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We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA

2012-01-28T08:48:00.000+11:00

from EFF.org Updates by parker

If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreementdesigned to broaden and extend existing intellectual property (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries,1 it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.

The EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA yesterday in Tokyo. This news is neither momentous nor surprising. This is but the latest step in more than three years of non-transparent negotiations. In December, the Council of the European Union—one of the European Union’s two legislative bodies, composed of executives from the 27 EU member states—adopted ACTA during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries. Of course, this is not the end of the story in the EU. For ACTA to be adopted as EU law, the European Parliament has to vote on whether to accept or reject it.

In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the constitutionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”. This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.

But leading US Constitutional Scholars disagree. Professors Jack Goldsmith and Larry Lessig, questioned the Constitutionality of the executive agreement classification in 2010:

The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.2

(And by the way, we agree [pdf].)

Senator Ron Wyden has been asking these questions for years, first demanding an explanation from USTR ambassador Ron Kirk, President Obama, and now the administration’s top international law expert Harold Koh. The distinction between executive agreement and treaty should not be lost on this administration: as a Senator, Vice President Joe Biden used the same argument to require the Bush administration to seek Senate approval for an arms reduction agreement.

Public interest groups and informed politicians have long lamented these problems with ACTA. But the impact of dubious backroom law-drafting is getting fresh attention in light of the powerful global opposition movement that has emerged out of last week’s Internet blackout protests. Activists and netizens all around the world have woken up to the dangers of overbroad enforcement law proposals drafted by monopoly industry lobbyists, and rushed into law through strategic lobbying by the same corporate interests that backed SOPA and PIPA. Tens of thousands are protesting in the streets in Poland as their ambassador signed the agreement in Tokyo. The EU Parliament’s website and others have come under attack for their involvement in these laws. The Member of the European Parliament who was appointed to be the rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament, Kader Arif, quit yesterday in protest. In a statement he said:

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly…This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. ACTA may have been signed by public officials, but it’s crystal clear that they are not representing the public interest.

It is now up to the collective will of the public to decide what to do next, and for individuals to ask themselves what they want their government to look like. Do you believe in democracy? Do you believe that laws should be made to reflect our collective best interests, formulated through an open transparent process? One that allows everyone, from experts to civil society members, to analyze, question and probe an agreement that will lead to laws that will impact potentially billions of lives? If we don’t do anything now, this agreement is going to crawl itself into power. With the future at stake like this, it’s never too late to fight.
~
If you live in Europe, follow these links to learn how you can take immediate action and stay informed on the latest updates:

La Quadrature du Net (@laquadrature): How to Act Against ACTA

European Digital Rights (@EDRi_org): Stop ACTA!

Open Rights Group (@OpenRightsGroup): ACTA: signed, not yet sealed - now it's up to us

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (@FFII): ACTA Blog

For those in the U.S., you can demonstrate your opposition to the dubious decision to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement to bypass proper congressional review by signing this petition on the whitehouse.gov website, demanding the Administration submit ACTA to the Senate for approval.

EFF will continue to monitor ACTA's global implementation and watch for efforts to use ACTA to broaden US enforcement powers.

1. United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea
2. (See also here [pdf] and here).

Related Issues:

International

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

SOPA to create "Internet Blacklist"

2011-11-17T11:29:00.001+11:00

from The Guardian by DominicRushe

Google,Twitter and eBay say controversial Stop Online Piracy Act would give USauthorities too much power over websites. Internet giants went on the attack onWednesday, claiming legislation aimed at tackling online piracy would create an"internet blacklist bill" that would encourage censorship, kill jobsand give US authorities unrivalled powers over the world's websites. Internetfirms including Wikipedia owner Wikimedia,eBay, Google, Twitter and others protested as Congress discussed the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)now passing through Washington. The act aims to tackle online piracy by givingthe US Justice Department new powers to go after websites, both domesticallyand abroad, that host disputed copyright material. The act would allow the USto effectively pull the plug on websites and go after companies that supportthem technically or through payment systems. A vote on the bill could come asearly as next month.

MariaPallante, register of copyrights, told the committee: "As we all know, theinternet harbours a category of bad faith actors whose very business modelsconsist of infringing copyright in American books, software, movies, and musicwith impunity.” She said these "rogue" sites were the "dark sideof the internet", and that while American authors, publishers, andproducers had been asked to invest in online commerce, "in criticalcircumstances we have left them to compete with thieves." SOPA wouldredress the balance she claimed by "ensuring that our law keeps pace withinfringers." She said the act would requires "all key members of theonline ecosystem, including service providers, search engines, paymentprocessors, and advertising networks, to play a role in protecting copyrightinterests".

