Kim Davis's Approach To Email More Outdated Than Her Views On Marriage

from the literally-does-not-compute dept

Kim Davis -- yes, THAT Kim Davis -- is proving to be as willfully obtuse in her other duties as a Kentucky county clerk as she has been in refusing to recognize the Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriage. Her brief stint in the local jail for contempt charges hasn't dampened her indomitable spirit, much to the chagrin of her critics, fellow employees (except her son, who works in her office as a deputy clerk) and anyone still attempting to make their way past her refusal to separate church and state.

Shawn Musgrave has requested all of Kim Davis's emails (sent or received) from August 1st through September 16th. It would appear Davis's current status as a pariah/hero (mileage varies greatly) has resulted in an outpouring of support/hate. According to her estimate, there are 6,000 emails responsive to Musgrave's request. So, of course, she has decided to handle her office's response in the least efficient way possible.

Hello,

I have received your request and need to confirm, I can furnish you with all that you have requested. There are well over 6000 or so emails received/sent during the time period you have ask for. With that being said, there will be considerable time and paper consumed in the processing of your request. I am estimating approximately 40 hours of labor at $12.50 per hour to retrieve and print all emails, along with a copy fee of $.10 per copy and the open records $3.00 fee plus postage for mail (estimated $100.00) for the request. This would make the approximate amount due $1,203.00. Once that amount is received, ($1,203.00 will be considered a deposit until all the records have been processed, if it is less, I will refund you the difference, and if more is due, I will contact you with the additional amount due prior to releasing said records), your request can begin to be processed.

Respectfully,

Kim Davis
Rowan County Clerk

Yes, as you probably would have guessed even without seeing it in [print] pixels, Kim Davis is one of THOSE people. The kind of person who still thinks email is a passing fad/tool of the devil and views trips to the post office as social events. And if she isn't one of THOSE people, she's one of those OTHER people -- the kind of public servant who thinks the government's job is to be as much of a standoffish dick as possible to the "little people" who pay their salaries. (Think every DMV you've ever set foot in...)

Davis's response was probably meant to dissuade Musgrave from pursuing this further. She picked the wrong FOIA warrior to tangle with.

Musgrave's immediate followup was to ask why in the name of all that is considered holy by certain people/not-so-holy by others would someone print out 6,000 emails and hand them off to the next Pony Express rider?

Is it possible to avoid copying time and fees by sending electronic copies of the emails?

Best,
Shawn

Davis's tone then shifts from deliberately unhelpful to "I'm in charge here" dismissiveness.

Dear Sir,

I have responded to and conveyed what all was needed to be able to process your request. I do not have the means to transfer electronic and the email dated 9-16-2015 is still my response. Once you have sent the fees as I had indicated in the email dated 9-16-2015, your request will be processed as timely as possible.

I think what Davis is trying to say is she doesn't have the "technical capability" needed to "transfer electronic." And I'm going to assume she's above asking for help. If not, then she's just trying to make Musgrave pay for inconveniencing her with an open records request.

Musgrave asks for clarification on the inability to "transfer electronic" and receives nothing more than Davis impatiently tapping her finger on the printout of her original response to his request.

Musgrave then tries to get some assistance on appealing her decision to ramp up fees by felling a forest. Davis basically tells him he's screwed.

Dear Mr. Musgrave,

Your consideration regarding my response contrary to the spirit and letter of the KRS in estimating cost to your KORA request is not substantiated. The Attorney General Opinion from 2012 states 'the agency may, but is not required to, provide the requested format. The agency may then recover staff costs as well as any actual costs it incurs.'

I was trying to be fair in this request, while I do retain the right, through the Kentucky Open Records Law, to refuse your request all together, as it is an 'overly burdensome request'. Again, I will refer to the email dated 09-16-2015 for the cost of this request and upon receipt, your request will be processed in as timely manner as possible.

Nah. There's nothing "fair" about her response. It's now clear she's taken this open records request up as Yet Another Personal Crusade in which Davis abuses her elected position to withhold for as long as legally possible something the law requires her to hand over.

