US-EU Relations After Two Important Votes In European Parliament: It's (More) Complicated

from the this-will-be-interesting-to-watch dept

Two major votes in the European Parliament -- one on data protection, the other on NSA surveillance -- could have important ramifications for US-EU relations, particularly the current TAFTA/TTIP negotiations. As we wrote back in October last year, the EU's proposed data protection legislation has been one of the most contested proposals in recent years, with massive lobbying from US companies concerned about the effects on their online businesses in Europe. In the end, there was extremely broad support from the European Parliament for the new data protection rules: 621 votes in favor, 10 against and 22 abstentions. Here are the main points as summarized in the official press release:

Data transfers to non-EU countries

To better protect EU citizens against surveillance activities like those unveiled since June 2013, MEPs amended the rules to require any firm (e.g. a search engine, social network or cloud storage service provider) to seek the prior authorisation of a national data protection authority in the EU before disclosing any EU citizen's personal data to a third country. The firm would also have to inform the person concerned of the request.

Deterrent fines

Firms that break the rules should face fines of up to €100 million, or up to 5% of their annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greater, say MEPs. The European Commission had proposed penalties of up to €1 million or 2% of worldwide annual turnover.

Better protection on the internet

The new rules should also better protect data on the internet. They include a right to have personal data erased, new limits to "profiling" (attempts to analyse or predict a person's performance at work, economic situation, location, etc.), a requirement to use clear and plain language to explain privacy policies. Any internet service provider wishing to process personal data would first have to obtain the freely given, well-informed and explicit consent of the person concerned.

The intent is make sure that any personal data from Europe is still protected according to EU norms when it leaves the continent -- specifically, when it is sent across to the US. And to give the new rules some teeth, the maximum fine for non-compliance is 5% of revenues, which for the largest companies like Google and Facebook could be many billions of dollars.

Among the requirements are that the personal data of EU citizens can only be disclosed (to the NSA, say) after permission has been obtained from the national data protection authority, and that EU citizens have a right to request that their personal data is erased. Clearly, these will not go down well with US companies -- or the US government.

However, it's important to note that this vote in the European Parliament is not the end of the story. Although the European Commission is behind the measures, there is another EU body -- the European Council of the European Union -- that must agree. It's made up of the heads of government of ministers from the EU's member states, and among those there are several that will not be happy with some of the proposals (notably the UK.) The unanimity of the MEPs in this vote will put pressure on the European Council to negotiate, but it's not clear at this stage what the final outcome might be.

The other important vote was on the European Parliament's inquiry into the mass surveillance of EU citizens, discussed here recently. The resolution put forward by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee of the European Parliament was backed by 544 votes to 78, with 60 abstentions. Its main recommendations are as follows:

Parliament's should withhold its consent to the final Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal with the US unless it fully respects EU fundamental rights, stresses the resolution, adding that data protection should be ruled out of the trade talks. This consent "could be endangered as long as blanket mass surveillance activities and the interception of communications in EU institutions and diplomatic representations are not fully stopped", notes the text.

MEPs also call for the "immediate suspension" of the Safe Harbour privacy principles (voluntary data protection standards for non-EU companies transferring EU citizens' personal data to the US). These principles "do not provide adequate protection for EU citizens" say MEPs, urging the US to propose new personal data transfer rules that meet EU data protection requirements.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) deal should also be suspended until allegations that US authorities have access to EU citizens’ bank data outside the agreement are clarified, insist MEPs.

Again, these will not be popular with the US government, which is pushing for data protection to be included in the TAFTA/TTIP talks. Similarly, suspending the Safe Harbor framework would be disastrous for the same kinds of companies affected by the data protection measures discussed above, since they would no longer be able to self-certify that their data handling is compliant with EU requirements. As the leader of the civil liberties inquiry, Claude Moraes, explained:

The Snowden revelations gave us a chance to react. I hope we will turn those reactions into something positive and lasting into the next mandate of this Parliament, a data protection bill of rights that we can all be proud of. This is the only international inquiry into mass surveillance. (...) Even Congress in the United States has not had an inquiry.