Mel Watt,a North Carolina Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors, dismissed as"hyperbolic" charges the bill "will open the floodgates togovernment censorship." He said the comments belittled "thecircumstances under which true victims of tyrannical governments actuallylive." The act has powerful support from the United States Chamber ofCommerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation ofMusicians, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and drugcompanies keen for a crackdown on online pharmacies undercutting US sales. Butit has met with almost universal criticism from the tech community. Mozilla,maker of the Firefox web browser, blacked out its name on its home page in ananti-SOPAprotest, as did Reddit, the social news site. Tumblr launched a pageattacking the act, and firms including AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter andZynga criticised SOPA in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. "Wesupport the bills' stated goals – providing additional enforcement tools tocombat foreign 'rogue' websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement orcounterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding USinternet and technology companies to new and uncertain liabilities, privaterights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring ofwebsites," the firms wrote. "We are concerned that these measurespose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation andjob creation, as well as to our nation's cyber-security."

In a blogpost, Google said: "We strongly support the goal of the bill – crackingdown on offshore websites that profit from pirated and counterfeited goods –but we're concerned the way it's currently written would threaten innovation,jobs, and free expression." Art Bordsky, spokesman for PublicKnowledge, a Washington-based public policy group, said SOPA was"the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop" and that the billas it stands would have "terrible consequences" for the internet. "Theinternational aspects alone are very worrying," he said. "It appearsthat the US is taking control of the entire world. The definitions written inthe bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseasimmediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take actionagainst it."

Atpresent, if Facebook, YouTube, or other leading websites are found to beholding copyright material without permission, then they are told to take itdown. SOPA would make it possible for the US to block the website. Suchfar-reaching powers could kill smaller firms and put off investors fromfinancing new companies, said Holmes Wilson, co-founder of FightFor The Future, a lobbying group. "Everybody uses the internetevery day, these days. Everyone realises how important freedom is online. Thisisn't just for geeks anymore," he said. "The worst part of this billis that the vast majority of the damage will be invisible – it will be all thecompanies that never start because this bill has effectively killed them."

Officials use ruse at high school to clear halls for drug search

2011-10-26T11:35:00.001+11:00

By Mark Frauenfelder at 1:30 pm Monday, Oct 24 boingboing.net

[Video Link] Police and school administrators Wolcott High School in Connecticut tricked students and teachers into believing a dangerous intruder had come into the school building and ordered a lockdown. It was a ruse for a drug sweep of the lockers. No drugs were found. In the video, the police and Wolcott school superintendent Joseph Macary serve a large pile of steaming horseshit to defend their reckless stunt. As kehfysik says in the comments: "The teaching point here is that they can not trust the people into whose care they are given. The authorities will lie to you and try to use fear to control you. I hope the kids learn this."

At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in classrooms.Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in. Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away from the windows.
But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a search for narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed in locked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls.

Officials Use Ruse At Wolcott High To Clear Halls For Drug Search (Via The Agitator)

Here's another version:

Officials Use Ruse At Wolcott High To Clear Halls For Drug Search

SayThere's An Intruder In Building, But It's Just A Drill

October 22, 2011|Rick Green articles.courant.com

At Wolcott High School onemorning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: athreatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediatelytake refuge in classrooms. Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in.Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away fromthe windows. But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a searchfor narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed inlocked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls. Drug-freeschools are an admirable goal but I wonder when we reached the point where thewar on drugs justifies police searches under the ruse of a Virginia Tech-styleattack. What on earth could authorities in Wolcott be thinking?

School officials told me it was aroutine lockdown drill, the kind that schools are required to do. "Wewanted to practice,'' said Superintendent of Schools Joseph McCary. "Wesaid there was a lockdown with an intruder inside. Doors are locked, shades aredrawn and the lights are turned off and students are told to move to a cornerof the room." "After 10 minutes we say this is a drill and at thatpoint we started a search for drugs,'' McCary said. "We are providing a safe andsecure nurturing environment." [my emphasis] No drugs turned up inthe search. An email from the high school to parents explained the event,without mentioning the intruder story. It was described as a "lockdownintervention drill" where "two police dogs swept the hallway lockers,locker rooms and the student parking lot.''

Bringing in police dogs to searchfor drugs in student lockers, while not common, isn't the real outrage here.It's understandable why adults feel they must do something about drug abuse.It's the trickery and tactics that seem more suited to a police sting operationthan a public school. "I don't think the school administration and policedepartment have any right to mislead these kids, under any circumstances, toconduct a public safety drill," said Carl Glendening, a parent of two highschool students. "The kids are told there is an intruder and there is alockdown and then they see cops coming in with dogs." "Some kids werefreaked out by it. The notion of Columbine was in the back of their minds,''Glendening said. "We didn't think this through clearly." "Theyare kids. They are students. They are not there to be used."

