Cyber bills legislate for mass surveillance; Former Cybersecurity Czar calls for Homeland Security data “customs inspections”.

In a New York Times editorial, former government cybersecurity czar Richard A. Clarke has called for the creation of customs checks on all data leaving and entering US cyberspace.

Clarke makes the call in relation to Chinese hackers stealing information and intellectual property from US firms.

“If given the proper authorization, the United States government could stop files in the process of being stolen from getting to the Chinese hackers.” Clarke writes.

“If government agencies were authorized to create a major program to grab stolen data leaving the country, they could drastically reduce today’s wholesale theft of American corporate secrets.”

While Clarke may well be coming at this subject well intentioned, the fact that government has a long history of attempting to crackdown on internet freedom and control the web will mean his words are a cause of concern for many.

“Under Customs authority, the Department of Homeland Security could inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace…” Clarke continues.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Steve Watson.

This is an informational graphic from Intel showing some of the things that happen in a single minute of internet time. I was honestly surprised that some figures were as low as they were. Only 20 identities stolen? Those aren’t the Nigerian scammers I know! Not included on the list: 80,000 moms forward spam emails, 30 dudes sign into Chatroulette with the intention of showing their dongs, my roommate maxes out our bandwidth downloading porn and brings my internet connection to a crawl, enough Viagra to pop a 1,000-year boner is purchased, and like five million people read Geekologie. “Five-million, really?” You heard me, five-million — like a five with two zeros.

What Happens in an Internet Minute? [intel]

Thanks to Patty, who heard every four minutes on the internet a man signs up for a dating website as a woman with the sole purpose of seducing himself through his regular profile. Wow, that…sounds strangely erotic.

Source: Geekologie.

Keywords agency is tracking include “body scanner,” “nationalist” , “police,” and “immigration”.

A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners.

“Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows,” reports the New York Times.

The manual, entitled Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability Desktop Reference Binder, was obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center via a FOIA request.

The controversy over DHS spying on social media erupted last month following the release of 300 documents which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.”

During a subsequent Congressional hearing on the matter, DHS representatives Mary Callahan and Richard Chávez denied the fact that tracking criticism of government agencies formed any part of the program, and that the effort was merely aimed at developing “situational awareness” of potential threats, mostly related to extreme weather events.

However, the 2011 manual makes it abundantly clear that the program was a backdoor effort to keep tabs on what the American people were saying about not just the DHS, but a whole host of federal agencies, including the CIA, the ATF, the TSA, FEMA, as well as organizations outside of the U.S. government such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.

CONTINUED at Infowars. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Pictures of cats dressed in wholemeal, plain and multi-seed bread are popping up across the web, being promoted by blogging sites and posted on Twitter.

It’s the latest ‘internet meme’, a term used to describe a trend which spreads quickly across the web, to emerge following last year’s planking craze.

A Facebook group has also been set up encouraging people to upload their snaps for the breading community to look at.

Thousands are discussing the new phenomenon across the internet which looks set to take off in a big way. …

Source: Metro.

Anonymous strikes Dutch website promoting pedophilia, releases names and personal information belonging to website users.

This week LulzFinancial, a hacktivist crew associated with the international Internet collective known as Anonymous, hacked into a Dutch website catering to individuals favoring the decriminalization of pedophilia.

(Because of the nature of the pedophile friendly website a link will not be posted. However, at the time of publication, the website in question was unavailable.)

On Thursday, LulzFinancial announced the action on their website:

Greetings Friends,

We’ve been busy over here at LulzFinancial. Today we dropped the d0x on some pedo’s…

(Dox – Personal information about people on the Internet, often including real name, known aliases, address, phone number, SSN, credit card number, etc.)

• Anonymous via AntiSec hacks FTC – rage over ACTA grows
• Anonymous takes down NASDAQ in solidarity with 99 percent, OWS
• Anonymous strikes ‘war profiteering’ tear gas manufacturer Combined Systems
• Anonymous punishes Interpol after Saudi blasphemy arrest
• CIA Tango Down: Anonymous strikes again

Source: The Examiner.

Homeland Security reps refuse to name superiors who ordered federal agency to analyze online dissent

Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security speaking today at a Congressional hearing regarding the federal agency’s monitoring of social media networks and news websites, including the Drudge Report, were evasive about who ordered them to look for reports or comments that “reflect adversely on the U.S. government and the DHS.”

The hearing was prompted as a result of the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtaining 300 documents through a Freedom of Information Act request which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.”

The list of websites the DHS requested be monitored for such content included the Drudge Report, Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, and GoogleBlogSearch, a service that allows millions of individual blogs to be searched for keywords.

EPIC submitted a statement to today’s Subcommittee Hearing in which the privacy group demanded the Committee suspend the DHS program, arguing that “The DHS monitoring of social networks and media organizations is entirely without legal basis and threatens important free speech and expression rights.”

