How Much Of Europe's Regulatory Interest In Silicon Valley Is Just Jealousy Over Successful Foreign Companies?

from the real-or-imagined dept

A month ago, the EU brought down the antitrust hammer on Google -- with somewhat suspicious timing. As we noted, the move by EU regulators to claim that Google violated antitrust laws came the very same day that the EU's digital commissioner, Gunther Oettinger announced that the EU should more heavily regulate American internet companies to help European competitors get a leg up against them:

The European Union should regulate Internet platforms in a way that allows a new generation of European operators to overtake the dominant U.S. players, the bloc’s digital czar said, in an unusually blunt assessment of the risks that U.S. Web giants are viewed as posing to the continent’s industrial heartland.

Speaking at a major industrial fair in Hannover, Germany, the EU’s digital commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, said Europe’s online businesses were “dependent on a few non-EU players world-wide” because the region had “missed many opportunities” in the development of online platforms.

Mr. Oettinger spoke of the need to “replace today’s Web search engines, operating systems and social networks” without naming any companies.

And this week, the NY Times has an article about the increasing attention Facebook is getting from European regulators as well. In that case, it's not so much antitrust issues (though, those are raised on the side), but much more focused on data protection/data privacy issues.

To be clear, Facebook doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to handling privacy issues of its users. The company has a history of changing its privacy policies with little notice, sometimes in ways that appear to unilaterally shift the privacy settings on certain information. Frankly, much of this was a result of Facebook needing to shift from what was an almost entirely closed network to one that was much more public and open -- which was a key to the site becoming so successful. Frankly, while some of the criticism is well deserved, and Facebook's bull-in-a-china-shop approach to privacy in its earlier days was pretty startling, of late the company has appeared to be much better about things. And many of the earlier concerns proved to be almost entirely overblown by people misrepresenting things or taking things completely out of context.

That isn't to claim that Facebook is good for user privacy -- but the supposed fears about Facebook and privacy seem overblown. Yes, Facebook is super popular, but it's still a voluntary system that you can choose to use or not. If you really don't like the company, it's not hard to not use it and to block it from tracking you on various other sites. But that won't stop Europe from using fears over privacy as a wedge to attack the company:

Regulators in Europe, however, are especially focused on how the company collects and handles those users’ data. The region has some of the world’s toughest data protection rules, and policy makers from France, Germany and Belgium are investigating whether Facebook broke Europe’s laws after the company announced a new privacy policy this year.

If found to have breached the privacy rules, Facebook may face fines or demands that it change how the company handles people’s data, though the company says it complies with the region’s data protection laws.

Meanwhile, European regulators are also looking to regulate how Facebook's messaging systems work:

Yet lawmakers are now looking into whether Facebook’s messaging services should be regulated like those offered by traditional carriers. And industry executives say that as the social network starts to offer other services like phone calls through the company’s many smartphone applications, Facebook should play by the same rules that now apply to traditional mobile operators.

It will be worth watching closely to see what regulators come up with. It is, of course, entirely possible that these internet companies really are doing bad things that should require regulators to step in. But, to date, there's been a lot of puffed up smoke, rather than any actual fire. And it really seems like the interest from EU regulators has more to do with the fact that these companies are (1) big and successful and (2) American rather than European.

Filed Under: antitrust, eu, jealousy, policy, privacy, regulation, silicon valley
Companies: facebook, google

Should Open Source Intelligence Be Used For Policy Making?

from the transparent-and-verifiable dept

Last summer, we wrote about the rise of open journalism, whereby people take publicly-available information, typically on social networks, to extract important details that other, more official sources either overlook or try to hide. Since then, one of the pioneers of that approach, Eliot Higgins, has used crowdfunding to set up a site called "Bellingcat", dedicated to applying these techniques. Principal themes there include the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), and the civil war in Syria.

Higgins recently published a post on the blog of the Policy Institute at King's College, London, in which he suggested that such open source intelligence (OSINT) could be used for formulating policy in situations where traditional sources of information are limited:

In recent years, content shared via social media from conflict war zones has allowed us to gain a far deeper understanding of the on-the-ground realities of specific conflicts than previously possible. This presents a real opportunity for providing robust evidence which can underpin foreign and security policymaking about emerging, or rapidly escalating, conflict zones.