In other words, the inquiry is a direct result of Snowden's leaks, so it's no surprise that the resolution included the following proposal reflecting that:

The text also calls for a "European whistle-blower protection programme", which should pay particular attention to the "complexity of whistleblowing in the field of intelligence". EU countries are also asked to consider granting whistleblowers international protection from prosecution.

Sadly, though, an amendment calling for Edward Snowden to be offered asylum in the EU was defeated, despite some spirited advocacy by the Green and Pirate parties inside the parliament chamber:

As with the data protection vote, it's not yet clear what effect the approval of the resolution will have. It is not binding, and it would be for the European Commission to implement. That seems unlikely for things like the suspension of Safe Harbor. However, the threat that the European Parliament will withhold its consent to any free trade agreement if data protection is included, or the NSA surveillance is not scaled back, is real. We saw with ACTA that if MEPs vote against an agreement, it is dead. That's bound to make the increasingly troubled TTIP negotiations even more fraught.

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Filed Under: eu, eu parliament, personal data, privacy, tafta, ttip, us

Will Cheese Derail TAFTA/TTIP?

from the grating dept

A battle over cheese could prove a major problem for the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations currently getting down to serious discussions. Here's the background, as reported by the Guardian:

As part of trade talks, the European Union wants to ban the use of European names like parmesan, feta and gruyere on cheese made in the United States.

The argument is that the American-made cheeses are shadows of the original European varieties and cut into sales and identity of the European cheeses. The Europeans say parmesan should only come from Parma, Italy, not those familiar green cylinders that American companies sell. Feta should only be from Greece, even though feta isn't a place. The EU argues it "is so closely connected to Greece as to be identified as an inherently Greek product."

Needless to say, some people in the US are not best pleased with what they call "an absurd European initiative":

U.S. Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) are working together to protect American dairy farmers and producers from an absurd European initiative that would change common names for cheeses Americans enjoy every day.

In a bipartisan letter signed by more than 50 of their Senate colleagues, Sens. Toomey and Schumer urged the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to fight European Union (EU) efforts to prohibit American dairy producers from using dozens of common cheese names. The EU claims that dairy products bearing names such as asiago, feta, parmesan, and muenster are "geographical indicators" and can only be appropriately displayed on products made in certain areas of Europe.

Techdirt has written about such geographical indications (GIs) before. There, the situation involving an attempt to protect "Belgian chocolate" was pretty trivial; now the stakes are much higher. Here's part of the Senators' letter:

Dear Secretary Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Froman:

We commend your past work to fight the growing geographical indication (GI) restrictions promoted by the European Union (EU). This trade barrier is of great concern to dairy and other food manufacturers in our states. On their behalf, we urge you to continue to push back against the EU's efforts to restrict our cheese exports, particularly to nations with which we already have free trade agreements. In addition, we urge you to make clear to your EU counterparts that the U.S. will reject any proposal in the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations now underway that would restrict in any way the ability of US producers to use common cheese names.

As that shows, there is pressure on the US negotiators to reject completely any EU calls for GIs in TAFTA/TTIP. Equally, the EU has made it clear that extending GI protection around the world is a priority. The European Commission says on its Web page dedicated to GIs:

The EU supports better protection of geographical indications internationally due to the increasing number of violations throughout the world. The EU is active in multilateral and bilateral negotiations protecting EU geographical indications.

Moreover, in the Canada-EU trade agreement (CETA), whose status is still unclear, Canada seems to have acquiesced to EU demands, as this story on CBC News explains:

The Europeans are particularly pleased about realizing all their goals in the area of geographic indicators or GIs, those products named for their origins, such as Gorgonzola or Feta cheeses.

"Canada -- not traditionally a friend of GIs -- has accepted that all types of food products will be protected at a comparable level to that offered by EU law and that additional GIs can be added in the future," says the document, noting 125 of Europe’s 145 "priority GIs" will enjoy full protection.

On cheeses, the document notes existing Canadian products are grandfathered, but new entrants will need to be identified by such modifiers as "style,” "type" or "imitation." The paper suggests winning the GI battle will give European manufacturers a significant leg up when competing with Canadian producers of similar products.