Andrew Schneider, executivedirector of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, called it a"terrible policy. It will cause more trouble in the long run. Young peoplewill learn not to trust the police." "It's a terrible civicslesson." While state law requires schools to have regular emergencydrills, drug-sniffing-dog searches are up to the individual school district.Canton schools recently attracted attention for surprise drug searches usingdogs. "The whole issue of search and seizure, you have to have reasonablesuspicion, such as if they have had other issues in where the administrationfeels there's a drug problem in the school,'' said Vincent Mustaro of theConnecticut Association of Boards of Education. "This is one of thosepolicies we consider optional."

School officials say it's not asif they think there's a drug problem in Wolcott. Bringing the dogs in "isprecautionary," said school board Chairwoman Patricia Najarian, who addedthat she didn't see a problem with the fake intruder story. "Maybe there'sa few people who get nervous. When we say it's a surprise drill, it's asurprise drill,'' she said. "We have a very active group of citizensagainst substance abuse." The drug search is "something that is goodto do periodically. It says we don't have drugs in the school,'' she said."Either way it's a win-win. I know people get concerned … there seems tobe an overreaction." McCary, the Wolcottsuperintendent, said they want to teach students to take their safetyseriously, so making them think it was real was essential. "If you sayit's just a drill, would you move as quickly?" He makes a point, exceptthat we don't set fires to get students to take fire drills more seriously.There's also another issue. If you say something important to teenagers and youwant them to trust you, it's better not to lie.

Free Bieber: campaign to kill proposed law that would send you to prison for 5 years for singing copyrighted music on YouTube

2011-10-20T09:39:00.001+11:00

By Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing at 3:13 pm Wednesday, Oct 19

S.978, a new bill in Congress, make it a felony to post videos that contain copyright-infringing music, with up to five years in prison for violators. The clever folks at Fight for the Future have noticed that this law would have put Justin Bieber in jail, since he launched his career by posting videos of himself singing R&B tunes, in violation of copyright. The Free Bieber campaign is aiming to raise awareness of the campaign to fight S.978 and keep posting videos of yourself singing music legal, and they've got plenty of info for helping you fight the bill and enlist your friends to do the same. After you sign, you can submit a webcam video "from behind bars" explaining why jail-time for ordinary internet users is a terrible idea (they're calling it the "Biebercam"). You can also submit your own photos of Bieber in jail to their Tumblr.

Just a kid, singing a song:

This is a video of child celebrity Justin Bieber singing "With You" by the artist Chris Brown. YouTube videos like this one were what made him famous. Tons of kids do this for fun, and many now-popular artists got started in this same way.
Wait-- it's illegal?

Copyright law is so extreme, just singing somebody else's song in public could be infringement. Because he and his mother posted the videos to advance his music career, it's commercial infringement. And a new bill would make this a felony.
5 years in jail, for singing!

The maximum sentence would be five-years, just for singing a cover! Other online video "crimes" could include: videos of a school play, a professional baseball game, or videos with incidental background music (even just a ringtone). Nuts, right?

Free Bieber: Vote no on S. 978 [freebieber.org]

The Dangers in Classifying the News

2011-10-20T09:35:00.002+11:00

October 18, 2011 - 9:57am | From Electronic Frontier Foundation By Jennifer Lynch and Trevor Timm

“When everything is classified, then nothing is classified…The system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion.” ~ Justice Stewart, New York Times v. United States, 1971.

Last week, the White House issued the so-called ‘WikiLeaks’ Executive Order, which mandates better security for the nation’s classified computer systems. While ensuring that the government has better security over its own systems is a good goal, it fails to address an equally important problem: the American government’s addiction to overclassification, which goes far beyond the appropriate and effective means necessary to safeguard real secrets.
The Order, announced nine months ago, was put on “a relatively fast track” by the administration, according to Secrecy News, yet the much more meaningful changes to the classification system President Obama pledged to implement at the very beginning of his presidency have been all but ignored.

In 2009, President Obama famously promised “an unprecedented level of openness” in his administration, and a lynchpin in his open government plan was an overhaul of the government’s bloated secrecy system. In a memo on classification on May 27, 2009, he directed all government agencies to aggressively tackle the problem of overclassification and find ways to reduce the number of classified documents. Included in his proposals were a National Declassification Center and “the possible restoration of the presumption against classification."