He cites his own group's work on the shooting-down of the MH17 flight as an example, noting some of the advantages and challenges:

Our research on the Buk missile launcher demonstrates that not only is there a wealth of largely untapped information available online and especially on social media, but also that a relatively small team of analysts is able to derive a rich picture of a conflict zone. Clearly, research of this kind must be underpinned by an understanding of the way in which content is being produced, who is sharing it, and, crucially, how to verify it -- and these are methodological challenges which need to be addressed systematically.

That call for open source information to be used more widely has now been echoed by two researchers at the International Centre for Security Analysis, also at King's College -- not surprisingly, perhaps, since they too use this technique in their work:

There is a powerful case for incorporating OSINT approaches to evidence-based policymaking. In the first place, evidence produced by OSINT methods can be both robust and rigorous, not least because it can be underpinned by extensive datasets. And in the second, it has the potential to be both transparent and verifiable; all open source evidence is, by definition, based on data that is publicly (and often freely) available.

However, they note that so far the uptake of such methods to inform policy-making has been very limited. Here's why:

At the heart of the problem is the fact that OSINT approaches are still relatively 'young' and, all too often in our experience, lack the rigour and reliability needed to underpin effective policymaking.

To overcome those issues, they suggest that practitioners of OSINT should develop more reliable open intelligence tools and methods, and should communicate better the advantages of this approach. They also urge policy makers to take open source intelligence into consideration as an additional form of evidence, but given the conservatism and risk aversion in these circles, I imagine it will take some time before that happens.

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

Filed Under: open source intelligence, policy, research

Judge Tackles Police Use Of Radar To Scan Home Interiors And Comes Up With No Real Answers

from the it-comes-down-to-details-and-there-just-aren't-enough-of-those dept

Being in law enforcement often means brushing right up against the edges of the Fourth Amendment. It's your job to catch criminals, and most criminals have zero interest in being caught. The resulting surface tension is easily broken. Some breaks are inadvertent. Others are much more deliberate. But in this case, the circumstances are ambiguous at best.

A recent case presided over by Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit Court deals with these stretched edges. [via Orin Kerr] Convicted felon Steven Denson stopped meeting with his probation officer and holed up in his house, where he was subsequently arrested for parole violations and the illegal possession of firearms. (The guns hadn't been used in any criminal activity, but Denson's previous felony conviction made it illegal for him to possess them.)

We know Denson was in his house because the end result bears that out. Leading up to the entrance of his residence, the police gathered other information indicative of Denson's whereabouts: utilities registered in his name, his lack of employment and electricity usage that surpassed that of an empty house.

Denson challenged the arrest and the post-arrest seizure of weapons on the basis of a single act performed by the officers prior to entry: the use of Doppler radar to determine whether someone was actually on the premises.

While it's never specifically stated as such, the gist appears to be that the Doppler radar was considered a warrantless search by Denson -- something that should negate the actions of the officers following the radar's use. The police had no warrant to search the premises, only a warrant to effect an arrest. While he was being arrested, police swept his home (without a warrant), uncovering the illegal weapons. Judge Gorsuch -- after some discussion on whether the police had enough "probable cause" to believe Denson was at home -- tackles the issue of the radar itself, something that presents Fourth Amendment concerns. [pdf link]

Separately and as we alluded to earlier, the government brought with it a Doppler radar device capable of detecting from outside the home the presence of “human breathing and movement within.” All this packed into a hand-held unit “about 10 inches by 4 inches wide, 10 inches long.” The government admits that it used the radar before entering — and that the device registered someone’s presence inside. It’s obvious to us and everyone else in this case that the government’s warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions. See, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33-35 (2001) (holding that using warrantless thermal imaging to show activity inside a home violated the Fourth Amendment) New technologies bring with them not only new opportunities for law enforcement to catch criminals but also new risks for abuse and new ways to invade constitutional rights.

Denson argues the police had no reason to enter his home, much less search it. The only reason they did was because the Doppler radar indicated someone was in the house. He also argues that the use of the radar should have negated the officers' stated need to perform a sweep of the house for other individuals -- this protective sweep being the instrument of discovery for Denson's weapons stash.

The single mention of a precedential case (Kyllo v. United States) is inserted near the discussion about "grave Fourth Amendment questions," and never mentioned again. It would appear that the Doppler radar was a warrantless search of Denson's premises, at least under this Supreme Court ruling, but Gorsuch ignores this and focuses on the probable cause factors justfying entry of the home in the first place.