Musgrave then tells Davis he will be filing a complaint with the District Attorney over the excessive fees, as is provided for in Kentucky's open records laws. No dice.

Mr. Musgrave,

I have tried to be obliging to you and your request, however, if you feel I have not, you may do as you have stated in your email.

With that being said, if you feel reviewing and printing or transmitting well over 6000 emails is not a burdensome task, I am sorry. I have said many times prior and will say again in this email, I will be happy to complete your request, for the fees as discussed in the email dated 09-16-2015…

Musgrave says, "Let me help you lower the cost."

Ms. Davis -

That is a substantial number of emails, admittedly. I am attempting to lower your manhour requirement (as well as the cost) by requesting that emails be sent in electronic format, rather than printed. As printing comprises approximately half of your fee estimate, eliminating the print requirement would cut down the cost considerably.)

And with that, Davis is done discussing this with Musgrave. After two more attempts to have the unresolved issue (the unnecessary printing of electronic mail) cleared up -- and receiving no response from Kim Davis -- Musgrave utilizes a communication Davis might be more familiar with.

Ms. Davis -

As you've stopped replying to emails regarding my two open requests — both of which you initially acknowledged by email — I am reaching out by fax.

Apparently Davis still answers faxes. But her answer is the same obstinate recital of her first estimate and a brief reminder that nothing will be returned to him until payment is made. A little more back-and-forth confirms Davis believes she's entirely in the right and that Musgrave's threatened appeal will go nowhere.

Because it appears nothing will move forward without payment and/or the District Attorney weighing in on the massive tree cull Davis has planned, Musgrave is crowdfunding the release of these emails over at MuckRock. The final total appears to be nearly $1,400. For 6000 emails that could easily fit on a single $10 USB stick/$1 blank DVD.

What makes Davis' response even worse is that when the emails finally arrive in paper format, Musgrave will have to spend his own time converting them back to electronic format. It's yet another case where government employees begrudgingly follow the letter of the law while steamrolling right over its spirit.

Filed Under: charges, email, fees, foia, kentucky, kim davis, public records, shawn musgrave

Important California Privacy Bill Signed Into Law: Police Need A Warrant To Look At Your Data

from the now-for-federal-reform dept

For a long time now, we've been talking about the need for ECPA reform. ECPA -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- is a truly outdated piece of law that law enforcement regularly abuse to conduct warrantless searches on your digital information. There are a number of problems with it, but the most cited one is the fact that it considers emails to be "abandoned" if they've been on a server for 180 days, and thus no warrant is needed to read those emails. That may have made sense in the mid-1980s when the law passed and the few people who used email downloaded their emails from a server to a local disk, but it makes no sense at all in the cloud era. However, actually getting ECPA reform through Congress has proven difficult, in large part because some in law enforcement really like this ability to snoop on your emails.

Thankfully, here in California, Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a new bill, for CalECPA, which protects users' digital information here in California. Just like the federal ECPA should do, CalECPA requires a warrant for access to digital records, including emails and text messages -- and the same goes for geographical location information.

This is a big win for EFF and the ACLU, who have been pushing for this law to make it through the California Assembly and then have Governor Brown sign it. Now, if only we could do something similar at the federal level...

Filed Under: calecpa, california, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, jerry brown, location info, privacy, text, warrant

CIA, FBI And Much Of US Military Aren't Doing The Most Basic Things To Encrypt Email

from the are-they-that-clueless? dept

It's no secret that FBI Director James Comey is somewhat clueless about encryption -- to the point that he doesn't even realize that stronger encryption will actually better protect Americans. But it seems to go beyond that. Apparently he's so clueless about encryption that he doesn't realize that it will help protect FBI agents. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai has a great story over at Vice Motherboard concerning key parts of our government that should understand the importance of keeping emails secret, that have failed to take the most basic steps in securing email communications. And the FBI is one of the agencies that has not done so. Ditto with the CIA. Or most branches of the military (the Air Force -- which used to run the US cybersecurity efforts -- is the one exception).

