police then went to court, and stunningly got Judge Jim Kitchens to order Twitter to reveal who's behind the parody accounts. That's not how it's supposed to work. Anonymity and parody are protected forms of speech, and just because you have a local official who doesn't like being parodied doesn't mean that a court can just order the person unmasked. There's a long string of First Amendment cases that note that anonymity should be strongly protected.

The law that is used to claim this unmasking is legit is one focused on outlawing real impersonation, not parody. And as Adam Steinbaugh explains, the order is almost certainly a violation of the First Amendment, and seems to twist the local statute (which is also written too broadly in the first place). The whole thing is a mess, basically, where it appears you have local politicians who can't handle being parodied, a bizarre "investigation" into the accounts, combined with a judge who signs off on a First Amendment-defying order. What a complete mess. Thankfully, it sounds like a bunch of lawyers are jumping in and offering to help out whoever is behind those parody accounts.

Filed Under: anonymity, david little, first amendment, mississippi, parody, starkville
Companies: twitter

Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies

from the don't-give-them-ideas dept

As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument. Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor -- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today:

The head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) has personally ordered preparations for laws that would block the Tor anonymity network from the entire Russian sector of the Internet, a Russian newspaper reported.

FSB director Aleksandr Bortnikov announced the initiative at a recent session of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, saying that his agency would develop the legislative drafts together with other Russian law enforcement and security bodies, the widely circulated daily Izvestia reported.

In fact, according to the Izvestia story (original in Russian), along with Tor, all anonymizing proxy services would be banned too. No prizes for guessing what's behind the latest move:

The news was disclosed after the Russian civil movement 'Head Hunters' wrote a letter to the FSB with a request to block Tor, as it is one of the favorite software tools for distributors and users of child pornography. The FSB replied that the request was directed to the wrong body, as crimes against public health and morals fall under the Interior Ministry's jurisdiction.

However, the FSB graciously decided to get involved anyway:

The FSB official said that the agency initiated the move as internet anonymizers were used by weapon traffickers, drug dealers and credit card fraudsters, giving the FSB an obvious interest in limiting the use of such software.

In other words, banning Tor and anonymizers is a real crowd-pleaser, since politicians can point to lots of bad people that use them. Just like they use the Internet, or postal service: and just as there are lots of good uses of the postal service and the Internet, so Tor and anonymizers are also vital for a wide range of non-evil people, notably activists and political dissidents, both of whom are already under pressure in Russia. But what is a bug for some is a feature for others: blocking Tor -- "for the children" -- would also have the knock-on effect of making it even harder for dissidents and political groups to access information and organize in secret.

Assuming that the proposed law is passed, as seems likely, the worry has to be that other countries will take note and start to think about following suit, probably playing the same populist card of fighting child pornography that Russia's 'Head Hunters' are now employing.

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

Filed Under: anonymity, filters, internet, online, proxies, russia, tor

Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs... Just As They Allow Wikileaks

from the arbitrary dept

This is random. Just as Mastercard and Visa are allowing payments to Wikileaks again after a two year hiatus, those same two companies have started banning VPN providers. If you don't recall, the credit card companies refused to process payments for Wikileaks, following significant pressure from US officials, even as they have no problem processing payments to hate groups like the KKK. After a long legal dispute, an Icelandic court ordered the credit card companies to start processing payments to Wikileaks again.

Given all of that, it's quite bizarre that they're now cutting off various VPN/anonymizing services, as it should be quite obvious that there are tremendous perfectly legal and reasonable uses of such services. Personally, I have two VPN services, which I use when I travel, or am working from outside the office to make sure my data is encrypted and safe. It's really just good computing hygiene to use such a service. However, apparently, Mastercard and Visa would like everyone's data to be exposed.

It now turns out that these policies have carried over to VPN providers and other anonymizing services. Before the weekend customers of the popular Swedish payment service provider Payson received an email stating that VPN services are no longer allowed to accept Visa and Mastercard payments due to a recent policy change.

"Payson has restrictions against anonymization (including VPN services). As a result Payson can unfortunately no longer give your customers the option to finance payments via their cards (VISA or MasterCard)," the email states, adding that they still accept bank transfers as deposits.

The new policy went into effect on Monday, leaving customers with a two-day window to find a solution.

At least one of the VPNs so impacted, iPredator, is apparently looking at its legal options. Given Wikileaks' victory on a nearly identical issue, you'd think that the credit card companies would know better -- but perhaps they think that the VPN providers won't bother with a costly legal battle.

Filed Under: anonymity, encryption, payment processing, payments, vpns
Companies: ipredator, mastercard, visa, wikileaks

New Bill Would Stop Patent Trolls From Hiding Behind Shell Companies

from the about-time dept

We've talked in the past about how patent trolling operations love to use shell companies to hide who actually owns the patents. Intellectual Ventures has thousands of shells, but it's even worse in many cases when it's smaller trolls, where no one has any idea who's actually behind the trolling. You may remember a few years back, when Reddit, Digg, Fark, Slashdot and others were sued over a bogus patent held by a shell company called "Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC," and we wondered if the collective communities behind those sites might be able to figure out who actually owned the patent in question. But even those hive minds failed to turn up much of use.

Thankfully, Rep. Ted Deutch has introduced a bill that would require a true disclosure of the owners of patents that are being used in litigation. Specifically, the bill would require a much clearer accounting of who "any real party in interest" would be concerning any patent. Failure to do so would mean that it would limit the ability of those patent owners to collect on any damages. Specifically, patent owners can only collect on damages that occur after the true owners of the patent are disclosed. This would help a tremendous amount, since so much in the patent troll world today is done in incredibly shady ways. It is believed that a very large number of patent trolling operations are actually run by patent lawyers themselves, who saw how lucrative it was, but who don't want to be publicly identified with their trolling. Forcing the actual owners to identify themselves would be a big help in making sure that people actually understand what's happening with patent trolling.

It's interesting to see Congress suddenly interested in patent reform again, even if in a piecemeal fashion. After spending nearly a decade fighting over a "comprehensive" patent reform bill that became the America Invents Act (a watered-down, mostly useless, bill) we kept hearing people say that patent reform was "done" in Congress. But in the past few months, three key bills have been introduced, each targeting the patent trolling problem. There was Rep. DeFazio's SHIELD Act, which would make it easier to shift fees and make trolls responsible for the costs of bogus lawsuits. Then, a few weeks ago, there was Senator Schumer's bill to make it easier to get tech patents reviewed relatively quickly by the USPTO to see if we can throw out more bad patents. And now this bill, called the End Anonymous Patents Act, from Rep. Deutch.

So far, none of the bills has received much momentum, but it's good to see that more and more people in Congress are realizing that the patent system is incredibly broken, and that trolls are a big part of that.

Filed Under: anonymity, patent trolls, patents, shell companies, ted deutch