He wrote the memo for good reason. The amount of sensitive information held by the government at the end of the Bush Administration was extraordinary, as Suffolk Law Professor Alastair Roberts illustrates, using the largest leak in U.S. history—the WikiLeaks cache—as a starting point:

[T]he leaked State Department cables might have added up to about two gigabytes of data—one-quarter of an eight-gigabyte memory card. By comparison, it has been estimated that the outgoing Bush White House transferred 77 terabytes of data to the National Archives in 2009. That is almost 10,000 memory cards for the White House alone. The holdings of other agencies are even larger.

And the problem is even older than that. Several US Commissions, including one chaired by Senator Moynihan in the mid-90s and the 9/11 Commission in the last decade, found that unnecessary classification was rampant. EFF’s FOIA work is often thwarted by government claims under Exemption 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, which prevents the release of classified information.

Unfortunately, besides the most peripheral and cosmetic changes, government secrecy has only increased since Obama took office. Last year, as part of their Washington Post series and subsequent book Top Secret America, Dana Priest and William Arkin reported, “An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.” Yet incredibly, when the government released its official count as part of an intelligence community report to Congress two months ago, the number of people holding the Top Secret clearance had ballooned to 1,419,051. And the same report noted that 4.2 million people hold some level of security clearances for access to classified information.
Document classification, already at record highs under the Bush Administration, has continued to explode as well. The government classified a staggering 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase over the previous year.

Overclassification causes a myriad of problems. It can open the government up to ridicule, like when the CIA recently refused to release a single passage from its study on global warming, claiming it would harm national security. It can stifle public debate, like two months ago when the CIA tried to censor the memoir critical of its post-9/11 tactics (despite the fact that much of the information that had already been revealed in Congressional testimony). It can encourage waste and incompetence, as it has at the Department of Homeland Security, where even the budget and number of employees is classified. And most critically, it can be used as a veil to hide illegal conduct, such as the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

With so much information stamped “secret,” leaks to the media are inevitable. On October 4th, the New York Times reported on just that: the “growing phenomenon” of public but classified information.

The older and larger drone program in Pakistan, for instance, is a centerpiece of American foreign policy, discussed daily in the news media — but it cannot be mentioned at a public Congressional hearing. The State Department cables published by WikiLeaks can be found on the Web with a few mouse clicks and have affected relations with dozens of countries — but American officials cannot publicly discuss them.

Nowhere was this absurdity starker than when the media reported on the death of Yemen’s alleged al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, at the hands of a (classified) C.I.A. drone. The evidence against him, the panel of U.S officials who decided he was to be put on a “kill list,” and the legal memo “authorizing” his killing were all “Top Secret,” despite the extraordinary constitutional implications of extrajudicially killing an American citizen.
While technically secret, these stories were plastered over the front pages of newspapers every day for one reason: leaks from government officials to journalists. Leaks of classified information, both helpful and damaging to administrations, have been commonplace for decades, and the Obama administration is no different.

But while high-level White House officials continually leak Top Secret information to justify their covert actions and to combat criticism, Obama’s Justice Department is also engaged in an unprecedented campaign to prosecute lower-level whistleblowers that leak information to the press in the name of public interest. This is in contradiction of another pledge Obama made to protect and strengthen whistleblower protections during his 2008 campaign. His administration, in just two and a half years, has indicted five leakers under the Espionage Act. That’s more than every president since Richard Nixon—combined. In addition, the Justice Department is currently trying to indict WikiLeaks for publishing classified information—a case that has huge First Amendment implications and could potentially criminalize portions of national security journalism.

By keeping everything “secret” and selectively prosecuting leakers, Obama is, as Glenn Greenwald put it, “trumpeting information that makes the leader and his government look good while suppressing anything with the force of criminal law that does the opposite.” The government’s secrecy obsession has many remedies, however. J. William Leonard, George W. Bush’s former “classification czar,” thinks overclassifiers should be sanctioned. The Brennen Center just released a series of innovative proposals—from requiring a written explanation every time a document is stamped ‘secret,’ to allowing authorized clearance holders to win cash prizes for successfully challenging an improperly classified document.

Or Obama could just implement the ideas he already proposed two years ago.

[via]

Facebook’s Hotel California: Cross-Site Tracking and the Potential Impact on Digital Privacy Legislation

2011-10-11T11:11:00.003+11:00

October 10, 2011 - 11:34am | By Rainey Reitman

Tracking of Logged Out Users

For its 800 millions users, logging out of Facebook is not something done idly. Closing the Facebook tab won’t do it. Closing your browser won’t do it unless you’ve adjusted the settings in your browser to clear cookies upon closing. And Facebook has buried the log-out button so that it isn’t apparent from your Facebook main page or profile page. This doesn’t mean that logging out of Facebook is difficult; it’s not. But this does indicate that when someone logs out of Facebook, they are doing so purposefully. They aren’t just stepping outside of Facebook; they’re closing the door behind them.