Specifically, the article focuses on the use of STARTTLS, which is used to encrypt emails in transit between service providers (it's not nearly as secure as doing full end-to-end encryption of the messages like PGP -- in which case the email providers can't read your email -- but it's a key tool for at least protecting your messages in transit between those providers). Most email systems use STARTTLS these days. Gmail has offered it since it launched over a decade ago. And for STARTTLS to work, both sides of the email provider chain need to be using it. Google has published stats on how much of the emails sent via Gmail are able to be sent with STARTTLS for a little while now and it keeps going up, such that these days, it's pretty rare for email providers not to offer STARTTLS -- with 80% of outbound mail and 61% of inbound mail using it. Yet the US military, the CIA and the FBI don't use it (the NSA does, because they're no dummies about encryption). Google and others in the tech industry have been begging email providers to use STARTTLS for a while, but apparently the US government, including agencies that you'd figure would want to protect secrets, apparently still hasn't figured this out.

When Franceschi-Bicchierai asked the Defense Department why most of the military doesn't support it, he got a nonsensical answer:

In a statement emailed to Motherboard, a spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Pentagon’s branch that oversees email and other technologies, said the DISA's DOD Enterprise Email (DEE) does not support STARTTLS.

“STARTTLS is an extension for the Post Office Protocol 3 and Internet Message Access protocols, which rely on username and password for system access,” the spokesperson wrote. “To remain compliant with DOD PKI policy, DEE does not support the use of username and password to grant access, and does not leverage either protocol.”

The spokesperson did not respond to several follow-ups, asking to clarify the statement. Michael Adams, an information security expert who served more than two decades in the US Special Operations Command, said that DISA’s explanation is “an unacceptable and technically inept answer,” and criticized the Pentagon for not taking security seriously and implementing STARTTLS.

“I can’t think of a single technical reason why they wouldn’t use it,” he told Motherboard in a phone interview. “It’s absurd.”

That opening sentence of the statement from the DOD reads like someone who is just discovering the technical details of email. It's stating something that is (1) meaningless to the question and (2) stated in a manner different than any knowledgeable person would say things. Someone who deals with this stuff would just say POP3 and IMAP rather than spell them out -- and again, that's totally unrelated to the question of STARTTLS. So is the use of PKI (public key infrastructure) for emails.

In the past, I'd mainly assumed that when the FBI spoke out against encryption, it was mainly a smokescreen to try to get more backdoors to make its own life easier. But could it actually be that the FBI (and the CIA and the DOD) don't even realize how important encryption is to protect their own information?

Filed Under: cia, cybersecurity, dod, email, encryption, fbi, security, starttls

Border Patrol Agent Forwarded All Emails To Someone Else's Gmail; Only Discovered When 'Civilian' Responded

from the oops dept

Intercept reporter Jenna McLaughlin alerts us to a rather stunning security mistake by a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent, as outlined in some DHS released "incident reports" concerning "cloud data breaches." The very first one involves the CBP agent forwarding all of his email to a personal account, but messing up the configuration, so that it actually forwarded to someone else's Gmail account (someone with a similar name) -- and this mistake was only noticed when this "civilian" responded to an email he had received via this forwarding, and the response was sent to a wider mailing list of Homeland Security employees: If you can't see that, here's what it says:

CBP reports that one (1) CBP user had an auto-forwarding rule setup to have emails sent externally to a civilian's personal Gmail account. There is a possibility that sensitive information to include Personally Identifiable Information (Pll) has been accidently sent out due to this rule. The incident was discovered when a civilian responded to a CBP user's email to a distribution list of other CBP/DHS users. The CBP user noticed the civilian's Gmail address and reported it to the FTO who then reported the incident to the CBP CSIRC. Upon investigation and confirmation from EaaS, one (1) CBP Border Patrol Agent who was on the email distribution list had an auto-forwarding rule setup within their Exchange account to a non-CBP/DHS user's personal Gmail account. The name of the Border Patrol Agent and the civilian are very similar, but it was determined that the Border Patrol Agent misconfigured the rule by using the civilian's personal Gmail address instead of his own. Technical remediation will include working with the EaaS team to implement a rule to disable the auto-forwarding rule and only allow it when requests are made to the Exchange team. The incident has been reported to the CBP Privacy Office and Joint Intake Center for action (assisting the user to have all government emails removed and confirmed).

