White House Petition Demanding Open Access Requirements For Federally Funded Research

from the sign-on dept

For years we've discussed the issue of open access for federally funded research. Currently, NIH has a program that requires any of the research that receives its funds to be available via public open access databases a year after its published elsewhere. While this still allows federally funded research to be locked up under a questionable copyright for a year, it's certainly better than locking it up for eternity. And while there have been some unfortunate efforts to ban NIH and other government agencies from requiring such conditions, many in academia favor such information sharing.

There is currently a White House petition asking the government to require such free access to scientific journal articles coming out of taxpayer-funded research. The Obama administration has indicated interest in doing this in the past, but has not done so. Forcing the administration to respond to the petition may help nudge them in the right direction. The petition still needs a lot more signatures, though, so get signing.

Filed Under: nih, open access, petition, research, white house

White House Cybersecurity Boss -- Who Argued Against Overhyping Threats -- Resigns

from the too-bad dept

There's been a lot of attention lately on various "cybersecurity" bills making their way through Congress, and the White House's role in the debate has been pretty important. So it's interesting to see that the White House's cybersecurity czar, Howard Schmidt, has announced that he's resigning. While I don't always agree with Schmidt, he was one of the few (perhaps only?) high level government officials talking about online security issues who seemed willing to avoid hyperbole. In fact, he actually hit back against those who kept talking about "cyberwar," saying there was no such thing and it was "a terrible concept." One hopes that his successor, Michael Daniel, will be similarly willing to push back against the rush of hype around "cybersecurity."

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, howard schmidt, michael daniel, white house

White House Reiterates Plans To Veto CISPA In Its Current Form; Though For The Wrong Reasons

from the amendments-not-convincing dept

As I'm sure you remember, the House passed CISPA with a few amendments -- some of which may have limited the possible abuses, while at the same time expanding the scope. Right before the bill went up for a vote, the White House stated that it would veto CISPA, if it got to the President's desk. It appears that, even with the amendments, the White House is still not willing to support the bill. White House "Cybersecurity Coordinator" Howard Schmidt appeared on CSPAN reiterating the White House's objections to CISPA, specifically calling out the problematic privacy issues.

That said, the White House is still supporting the Lieberman cybersecurity bill in the Senate, which isn't quite as bad as some of the other proposals, but still has plenty of problems. And, most importantly, still doesn't include any clear explanation for why it's needed. It's bizarre and troubling that no one in the federal government seems willing to provide a real justification for any of these bills others than "oooooh, it's scary out there on the internet!!"

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, veto, white house

CISPA Has NOT Been Fixed; It Could Allow The Gov't To Effectively Monitor Private Networks

from the don't-buy-the-hype dept

When the new discussion draft of CISPA was published, many people including myself praised the one point of sincere improvement in the bill: the modified definition of cybersecurity that focused on network attacks. Unfortunately, the authors of the bill are spinning this to suggest that CISPA is now nearly perfect, and some media outlets and even advocacy groups are buying it—even though nothing could be further from the truth, and the White House still opposes the nature of the bill. CISPA still has big, big problems. In fact, closer analysis by the CDT and EFF suggest that the language may be worded to allow what is effectively direct government monitoring of private networks.

Government networks are protected by a network security system called Einstein, which is being steadily expanded to do things like analyze the content of communications. Such software meets all the criteria of a "cybersecurity system" under CISPA, and there is serious concern that the bill would permit the government to offer Einstein or a similar system to private cybersecurity companies. By CISPA's definitions, everything collected by such a system would qualify as "cyber threat information" and thus be open game for sharing with the government—and nothing in the bill would prevent these private systems from being connected live to government databases, effectively uniting them with the government's own security network.

Yes, it would still be voluntary—the government couldn't force a cybersecurity provider to install their software, and the provider would need to get permission from its clients to share the data. But it's not hard to envision a situation developing very quickly, in which the government gets a few major security players hooked up and their clients routinely agree without a second thought. After all, CISPA's extremely limited liability provisions mean there's little to no risk for companies. Some may question whether the government would actually move in this direction under CISPA, but given the fact that the NSA has been trying to expand Einstein to private networks since the Bush administration, giving them the legal ability to do so is a very bad idea.