Gorsuch examines the protective sweep more closely, and finds it wanting, considering the pre-entry radar deployment. On one hand, Denson's history of violent crime and known violent criminal associates would have justified a "protective sweep" during his arrest. But, on the other hand, the cops already knew no one else was on the premises.

But what — again — about the radar? Before the officers entered, their radar search suggested the presence of one person inside. And given that, one might well wonder: did the officers’ questionable search outside the home paradoxically negate their otherwise solid case for a search inside the home? Surely, after all, the government isn’t entitled to perform searches to guard against phantom risks, ones they know don’t exist. If radar (or any other investigative technique for that matter) dispels the possibility of a hidden danger, a search predicated on that possibility becomes constitutionally unreasonable.

The government cannot take the benefit of a questionable radar search without having to live with its costs. Neither does the government seek to justify its protective sweep in this case on the presence of any threat (say, traps or bombs) that its radar wasn’t designed to detect. The government’s only professed fear was the presence of persons, something its radar was admittedly designed to detect.

Gorsuch could have pushed a bit more on this point, but unfortunately, defers to the unknown.

Even so, without more facts about the radar, its capacities and how it was used, we just can’t say it “dispel[led]” the officers’ “reasonable suspicion of danger” in this case. We know the radar suggested the presence of someone inside. But how far inside the structure could it see? Could the device search the whole house and allow the officers to be sure that they had located every person present? Could it distinguish between one person and several? We just don’t know. Our record lacks any answers. As a result, we simply aren’t in a position to say that the radar search negated the officers’ otherwise specific and articulable reasons to worry about a compatriot lurking inside.

And that's where it ends. Gorsuch notes that the use of these devices means this sort of thing will be discussed again. As for the police department, it's safe to assume it isn't interested in divulging further details about its technology, even if what it withholds may jeopardize the evidence it obtained.

But behind it all, there were two searches performed -- both without a warrant. First, there was the Doppler "search," which determined someone was home. Then there was the search performed under the guise of a "protective sweep." The guns were uncovered in a closet, something that would be checked during a sweep, but the question falls back to whether the sweep itself was justified. Gorsuch says basically that he just doesn't know and the question remains open until the situation presents itself again.

The troubling aspects about the Doppler radar align with concerns about Stingray devices. Police have used IMSI catchers to track down suspects without having to deal with search warrants -- something radar can do as well. In both cases, details about capabilities are left to the courts' imaginations. No one in law enforcement wants to talk about the level of intrusion or the inherent limits of the tech and, for the most part, their silence has been unchallenged.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, houses, policy, privacy, scanning, steven denson

Tennessee Town Passes Policy Banning Negative Comments About The Town's Government

from the the-Supreme-Court-has-roundly-rejected-prior-restraint dept

The commissioners of a small Tennessee town have just voted to ban negative comments about it from social media. This stupid move was prompted by "criticism and lies" being posted online, which supposedly "hampered" the town's government from performing its duties.

South Pittsburg City is a town of 3,000. This fact will limit the damage done by its city commissioners' new policy (which passed with 4-1 vote), but only because the town itself is tiny. The ban, however, is super-broad. (via Ben Swann and BRACE YOURSELF for always-awesome AUTOPLAY)

It applies to all city elected representatives, appointed board members, employees, volunteers, vendors, contractors and anyone associated with the town in an official capacity who uses social networks. The policy says those persons can't post anything negative about the city, its employees or other associates.

Examples include posted videos, blogs, online forum discussions, Facebook and Twitter, Commissioner Jeff Powers said.

Now, it's obvious that this ban violates the First Amendment rights of everyone involved. It's obvious to the lone dissenting voter, Paul Don King. It's not so obvious to the rest of the commissioners, who have offered a variety of terrible defenses the new policy.

Commissioner Jeff Powers:

"It seems like every few meetings we're having to address something that's been on Facebook and created negative publicity," he said. "This is just an industry standard nowadays."

Oh, lord. Have you ever heard of such a slight inconvenience? "Every few meetings." Sounds exhausting. If he thinks it's a drag dealing with negative comments periodically, just wait until he has to actively police social media for violators.

