Why Is The Federal Government Running Ads Secretly Created & Owned By NBC Universal?

from the so-that's-how-it-works... dept

We certainly suspected this when New York City first announced that it was running a series of silly and misleading videos as part of a media campaign to "Stop Piracy in NYC," but now it's been confirmed that these videos were not, in fact, New York City's, but are purely NBC Universal's. At the time, NYC had "thanked" NBC Universal (among others), but had not admitted that NBC Universal "owned" and had created the videos themselves. However, in response to one of the Freedom of Information requests that I filed with New York City, the city noted that the videos are property of NBC Universal. I had asked for any licensing info between NYC and Homeland Security/ICE because ICE was using the same videos. Since NYC had clearly suggested that those videos were the creation of the NYC government, I assumed that ICE must have licensed the videos from NYC. However, NYC responded to my request by saying that there was no such info to hand over, because it did not license the videos to Homeland Security. And the reason was that NYC did not own the videos:

The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment has no records responsive to your request. Please note that NBC Universal owns the material, not the City of New York.

That's fascinating information. Of course, I had also filed a separate FOI request for any info on the licensing agreement between NYC and NBC Universal. As of this writing there has been no response from NYC, in violation of New York State's Freedom of Information Law, which requires a response within 5 business days (we're way beyond that).

Still, at least give NYC credit for making it clear that NBC Universal had a hand in the creation of the videos, even if it left out the rather pertinent information that it created and owned the videos. While I find it immensely troubling that a municipal government would run PSAs created by corporate interests (without making that clear), I'm extremely troubled by the news that the federal government would run those same videos with absolutely no mention of the fact that the videos were created and owned by a private corporation with a tremendous stake in the issue.

Could you imagine how the press would react if, say, the FDA ran PSAs that were created and owned by McDonald's without making that clear to the public? How about if the Treasury Department ran a PSA created and owned by Goldman Sachs? So, shouldn't we be asking serious questions about why Homeland Security and ICE are running a one-sided, misleading corporate propaganda video, created and owned by a private company, without mentioning the rather pertinent information of who made it?

Does Homeland Security work for the US public... or for NBC Universal?

Filed Under: government, ice, psa
Companies: nbc universal

ACLU And EFF Want To Find Out Who Rolled Over When Gov't Came Calling For Info About Wikileaks

from the who-didn't-protect-its-users dept

While there's been plenty of attention paid to the US government's attempt, using a 2703(d) order (sorta like a subpoena, but not quite), to get info from Twitter on certain users who had a connection to Wikileaks, one of things that we pointed out at the time was the only reason we knew about the orders to Twitter was because Twitter fought the order. We wondered who else received such orders and just rolled over and handed over the data.

It appears that the ACLU and the EFF are asking the same question.

While (of course) it would appear that such info is being kept totally secret by the US government, those two organizations scanned the case numbers to determine that it appears four other similar orders were issued at the same time as Twitter's order -- and they'd like to know who those orders went to, in order to defend the users' right to privacy. The argument seems pretty sound here. Since these users are currently fighting the government's attempt to have Twitter hand over their info, shouldn't they have the right to fight against other services handing over their info?

Of course, the end result of this will almost certainly be a revelation of which four online services simply rolled over rather than defending their users' rights. Anyone want to take guesses as to who's on that list?

Filed Under: government, privacy, subpoena, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, eff, twitter, wikileaks

Lawyers For Guantanamo Detainees Not Allowed To Look At Important Leaked Evidence

from the this-is-stupid dept

In the business world, if you sign a non-disclosure agreement, it's well accepted that if the information covered in that agreement later becomes public through other means, you are no longer bound by the agreement. This makes sense. After all, why should anyone be forced to clam up about information that's already public. And, yet, for no good reason at all, it seems our government prefers a system where everyone is supposed to keep their head in the sand about public info. Witness the mind-numbingly bizarre claim that lawyers for Guantanamo detainees are not allowed to look at the documents that a bunch of newspapers released earlier this week (the documents allegedly came from Wikileaks, but apparently Wikileaks itself did not release them to the newspapers). Yes, these documents are all over the news and are widely available from multiple sources... yet the government has warned the lawyers not to look:

On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantanamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.

Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files "in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards" -- handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department's Court Security Office.

The NY Times, rightly, calls this "absurdist." I'd call it out right stupid. It's head-in-the-sandism. If the information is public, live with it. It's public. Pretending that public information is not public doesn't help anyone. It just makes it look like the government is in denial and not dealing with reality. Frankly, I'd much prefer a government that can deal with reality to one that tells everyone to cover their eyes and ears and pretend reality doesn't exist.

Of course, this is not the first time we've seen this. With just Wikileaks, we saw it a few months ago when parts of the federal government barred employees from looking at the site and its leaks, using the identical rationale. So, despite the fact that everyone else in the world could easily see those documents, the ones who it might impact the most have to pretend that the documents are not actually public.

It's government playing make believe.

It's also not unlike the ridiculous hoops the government made lawyers go through in the al-Haramain case, in which the government accidentally leaked a document proving that it had wiretapped without a warrant. And despite the fact that the document had been leaked, it was required that lawyers for al-Haramain pretend the documents were still secret, leading to an absolutely insane process by which the lawyers had to destroy all of the copies they had of this info, and could only refer to it obliquely from memory, with a Justice Department official watching over them, with the ability to force them to stop talking about certain aspects.

None of this makes any sense. Just like we have "security theater," this appears to be "classification theater." These documents are not classified any more. Period. Pretending they are is a charade that the government is putting on which everyone knows is a lie. Isn't it time we had our government stop pretending and start dealing with reality?

Filed Under: government, guantanamo, leaks, reality, secrecy

Microsoft's Bizarre And Misleading Statement About Google In Gov't Procurement Fight

from the well,-well, dept

You may recall the interesting case from late last year, in which Google sued the government, claiming that the Department of the Interior set up a bid for a cloud-based apps service in a way that only Microsoft could win. However, recently, Microsoft made a big stink on its blog, claiming that Google lied in claiming its Apps solution was accredited under FISMA, the Federal Information Security Management Act. Google quickly shot back claiming that its offering absolutely was FISMA certified.

The news coverage on all of this has been a bit confusing, as there's a lot of back and forth with seriously conflicting claims, though Groklaw does a nice job trying to piece together the truth. In the end, it appears that a Justice Department official was confused, mainly because Google got FISMA approval for Google Apps Premiere, and then introduced a product subset of that, with additional security features, called Google Apps for Government. The DoJ seemed to assume that this meant there was no FISMA on the new offering, and Microsoft ran with it. However, as the GSA quickly made clear, it agrees with Google:

Google Apps for Government uses the Google Apps Premier infrastructure but adds additional controls in order to meet requirements requested by specific government agencies. The original FISMA certification remains intact while GSA works with Google to review the additional controls.

Of course, even the GSA seems a bit confused about all of this. While the above statement was the official position of the GSA, in a Senate hearing on the matter, a GSA official described it slightly differently:

"In July 2010, GSA did a FISMA security accreditation for 'Google Apps Premier.' That's what the Google product was called, and it passed our FISMA accreditation process. We actually did that so other agencies could use the Google product. If we do one accreditation, it's leveraged across many agencies. Since that time, Google has introduced what they're calling 'Google Apps for Government.' It's a subset of Google Apps Premier, and as soon as we found out about that, as with all other agencies, we have what you would normally do when a product changes, you re-certify it. So that's what we're doing right now, we're actually going through a re-certification based on those changes that Google has announced with the 'Apps for Government' product offering."

Leading to a bunch of headlines claiming that the GSA disagrees with Google. However, if you read both statements in context, you realize that it appears the GSA does, in fact, agree with Google. What the latter statement notes is that the new subset product needs to be re-certified, but nowhere does he say that it lost its ongoing certification. The official GSA statement above that confirms the initial certification remains intact.

In other words, nothing to see here. A lot of people got confused, but Google has the FISMA certification.