After that win, the EU will doubtless be looking for similar concessions from the US -- concessions that are unlikely to be granted, in view of the objections of the US dairy industry:

The National Milk Producers Association, International Dairy Foods Association, U.S. Dairy Export Council, American Farm Bureau Federation, Kraft, Leprino Foods, and others support Sens. Toomey and Schumer's efforts.

Given those strongly-opposing views, it's unclear how the issue of GIs will be resolved in the TAFTA/TTIP talks -- or even whether it can be resolved. It would be rather ironic if the biggest trade deal in history collapsed not because of clashes over major issues like corporate sovereignty or the Precautionary Principle, but over the names for cheese.

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Filed Under: cheese, eu, geographical indicators, tafta, ttip, us

United States Sanctions On Exporting Open Online Learning Courses Are Completely Backwards

from the aiding-the-enemy dept

Between Syria, Cuba, Iran and Sudan, Americans bothering to pay attention to the world around them are becoming increasingly familiar with how we sanction other countries and the intricacies of those sanctions. The intersection of sanctions and technology tend to revolve around the export of hardware, software, and services to nations with regimes we don't particularly care for. All of these sanctions are typically designed to achieve one or both of the following goals: altering the behavior of the regime in question and/or encouraging the people of that nation to rise up against the regime by making everyone completely miserable.

With that in mind, we can now conclusively say that at least some of the tech sanctions levied against some countries are completely useless and should be done away with, namely those that intermittently punish the people of Syria, Iran, Cuba and Sudan, preventing their people from accessing open education platforms.

Coursera, which according to its site aims “to change the world by educating millions of people by offering classes from top universities and professors online for free,” is now subjected to a recent directive from the US federal government that has forced some MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) providers to block access for users in sanctioned countries such as Iran and Cuba. Coursera explains the change in its student support center:

"The interpretation of export control regulations as they related to MOOCs was unclear for a period of time, and Coursera had been operating under one interpretation of the law. Recently, Coursera received a clear answer indicating that certain aspects of the Coursera MOOC experience are considered ‘services’ (and all services are highly restricted by export controls). While many students from these countries were previously able to access Coursera, this change means that we will no longer be able to provide students in sanctioned countries with access to Coursera moving forward."

While updates to this post suggest that connectivity to Syrians has been reestablished, that isn't so with regard to countries like Iran, Cuba or Sudan. Examine for a moment the practical application of this kind of sanctioning. The US has identified a regime we do not like, which will almost by definition be relatively well-educated, affluent, and powerful. That regime oppresses its people. To combat this, part of our sanctions policy is designed to prevent the oppressed people from accessing educational services that would offer a ladder towards the educational standards enjoyed by the offending regime. Knowledge is power, of course, and the ability to learn about the world outside of the pens in which these countries have placed their own people is a tool that could be used to encourage change in these countries. Don't take that from me, take it from the governments in those nations which are quite busy censoring the internet out of fear of their people becoming more educated. And now the US is essentially joining the censoring party, too.

In September 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation called on the US to lift all restrictions “that deny citizens access to vital communications tools.” But the US has continued its piecemeal approach, going back and forth between blocking new ranges of transactions to allowing the export of certain services.

“These sorts of export restrictions are overbroad and contain elements which have no effect on the Syrian regime, while preventing Syrian citizens from accessing a wealth of tools that are available to their activist counterparts in neighboring countries and around the world,” EFF stated.

Likewise in Iran, Cuba, and Sudan. A common complaint one sometimes gets from peace activists is that sanctions should be lifted because they don't hurt the regime, only the innocent civilians. That complaint is usually moot, because often times the entire point is to hurt the citizens to breed unrest building towards revolution. But in this case, the harm is repressing the capacity for change, and therefore serves no purpose. Even beyond the humanist concept of exporting information and education as a simple matter of human rights, these sanctions can only have the opposite effect of their intention.