Filed Under: cdt, cispa, cybersecurity, eff, einstein, surveillance, white house

White House Criticizes CISPA, Though Meekly And For Partially Wrong Reasons

from the still,-it's-something dept

With next week's vote on CISPA looming, the White House has made an official statement that implicitly criticizes the bill without mentioning it by name. The Hill reports that National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden issued the statement after a cybersecurity briefing in Congress:

"The nation’s critical infrastructure cyber vulnerabilities will not be addressed by information sharing alone," Hayden said.

"Also, while information sharing legislation is an essential component of comprehensive legislation to address critical infrastructure risks, information sharing provisions must include robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens. Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation's urgent needs," she said, without explicitly mentioning CISPA.

While it's very good to hear them to make privacy concerns a central point, the administration's reasons for this position are not entirely the same as the citizens and civil liberties groups who oppose CISPA. The White House endorses the Lieberman-Collins bill in the Senate, which does indeed include better privacy protections (including an all-important requirement to anonymize shared data whenever possible), but also grants the federal government broad new regulatory powers relating to cybersecurity and critical infrastructure. This is in stark contrast to CISPA, which explicitly forbids regulatory usage. The White House wants to be able to start creating rules for "critical infrastructure" providers, which is undoubtedly the number one reason they support the Lieberman-Collins bill—but granting them that power is opening up a whole different can of worms. Nevertheless, though not an explicit or especially strong condemnation, this statement from the White House still adds significant weight to the growing CISPA opposition. The fact that the bill they are backing has its own problems really just points to the bigger and more important question: is there really any need to rush to create new cybersecurity legislation.

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, white house

MPAA Pretends Dodd Didn't Say That New SOPA Negotiations Were Underway

from the nice-try-guys dept

So Chris Dodd just said that there were ongoing backroom negotiations for a new SOPA, with some push from the White House. Of course, he did it with a wink and a nod, by saying he was "confident" that such was "the case" but that he wouldn't "go into more detail, because obviously if I do, it becomes counterproductive." When asked to clarify, he made it clear that Obama was pressuring the tech community to agree to a version of SOPA:

I'm not going to revisit the events of last winter. I'll only say to you that I'm confident he's using his good relationships in both communities to do exactly what you and I have been talking about.

For all the winking and nodding, the meaning of the statement was pretty clear. Of course, now that it's getting plenty of attention and the MPAA is getting slammed from every direction for continuing its braindead backroom strategy, the organization is simply denying Dodd said what he said:

"Sen Dodd did not say SOPA is coming back to life. He said the tech and entertainment industries need to come together to work on a new solution and those conversations are beginning. SOPA is gone. The path forward now is a serious conversation between all involved industries about new solutions, and that was Sen Dodd's point."

That's an interesting twist on what he actually said, but even if we take the MPAA at their word, this still shows how out of touch they are. Notice that they say the path forward is not an open conversation with internet users. Nope. It's a backroom negotiation between "all involved industries." It's as if the MPAA can't even get its mind around the fact that the stakeholders here are the internet users -- or that any such discussions should be done in public. Instead, the only thing it can think of is that it has to negotiate in backrooms with industry reps. I don't think I've ever come across an organization so ridiculously tone deaf.

Filed Under: chris dodd, mpaa, sopa, white house

Time To Start Again On 'Six Strikes' And Let Internet Users Have A Seat At The Table

from the all-the-stake-holders dept

One of our key concerns with the so-called "voluntary" six strikes agreement set up between the ISPs and the content companies (with a major shove from the White House) was the fact that there was no one representing the users at the table. As much as the White House has insisted that the entertainment industry alone represents "all the stakeholders," the simple fact is that copyright law is supposed to benefit the public, not the legacy industry gatekeepers.

And while it may have been the way things were done around copyright in the past, the public's reaction to SOPA should have changed that equation. No longer should decisions around copyright law that effect the public internet users be made without their input. And, yet, that's exactly what happened with the six strikes agreement. Even if the new Center for Copyright Infringement (CCI), which has been set up to run the new six strikes program, has appointed some consumer rights advocates to its powerless "advisory" board, shouldn't we go back to the drawing board and have a true, open discussion about these things that includes the users of the internet? After all, aren't they the true stakeholders here?