One, you're a government, not an "industry." So, that makes this move censorship rather than some sort of half-assed town TOS. It's called prior restraint and it's something the Supreme Court has recognized as a violation of First Amendment rights. You can't just tell any group of people they can't criticize the town or its employees/"other associates." That's not an "industry standard." It's not even a "government standard." Criticism is to be expected, not shut down.

Powers follows that up by attempting to clarify the situation, but only makes it more incomprehensible.

Powers said the policy doesn't forbid the use of social media, and it can be amended in the future.

"The first thing everyone wants to say is 'I can't post anything on Facebook,'" he said. "Well, you can. Just not [anything] that sheds a negative light on any person, entity, board or things of that nature. You can go ahead and post all you want."

Oh, OK. You're not banning anyone employed by or doing business with the city from using social media. You're just forbidding them from criticizing anyone employed by or doing business with the city. You can "post all you want" EXCEPT.

And "fixing it in post" with amendments isn't a great way to run a town's government. The idea is to produce good policies and statutes, not bad statutes that need to be amended (or rolled back) before they can mesh with the Constitution.

City Attorney Billy Gouger said the new policy is not intended to infringe on anyone's right to free speech.

"What this policy tries to do is reconcile that right with other rights," he said. "It does, to some extent, limit your ability to criticize or comment in an official capacity."

I am completely lost as to how Gouger has managed to reconcile the policy he passed with the words he's saying in defense of it. It is definitely "intended to curtail free speech." Free speech is the opposite of this policy's wording. How is "limiting your ability to criticize or comment" not a limit of free speech? Because it's in an "official capacity?" Even if that limitation manages to pass Constitutional muster (and good luck!), the limitation is effectively meaningless because the range of people this policy covers is so broad. "Volunteers, vendors and contractors" are still private citizens even if they're doing business with the town.

If you want to write individual agreements with each of these listed parties stating that doing business with (or being employed by) South Pittsburg City means not criticizing South Pittsburg City, then by all means do so. These parties can waive their rights, but it's still their choice. You can't just take it away. That (again) is prior restraint -- something that is exactly a "limit on free speech."

Finally, some words of "wisdom" from the mayor herself.

"Criticism is one thing," Mayor Jane Dawkins said. "Out-and-out lies and untruths -- that's another thing. Those kinds of things are the things that will be directed."

Hey, there's a civil process for dealing with lies and untruths. Try using that instead. Libel and defamation are not protected speech and any of the four easily-bruised members of the city commission should avail themselves of that remedy. Shutting people up with a stupid, unconstitutional policy isn't the answer, no matter how small your town is. That the number of people whose free speech rights have just been constrained will likely be low is no excuse. It's still what it is: censorship in the form of prior restraint.

Filed Under: free speech, jeff powers, negative comments, policy, social media, south pittsburg city, tennessee

You Can't Vote Out National Security Bureaucrats: And They, Not Elected Officials, Really Run The Show

from the well,-that's-unfortunate dept

A year ago, we noted a rather odd statement from President Obama, concerning some of the Snowden leaks. He more or less admitted that with each new report in the press, he then had to go ask the NSA what it was up to. That seemed somewhat concerning to us -- suggesting that the administration wasn't actually aware of what the NSA was up to until after it leaked to the press. Combine that with our more recent story of how James Clapper is basically ignoring the substance of President Obama's called for surveillance reforms, and you might begin to wonder who really runs the show when it comes to surveillance. And, indeed, according to a guy who knows quite well, the national security bureaucracy basically calls the shots, and the President has little to no power. That's the basic summary of an interview with Michael Glennon under the title Vote all you want. The secret government won't change in the Boston Globe.

Glennon is the author of a new book called National Security and Double Government, as summarized by the Boston Globe:

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.

And, yes, of course, there have long been conspiracy theory books about the "shadow government" and the like, but this one's from someone who actually worked on these issues.

He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

Basically, the story that Glennon describes is sort of an exact replica of the concerns that many people have about how lobbyists push legislators in a particular direction. While many like to ascribe nefarious intent to lobbying efforts, the reality is that oftentimes legislators don't fully understand a particular or specific area, and the people they turn to are the lobbyists. And, to some extent that's reasonable. You'd rather that regulators and legislators actually are informed about the issues they're making decisions on, but too often they don't understand those areas at all. The problem is that the "experts" who are readily available aren't unbiased purveyors of truth, but are those who have a very specific agenda.