Fortunately, Coursera appears to have a genuine interest in spreading education and, as they did with the Syrian issue, appear to want to work with the US government to get around these outdated sanctions.

Coursera ended the announcement of the changes that prevent access to their courses in sanctioned countries with the following note: “We value our global community of users and sincerely regret the need to take this action. Please know that Coursera is currently working very closely with the U.S. Department of State and Office of Foreign Asset Control to secure the necessary permissions to reinstate site access for users in sanctioned countries.”

If the US government has any interest in their sanctioning policies beyond using them as some kind of penis-measuring contest, they'll act quickly to give Coursera the ability to export education to the nations of oppressed people, otherwise known as the places where it is most sorely needed.

Filed Under: cuba, iran, moocs, online learning, sanctions, sudan, syria, us
Companies: coursera

Why Exactly Do We Need To 'Protect' US And EU Foreign Investments Through TAFTA/TTIP Anyway?

from the risky-business dept

Techdirt has already examined the issue of corporate sovereignty many times over the past year, as it has emerged as one of the most problematic areas of both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP. A fine article by Simon Lester of the Cato Institute examines a hidden assumption in these negotiations: that an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism is needed at all.

Most of his post is devoted to the background of corporate sovereignty, and it provides a useful primer if you're still wondering what exactly ISDS is supposed to do, and why. Having established the framework, Lester concludes by making two key points:

First, if a U.S. (or EU) company chooses to make an investment abroad, why should the U.S. (or EU) government go to bat for it at all? In the past, we used "gunboat diplomacy" to protect our companies. Now we use international lawyers. But why should we do anything? These companies have chosen another jurisdiction for their investment, which is fine. Companies should invest in whatever location makes the most economic sense. But in that situation, it is not clear why the investment is "ours" to worry about anymore. When multinationals invest all over the world, are they really "ours," or are they now just global entities?

Business is inherently about taking risks -- if there were no risk, there would be no need for entrepreneurs. So why should a nation be expected to offer a kind of free insurance policy against those risks when they are incurred abroad -- not least because commercial policies doing that are readily available? Since fans of the free market think that the government should just get out of the way, surely they should extend this to foreign investment too?

Lester's other point is one that many people have made -- that ISDS is in any case unnecessary in an agreement between the US and EU:

when the place of the investment is the EU or US, which have plenty of their own protections in domestic law, international law seems largely duplicative. International investment rules are an opportunity for lawyers to bring additional claims, but are not necessary for "protection" of foreign investment. Without some evidence that more is necessary, perhaps US-EU investment rules should be limited to a basic promise to treat each other's investors equally, let governments settle disputes between themselves, and leave the international constitutional protections out of it.

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Filed Under: corporate sovereignty, europe, investor state dispute settlements, isds, tafta, tpp, ttip, us

Eric Schmidt Claims Google Considered Moving Its Servers Out Of The US To Avoid The NSA

from the that-would-be-big dept

We've been hearing more and more reports that many folks within Google are incredibly angry over the NSA's activities, some of which has bubbled up already. There have been some questions, though, about whether those attitudes go all the way up the management chain, so it's interesting to see Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, now claiming that the company actually considered taking all its servers out of the US in the wake of the NSA revelations.

Google, the giant of the Internet, thought about moving its servers out of the U.S. after the NSA debacle, said Eric Schmidt, the company's chairman, on Friday at the Paley International Council Summit in New York.

"Actually, we thought about that and there are many, many reasons why it's impossible for Google to leave the United States, although it's attractive," Schmidt said.

"But the reason it's an interesting idea is because American firms are subject to these rules, the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] rules, Patriot Act and so forth, and this government surveillance is really a problem."

Of course, what Google probably realized is that, once out of the US, the NSA actually has more powers to spy on anything with basically no oversight. At least in the US, there are some (if minimal) restrictions, and there are at least some ways to fight back. Still, it would be quite a statement for a company like Google to make that kind of a move, and again would highlight just how much of a bad business impact all this NSA spying can have on American companies.