The folks over at the EFF are calling for a complete "reset" on the agreement, and saying that it's time to do it correctly: with internet users at the table, rather than kept out of the room. The statement notes that the advisory board is not the same as including internet users in the process:

An advisory board is just that: a group of advisors, not decisionmakers. No matter how you slice it, subscribers don't have a seat at the table now any more than they did in the earlier negotiations.

Instead, they point out that the only way this is going to be done in a way that's fair and that actually serves the true purpose of copyright law is to start again, and have the discussion done in public where the public has a true say in what happens:

So here's an idea: press reset. This collaboration has been years in the making, with the ISPs under heavy pressure from the content industries and government officials. It may be that they made the best deal they could under the circumstances, but since then the world has changed. If the ISPs decided to take this back to drawing board, we think their customers will stand with them, loudly and publicly -- but only if they also insist that their customers have voice in the process.

Indeed. This may have seemed like a crazy idea pre-SOPA blackout, but since then, the public is aware and energized on this issue -- and they want to participate in the conversation. The number one point we've heard over and over again since the January 18th blackouts is about how the public can get involved in a positive agenda around copyright. Here's a key opportunity. The big ISPs who signed on to this six strikes deal should call for a brand new discussion, one that is not done in a backroom, but is done in public, where the public can take part.

Filed Under: graduated response, six strikes, sopa blackout, white house
Companies: cci, eff

Did The White House Call For A New SOPA?

from the missed-that-one dept

On Friday, the White House's annual report on "IP enforcement" came out, and we noted the serious problems with the report. However, we did miss a little tidbit that Declan McCullagh picked up on. Hidden in the details of the report, it does suggest that we still need a "legislative solution" to offshore file sharing -- which was the point of SOPA/PIPA:

"We believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools are needed to address offshore infringement."

Now, the report also does reiterate what the White House said earlier during the SOPA/PIPA fight: that it would not support DNS blocking or other legislative efforts that harm the internet, but just saying that it supports some legislation at all seems pretty questionable. If anything, it's probably a wink and a nod towards Hollywood to try again, with something less overreaching. Of course, anything that's cooked up in the backrooms again simply isn't going to go over well, and (as I noted in my previous post on the report) it's a real shame that the White House doesn't even seem to acknowledge that the landscape and awareness on this issue has changed.

Filed Under: ip czar, ipec, pipa, sopa, victoria espinel, white house

White House's New Report On Intellectual Property Enforcement Should Get A Copyright As A Creative Work Of Fiction

from the maybe-hollywood-can-make-the-movie dept

The 2008 ProIP Act put in place a number of problematic things, including (via a very sneaky backdoor method) the ability for the US government to directly censor websites (something many people thought was in SOPA but which is already a part of the law, according to a tenuous interpretation of the law by the Justice Department and Homeland Security). It also put in place the job of IP Enforcement Coordinator, officially known as IPEC, but more regularly called the Copyright Czar. The job isn't about more efficient or more effective IP. It's designed solely to push an agenda of greater enforcement as if that must be a good thing. While the current Copyright Czar, Victoria Espinel, actually has been very good in trying to hear from critics of expanded copyright enforcement, the nature of the job itself leaves her little room to do too much.

However, as part of the job, she releases an "annual report" on intellectual property enforcement. Now, as you hopefully know, content published by the federal government cannot be covered by copyright and is automatically in the public domain. But, reading through the newly released annual report (pdf and embedded below), it makes me wonder if we should make an exception here, as it appears to be, in large part, a work of fiction.

There are plenty of questionable things in the report, but I'm just going to focus on a few (we'd be here all day if I dug into even more of the report, but feel free to read and guffaw along with the entire report). Once again, the report seems to assume that "greater enforcement = good thing," despite a near total lack of evidence to support that position. In part, of course, this is the nature of the job itself, so the report has to slant in that direction. But there are some whoppers in the report. Let's dig into a few:

• "Improved transparency in intellectual property policy-makings and international negotiations." Wait, what?!? Yes, this is the same administration that has been the most secretive when it comes to negotiating IP laws and international agreements. SOPA came out of a secret backroom deal in which the tech industry and the public were entirely left out of the negotiations. That's why there was a public revolt over SOPA/PIPA.
  