The same thing is true of government bureaucrats within the intelligence community. They're going to advise elected officials in ways that continually push and expand their own capabilities and powers, rather than limit them. And while what happens with lobbyists is often not directly publicly viewable, there can at least be some public recognition of policies and regulations that come out of those discussions. When it comes to the intelligence community, many of the results are kept entirely secret, so there's basically no pushback and no "other side" heard. The intelligence community acts as secret lobbyists for the expansion of the surveillance state, and the government basically says "okay." And that doesn't even begin to go down the road of recognizing how much of this "expansion" of the surveillance state also happens to massively benefit the private corporations that former intelligence officials jump to right after leaving the government. Glennon covers all that and more:

It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”

And the end result is basically that elected officials don't really have the power to do anything, even if they're technically "in power."

I think the American people are deluded... that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy.... But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

All the more reason why Snowden's revelations were so important. They've helped expose just a tiny fraction of these policies being decided in near total secrecy by the intelligence community to further its own agenda -- leading to some much needed sunlight, finally forcing at least a tiny bit of debate into that corner of the world that thrives on being able to expand in secret.

Filed Under: bureaucrats, michael glennon, national security, nsa, policy, power, surveillance

EFF And ACLU Explain To Tennessee School Board That Its New Internet Policy Violates Both The 1st & 4th Amendments

from the a-twofer dept

We've seen over and over again recently that schools seem to have a bizarre notion of how the First Amendment works with things like "free speech zones" and the like. There are all sorts of policies popping up that try to ban free speech. In perhaps the most famous court case concerning free speech in schools, Tinker v. Des Moines, the Supreme Court noted, importantly, that students do not shed their constitutional rights just because they've entered a school building. More recently, the courts have (tragically) chipped away at that ruling, but the core of it still stands. And schools still don't seem to realize that it's true. Instead, they seem to want, increasingly, to regulate speech of students in completely unconstitutional ways.

Over in Tennessee, the EFF and the ACLU have teamed up to challenge a new school board policy from the Williamson County Board of Education, which is something of a twofer: not only does it violate the First Amendment, but the Fourth Amendment as well. The policy is the school's "Acceptable Use, Media Release, and Internet Safety Procedures and Guidelines" that effectively bar students from ever saying anything the school deems "inappropriate" or "unauthorized" on any computer equipment that they bring to school (even if the speech is done off-campus) and also make all of the students subject to searches of their devices and monitoring of what they do online. Here's the short summary from the letter (which is quite detailed and runs 10 pages long):

Of particular concern are (i) the social media guidelines applicable to students when engaged in off-campus speech; (ii) the "Bring Your Own Technology" guidelines, pursuant to which students are required to consent to suspicionless searches of their electronic devices "at any time" for any "school- related purpose"; and (iii) the network security and email guidelines, pursuant to which all data and communications of network users are subject to suspicionless monitoring.

While the Policy may be the product of a well-intentioned effort to ensure student safety and network security, and to ensure that classrooms are not disrupted, the Policy goes too far and, as written, violates students' constitutional rights. It (a) functions as a prior restraint on speech, allowing school officials to censor student speech in and out of school, and (b) permits officials to conduct suspicionless searches of (i) any electronic devices that students bring to school and (ii) all data and communications stored or transmitted on the WCS network. In so doing, the guidelines overstep the school district's authority and impermissibly burden the First and Fourth Amendment rights of WCS students. As the United States Supreme Court famously held in the landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, students do not "shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate."

Let's hope the school district recognizes its mistake, otherwise it appears that there may be a legal challenge to the policy coming up shortly.

Filed Under: first amendment, fourth amendment, free speech, policy, schools, social media, tennessee
Companies: williamson county schools

Mexican Activists' Stop-ACTA Victory: 'We Did It First, And We Did It Better'

from the the-politicization-of-copyright dept

The most important development in copyright policy in the 21st century has undoubtedly been the mass politicization of copyright. In the common telling, the 2012 US SOPA and European anti-ACTA protests are when this politicization became crystal clear, lessons for the entire world that citizens can shape copyright laws and treaties.

The SOPA and ACTA stories are important, both as sources of inspiration and as how-to lessons. Which is why it's a shame that another, earlier, anti-ACTA victory is in danger of being forgotten by activists.

