EFFector Vol. 23, No. 04 February 3, 2010 editor@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : In our 527th issue: Come Celebrate EFF's 20th Birthday with Adam Savage and Friends on February 10! Join TV geek Adam Savage and a cast of EFF legends and luminaries at EFF's 20th birthday party! Our birthday fundraiser on February 10th will celebrate two decades of digital freedom-fighting in San Francisco's world-famous DNA Lounge. Adam will present a unique look back and forward to EFF's founding and the future of digital rights. DJs Adrian & the Mysterious D, the duo that founded the seminal, globe-trotting mashup party "Bootie," will get people moving with their genre-mashing blend of tracks, with guest DJs dropping sets throughout the evening. It's a once-in-a- lifetime event for those who love freedom, technology, and celebration! Doors open at 8 p.m. We'll be asking for a $30 donation at the door to fund our work defending your digital freedom. WHAT: EFF's 20th Birthday Fundraiser with Adam Savage and Surprise Special Guests! WHEN: Wednesday February 10, 2010 Doors open at 8 pm Tickets are $30 WHERE: DNA Lounge 375 Eleventh Street San Francisco, CA 94103 Please RSVP to events@eff.org. This is an all ages event. For more information: http://www.eff.org/birthday Advance ticket purchase is available at: http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2010/02.html#10 * VIP Event with Adam Savage, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, John Gilmore, Mark Klein, Steve Jackson and more! Join EFF for a special VIP event with Adam Savage and EFF founders and luminaries! For a special donation of $250, you're invited to attend our VIP event before the birthday party, where you can meet many of the amazing people who helped EFF reach this historic milestone. Special VIP donors receive free admission to the birthday party, which starts immediately afterwards, as well as a commemorative EFF 20th Anniversary poster. The VIP event begins at 7pm. For more information: http://secure.eff.org/happybirthday Please also RSVP to events@eff.org : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : ~ Seven "Corporations of Interest" in Selling Surveillance Tools to China Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement of a new U.S. policy on global Internet Freedom included a bold new statement about the responsibilities of American technology companies: "We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what's right, not simply what's a quick profit." While Clinton focuses on Internet media companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, there are plenty of other companies deserving scrutiny. Many other U.S. and multinational technology companies may be knowingly selling Chinese authorities the surveillance equipment used to commit or facilitate human rights abuses. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/selling-china-surveillance ~ Blogging ACTA Across the Globe: Lessons From Korea If there's one country that might have insight into what a post-ACTA future may look like, it's the Republic of Korea. Korea is known as having one of the most advanced networks in the world, but more recently it has also been the recipient of some of the strongest foreign pressure to ramp up its IP laws. Heesob Nam is a member (and former Chair) of IPLeft, a Korean digital rights activist group founded in 1999 to critique the increasingly maximalist IP rights agenda in that country and to research and present alternative policy proposals. He writes of the impact on Korea of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other international IP agreements. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/acta-and-korea ~ Blogging ACTA Across the Globe: The View from France La Quadrature Du Net is a French advocacy group formed to promote digital rights and online freedom. Its name comes by analogy between the unsolvable mathematical problem of "squaring the circle", and similarly impossible attempts to "effectively control the flow of information in the digital age by the law and the technology without harming public freedoms, and damaging economic and social development." In our ongoing series of perspectives on ACTA from around the globe, Jérémie Zimmermann and Félix Tréguer of La Quadrature du Net describe how the trade agreement undermines democratic challenges to IP policies in France and beyond. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/acta-and-france ~ Obama Reverses Position on Disclosing Lobbyist Contacts In his State of the Union Address, President Obama made another important commitment to openness and transparency in government: "It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my Administration or Congress." This is welcome news. For the past few years, EFF has been litigating a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case against the government, seeking the identities of lobbyists who contacted the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on behalf of their telecommunications company clients in order to push for telecom immunity. With the help of lobbyists from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, the FISA Amendments Act passed with an unconstitutional provision to retroactively grant immunity to the telecoms for collaborating with the warrantless wiretapping program. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/obama-reverses-position-disclosing-lobbyist-contac ~ FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Would Permit Blocking of BitTorrent Remember what put the debate over net neutrality into high gear? In 2007, EFF and the Associated Press confirmed suspicions that Comcast was clandestinely blocking BitTorrent traffic. It was one of the first clear demonstrations that ISPs are technologically capable of interfering with your Internet connection and that they may not even tell you about it. After receiving numerous complaints, the FCC in 2008 stepped in and threw the book at Comcast, requiring the company to stop blocking BitTorrent. The Comcast-BitTorrent experience put net neutrality at the top of the FCC agenda. Yet now that the FCC has formally issued draft net neutrality regulations, they include a huge copyright loophole -- a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 simply by claiming that it was "reasonable network management" intended to "prevent the unlawful transfer of content." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/net-neutrality-plan-would-permit-blocking-bittorrent ~ Help EFF Research Web Browser Tracking What fingerprints does your browser leave behind as you surf the web? Traditionally, people assume they can prevent a website from identifying them by disabling cookies on their web browser. Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer's configuration. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint -- a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be? EFF is running an experiment to find out. Our new Panopticlick website will anonymously log the configuration and version information from your operating system, your browser, and your plug-ins, and compare it to our database of five million other configurations. Then, it will give you a uniqueness score -- letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web. https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/help-eff-research-web-browser-tracking ~ A Primer on Information Theory and Privacy If we ask whether a fact about a person identifies that person, it turns out that the answer isn't simply yes or no. If all I know about a person is their ZIP code, I don't know who they are. If all I know is their date of birth, I don't know who they are. If all I know is their gender, I don't know who they are. But it turns out that if I know these three things about a person, I could probably deduce their identity! Each of the facts is partially identifying. There is a mathematical quantity that allows us to measure how close a fact comes to revealing somebody's identity uniquely. That quantity is called entropy, and it's often measured in bits. Intuitively you can think of entropy being generalization of the number of different possibilities there are for a random variable: if there are two possibilities, there is 1 bit of entropy; if there are four possibilities, there are 2 bits of entropy, etc. Adding one more bit of entropy doubles the number of possibilities. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-theory-and-privacy ~ Browser Versions Carry An Average of 10.5 Bits of Identifying Information Whenever you visit a web page, your browser sends a "User Agent" header to the website saying precisely which operating system and web browser you are using. This information could help distinguish Internet users from one another because these versions differ, often considerably, from person to person. We recently ran an experiment to see to what extent this information could be used to track people (for instance, if someone deletes their browser cookies, would the User Agent, alone or in combination with some other detail, be unique enough to let a site recognize them and re-create their old cookie?). Our experiment to date has shown that the browser User Agent string usually carries 5-15 bits of identifying information (about 10.5 bits on average). That means that on average, only one person in about 1,500 (210.5) will have the same User Agent as you. On its own, that isn't enough to recreate cookies and track people perfectly, but in combination with another detail like geolocation to a particular ZIP code or having an uncommon browser plugin installed, the User Agent string becomes a real privacy problem. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/tracking-by-user-agent ~ Blogging ACTA Across the Globe: FFII's Ante Wessels on Exporting Europe's Flaws Every major country in the ACTA negotiations claims that its own laws will remain unchanged by the treaty. But without changing a word of domestic law, ACTA can still be dangerous to a country's or a continent's economy. We asked guest bloggers from around the world to give their perspective on the trade agreement. Giving the view from the heart of the European Union is Ante Wessels, analyst for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a group best known for its work in Europe's debate over software patents. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/blogging-acta-across-globe-ffiis-ante-wessels-expo ~ Terms of (Ab)Use: US and UK Consumers Dance to Different iTunes Too often, online services draft their "Terms of Service" (TOS) agreements in ways that are one-sided and overreaching. In Europe, however, regulators are beginning to step in to protect consumers. In late November, the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced that Apple, Inc., agreed to change the terms and conditions for its popular iTunes online music store in the United Kingdom. In particular, according to the statement from the OFT, the changes would make the iTunes terms "clear, fair and easy to understand," and, more importantly, give consumers "clear and accurate information about their rights in case things go wrong." The OFT took action following a similar intervention by the Norwegian Consumer Council. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/terms-ab-use-dancing-different-itunes-differences ~ HOWTO: Thrive as a Musician Without Suing Your Fans TechDirt's Mike Masnick put together a fantastic memo to the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers: The Future Of Music Business Models (And Those Who Are Already There). Masnick writes that the mainstream entertainment industry's formula for contending with the Internet desperately trying to invent "new copyright laws or new licensing schemes or new DRM or new lawsuits or new ways to shut down file sharing" is counterproductive. He lists a dozen artists who've done well for themselves through various permutations of this model. Everyone knows about the efforts of big names like Trent Reznor and Radiohead, but Mike also draws attention to less-famous success stories like Josh Freese, Jill Sobule, Corey Smith, Jonathan Coulton, Moto Boy, Amanda Palmer, Matthew Ebel, Moldover and K-Os. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/howto-thrive-musician-without-suing-your-fans ~ Clinton on Internet Freedom, and Principled Stands Secretary Clinton’s speech on Internet Freedom was an important step in bringing online free expression and privacy to the forefront of the United States' foreign policy agenda. But for all the strong language, it was also a speech of caveats: powerful statements like "we stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas" sat close to hedges about the dangers of anonymous speech and how it might be used to distribute "stolen intellectual property." Clinton expressed concern at those who "violate the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech," but she also spoke of "redoubl[ing] efforts" similar to the Convention on Cybercrime, a document that provides scant protections for the privacy of anyone being investigated by a foreign government. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/clinton-internet-freedom-and-principled-stands ~ Over-Redaction in Audit of FBI’s Use of Illegal Exigent Letters The DOJ's Inspector General issued a heavily redacted report about the FBI's Communications Analysis Unit (CAU), which found "shocking" violations, including embedded telecom employees providing customer phone records in response to post-it notes. While the underlying violations are egregious enough, the report itself is problematic because it redacts huge swaths of information that is already publicly known. The report cryptically refers to AT&T, Verizon and MCI as Company A, B and C. Yet, the source that identified the telecoms embedded with the CAU was none other than FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni, in sworn testimony before Congress. Moreover, information in the IG report combined with letters to Congress from the telecoms themselves shows that Company A is AT&T. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/over-redaction-audit-fbi-s-use-illegal-exigent-let : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : miniLinks ~ The Case Against The iPad Timothy B. Lee says the iPad is part of Apple's attempt to roll back the trend towards open computing platforms. http://timothyblee.com/?p=2169 ~ 3-Strikes Is Not Mainstream Michael Geist says 3-strikes provisions in different countries have proven unpopular, expensive and controversial. http://www.thestar.com/business/article/755443--geist-three-strikes-and-you-re-out-system-draw-cries-of-foul-from-governments ~ ArsTechnica on EFF's Panopticlick Even without cookies, a browser leaves a trail of crumbs. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/even-without-cookies-a-browser-leaves-a-trail-of-crumbs.ars : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : Announcements * Help EFF Go to SCaLE! EFF is looking for donations of airline miles, flight vouchers, and hotel points for the Southern California Linux Expo, as well as other conferences and speaking engagements. If you have enough airline miles for a free ticket and would like to send an EFF staffer to a conference, let us know, and we will help you with the process of making the reservation. Please note that at this time we are unable to combine miles from multiple individuals. We are also looking for hotel rewards points to help reduce our overall travel costs. As a thanks for your donation, we can offer a free membership and a mention in EFFector (if you'd like). Please contact aaron@eff.org if you can help! *EFF at ShmooCon in DC! EFF will have a booth at the 2010 ShmooCon from February 5-7. East Coast hackers unite! Come by and say hello! Location: Wardman Park Marriott 2660 Woodley Road Northwest Washington, DC 20008 (202) 328-2000 Exhibition Hours: Friday, February 5: 12:30-8 PM Saturday, February 6: 9:30-8 PM Sunday, February 7: 9:30-2 PM For More Information: http://www.shmoocon.org : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : Administrivia EFFector is published by: The Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/about Editor: Eva Galperin, Referral Coordinator eva@eff.org Membership & donation queries: membership@eff.org To support EFF: http://links.eff.org/emaildonate General EFF, legal, policy, or online resources queries: information@eff.org