On September 25th, 2011, Nik Cubrilovic, a hacker and writer, published a blog post 1 that showed that a particular Facebook session cookie wasn’t being deleted after a user logged out. He noted that the session cookie included your Facebook user id number, which would presumably facilitate Facebook associating any data they collected about your browsing the web with your Facebook account. Cubrilovic’s review showed that, based on what the cookies were transmitting, Facebook could easily connect some of your browsing habits to your unique Facebook account.

This set off a storm of media coverage, but much of it lacked a detailed analysis of what Facebook is actually tracking and an understanding of how this could influence pending privacy legislation in Congress.

What Does Facebook Really Track?

Facebook sets two types of cookies: session cookies and tracking cookies.

Session cookies are set when you log into Facebook and they include data like your unique Facebook user ID. They are directly associated with your Facebook account. When you log out of Facebook, the session cookies are supposed to be deleted.
Tracking cookies - also known as persistent cookies - don’t expire when you leave your Facebook account. Facebook sets one tracking cookie known as 'datr' when you visit Facebook.com, regardless of whether or not you actually have an account. This cookie sends data back to Facebook every time you make a request of Facebook.com, such as when you load a page with an embedded Facebook 'like' button. This tracking takes place regardless of whether you ever interact with a Facebook 'like' button. In effect, Facebook is getting details of where you go on the Internet.

When you leave Facebook without logging out and then browse the web, you have both tracking cookies and session cookies. Under those circumstances, Facebook knows whenever you load a page with embedded content from Facebook (like a Facebook 'like' button) and also can easily connect that data back to your individual Facebook profile.
Based on Cubrilovic’s recent findings, there was also a period of time when you kept a session cookie after logging out of Facebook, allowing Facebook to easily associate your web browsing history and your Facebook account. Facebook says they’ve addressed this issue, and that now all session cookies are deleted at log out.

But there have been other concerns around Facebook tracking, including an issue that has surfaced three times in the last year. Dutch doctoral candidate Arnold Rosendaal, independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani, and Stanford doctoral candidate and law student Jonathan Mayer have each discovered instances in which Facebook was setting tracking cookies on browsers of people when they visited sites other than Facebook.com. These tracking cookies were being set when individuals visited certain Facebook Connect sites, like CBSSports. As a result, people who never interacted with a Facebook.com widget, and who never visited Facebook.com, were still facing tracking by Facebook cookies.

But there’s yet another layer to this, a layer often glossed over by mainstream coverage of this issue: Facebook can track web browsing history without cookies. Facebook is able to collect data about your browser – including your IP address and a range of facts about your browser – without ever installing a cookie. They can use this data to build a record of every time you load a page with embedded Facebook content. They keep this data for 90 days and then presumably discard or otherwise anonymize it. That's a far cry from being able to shield one’s reading habits from Facebook.

Facebook’s Response

For its part, Facebook admits they collected the data through the accidental setting of tracking cookies and the failure to delete session cookies upon log out - but says these were oversights. They say that the issues are now resolved. They expanded their help section and sent us this statement:

Facebook uses cookies to provide customized content, measure the performance of our products, and protect individual users and our service. We do not track people across the Web to sell that information or use it to target advertisements. In recent instances, when we were made aware that certain cookies were sending more information to us than we had intended, we fixed our cookie management system immediately. Our intentions stand in stark contrast to the many ad networks and data brokers that deliberately and, in many cases, surreptitiously track people to create profiles of their behavior, sell that content to the highest bidder, or use that content to target ads on sites across the Internet.

The Trust Gap

For users concerned about privacy, this statement is small consolation. It’s clear that Facebook does extensive cross-domain tracking, with two types of cookies and even without. With this data, Facebook could create a detailed portrait of how you use the Internet: what sites you visit, how frequently you load them, what time of day you like to access them. This could point to more than your shopping habits – it could provide a candid window into health concerns, political interests, reading habits, sexual preferences, religious affiliations, and much more.
Facebook insists they aren’t misusing the data they are collecting. The question is then: do we as Internet users trust Facebook? Do we trust them not to connect our data with our Facebook profiles, sell it to marketers, or provide it to the government upon request? If Facebook’s business model becomes less profitable in the coming years, do we trust them to continue to not connect tracking data to profiles? If the government brings pressure to bear on Facebook, do we trust Facebook to stand with users and safeguard the data they’ve collected? And, do we believe that Facebook isn’t actually connecting browsing data to profiles now, given their history of mistakes when it comes to tracking and the clear market incentive they would derive from that sort of connection?

This is the “trust gap”- the space between what Facebook promises they are doing with the data they are collecting and what we as Facebook users can reasonably trust them to do. And, when it comes to safeguarding the sensitive reading habits of millions of users, the trust gap is pretty wide.