In his opening comments before the Subcommittee Hearing, titled DHS Monitoring of Social Networking and Media: Enhancing Intelligence Gathering and Ensuring Privacy, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Patrick Meehan spoke of his concerns that “Collecting, analyzing, disseminating private citizens’ comments could have a chilling effect on individuals’ privacy rights and people’s freedom of speech and dissent against their government.”

Representative Jackie Speier said she was “deeply troubled” by the program, stating DHS “is not a political operation….It should not be a political operation.”

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.

Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.

The White House proposal recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be given broad regulatory authority for cybersecurity matters over civilian networks. The White House proposal also recommends that the DHS program be “developed in consultation with privacy and civil liberties experts and with the approval of the Attorney General.”

A recent bill in the House  – the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 or PrECISE Act — also empowers DHS in the event of a cyberattack, but the bill has been criticized by Reid as not giving the agency enough power. PrECISE focuses on strengthening the information sharing component between private corporations and DHS by allowing a limited amount of information to be shared between the two.

CONTINUED at the Daily Caller.

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight.

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymousattacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, amethod questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when an overwhelming amount of Americans banned together and voiced their opposition to Congress over both the Stop Online Piracy Act, and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Sites that dimmed the screen for a day or two have gone back to normal — Facebook users have swapped their anti-SOPA images for their previous profile pictures.

We may have even believed that the postponement of the vote originally scheduled for January 24th was some sort of white flag of capitulation. But that is certainly not the MO of most lawmakers.

While the outcry did get the attention of Congress, they are simply returning unflinchingly back to the drawing board to wait out our attention spans. Articles whirled that SOPA was dead and the bill was pulled when the bill’s sponsor Lamar Smith said in a statement that there would be no further action “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

Lamar isn’t really listening. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Actually, SOPA is set to be reformulated in February. PIPA will be revisited with possible amendments in the coming weeks. Case in point, all is still open and possible — nothing is dead, pulled, or cancelled. If that wasn’t enough to keep us on our toes, a new, similar bill has surfaced.

Déjà Vu in the form of OPEN — The New Anti-Piracy Bill

As an alternative to SOPA-PIPA, Representative Darrell Issa (CA-R), and 24 co-sponsors introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782 on Wednesday, during the Internet blackout.

From PCWorld:

OPEN would give oversight to the International Trade Commission (ITC) instead of the Justice Department, focuses on foreign-based websites, includes an appeals process, and would apply only to websites that “willfully” promote copyright violation.

The bill pretends to only target foreign websites, while keeping Americans free to surf and post, but the bill’s wording is wide open to pursue American sites. Just one example: when describing aninfringing site, it starts with those “that are accessed through a non-domestic domain name,” but continues in section (8)(A)(ii) for any site that “conducts business directed to residents of the United States.”

Also, none of these bills had been decided before the U.S. Government took down New Zealand owned Megaupload.com during the commotion. To which, Anonymous responded by shutting down the websites of the U.S. Department of Justice, Universal Music, Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. Copyright Office, Broadcast Music Inc. and the Motion Picture Association of America.

“The [DOJ's] action ‘demonstrates why we don’t need SOPA in the first place,’ points out PCWorld’s Tony Bradley.” The government was enforcing a previous anti-piracy law called PRO-IPsigned by Bush in 2008.

OPEN is gaining support from groups like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Consumer Electronics Association and more.

While it seems admirable that the bill is transparent and open for public comment, most laws of this nature are broad and allow for bigger, no-common sense crackdowns later. Plus, there might only be a couple concessions and the pacifying effects of “being heard.”

One commenter of the bill aptly noted:

‘Reasonable belief’ and ‘credible evidence’ are too vague and have the appearance of inviting highly subjective interpretation with the option for the commission and/or the provider to exercise sweeping powers with impunity.

Whenever any group is appeased after a battle, it cannot be emphasized enough — the lawmakers’ modus operandi will be: aim high, brace for the outcry, make a couple alterations and sneak the bill back in when no one’s looking. Keep it going and going. Call it by a different name. Haggle. It appears there is compromise and reasoning now, but once the bill passes into law, reason goes out the window, and we are the only ones compromised.

Theft is a reality — although not one that has seriously damaged the growing entertainment industry, or caused massive death and devastation. If Hollywood, pitching the biggest fit, were actually going down, why should we go down with it?

It is more unfortunate that Americans must be so tirelessly vigilant to protect their online activities from the same lawmakers who are tanking the country in so many other truly devastating ways.

The dismantling of Internet freedom will not stop here. Let’s borrow an MO and not let up.

To SOPA — Say NOPA!

To PIPA — Pipe down!

To OPEN — Shut it!

Additional Sources:

http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/sopa-and-pipa-postponed-but-not-cancelled/
http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/pipa-postponed/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/nternet-spoke-and-finally-congress-listened
http://www.webpronews.com/lamar-smith-to-delay-sopa-until-wider-agreement-on-solution-2012-01

Source: Activist Post.