Oh, and an important sidenote in all of this: the Microsoft product which "won" the DoI bid does not have FISMA certification. Yes, you read that correctly. Microsoft is mocking Google for not having FISMA certification (which the product actually did have), while leaving out the bit about how their own product does not. In fact, the government's own filings in the case highlights that it's fine if Microsoft doesn't have FISMA certification now, because it can get it later:

Pursuant to FISMA, an agency may certify and accredit the security of an information system after testing its controls to ensure they work properly. In soliciting a private external cloud, DOI is requesting offerors to propose implementation of its pre-existing technology to meet DOI's specific needs. Accordingly, it follows that such a cloud cannot possibly obtain certification or accreditation because it has not yet been implemented to meet DOI's needs or actually tested. Thus, the lack of FISMA certification for DOI's personalized cloud is not a sign of lax security, as plaintiffs suggest; rather, it is a necessary step in acquiring a dedicated cloud.

In other words, no matter who wins, there will be customization done which will need re-certification... exactly as Google is having done now. In other words, there's no story here. None.

And yet, the Google haters came out quickly on this one. Not only did that Senate hearing happen almost immediately, but the group Consumer Watchdog, which seems to spend all its time coming up with bogus reasons to attack Google, rushed out a press release demanding a further investigation:

"Making misrepresentations to government agencies, particularly involving security clearance, again shows the arrogance of Google engineers, who give little respect to civil society and its accepted rules of conduct. We again urge your committee to hold hearings."

Except, of course, Google did not make misrepresentations to the government agencies. This has nothing to do with Google engineers -- arrogant or not. In fact, you could argue that Consumer Watchdog is actually "making misrepresentations to government agencies" with the letter it sent demanding an investigation.

Filed Under: fisma, government, gsa
Companies: google, gsa, microsoft

Does It Really Make Sense For Silicon Valley Companies To Make Friends In DC?

from the politics-is-a-dangerous-game dept

The common wisdom around Silicon Valley for the last twenty years or so, has been that companies here need to be much more active in Washington DC, and really should be more active on the lobbying front. The classic example of a tech company that didn't pay much attention to lobbying was Microsoft. And, more recently, it was joked about how Google was late to the game, and not very good at it when it started (I remember the stories of Sergey Brin showing up in DC in silver mesh sneakers and a t-shirt and finding it hard to get meetings with Congressional reps). Yet, with reports that Facebook is trying to buck this trend with a strong DC presence (including possibly hiring former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs), DCer Adam Thierer makes the case that tech companies "normalizing relations" with DC is a bad, bad idea, because when you get into the lobbying game, inevitably, you become focused on using politics to limit others, rather than on your own ability to innovate.

It's the same basic argument that Andy Kessler discussed in his recent guest post (and in his new book, Eat People) concerning the difference between entrepreneurs who create value... and those who use politics to lock up value.

In an essay I penned for the Cato Institute last November entitled “The Sad State of Cyber-Politics,” I reiterated arguments made a decade earlier by two brilliant men: Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers and the late great Milton Friedman. Rodgers penned a prescient manifesto for Cato in 2000 with the provocative title: “Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington, D.C.” in which he argued that, “The political scene in Washington is antithetical to the core values that drive our success in the international marketplace and risks converting entrepreneurs into statist businessmen.” A year earlier, Friedman penned another Cato essay called “The Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse” in which he lamented the persistent propensity of companies to persecute one’s competitors using regulation or the threat thereof. What both men stressed was that coming to Washington has a tendency to change a company’s focus and disposition, and not for the better — if you believe in real capitalism, that is, and not the abominable crony capitalism fostered by Washington.

As Adam notes, the companies like Facebook seeking greater attention in DC certainly aren't doing so with the explicit purpose of trying to limit others and seeking regulatory capture of some sort. For the most part, as he says, they're in "cover your butt" mode. But, once you get established, there certainly is a temptation to make use of that situation to limit innovation, limit competition, and push for policies that simply benefit a single company.