Could Privacy Snafus Spur Privacy Legislation?

If you are uneasy with Facebook’s cross-domain tracking, you aren’t alone. This has led to a call from lawmakers as well as privacy advocates to have the FTC investigate whether Facebook deceived users by tracking logged-out users. And a group of 6 Facebook users has filed suit against Facebook over this issue.

This newest privacy snafu could prod legislators into moving on one of the many online privacy bills that have been introduced this year. Users’ unease with the quickly-evolving technical capabilities of companies to track users, combined with the abstruse ways in which that data can be collected (from social widgets to super cookies to fingerprinting), has resulted in a growing user demand to have Congress provide legal safeguards for individual privacy when using the Internet.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook hopes that its brand of data collection through ‘like’ buttons won’t be subject to federal regulation. According to AdAge, Facebook sent an “army of lawyers” to Washington to convince Senators McCain and Kerry to carve out exceptions to their recently introduced privacy bill so that Facebook could track their users via social widgets on other sites (dubbed the "Facebook loophole"). But while Kerry and McCain may have acquiesced to Facebook's requests, Senator Rockefeller did not. He introduced legislation that would empower the FTC to create rules around how best to protect users online from pervasive online tracking by third parties.

Facebook seems keen to influence future legislation on these issues. They recently filed paperwork to form a political action committee that will be "supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."

We hope that these efforts to influence politicians won't come at the cost of strong protections for user privacy on the Internet. As the situation currently stands, the resources available to governments and corporations to track users across the Internet far outstrip the resources of the average user to fend off such tracking. And from all appearances, self-regulation by industry is failing.

What You Can Do

If you find yourself creeped-out by being tracked by Facebook on non-Facebook sites, then you have a few options to protect yourself and voice your concerns.

Install Firefox addons like Ghostery, ShareMeNot, Abine’s Taco, and/or AdBlockPlus to limit online tracking. None of these is perfect and each works a little different; check out this guide for a discussion. Also consider installing the Priv3 Firefox extension, which is still in beta.
Use private browsing mode.
Adjust the settings in your browser to delete all cookies upon closing. Clear your cookies when leaving a social networking site, and log out of Facebook before browsing the web. You should consider having one browser strictly for logging into your Facebook account and one browser for the rest of your web usage.
Send a quick complaint to the Federal Trade Commission via their online web complaint form. The FTC uses its complaint form the gauge what issues concern consumers and may launch investigations if there is sufficient user interest.
Support privacy legislation like the Rockefeller Do Not Track bill, which will give users a voice when it comes to online tracking.

1. According to his blog, Cubrilovic says he’s been trying to inform Facebook of these issues since November 14, 2010

[via Electronic Frontier Foundation}

Why Did the New York Times Change Their Brooklyn Bridge Arrests Story?

2011-10-04T09:21:00.001+11:00

By Nick Greene, The Village Voice, Sun., Oct. 2 2011 at 2:34 PM

The above photo of juxtaposed screenshots from the New York Times website has been making the rounds on Facebook, and it shows two very different takes for the same story on yesterday's Brooklyn Bridge arrests. The screenshot on the left, from 6:59 p.m., appears to reflect what many protesters are saying: The police tricked them into marching on the bridge. At 7:19 p.m., any mention of the police allowing demonstrators onto the bridge was removed from the lede. Why did they make this change?

We asked City Room Bureau Chief Andy Newman, and he said the following:

At every point yesterday as the story unfolded, we offered the most complete account we could of a large and chaotic scene that could not be grasped by any one person. The earlier version had almost no input from the police. The later version reflected the accounts of the police, protesters and of course our reporters at the scene. The later version, read in its entirety (not just the one highlighted sentence in that photo), reflected the various perspectives much more thoroughly. The final version of the piece was more thorough still.

It's worth noting that one of their reporters at the scene, freelancer Natasha Lennard, was among the over 700 arrested. The original City Room report that Lennard contributed to says that police did in fact allow protesters onto the bridge:

After allowing marchers from the Occupy Wall Street protests to claim the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge and get partway across, the police cut the marchers off and plunged into the crowd and began making arrests around 4:15 p.m. Saturday.

That paragraph is now nowhere in the story. Currently, the only mentions in the piece of police telling protesters they were allowed onto the bridge are in the words of the protesters themselves.

The Times published a post, "Police Gave Warnings at Bridge, Videos Show", that features footage released by the NYPD. They say the clips "show the police issuing two separate warnings to marchers who were either poised to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on its roadway, rather than the pedestrian walkway, or had already begun doing so." Take a look at the videos for yourself:

While the NYPD videos certainly represent the "input from the police," they may raise more questions than they answer. Animal New York's Bucky Turco tweeted that the second video above appears to be edited at the 29-second mark. How much was edited is unknown, but the footage certainly does jump.