How television executives are adjusting to the post-Netflix world.

The Television Critics Association press tour is a chance for the networks to show off their new shows and returning hits to television critics. But as viewers increasingly use technology ranging from DVRs to streaming services like Hulu and Netflix to watch television, and as artists increasingly tell and sell stories outside the conventional network structure, how network executives approach technology is as important as how they think about storytelling and marketing. These are the five smartest ideas we heard at the press tour in Pasadena over the last two weeks.

1. Use web content as a development pool for the airwaves.
Executive: Kevin Reilly, Entertainment President, Fox Broadcasting Company
While some of the people who make Internet television series are happy to stay online, there are plenty who would love the support of networks, and to make the jump from the Internet to the airwaves. Friends alum Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy, for example, started as a web-only series and is now aired on Showtime. Reilly’s bright idea is to jumpstart that process and to bring it internal. Fox has a strong foothold in animation in prime time with shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy. So Reilly announced that Fox is going to start an aggressive program to develop animated series online to compete with YouTube, which is building out a series of web TV channels anchored by celebrities. And he says that “something that starts in digital could be the next big prime-time hit…You’re seeing those entities [like YouTube] beginning to see the value of content. We have an expertise, and a history, and a proficiency, and a prime-time audience base.” Tech companies from Netflix and Hulu to Yahoo are behaving more like content providers. It’s smart of Fox to start acting like a tech company.

2. If you want critics to assess your ratings more creatively, give them more data.
Executive: John Landgraf, President and General Manager, FX Networks
Landgraf started his session at TCA with a plea to critics to look beyond the ratings of shows when they air in their initial time slot, and to include viewing of repeats of episodes in the same day that they air, and DVR viewings of shows both in the three and seven days after episodes air. Only reporting the first dramatically underestimates the true audience for his shows, Landgraf argued, saying “We’re getting paid, from an ad sales standpoint, for about a third of the audience of our show…if we hadn’t gotten into the ownership [of shows that air on other networks] business, we’d be struggling to maintain this level of business.”

But ratings come out in piecemeal ways, and it can be hard to aggregate numbers and draw trends. So I asked Landgraf if he’d build a portal or tool for journalists to help us get the data we need to do what he’s asking. He said he would. If he lives up to that promise, it would help journalists quantify the time-shifting revolution—especially if other networks follow.

3. Help advertisers find their way to audiences, not shows—and support cult favorite series, while you’re at it.
Executive: Andy Forssell, Senior Vice President of Content, Hulu
You know all that time you spend watching Community on Hulu? And clicking yes or no when the company asks if the ads you’re watching are relevant to you? Or subscribing to Hulu Plus? Hulu generates a lot of information about who you are and what you watch. And when the company’s 1,069 advertisers come to them and want to reach a very specific audience, Hulu tells them exactly where to go, even if it’s to shows that they wouldn’t expect. In other words, Hulu is treating television programming like print content’s being treated online for years. And if that approach can generate extra revenue for low-rated but critically-brilliant shows like Community, all to the good.

4. If you want people to put television on their calendars, make television that’s worth the appointment—in every way.
Executive: Paul Lee, President, ABC Entertainment Group
Lee isn’t alone in recognizing this. But he was the executive of the press tour to point out that if you want people to plan their weeks around television shows, you have to give them not just can’t-miss plots but visual spectacles that they want to see on television screens, which have gotten larger and cheaper even as we’ve added multiple smaller screens. “I think part of that is we are taking risks and having fun and a lot of feature [movie] directors are attracted to that…that’s one of the reasons you saw Phillip Noyce” (the movie director who helmed two episodes of ABC’s Revenge and an upcoming episode of HBO’s Luck) “coming in. I think you’re going to see feature actors as well as directors.” The profusion of movie actors, such as Anjelica Huston on Smash, Josh Lucas on The Firm, and Dustin Hoffman on Luck, coming to the small screen in mid-season seems to be proving him right. It may not have worked for The Firm, which is floundering, but we’ll see how Smash and Luck do.

5. Time slots don’t matter. Nor does waiting between episodes. Or traditional seasons.
Netflix didn’t present at press tour this year, but the service and other streaming providers were an undeniable factor. Particularly given how many questions executives were asked about serialized versus one-off storytelling. They’re in a bind: serialized stories may make it harder for viewers to drop in casually or mid-season, but they may also hold up as more consistent and coherent for viewers who binge on entire seasons of television at a time. In its foray into original content, Netflix is leaning heavily towards serialization, releasing the entire season of its mobsters-in-Scandanavia drama Lilyhammer at once. Technological developments don’t just affect distribution and marketing: They affects storytelling, too. And all the networks are trying to figure out what that means for them.

Source: The Atlantic.