It seems rather stunning that CBP/DHS didn't already have such a rule in place. Then again, this is Customs and Border Patrol, who has something of a history of not really giving a fuck because they can get away with doing whatever they want and no one ever does anything about it.

Later in the same report, it is revealed that this auto-forwarding from inside DHS to private accounts happened somewhat frequently. An investigation just a month after the incident above showed 771 such rules set in DHS staffers Exchange systems: If you can't read that, it says:

DHS SOC reports that a total of 771 rules are configured in Exchange to auto-forward emails external to DHS. DHS SOC requested and received a list of 771 automated email forwarding rules created by DHS Email as a Service (EaaS) users. Auto-forwarding or redirecting of DHS email to address outside of the .gov or .mil domain is prohibited and shall not be used per DHS 4300A policy, section 5.4.6.i and poses a high risk of accidental disclosure of Pll, SBU, FOUO, LES, or classified data. The incident has been reported to the Joint Intake Center (JIC). Affected Components (CBP, FEMA, DHS HQ, and DC2) are asked to identify and remediate the rules.

Not sure about to you, but this doesn't make me feel much safer about DHS at all. And, remember, DHS is one of the government bodies currently looking to manage the government's cybersecurity efforts -- and they're considered the better option given just how little people trust the NSA or the FBI (the two other main contenders).

Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, cybersecurity, dhs, email, email forwarding, homeland security

White House Vaguely Agrees Outdated ECPA Should Be Reformed But Only With An Eye On The Government's 'Interests'

from the SOMEONE-SHOULD-REALLY-FIX-THAT-SOMETIME dept

The Obama administration must be doing a little housecleaning in preparation for the 2016 winner. After months of highly-sporadic and belated responses to We The People petitions, it's answered two big ones (that have been sitting around forever) in a single day. It's also issued a handful of other responses to open petitions, some of which are little more than "we decline to respond," accompanied by a link to the site's Terms of Participation.

It took on two big petitions today. The first was a response to a request to pardon Snowden, which it denied under its "No Good Whistleblowing Goes Unpunished" policy. The second asked for a long-delayed rewrite of an outdated law.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act has been in need of reform for years. If nothing else, the law's misleading name needs to be changed. One of the more notorious aspects of the law is that it gives email less privacy protection than snail mail, which is already an exceedingly low bar.

The administration agrees that reform of this law -- which treats email older than six months as "abandoned" and thus easily-accessible by law enforcement -- is needed. However, it does so both belatedly, vaguely and disingenuously.

The We The People petition calling for ECPA reform was posted November, 12, 2013. It passed the 100,000-signature threshold roughly 30 days later. At that point, a response was "required." 593 days later, that response has finally arrived.

It's obvious that many -- and arguably, most -- Americans today use email as one of their primary means of communication. Particularly in an era where we keep so much of our lives online, the content housed there deserves strong privacy protections -- which is at the core of what ECPA was designed to do. But over time, technology has evolved.

Which is why our policy teams agree with you: ECPA is outdated, and it should be reformed.

This is good news. Or it would be if there were any particular plan to get something done. While the response agrees that the outdated law's take on email privacy protection is pretty much terrible, the administration doesn't seem too willing to push for any specific reform effort.

We know there are still important details being worked out across government and in the halls of Congress. We aren't going to endorse a single ECPA-reform bill at this time. As any given bill goes through committee and makes its way to the House and Senate floors, the draft is negotiated and modified to address concerns and strengthen the bill.

In other words, we like the idea of reform so much we're going to do nothing about it. While efforts have been made over the past few years, they've been stalled/gutted to appease law enforcement and (yes, really) regulatory agencies' interests. Very little forward motion has been made and without something stronger than "we'll probably support whatever actually makes its way to the President's desk" propelling this reform, it could still be several more years before the already-outdated law is rewritten to properly address a communication method that originated nearly 45 years ago.

Finally, the response sends a mixed message about reform in the very last sentence.