  And, of course, ACTA and TPP negotiations have been significantly more secretive than traditional IP international agreements as negotiation via WIPO and the WTO. In those negotiations, positions are made publicly. With ACTA and TPP the US government has driven a policy of extreme secrecy, requiring special security clearance just to see drafts, and forbidding other countries from releasing reports. With TPP, the USTR has even agreed that the various documents surrounding the negotiations should be kept secret until four years after the agreement is completed and ratified. This is not transparency at all. It's the opposite of transparency. Saying you're transparent and actually being transparent are two different things.
  
  This is a point where the White House and IPEC in particular could be a lot more effective. It could revamp the entire Special 301 process to make that more transparent and less of a black box where the USTR basically "remixes" the complaints of Hollywood into a report shaming other countries. It could tell the USTR to release its positions and drafts for things like ACTA and TPP publicly so that the public (you know, the real stakeholders) can comment. It could call out the USTR for doing things like participating in an industry-sponsored dinner for negotiators, and partying in Hollywood with MPAA studio heads while kicking civil service organizations out of the hotel where they were meeting. But, instead, it pretends that there's more transparency? That's simply fictional.
  
  Patting itself on the back for including transparency when it's actually one of the most opaque administrations on such issues is simply ridiculous.



• What's not in the report. It's really quite stunning what's completely missing from the report. The omissions are quite telling, however. The report appears to completely skip over what happened with SOPA/PIPA. I mean, it's as if the widespread public backlash and outrage didn't happen at all. SOPA and PIPA are barely mentioned at all, and when they are, it's only to mention briefly how random parts of those bills (not the main parts) included little bits and pieces of the White House's legislative agenda on IP around "greater information sharing." How can a report on the state of IP enforcement completely leave out the biggest thing that's happened in IP enforcement in decades? The fact that the public has stood up and said enough is enough on greater expansion of making the government Hollywood's private business model protection service. That's a huge event and to completely ignore it is quite telling.
  
  Similarly, the report completely ignores last year's realization of the serious problems with Homeland Security's ICE's Operation in Our Sites, the program to seize and censor websites based on mere shreds of evidence. While the report does mention Operation In Our Sites multiple times, it's only to self-congratulate itself for such censorship. What it does not mention is that the program resulted in the wrongful seizure and censorship of sites based on faulty evidence, or the fact that it is still illegally censoring a few websites, despite not having filed for forfeiture, as required by the law.
  
  In fact, the report seems so ashamed of the November 2010 seizures -- which resulted in all three of the domains in question being seized -- is completely skipped over in the discussion. They discuss the seizures before that one (in the summer of 2010) as well as the operations in 2011 -- but the infamous November 2010 seizure round is simply being written out of history.
  
  I'd have a lot more respect for Espinel and IPEC if it would actually admit that they fucked up royally with some of these seizures, and then was willing to publicly explain what went wrong, why it went wrong and what the White House is doing to prevent such bogus seizures and censorship from ever occurring again. Instead? It just pretends it never happened at all. That's shameful behavior.



• "Voluntary best practices." The report talks up how there have been a variety of private sector "voluntary best practices" that were "facilitated by the IPEC." This includes things like the infamous "six strikes" plan that the ISPs have agreed to. While "private sector" solutions are good, what this leaves out is that the "facilitated by the IPEC" part was more about effectively threatening the ISPs that if they didn't come up with a plan, that it might show up in a law instead. Separately, the problem with "voluntary best practices" like this are that they really do seem to border on government-sponsored collusion. Getting all of the industry's largest players in a room to make agreements on who to do business with, who to censor and why... and without having it go through government review to avoid abuse? That's generally something the government used to be against. Why is it for collusion in these cases?



• "A data driven government." The report tries to suggest that the government is being more data driven, and less faith-based in its efforts, but that's belied by the fact that nowhere is any effort being made to empirically look at the effectiveness of this enforcement on "promoting the progress." Instead, the "data" the report talks about is the data on how they've taken the same budget and "turned it into a more than 33 percent increase in seizures, arrests, and investigations of counterfeit and pirated merchandise in FY 2010." But if those seizures, arrests and investigations are doing more harm than good, or are leading to false accusations, censorship and bogus (taxpayer-expensed) lawsuits, isn't that a problem? Shouldn't IPEC be exploring that?
  