The real question is how much will Google continue to do in response to these revelations. Many, many people don't trust the company, and taking a strong stand to protect its users privacy and to push back against government surveillance is going to be necessary, or the company runs a real risk of driving many people to other services that promise to be more secure.

Filed Under: eric schmidt, nsa, servers, surveillance, us
Companies: google

US Working Overtime Behind The Scenes To Kill UN Plan To Protect Online Privacy From Snooping

from the of-course-they-are dept

The UN has apparently been considering a proposal pushed by Brazil and Germany, to clarify that basic offline rights to privacy should apply to online information and activities as well. The proposal is targeted at attempts by governments -- mainly the US -- to ignore privacy issues in spying on people around the globe. Not surprisingly, the US is (quietly) working hard to stop this plan. Colum Lynch at Foreign Policy has the scoop, noting that publicly, the US is pretending to support this in some form:

But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.

In recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas.

The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does. Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts.

While none of this creates any binding requirements, it does put tremendous pressure on countries to comply -- and could lead to more specific language in various treaties and other agreements as well. It also allows other countries to stand firmly on the moral high ground that the US pretends to stand on, in order to scold the US for its activities.

The US, of course, likes to pretend that it needs to violate everyone's privacy to catch a few bad guys. There is little reason to suggest this is true. Nothing in the proposal appears to stop legitimate law enforcement, espionage and surveillance efforts, targeted at actual people involved in criminal or terrorist activity. The issue is scooping up everyone's data "just because." That's not what US negotiators are saying, obviously. Instead, they argue they need to scoop up everyone's data to make the world safer by going after "international terrorists."

The US's stance here is fairly obvious. It wants to pretend to retain the moral high ground on this issue, and the way to do that is to try to stop the rest of the world from pointing out that it's been on the low road for quite some time. But trying to redraw the map doesn't change the reality.

Filed Under: brazil, germany, privacy, surveillance, un, us

NSA Worked Out Deal With GCHQ To Spy On UK Citizens, Secretly Expanded It

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Early on in the Snowden leaks, it became clear that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, had a very close relationship, sharing lots of data with each other. We noted a convenient potential byproduct of this collaboration: while, technically speaking, NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans and GCHQ isn't supposed to spy in UK citizens, if they spy on the others' citizens and then share the results, they can get around that loophole. In response to that, the NSA, GCHQ and the three other signals intelligence agencies that make up the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance collaboration between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, suggested that they had "minimization" procedures in place not to actually spy on "non-target" citizens of each members' countries.

But, of course, that's not what's actually happening. The latest Snowden document published by The Guardian reveals two important, but related things. First, the GCHQ and the NSA worked out a deal to let the NSA spy much more broadly on UK citizens, allowing them to build a database of previously "restricted" materials on UK citizens. Second, the NSA appears to have taken this small opening by the GCHQ to spy on the UK citizens under certain circumstances and massively expanded it, without telling GCHQ. First, the NSA and GCHQ decreased the rules for "minimization" on "incidentally collected" information, allowing it to be "unminimized" (which most people would call "maximized"), in 2007. Basically, the GCHQ allowed the NSA to do pattern analysis on all that data from UK persons, which had previously been off limits. The idea was to try to piece together connections to suspected terrorists, drug dealers and criminals. Technically, the new "agreement" barred targeting UK citizens to look at the content of their communications. However, as another revealed memo also shows, the NSA took this small opening to conclude that it can basically surf through GCHQ data at will -- something it purposely chose not to inform GCHQ about -- so long as it was good for the US.

The document, titled 'Collection, Processing and Dissemination of Allied Communications', has separate classifications from paragraph to paragraph. Some are cleared to be shared with America's allies, while others – marked "NF", for No Foreign – are to be kept strictly within the agency. The NSA refers to its Five-Eyes partners as "second party" countries.

The memo states that the Five-Eyes agreement "has evolved to include a common understanding that both governments will not target each other's citizens/persons".

But the next sentence – classified as not to be shared with foreign partners – states that governments "reserved the right" to conduct intelligence operations against each other's citizens "when it is in the best interests of each nation".