That said, we're encouraged by the strong bipartisan support for updating this legislation in both chambers of Congress, and are looking forward to seeing this law address today's technological realities while preserving the interests we must protect.

This seems to indicate it will be more supportive of a bill that has the backing law enforcement and other government agencies. A warrant requirement for emails older than six months isn't that much of an imposition, but so far, it's been a tough idea to sell. This last sentence shows the administration finds the government's "interests" worth protection. The privacy interests of millions of Americans? Not so much.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, obama administration, privacy, warrant, we the people

UK Government Instituted Automatic Email Deletion Program Right Before Its Freedom Of Information Law Came Into Effect

from the AUTOBURY dept

Loads of politicians continue to skirt the requirements of open records laws by using personal email accounts to handle official business. Others simply implement voluntary/poorly defined data retention policies that ensure nothing of interest will be handed over to the public. Given a short enough retention period, any request can be stonewalled until the autodestruct has rendered responsive files unavailable.

This is what the UK government is doing. Tony Blair, the prime minister behind the implementation of the UK's Freedom of Information laws, has publicly lamented ever inviting the public into the conversation. It now appears they'll still be mostly excluded from any email correspondence. (via slashdot)

Weeks before Tony Blair’s Freedom of Information (FOI) act first came into force, Downing Street adopted a policy of automatically deleting emails more than three months old, resulting in a system described by those who worked under it as ‘dysfunctional’. Campaigners have described the timing of the IT policy as ‘not a coincidence’.

Any emails retained past this point have to be saved by the recipient. The deletion system works so efficiently and thoroughly that some government employees thought they'd been issued faulty devices.

One former permanent secretary told the newspaper that he thought there were problems with his BlackBerry when he noticed his emails kept disappearing.

The public might call this system opacity at its finest. But it's apparently not all that popular with those on the inside, either. It's one thing to be on the outside and attempting to peer in with a stack of FOI requests. It's quite another when government employees often experience email-induced early-onset dementia. The "90 Days or it's Deleted!" policy has been referred to as "extremely frustrating," especially when no one's able to verify what was agreed upon in meetings held only three months ago.

On top of 10 Downing Street's disappearing act, there's a concerted effort by other staffers and lawmakers to keep emails out of the public's hands. Some delete theirs almost immediately after reading. Others avoid discussing anything "interesting" in official emails.

The problem obviously traces back to Blair's hesitant implementation of the law. A promise of new openness was immediately undercut by a deliberate email retention policy change. When the leadership openly regrets and resents new avenues of accountability, the rank-and-file will only be more than happy to follow. In his memoirs, Blair called the FOI law a "weapon" in the hands of "journalists," showing just how deep-seated the government's disdain for openness actually is.

There's not a government on the planet that welcomes the scrutiny of the public. Fortunately, some legislators have recognized this as an unhealthy attitude. The battle over the freedom of information didn't end with FOI laws. It was only the beginning. The UK government -- like ours -- still has plenty of "weapons" of its own to deploy in the interest of opacity. Destruction of "retention" policies, easily-abused exemptions, stonewalling, disingenuous search efforts, exorbitant fulfillment fees -- all of these are the tools the government uses to remain in its natural vampiric state of living off the income of others while recoiling from the sunlight.

Filed Under: email, email deletion, foia, freedom of information, retention, tony blair, uk

Clinton Email Case Gets Nutty: Clinton Offers Faux Support For Faster Release... That She Could Have Done Herself

from the let's-try-this-again dept

The whole saga over Hillary Clinton's emails is getting more and more bizarre. Last night, FOIA ninja (it beats the "FOIA terrorist" label some have given him), Jason Leopold revealed that in his FOIA lawsuit over the release of the emails, the State Department was claiming that it would take at least until January of 2016 to release the piles and piles of emails that Clinton gave them... in printed form. (In case you were living under a rock, Clinton used her own personal email server while Secretary of State, and only just recently handed over copies of the emails to the State Department -- after her own staff vetted them -- and then nuked the entire server).

The State Department went into great detail [pdf] explaining why it's going to take so damn long. In large part, it's because Clinton handed them all over in printed form, rather than digital form, and the State Department had to staff up just to go through all the emails.