  Separately, it notes that the federal government is conducting an "economic analysis." That's good, right? But it's not conducting an economic analysis on the effectiveness of this enforcement. Instead, it's conducting an economic study that, by the very setup of the study, is completely missing the point. It's actually designed to miss the point by starting with the assumption that greater IP is a good thing:

  At the request of the IPEC, the U S Government is for the first time conducting an economic analysis, led by DOC, the Economic and Statistics Administration (“ESA”), and the USPTO, working with chief economists across the Federal government, to identify the industries that most intensively produce intellectual property and to measure the importance of those industries to the U S economy This broad study will examine all sectors of our economy We believe that improved measurement of intellectual property linked to measurements of economic performance will help the U S Government understand the role and breadth of intellectual property in the American economy and will inform policy and resource decisions related to intellectual property enforcement

  And, no, I don't know why the report seems to do away with the grammatical icon known as "the period" at the end of sentences. Perhaps it was too expensive to license. Either way, notice that this study seems to assume, without evidence, that industries that "produce" intellectual property automatically require intellectual property laws and protectionism. Figuring out which industries produce a lot of intellectual property says nothing about whether or not those industries actually need intellectual property laws, or if those laws are helpful or harmful. When you set up to study something based on faulty assumptions, the end results will not be helpful.

All in all the report clearly tries to paint a rosy picture, but in leaving out the failures and being quite misleading in other parts, this really is a work of fiction, not reality.

Filed Under: copyright, enforcement, ip enforcement, ipec, victoria espinel, white house

If Phishing Email Can Kill NY Power Grid, Lack Of Cybersecurity Legislation Is Not The Problem

from the oh-come-on dept

We've been talking about the faux urgency to pass some cybersecurity legislation coming from the federal government, with plenty of fear mongering from politicians who never seem to want to point out any factual basis for why we need such new laws. Instead, it's all been about Hollywood movie script-style scenarios about planes falling from the skies. It appears that the White House is heavily involved in this bogus fear mongering as well, having recently set up a "simulated cyberattack on New York City's power supply" to convince elected officials to move forward on the legislation.

During a classified briefing in the Office of Senate Security, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan showed lawmakers how a hacker could breach control systems of the city’s electric system and trigger a ripple effect throughout the population and private sector, according to a source familiar with the scenario.

“The fact that we could be subject to a catastrophic attack under the right circumstances and we now know some of the things that would help us to protect against such an attack, that’s why it’s important now for the Congress to take this up,” Napolitano said in an interview with POLITICO.

Now that's interesting. Just how could a hacker breach control systems of the power grid? Apparently with an email phishing attack:

During the simulation, the hacker gains access to the electric supply’s control system through a simple “spearphishing” attack, in which a worker merely clicks on a link in an email that appears to be from someone they know.

Um, there's your problem. If the NYC power grid is attached to the public internet in such a way that it can be taken down, then um, shouldn't we take it off the internet? This isn't about cybersecurity, this is about common sense, where things like the power grid should not be accessible via the internet -- and I'm pretty sure they're not (back here in reality). But in the world where we need fear, uncertainty, doubt and the ability for the federal government to spy on private networks, we have to pretend such a scenario is likely.

Of course, I also question why the White House chose NYC as the showcase for the simulation and suggested that there would be deaths and other massive harm from such a power grid takedown. After all, it was just about a decade ago that the power grid in the Northeast did, in fact, fail. It was an inconvenience for many people, certainly, but it was hardly damaging in the way the White House seems to have implied with this scare tactic.

So, once again, can we take a step back and ask some simple questions: what's the real threat and the real risk here? If it's that the NYC power grid is accessible by a simple password over the public internet, then the problem isn't cybersecurity, it's whoever was stupid enough to connect the power grid to the internet. Let's fix that. But let's not regulate and spy on large segments of the public internet to cover for a few bad decisions.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, fear mongering, hype, nyc, phishing, power grid, terrorism, white house