Because this is an ever-evolving story, the original City Room piece is subject to change. As of right now, the last update was posted at 1:23 this afternoon. The current text for the story on the site's front page is still, "In a tense showdown on Saturday, police arrested Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they entered the bridge's Brooklyn-bound roadway."

From The Village Voice

Videos show police brutality at Occupy Wall Street protests

2011-09-26T17:29:00.001+10:00

from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin

Protesters at the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations in and around New York City's Financial District are being met with increasingly harsh police response. A growing number of videos show clashes between NYPD and activists, with police using tasers and mace on demonstrators.

Here are several of the videos making the rounds today: one, two, three.

If I'm reading the sequence of events in the video above correctly, two peaceful female protesters were first penned in by police, then at least one of the young women is sprayed directly in the face at close range with pressurized mace. She then falls to her knees, and repeatedly screams in pain.

There's an ABC News report about this video here. And Evan Fleischer has been gathering news, videos, and relevant links here. Below, from the Occupy Wall Street website: "This is a photo of a white-collar police officer reaching over a barricade and ripping a young woman's hair out."

(thanks, @kaepora)

80 Arrested as Financial District Protest Moves North

By COLIN MOYNIHAN NEW YORK TIMES

Andrew HinderakerPolice officers arrested protesters who had marched from Zuccotti Park to Union Square.

The police made scores of arrests on Saturday as hundreds of people, many of whom had been encamped in the financial district as part of a lengthy protest, marched north to Union Square. As darkness fell, large numbers of officers were deployed on streets near the encampment in Zuccotti Park, at Broadway and Liberty Street, where hundreds more people had gathered.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said in a statement, “There were approximately 80 arrests, mainly for disorderly conduct by individuals who blocked vehicular and pedestrian traffic, but also for resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and, in one instance, for assault on a police officer.”

Protest organizers estimated that about 85 people were arrested and that about five were struck with pepper spray. Among those was Chelsea Elliott, 25, who said that she was sprayed after shouting “Why are you doing that?” as an officer arrested a protester at East 12th Street.

“I was on the ground sobbing and couldn’t breathe,” she said. The continuing protests, against a financial system that participants say favors the rich and powerful over ordinary citizens, started last Saturday and were coordinated by a New York group called the General Assembly.

Many of those taking part have slept in Zuccotti Park, which is private, using it as a base. In the early afternoon hundreds of people left the park and moved north toward Union Square. Witnesses said that for much of the route, protesters spilled from sidewalks onto streets and added that the police used long orange nets at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street in an apparent attempt to block the march from proceeding.

Many marchers, however, detoured and entered Union Square before eventually turning south again. Video showed a confusing scene as protesters went south on University Place, where motor vehicles run north.

At 12th Street the orange nets again were used, this time to box in protesters between University Place and Fifth Avenue. About 3 p.m., more than two dozen people sat, handcuffed, on the sidewalk.

Nearby, two other protesters standing handcuffed on Fifth Avenue told a reporter that they had both been arrested on sidewalks and were not aware of having broken any law.

“They put up orange nets and tried to kettle us and we started running and they started tackling random people and handcuffing them,” said Kelly Brannon, 27, of Ridgewood, Queens. “They were herding us like cattle.”

Next to her, David Smith, from Maine, said that he had been chanting “Let them go” as people were handcuffed, and was then arrested by a senior officer who told him that he was being charged with obstructing governmental administration.

After his arrest, one protester posted a Twitter message about his experiences from a bus taking him downtown.

@DustinSlaughter there’s 50+ of us arrested in a caravan, netted & maced by police after standing on sidewalk where they told us toSat Sep 24 20:12:15 via Twitter for iPhoneJRL | NONVIOLENCE
PulseOfProtest

Many demonstrators made their way back down to Zuccotti Park, where they were joined by new arrivals. “Right now we are more determined than ever that what we are doing is necessary and correct,” said Patrick Bruner, a spokesman for the protesters.

New rules posted in the park on Saturday seemed aimed at the protesters. In addition to bicycle riding, camping gear and sleeping bags were now also banned.

Elizabeth A. Harris, Rob Harris and Meredith Hoffman contributed reporting.

Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesProtesters who marched up from Wall Street area were arrested on Fifth Avenue at 12th Street.