As noted above, the Department received the 55,000 pages in paper form. The documents were provided in twelve bankers’ boxes (approximately 24” x 15” x 10 ¼” in size) with labels placed on the outside of the boxes that corresponded approximately to the timeframe of the documents within a given box. The Department initially performed tasks necessary to organize the records. This included foldering, boxing, and creating a box level inventory of the records. In consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration, the Department also conducted a page-by-page review of the documents to identify, designate, mark, and inventory entirely personal correspondence, i.e., those documents that are not federal records, included within the 55,000 pages.

Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the Secretary of State and the Department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the Department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments. These records are comprised of communications to or from the former Secretary of State, who was responsible for the overall direction and supervision of the full range of activities of the Department, which operates in approximately 285 locations around the globe. The Department is committed to processing the 55,000 pages as expeditiously as possible, while taking into consideration the Department’s other legal obligations.

The Department has taken multiple steps to facilitate its review of the 55,000 pages. It has developed an approach for addressing the review, upgraded the capabilities of the Department’s processing software, and dedicated staff. Currently, this project is staffed fulltime by a project manager and two case analysts, as well as nine FOIA reviewers who devote the entirety of their time at the State Department to this effort, plus other analysts and information technology specialists who provide collateral assistance to this review in addition to their regular duties. The team managing this project has met daily since early April to implement and oversee this large undertaking.

Each page of the 55,000 must be individually hand-processed in order to ensure that all information is being captured in the scanning process. The scanning process itself involves five steps that are time-consuming and labor-intensive. These are: (1) scanning (inserting barcode separator sheets between each document and its associated attachments and then scanning the documents, which includes converting them for optical character recognition [“OCR”], and then inputting the resulting OCR-ed files into the system in batches based on search segments); (2) scanning quality control (the scanned material is checked to ensure that each document is scanned properly and to flag documents that need to be re-scanned); (3) indexing (indexers review each scanned document to manually input bibliographic coding, such as the “To,” “From,” “CC,” “BCC,” “Date Sent,” and “Subject” fields associated with that document into the system); (4) indexing quality control (a senior indexer reviews the indexed documents to ensure that the bibliographic coding has been properly input into the system); and, (5) duplicate detection resolution (the computer analyzes the indexed documents to identify possible duplicates between the document being ingested and those documents that already exist in the system). Any possible duplicates that cannot be resolved (identified as an exact duplicate, near duplicate, not a duplicate) by automated means are pushed forward for individual review for manual adjudication. This process was made even more complicated by the fact that some, but not all, of the paper records that the Department received were double-sided. It took the Department five weeks to perform the scanning process, which was completed recently in May. There will be further work required to load these into a searchable database, which will be completed by mid-June.

When asked about it by reporters this morning, Clinton gave a really ridiculous answer, urging the State Department to speed up the work of releasing the emails, saying that she wanted them released:

“I have said repeatedly: I want those emails out. Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do,” she told reporters at a campaign stop in Iowa in a rare question-and-answer session. “...[A]nything that [the State Department] might do to expedite that process, I heartily support.”

You know what would have expedited the release? First, using the State Department's own email system while you were Secretary of State, so this wouldn't have even been an issue. And, second, when all of this became an issue handing over the emails in electronic form, rather than in printed form in a bunch of boxes.

Meanwhile, the judge in the case, Judge Rudolph Contreras, is not impressed. This morning he issued a minute order telling the State Department that waiting until January of next year was unacceptable, and ordering the State Department to set a renewed schedule with rolling releases every 60 days:

As stated on the record at today's status conference, Defendant shall file a notice to the Court on or before May 26, 2015, that includes the following: (1) a new production schedule for the Secretary Clinton e-mails that accounts for rolling production and updates from counsel every 60 days, (2) a proposed deadline for production of the Secretary Clinton e-mails relating to Benghazi, and (3) a proposed order that encapsulates the parties' agreement on the narrowing of Plaintiff's request concerning searches for records beyond the Secretary Clinton e-mails. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Rudolph Contreras

In the end, there may turn out to be nothing much of interest in all of those emails (though, of course, the fact that Clinton's own staff went through them and got rid of a bunch first will keep conspiracy theorists in business for ages), but the way that Clinton has handled this whole thing is really ridiculous. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to print out 55,000 pages of records that were original electronic unless you're trying to hide stuff and make life difficult for those going through it?