As you might have read on Techdirt (and as I recount in greater detail in my just-published book), between 2010 and 2011, a dozen or so underfunded Mexican activists (with a key role played by artist and Techdirt contributor Geraldine Juárez) under the label of the Mexican Stop ACTA network and leveraging social media like Twitter, convinced the Mexican Senate unanimously to reject ACTA. Specifically, the Senate, which is responsible for ratifying international treaties, told the President they would not ratify ACTA if he signed it.

Since then, in July 2012, lame-duck President Felipe Calderón actually signed ACTA, but, almost two years later, it has yet to be submitted for ratification and it's unclear whether it would pass in any case. And of greater long-term importance, the Stop ACTA debate has user rights as a legitimate part of Mexican copyright discourse.

This already-impressive outcome becomes even more remarkable when you consider the context. In 2002, the Senate voted, with little debate and almost unanimously, to extend the copyright term to a world-leading life of the author plus 100 years, which was pretty indicative of the Senate's (and the government, generally) previous hands-off, maximalist approach to copyright.

The Stop ACTA network not only engineered the Senate's unanimous rejection of ACTA, but they did it in a country generally thought to have relatively weak political institutions, an underdeveloped civil society and relatively low broadband penetration rates, on an issue traditionally negotiated behind closed doors. Most remarkably, unlike SOPA and the European ACTA protests, they did it within the political system: the system worked. As Antonio Martínez, one of the Stop ACTA leaders, told the December 2013 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, "Mexico did it first, and we did it better." He's right.

Given that Mexico's political, social and technological situation is more like other developing countries' than are those of Europe or the United States, it's worth considering how they pulled it off. Spanish speakers can check out Ciudadanos.mx: Twitter y el cambio politico en México, which includes a chapter by two of the main Stop ACTA participants, Juárez and Mart'nez. Based on interviews with many of the key players that I conducted for my book, three factors were particularly important.

The Stop ACTA activists understood and exploited the particularities of their political system, working with sympathetic, well-placed legislators. In particular, they worked with Senator Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca, then chair of a key Senate committee, whom they knew from a previous battle over taxation of the Internet. Realizing that Mexican law requires that the Senate be kept informed of all economic-treaty negotiations, they exploited the secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations to convince even Senators from the President's party that they were being disrespected.

In terms of social media's political efficacy, broadband penetration rates are less important than politicians' views on the importance of social media. Legislators paid attention to Stop ACTA's Twitter presence because Barack Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign had convinced them that social media are politically relevant.

They successfully framed the ACTA question in terms of its potential violation of constitutional guarantees, such as access to information, free expression, communication, and access to education and culture. Its potential negative effect on economic development also did not go unnoticed.

Crucially, this was a made-in-Mexico movement. There might be a transnational copyright movement, but actual activism is still local. Also, while social-media technologies can make it easier to mount successful political campaigns, it's unclear whether diffuse networks like Stop ACTA have long-term staying power in protracted policy debates.

Even with those caveats, there are many lessons here for anyone interested in understanding online social movements. It suggests how citizens can leverage social media and an understanding of their domestic political regimes to effect political change. It's disappointing that this historic achievement is in danger of falling into the memory hole, even among copyright and open-Internet activists. It would be a shame if that were to happen.

Blayne Haggart (@bhaggart) is an assistant professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. His first book, Copyfight: The global politics of digital copyright reform was just published by University of Toronto Press.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, mexico, policy, social media, sopa

Latest Trade Agreements Are Re-defining Cultural Choices As 'Non-Tariff Barriers' That Need To Be Eliminated

from the insensitive-much? dept

It's something of a misnomer to call TPP, TTIP and TISA trade agreements: they go far beyond traditional discussions about things like tariff removal, and are encroaching on domains that are as much cultural as economic. That is, many of things that the US dubs "trade barriers" are in fact long-standing expressions of national priorities, preferences and beliefs. That's evident in an interesting post from Public Citizen's Eyes on Trade blog, which explores the 2014 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (pdf). Public Citizen points out:

The policies of other TPP nations criticized by the 384-page USTR report include New Zealand's popular health programs to control medicine costs, an Australian law to prevent the offshoring of consumers' private health data, Japan's pricing system that reduces the cost of medical devices, Vietnam's post-crisis regulations requiring banks to hold adequate capital, Peru's policies favoring generic versions of expensive biologic medicines, Canada's patent standards requiring that a medicine's utility should be demonstrated to obtain monopoly patent rights, and Mexico's "sugary beverage tax" and "junk food tax."