"Therefore," the draft memo continues, "under certain circumstances, it may be advisable and allowable to target second party persons and second party communications systems unilaterally, when it is in the best interests of the US and necessary for US national security."

Basically, GCHQ agreed to share more data on UK persons under the understanding that it wouldn't be abused, and the NSA took the opportunity to tell NSA folks "feel free to abuse it" so long as you can claim "it's in the best interests of the US." And they didn't let anyone in the UK know about that part. In other parts of the document -- which are shared with the Five Eyes partners, the NSA makes it sound like it will work collaboratively with those agencies when it comes up with important terrorist/criminal information.

Of course, you also have to assume that this original deal was not one-sided. It almost certainly involved the NSA telling GCHQ that it could also collect data and "unminimize" information it collected on US persons as well. And, it wouldn't be surprising to find out that the GCHQ has similar procedures in place that give it "for the good of the UK" exceptions to whatever limits the NSA tried to place on such data.

Filed Under: five eyes, gchq, minimization, nsa, uk, unminimize, us

New 'We The People' Petition Demands UK-Style Porn Filtering

from the aspiring-to-be-the-nation's-conscience dept

M.G. in Greenbrae, CA must have been inspired by UK Prime Minister David Cameron's quest for a porn-free Britain. The Prime Minister's idealism has resulted in an insistence that all internet providers make access to porn "opt-in." Anti-porn filters are on by default. For the children.

As the Daily Dot points out, M.G.'s petition for online porn blockage is likely to be severely short on support. For one, the US government has been generally opposed to regulating the internet in this fashion. Not that there aren't plenty of little instances where legislators have imposed their will on internet communications, but by and large, a nationwide censoring of certain content is highly unlikely. For another, it's highly unlikely a majority of Americans would be supportive of a plan that makes them ask, in writing, for their internet porn tap to be turned back on.

That being said, it's a large nation with 300 million people, a certain percentage of which enjoy imposing their morality on others. 100,000 signatures isn't completely out of the question. (Not that this will guarantee an administration response…)

But what is M.G. asking for, specifically? Here's the entire petition, which is mercifully brief.

Require Porn to be an "Opt In" feature with Internet Service Providers rather than a standard feature.

Hang on. Let's deal with the title first. I don't believe any ISP offers porn as a "standard feature." Yes, your internet access will provide you with a gateway to porn, but it's not on the feature list right after the breakdown of your underachieving (but overpriced!) connection speed. So, "porn" isn't a standard feature -- it's just something that's available on the internet. And it's far from the only thing.

OK. here's the entire petition.

In its current state, Internet porn seeks out users by email solicitations and massive amounts of free content throughout Internet browser searches. The average person, even children, can type in the word "cat" or "home" or "soup" and instantly be inundated with offensive and disturbing pornographic images. Parents and individuals have to go to great lengths to install Internet filters that often don't weed out all porn. We are asking for greater protection and responsibility from Internet Service providers and our country. We are asking that people who are interested in porn should have to seek it and choose it. They should have to "Opt In" for it by making arrangements to receive it with their Internet Service Provider. Everyone else should be free from it and assumed "Opt Out".

It would appear that M.G. has clicked through on some very questionable ads and linkbait and, worse, provided some sketchy forms with his or her email address. I have yet to receive a porn email solicitation -- or at least, I haven't received one in years. Anyone using a halfway competent email service will find these sorts of solicitations routed directly into their spam folder without ever being made aware of porn's apparent ubiquity. Perhaps what's sketchy here is M.G.'s email provider.

Following up this dubious assertion that "average people" (including children, which is what this is all about, innit?) can stumble across porn using words like "soup." And "home." You can, if so inclined, perform some iterations of everyday words that will allow you to "inadvertently" conjure up pornographic images, but for most people, using common words will return common search results, especially considering most search engines provide a "safe" search by default. Sure, you may find some edge leakage, but for the most part, searching for "soup" will net you soup-related images and links, not porn.

And then M.G. tanks the whole thing by complaining that parents have to make an effort to protect their average children from accidentally accessing soupporn, and notes that even these so-hard-to-use filters don't even filter out all of the bad stuff. But then, M.G. ignores this gaping (soup) hole in his/her plan and arrives at a pair of bad conclusions.