Filed Under: clinton email, email, foia, hillary clinton, jason leopold, print outs, state department

Barrett Brown Loses Email Access For A Year After Using Email To Complain About Prison

from the that's-ridiculous dept

Last week, whistleblower Chelsea Manning was able to start tweeting from prison, while at nearly the same time reporter Barrett Brown lost his email access for an entire year for daring to email a journalist about bad prison conditions. If you don't recall, Barrett Brown is the reporter who was recently sentenced to more than five years in jail for reporting on the hacking actions of Anonymous. Bizarrely, the length of the sentence hinged on Brown's sharing a link in a chat room, even though the Justice Department dropped that particular charge. We also found it ridiculous that during the course of his trial, Brown was ordered by the court not to talk to journalists.

It appears that, once again, that was a part of the problem here. The judicial and correctional systems apparently really don't like it when you talk to journalists:

An hour or so after having used the system to contact a journalist about potential BOP [Bureau of Prisons] wrongdoing, Barrett Brown’s access to the TRULINCS prisoner e-mail system was restricted, for a full year until April 2016, without explanation.

This is contrary to the BOP’s own policy on several points, as noted in their 2009 documentation — the administration is only allowed to remove access to TRULINCS for thirty days pending an investigation of any potential misuse, and the inmate is supposed to be informed in writing of the reason for that.

But despite all of that, prison officials don't seem to care. They made it clear they just wanted to shut up Brown:

Barrett spoke to a supervisor this morning who told him that he lost his e-mail access because he was “using it for the wrong thing”. This refers to his contacts with the press. A review of his e-mail activity had been made, Barrett was also told by this person that he “wasn’t supposed to have” e-mail, when there’s been no such order or determination that we’re aware of.

Apparently, Brown had been talking to Glenn Greenwald about writing some articles for The Intercept, and that's what set off the Bureau of Prisons into a full-fledged lockdown on Brown's email account. Brown himself was later able to provide more details, suggesting a completely arbitrary process by a prison official:

Failing to find Mr. Coleman, I met that afternoon with Unit Manger Ivory, who checked my files but could find no reason why my access should have suddenly been suspended and also advised me to meet with Mr. Coleman. At some point that day, my attempts to log in started to prompt a different message stating: “This account is on suspension until 4/1/2016 11:59:59 pm (from portal 16)”. At the next lunch period on Thursday, April 2nd, I was unable to locate Mr. Coleman, but laid out my problem to the associate warden who told me to return in five minutes, when Mr. Coleman would be present.

I did so, and when I asked another group of prison officials if they knew where I could find Mr. Coleman, another individual came up to me and said that he was the person I was looking for. He pulled me aside and told me that he was the one who had cut off my email, as I wasn’t supposed to have access to it in the first place due to my charges. I noted that I had three charges and asked which one precluded me from using the email service. He told me to list my charges and I did so. He then added that he had done a review of my email correspondence and found that I had “been using it for the wrong thing.” I replied that I had simply been using it to communicate with the press. He confirmed that “that was the wrong thing.” I asked him his name, which he gave as “Moore”.

Yes, when you go to prison, you have given up a lot of your rights and freedoms. But this seems like a purely arbitrary decision to punish Brown for criticizing the prison system. And, it appears to be backfiring, only driving that much more attention to the issue.

Filed Under: barrett brown, bureau of prisons, email, glenn greenwald, journalism, prison, vindictive

Yahoo Rolls Out End-To-End Encryption For Email

from the good-move! dept

Back in 2012 (pre-Snowden!), we wrote about why Google should encrypt everyone's emails using end-to-end encryption (inspired by a post by Julian Sanchez saying the same thing). Since then, securing private communications has become increasingly important. That's why we were happy to see Google announce that it was, in fact, working on a project to enable end-to-end encryption on Gmail, though it was still in the early stages. In December of last year, Google moved that project to Github, showing that it was advancing nicely. As we noted at the time, one interesting sidenote on this was that Yahoo's Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, was contributing to the project as well.