To be honest, I'd always gone with the conventional wisdom, that building up better relationships with folks in DC was a good idea. But Adam (and the others he links to) make a good point that's worth considering as well. Perhaps I'm too idealistic in that I believed that perhaps more people explaining and demonstrating how innovation really works, would get the message through to politicians. Instead, it seems there may really be a risk that the opposite happens: and how DC politics works is the message that gets through to tech companies. And that may not be a good thing.

Filed Under: government, innovation, lobbying, politics, regulations, silicon valley, washington dc
Companies: facebook, google, microsoft

ICANN Says US Gov't Should Let It Go Private, While US Wants More Control

from the this-won't-end-well dept

We were just talking about how the US government -- despite existing concerns from pretty much the rest of the world that it already has too much control over ICANN -- wants more control over the organization that manages the basic structure of the internet. It appears that ICANN is looking to go in the other direction. ICANN boss Rod Beckstrom has sent a letter to the US government asking to be set free. In the letter, Beckstrom notes that the original plan had always been to privatize ICANN, and that was supposed to happen 11 years ago. Beckstrom points out that same thing we noted, which is that foreign governments are concerned about US control over the internet, and they're not going to look kindly on closer ties with the government. I have to admit that I'm intrigued what Beckstrom could do with an ICANN not under US government control. After all, he's literally written an entire book on the power of distributed systems over centralized ones. It would be great if he really worked to turn ICANN into a distributed system that couldn't be censored by any particular government agency.

Filed Under: control, government, icann

Some Concerns About Feds' Ability To Get Twitter Info

from the any-right-to-protect? dept

We already wrote about the judge allowing the feds to get info from certain Twitter users. I didn't find it all that surprising, but in a blog post with thoughts from lawyers Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman, some big questions are raised. Venkat points out that the judge seemed to rely on the terms of Twitter's privacy policy as "evidence" of what users are willing to give up as information. However, that seems pretty questionable, since there's little evidence that the vast majority of people actually read privacy policies, leading to serious questions about how binding they are, or how instructive they are about what people have "willingly" given up. Goldman builds off of this, by noting that people should realize that privacy policies really aren't just between users and sites, but that governments will "trawl through a site's privacy policy to cite terms against the site's users as part of the government's rapacious desire to know everything about its citizens."

Separately, Goldman raises a number of serious questions about the judge's ruling and what it means. He points out that, similar to file sharing cases where there's "file sharing law" and "real law," there may be "Wikileaks law" and "real law," where judges bend over backwards to make rulings against Wikileaks:

The government's request for Wikileaks-related information from Twitter very well may be lawless, but this judge--like so many others confronted with Wikileaks-related issues--is willing to roll with it using highly formalist reasoning. In this respect, Wikileaks may be the new Napster--whenever its name is invoked, the rule of law gets suspended in an overall effort to kick the unwanted enterprise out of the ecosystem; and everyone who touches Wikileaks gets tarred with the taint-by-association brush.

The court's ruling on 2704 standing to challenge a 2703(c) request is a fine example of the problem. The court says that, based on the statutory wording, the affected subscribers lack standing to challenge the records request. OK, but when do the affected subscribers have standing to challenge a 2703(c) request? According to this ruling, the answer may be never. That can't be right. Surely we as citizens have some way to fight back against overreaching government requests for non-public information about us...don't we?

We encounter the same problem with the court's discussion regarding IP addresses. The court makes a troubling categorical statement: "petitioners have no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in their IP addresses." As with the 2703(c) records request, is there any circumstance where a subscriber could prevent his/her IP address from being disclosed to the government? According to this court, the answer may be no.

Definitely questions worth pondering.