1. ISPs are supposed to "protect" users. What?
2. The government can make a perfect porn-proof filter, even if private companies cannot. Wat.

This sounds like someone who wants to look at porn, but believes he (or she) shouldn't and feels this "responsibility" should be entrusted to higher powers in order to protect he/she from his/her vices. Anyone can be almost completely free of porn (edge leaks excluded) with a minimum of effort. What M.G. wants is something that prevents users from accessing porn, even if they want to. Signees want the government to force ISPs to be their conscience, so to speak.

Don't believe that? Check out the list of signatures. One state is hugely over-represented.

Utah.

Now, I won't paint everyone in Utah with the same brush, but the state does have, shall we say, a prevailing religion. Now, like most religions, Mormons believe porn is "wrong." Thus, it would follow that they'd like to see it blocked. But why would they feel the government should get involved, what with church and state and all that?

Because Utah can't help itself.

A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states…

Utah has the nation's highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.

All speculation, of course, but this looks a whole lot like a bunch of people want assistance curbing their vices. This puts the onus (a word that only sounds dirty) on someone else to put them on the path to righteousness. More "evidence?" The next two states listed most frequently are Idaho (Utah Lite) and Texas (a state that elected Rick Perry, someone who still makes political hay complaining about the disappearance of prayer from public schools).

Now, the petition is gaining new signatures at a slow but pretty steady pace, making it a long shot to make 100,000. But not impossible. So, there's a slim chance the administration may have another petition to ignore (or talk around) by the end of November.

Conversely, if you're one of those people completely unaffected by this sort of moral panic, you may be finding your internet is woefully inefficient when it comes to delivering the porn-y goodness. Good news! Someone out there, also inspired by David Cameron's porn blocking, has compiled a bit of scripting to help you properly filter the internet [possibly NSFW - "denial" page contains hand-drawn penises] by swiftly separating the porn wheat from the overly-inhibited chaff (via Egg Miliband) by using a porn filter against itself.

The filter is a dns server which checks all queries against the OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS server. Any request that is denied by OpenDNS is then allowed by our DNS server, and any request allowed by OpenDNS is blocked by us.

The server itself is built using the python Twisted framework which handles both the DNS requests and acts as a simple web-server to host the denial page.

Here's a brief video explaining the HOW. [Again, NSFW - penis drawings]



Happy surfing!

Filed Under: petitions, porn filters, us

India's Approach To Pharma Patents Under US Attack, But Other BRICS Nations Likely To Adopt It

from the closing-the-barn-door dept

Techdirt has been reporting for a while on India's growing success in providing its population with access to low-cost generic drugs, making use of the permissions to do so granted by TRIPS. That has naturally earned it the ire of Western pharma companies, which now seem to be striking back, as this post on Infojustice.org explains:

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry and its Big Brother Chamber of Commerce have launched an all-out disinformation campaign against the India Patent Act and decisions rendered thereunder. They have enlisted allies in the U.S. government, including Members of Congress, the United States International Trade Commission, Secretary of State Kerry, and even President Obama, to carry their claims to the highest levels of the Indian government. They have threatened to insist that the U.S. file a WTO trade complaints against India in 2014 and that India no longer be permitted to export duty-free products to the U.S. under the Generalized System of Preferences.

As evidence for their campaign, the representatives of Big Pharma have claimed that India is violating US-based global norms for protecting patent rights, that it is adopting new patenting criteria not authorized by international law and allowing generic competition when it is not permissible, and that it is discriminating against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in favor protectionist policies that shield Indian generic companies and steal U.S. jobs.

The rest of the post -- written by Professor Brook K. Baker, whose work has been discussed here on Techdirt several times -- then goes on to explain in detail why those claims are false, and is well-worth reading to understand the legal issues here.