Thus it's not surprising, but still great to see, that Stamos has now announced the availability of an end-to-end encryption extension for Yahoo Mail (also posted to Yahoo's Github repository). It appears to function similarly to existing third-party extensions (like Mailvelope), but it's still good to see the big webmail providers like Yahoo and Google taking this issue more seriously. It's still not ready for prime time, and it's unlikely that either provider is going to make this a default option any time soon, but offering more, better (and more user friendly) options to give everyone at least the option of doing end-to-end encryption is a very good sign.

It also raises a separate issue that I think is important: many have argued that companies like Yahoo and especially Google would never actually push for end-to-end encryption of emails, because it takes away the ability of those companies to do contextual advertising within those emails. But that's an exceptionally short-sighted view. If Google, Yahoo and others don't do enough to protect their users' privacy, those users will go elsewhere, and then it won't matter whether or not the emails are encrypted, because they won't see them anyway. Focusing on the user first is always going to be the right solution, and that includes encrypting emails, even if it means slightly less ad revenue in the short term. Hopefully, Google, Yahoo and others remember this simple fact.

Filed Under: email, encryption, end to end, end to end encryption
Companies: yahoo

Dear Politicians: Responding To The Clinton Email Scandal By Proudly Affirming You've Never Used Email Isn't Helping

from the dumb-dumbs dept

Hey, politicians who read Techdirt... look, can we talk for a moment? As someone with a keen interest in DC machinations and politics on a national level, I feel like I know you guys well enough to have a heart to heart with you. And I get how the DC game is played. Some story comes out creating a national outrage with some percentage of the country and the whole thing seems designed to thieve the attention you might otherwise be getting from the press and the constituency. It's not only tempting, it's downright irresistible to react to such a story in an insane way, even if only to momentarily draw attention, any kind of attention, back on yourselves. I get it, believe me. When I first saw the trailer for the new Game of Thrones while sitting in my living room with my family, for instance, I immediately stood up, took my pants off, and ran around the block a few times until my wife clotheslined me on the third lap. Because, let's face it, that's how we roll, am I right?

But, guys, seriously...there's enough meat on the bone in the Hillary Clinton super-secret unofficial email fiasco-steak to work with. You really don't have to lose your minds and draw all the wrong kind of attention to yourselves as a result. For example, don't be Lindsey Graham.

If you click that link, there's a video of Senator Lindsey Graham (we'd embed it here, but NBC still hasn't figured out how to allow HTTPS embeds, because it doesn't care about your privacy, apparently). Here's the key part of Graham's exchange on Meet the Press.

Chuck Todd asked Graham, "Do you have a private e-mail address?"

Graham's answer: "I don't email. No, you can have every email I've ever sent. I've never sent one. I don't know what that makes me."

Well, Senator, it quite likely makes you the most unqualified member of the subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law for starters. Because email is ubiquitous enough at this point that I'm not even sure it should be called "technology" without being prefaced by the qualifier "super old and probably due for displacement." To at once sit on that committee and proudly state that you've never sent an email during your time in office sounds like you're begging to be replaced on that committee.

But my point is a larger one: the Clinton email scandal is one that should not result in any thinking person believing that having never sent an email to anyone ever is a bragging point. Put this kind of reaction into other contexts and see how far it gets you. One wouldn't, for instance, react to the cluster-bomb that has become Obamacare by proudly stating, "I've never even gone to a doctor!" One wouldn't criticize our foreign policy in the Middle East by proudly shouting, "Dude, I've never even been out of our country!" That's just stupid.

And so is proudly claiming that you've never sent an email. You want to have some kind of massive reaction to get attention? Fine, just don't say stupid things like Lindsey Graham. My suggestion? Take your pants off and go for a jog. You'll feel better when you do, I promise.

Filed Under: clinton email, email, hillary clinton, lindsey graham, politicians