Filed Under: government, privacy
Companies: twitter

If Copyright Is 'Property' Why Aren't People Outraged When The Gov't Seizes Content From The Public?

from the property? dept

Michael Scott points us to an interesting analysis of a recent academic paper exploring (yet again) the issue of whether or not patents and copyright should be viewed as property. I won't go into the specific arguments of the paper itself (take a look to read about it, if you'd like), but one key point did strike me as quite interesting:

Professor Fagundes argues that property rhetoric currently is understood through the lens of "ownership" discourse, which understands "property" to mean private rights that are good against the world. Exhibit A for this thesis is the very different public reactions to the Supreme Court's rulings in Kelo and Eldred. In each case, the Court held that the constitution did not protect members of the public from elected officials transferring their rights to another private party. Certain groups were outraged by the Kelo result because, in their view, the Court had fundamentally disregarded specific private owner's property rights. By contrast, the Act at issue in Eldred "took not just from the original plaintiff Eric Eldred, but from every member of the public the entitlement to use expired copyrighted materials for another twenty years." (P. 655.) This transfer, however, was greeted with a public yawn because it was not seen as a transfer of public property into private hands.

If you're not familiar with the two cases (and you should be), Kelo was the Supreme Court case that ruled it was okay for eminent domain to be used by the government to take land away from a landowner and hand it to a private developer. This got a lot of people quite upset about the government overstepping its bounds. Eldred, of course, argued effectively the same thing, in claiming that copyright extension transferred "property" from the public to private interests by blocking it from entering the public domain. While it's worth noting that the Supreme Court seems somewhat consistent on the rulings, it certainly is notable that the folks who got upset by Kelo didn't get as upset by Eldred (yes, some of us were quite upset by Eldred, but it didn't get nearly the same widespread reaction).

It could be that, in general, most people simply don't, implicitly, view copyright as property. Or, it could be that many people don't quite understand copyright issues. I think a bigger issue might just be that most people simply don't understand the importance and value of the public domain. So, without realizing what they're losing, they don't recognize that works failing to move into the public domain is a bad thing.

Filed Under: copyright, eldred, government, kelo, property, public domain

How To Get Elected Officials To Actually Hear Our Worries About Censorship: Speak Up!

from the speak-up dept

I already mentioned Rep. Lofgren's talk at the Section 230 Symposium from the High Tech Law Institute at the University of Santa Clara on Friday, but wanted to do a separate post on another point that Lofgren raised. EFF's Cindy Cohn asked Lofgren a simple question towards the end of Lofgren's talk, questioning what we in Silicon Valley could actually do so that folks in Washington DC actually understand these issues.

Lofgren, at first, seemed unsure that anything could be done, noting that those with lots of money and hired lobbyists in DC still get heard much more than the ordinary citizen, but after talking for a bit, she did make a point clear, and it was: we need to speak up. She pointed out that in this day, a congressional rep hearing from 200 constituents (she suggests physical letters) is something that gets attention, and gets Representatives to pay attention right away.

I know that many around here are cynical about the political process -- and I'd include myself in that description. We've seen way too many ridiculously bad laws passed by Congress to protect this or that special interest. Our government too often seems to take direction (if not dictation) directly from corporate interests. However, Lofgren does have a point: people really do need to speak up when they hear of serious problems such as domain seizures, copyright expansion and other problems.

The domain seizures, in particular seem to have received very little attention in the press. I spoke to a reporter at the event who said that his editor just didn't think it was a topic anyone cared about. That's scary. We're talking about wholesale censorship by the US government -- almost certainly in violation of basic free speech and due process rules. And it's all being done by a group within the US government who's supposed to be "protecting our borders." It seems reasonable to question why this group is involved in straight up censorship of websites. But it's not going to happen if people don't speak up.

Filed Under: government, participation, politics, zoe lofgren

US Paid Millions For Bogus (Patented) Intelligence Software; Now Trying To Cover It Up Claiming 'National Security'

from the government-at-work dept

There are so many ridiculous aspects to a NY Times story from this weekend about a nearly decade-long relationship between the US government and what appears to be a con man who conned them out of tens of millions of dollars that it's hard to know where to start, so let's break it down in sections:

Conned
First off, the crux of the story is that a guy named Dennis Montgomery seems to have concocted an elaborate con on the US government that worked for years. He created some software, supposedly originally designed to help colorize movies, but it was later pitched for its capability to (I'm not joking) read coded messages in the "crawl bar" on Al Jazeera which (it was claimed) provided clues to planned terrorist attacks. Various US government agencies basically kept handing over millions and millions of dollars to Mr. Montgomery and partners. Some of those former partners now admit that Montgomery's technology was a hoax, and his presentations included doctored videos and test results.