Interestingly, it looks like India could be joined by other nations in exploiting TRIPS flexibilities. An article in South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper reports that there is both legislation and a detailed report from the research arm of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies that have this as their goal, not just in Brazil, but elsewhere too:

Amending intellectual property legislation is just what the country aims to do with the release of a 363-page report earlier this week by the Brazilian [Chamber of Deputies] Centre for Strategic Studies and Debates.

The report's suggested changes mirror those outlined in a Bill tabled in Brazil's Parliament earlier this year.

Although the Bill has yet to be heard, lead report writer Pedro Paranaguà, intellectual property adviser for the ruling Workers Party, says that he hopes the document "will serve as a means for influencing court decisions, the competition authority, and academics -- nationally, and internationally".

In the same article, Baker explains why India succeeded in creating a flourishing domestic drug industry, while Brazil did not:

Although developing countries had until 2005 to adopt the Trips Agreement into their national laws, Baker says that Brazil acceded nearly a decade earlier because the US pressured the country into adopting more stringent intellectual property measures by placing it on its Special 301 Report.

…

India, in contrast, waited until the 2005 deadline. As such, the country did not have to respect pharmaceutical patents, which helped India to develop a strong generic pharmaceutical sector. The country is now famously known as the "pharmacy of the developing world", supplying the majority of the [antiretroviral drugs] used in Africa.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, an open letter from 130 organizations and experts to the Department of Trade and Industry there is urging similar pro-health patent moves to those in Brazil:

South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has expressed its intention that reform of the intellectual property system will balance patients' rights with those of patent-holders. Given South Africa's high burden for both communicable and non-communicable diseases, this is a positive step towards addressing the current imbalance in the system in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, the protection of public health, and the transfer and dissemination of technology, especially in sectors of vital importance to socio-economic and technological development. The DNPIP [Draft National Policy on Intellectual Property] proposes several reforms that would make use of pro-public health flexibilities allowable under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). Many other countries, including India and Argentina, have already incorporated TRIPS flexibilities into their national laws, and others, like Brazil, are initiating comparable pro-health patent law reforms. These countries and others have also implemented TRIPS-compliant flexibilities to procure more affordable medicines and to strengthen domestic pharmaceutical capacity. We think that intellectual property law reforms are essential for South Africa to meet its human rights obligations, including the right to health and the right of access to medicines.

This is doubtless exactly what Western pharma companies feared would happen. India's example is now inspiring other BRICS countries to follow suit, making use of flexibilities in TRIPS to provide desperately-need medicines to their populations at affordable prices. Current US attempts to attack India's approach to pharma patents are not just unjustified, as Baker explains, but quite simply too late.

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Filed Under: india, patents, pharmaceuticals, trips, us

White House Assures German Chancellor It Is Not And Will Not Monitor Her Calls... Won't Comment On The Past

from the says-a-lot dept

Another day, another foreign country realizing that the NSA is spying on its leadership. This time around, it's Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel, alerted to the possibility by reporters working on Snowden documents for Spiegel, called President Obama to confront him about evidence that the NSA was monitoring her mobile phone calls.

During her conversation with Obama, Merkel expressed her expectation that "US authorities would provide an explanation about the possible extent of such surveillance practices, and thus answer questions that the German government already posed months ago," Seibert said.

"As a close ally of the United States of America, the German government expects a clear contractual agreement on the activities of the agencies and their cooperation," he added.

Of course, as with similar revelations recently concerning Brazil, France and Mexico, none of this should really be all that surprising. Spying agencies spy on top elected officials and bureaucrats in other countries all the time. It's what they do. A lot of the reaction to getting caught is just political theater. It's embarrassing, but not nearly as big a deal as governments spying on citizens. That said, the amusing bit is this:

"The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel."

Oh, and this:

The spokeswoman did not wish to specify whether this statement applied to the past.

And this:

[the] NSA, asked [about the White House's] statement wording, officially says it has nothing to add [about] whether Merkel was targeted in the past

Yup. Genius move by the White House spin doctors there. Say we're not monitoring and won't in the future, calling that much more attention to the question of "in the past" and then refuse to make any statements about that.

Filed Under: angela merkel, barack obama, espionage, germany, nsa, nsa surveillance, us, white house