None of those is a real trade "barrier", but rather a policy choice seeking to bring about certain results that presumably correspond to the wishes of the local electorate. The cultural aspects of these so-called "barriers" are even clearer in the case of Malaysia:

The report takes issue with Malaysia's "extremely high effective tariff rates" on alcohol and its strict licensing policy for the importation of pork -- strange "barriers" to highlight in a country where three out of every five people are Muslim. Malaysia's halal standards for meat have also been targeted as a "barrier" in a companion USTR report on Technical Barriers to Trade (published in 2013, the most recent edition available). USTR is concerned that Malaysia requires "slaughter plants to maintain dedicated halal production facilities and ensure segregated storage and transportation facilities for halal and non-halal products."

Again, it's quite evident neither of those has anything to do with "market distortions", and everything to do with the fact that Islam is an important cultural element of Malaysian society. It is only natural that its laws and regulations should reflect that. Similarly, the following is likely to be an expression of Japanese society itself, not some evil plan to shut out foreign companies:

The report critiques Japan's laws protecting the privacy of citizens' personal data, calling them "unnecessarily burdensome." The U.S. government, according to the report, "has urged the Japanese government to reexamine the provisions and application of the Privacy Act, so as to foster appropriate sharing of data..."

Presumably those laws were passed because the Japanese value their privacy, and specifically wish to limit the sharing of personal data. But the USTR seems to think it is reasonable to demand that Japanese society change its attitudes in order to make the laws less "burdensome" to US companies operating there. The Japanese section also contains the following:

The report calls for "timely and accurate disclosure" of key texts related to Japan's postal reform, and "public release of meeting agendas, meeting minutes, and other relevant documents." In contrast, leaks have revealed that the United States and other TPP countries have agreed to keep TPP texts classified until four years after the agreement enters into force or talks collapse.

The lack of transparency for TPP is no simple matter of hypocrisy: it is an assault on local democracy. That's because the TPP negotiations are not haggling over a few tariffs, they are imposing a wide range of economic and social norms for an entire region. Conducted in secret, without any meaningful input from the people who will be most affected, these new-style agreements undermine the usual legislative process. This shift is yet another reason why TPP, TTIP and TISA must be opened up to allow greater public participation and input. If they are not, they are likely to be perceived as something imposed from above, and lacking in legitimacy. That's precisely what happened with ACTA; it led to tens of thousands of people taking to the streets, and ultimately rejection by the European Parliament.

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Filed Under: non-tarrif barriers, policy, sovereignty, tafta, tisa, tpp, trade agreements, ttip

DailyDirt: Monopoly Isn't Just Some Game You Can Play...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've talked about monopolies of various kinds around here before, because monopolies are oftentimes fascinating examples of markets not quite doing what most folks think markets should do. Monopoly issues are also not as black-and-white as they're made out to be in the news, and there are some intriguing (unanswered) questions about how to properly regulate monopolies -- and numerous examples of unintended consequences of poor regulation. Here are just a few more stories on monopolies that you might have come across.

• Has Trader Joe's cornered the market on pretzels filled with peanut butter? It's a market worth tens of millions of dollars, and how many different brands can you think of that sell these kinds of snacks? Maxim Marketing claims to have invented the snack in the 1980s, and it's suing Trader Joe's and ConAgra for creating a peanut-butter-filled pretzel snack monopoly. [url]
• Maybe you've never heard of "Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha" -- but you've probably seen the initials YKK on some of your zippers. YKK is a Japanese company that has about half of the world's zipper business (however, zippers make up less than half of YKK's revenues). [url]
• Apple was once an underdog in the PC business, but when it got into smartphones, CEO Steve Jobs didn't shy away from his market power. Court documents reveal Jobs threatened Palm's CEO with patent lawsuits if Palm didn't agree to fix high tech worker wages and join a tech company alliance that wouldn't try to hire away employees from each other. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: market power, monopoly, policy, pretzels, regulation, steve jobs, wage fixing, ykk, yoshida kogyo kabushikikaisha, zippers
Companies: apple, conagra, maxim marketing, palm, trader joe's, ykk