Known, but still purchasing
Next up, there's the news that the CIA figured all of this out way back in 2003 and knew the software was useless, but the government was still paying millions of dollars in new contracts for it and using the software at least until 2009, when it was supposedly used to "detect" Somali terrorist plans during Obama's inauguration -- terrorist plans that later turned out not to exist at all.

And, it wasn't just the CIA that had figured this out. The NY Times report notes that the media -- including reports from both Bloomberg and (of all places) Playboy -- had previously called out "hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery." Separately, a Pentagon report notes that the government had paid an astounding $285 billion in just three years to contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing.

Feeling safer?

Relied on the info to make big decisions
What's really scary is how much the government seemed to rely on bogus info from this system that the CIA knew didn't work. In one case, it actually caused an international incident:

In December 2003, Mr. Montgomery reported alarming news: hidden in the crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were hijacking targets.

C.I.A. officials rushed the information to Mr. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could enter American airspace.

"The intelligence people were telling us this was real and credible, and we had to do something to act on it," recalled Asa Hutchinson, who oversaw federal aviation safety at the time. Senior administration officials even talked about shooting down planes identified as targets because they feared that supposed hijackers would use the planes to attack the United States, according to a former senior intelligence official who was at a meeting where the idea was discussed. The official later called the idea of firing on the planes "crazy."

The French then conducted a study, and also concluded that the technology Mr. Montgomery used was a total hoax, and told the Bush administration, leading them to claim "we got played," though it didn't stop the federal government from continuing to buy the technology for at least another five years.

Oh, also there were no actual repercussions to this massive international incident. The guy at the CIA who had been one of the main supporters of the technology, Donald Kerr, got promoted after this. Another CIA official noted that not only was no one blamed for this massive misstep, but "they acted like it never happened."

FBI's improper search
In 2006, the FBI began investigating things, after Mr. Montgomery and his then business partner had a dispute and split up. There were claims that Montgomery had illegally copied data from the company when he left, and it was during this investigation that employees apparently told the FBI that "Montgomery had manipulated tests in demonstrations with military officials to make it appear that his video recognition software had worked." So, once again, the government discovered the hoax... but, the whole investigation was dropped after a court determined that the FBI screwed up by conducting "an improper search" of Montgomery's home. So the technology lived on, and was still being purchased and used by government agencies.

Patenting software that doesn't work
Oh yeah, did we mention that Montgomery "patented" this apparent hoax of a technology? The NY Times mentions this in passing. In doing a quick search, I've turned up a bunch of different patents from Montgomery and others who worked with him.

Nice to see that you can patent fraudulent systems, huh?

Cover up
Oh yeah, the biggest point in all of this is that the Federal government is working over time to cover this entire story up. It still hasn't admitted to any of this. It hasn't taken Montgomery to court at all (he's facing other legal problems related to passing bad checks at casinos). However, the Justice Department is apparently working overtime to keep this story totally secret:

The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.

Once again, it appears the government is using secrecy and totally bogus claims of "national security" to hide embarrassing details, rather than for any legitimate reason. This is an unfortunate result of giving the government too much power to declare things as "secret" with little to no oversight. It clearly will abuse that power to hide mistakes, rather than admit them and maybe even learn from them. Instead, we allow a con artist to cost tax payers tens of millions of dollars, and then the government tries to brush it all under the rug.

And, yes, all of this really should make you wonder about all of those claims from politicians supporting the renewals on the Patriot Act and other such legislation, who claim that the government has protected us from multiple terrorist attack attempts. While I'm sure there have been some attempts, it does make you wonder how many such "thwarted" attempts included the ones that were apparently totally made up by Montgomery.

Filed Under: coverup, government, hoax