Hacking: Met use Official Secrets Act to demand Guardian reveals sources

2011-09-17T09:05:00.000+10:00

By David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 September 2011 15.40 BST
Unprecedented move sees Scotland Yard use the Official Secrets Act to demand the paper hands over information

The Met are demanding the handover of documents relating to the source of information used in the Guardian's Milly Dowler phone-hacking story. Photograph: Surrey Police/PAThe Metropolitan police are seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal.In an unprecedented legal attack on journalists' sources, Scotland Yard officers claim the act, which has special powers usually aimed at espionage, could have been breached in July when reporters Amelia Hill and Nick Davies revealed the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

They are demanding source information be handed over.The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, said on Friday: "We shall resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost".Tom Watson, the former Labour minister who has been prominent in exposing hacking by the News of the World, said: "It is an outrageous abuse and completely unacceptable that, having failed to investigate serious wrongdoing at the News of the World for more than a decade, the police should now be trying to move against the Guardian. It was the Guardian who first exposed this scandal."The NUJ general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, said: "This is a very serious threat to journalists and the NUJ will fight off this vicious attempt to use the Official Secrets Act … Journalists have investigated the hacking story and told the truth to the public. They should be congratulated rather than being hounded and criminalised by the state."The protection of sources is an essential principle which has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the European court of human rights as the cornerstone of press freedom. The NUJ shall defend it. In 2007 a judge made it clear that journalists and their sources are protected under article 10 of the Human Rights Act and it applies to leaked material. The use of the Official Secrets Act is a disgraceful attempt to get round this existing judgment."

The paper's revelation in July that police had never properly pursued the News of the World for hacking the phone of the missing murdered girl caused a wave of public revulsion worldwide.The ensuing uproar over police inadequacy and alleged collusion with the Murdoch media empire swept away the top officers at Scotland Yard. It also brought about the closure of the News of the World itself, the withdrawal of the Murdoch takeover bid for Sky, and the launch of a major judicial inquiry into the entire scandal.Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and assistant commissioner John Yates both resigned. David Cameron's former PR chief Andy Coulson is among those who have subsequently been arrested for questioning, along with former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

Police now intend to go before a judge at the Old Bailey in London on 23 September, in an attempt to force the handover of documents relating to the source of information for a number of articles, including the article published by Hill and Davies on 4 July disclosing "the interception of the telephone of Milly Dowler".Documents written by both reporters about the Milly Dowler story are covered by the terms of the production order police are now demanding.The application, authorised by Detective-Superintendent Mark Mitchell of Scotland Yard's professional standards unit, claims that the published article could have disclosed information in breach of the 1989 Official Secrets Act.It is claimed Hill could have incited police working on the then Operation Weeting hacking inquiry into leaking information, both about Milly Dowler and about the identity of Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and other arrested newspaper executives.A police officer is also being investigated, Scotland Yard say, for breaching the Official Secrets Act, as well as alleged misconduct in public office, for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.An obscure clause – section 5 – of the 1989 Official Secrets Act, highly controversial at the time of its passing, allows individuals to be prosecuted for passing on "damaging" information leaked to them by government officials in breach of section 4 of the same act. This includes police information "likely to impede … the prosecution of suspected offenders".The clause is aimed at those who deliberately derail investigations by, for example, tipping off a suspect about an impending police raid. But it is being used in this case in an unprecedented way, against individual journalists for publishing a news article.

The Guardian's reporters did not pay any police officers.Police claim their work might be undermined by the alleged leaks. The head of Operation Weeting, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, is on record deploring that some details of inquiries have apparently leaked to the Guardian. Some of the arrestees are reported to be already claiming that media publicity will prevent them getting a fair trial.Scotland Yard says it has not officially released any of the arrestees' names, none of whom has as yet been charged with any offence. But they do not assert that anyone was "tipped off" by the arrest disclosures in the Guardian or other papers. Most of those questioned were arrested by appointment.The only previous attempt to use the 1989 Official Secrets Act against a journalist collapsed 11 years ago after a public outcry. Lieutenant Colonel Wylde, a former military intelligence officer, and author Tony Geraghty were arrested in December 1998 by defence ministry police after early morning raids at their homes. Both had computers and documents seized. This followed the publication of Geraghty's book The Irish War, which describes two British army computer databases in Northern Ireland used to identify vehicles and suspects.Expert reports were produced by the defence showing the information was not damaging. After consultations with Labour attorney general Lord Williams of Mostyn, both cases were finally dropped in November 2000.Wylde's lawyer, John Wadham, then of Liberty, said: "This case should never have got off the ground … This case is another nail in the coffin of the Official Secrets Act. The act is fundamentally flawed and needs to be reformed."In the same year, police failed in a similar attempt to get a production order for journalistic material from the Guardian and the Observer, over correspondence with renegade MI5 officer David Shayler. The appeal court, led by Lord Justice Judge, ruled: "Unless there are compelling reasons of national security, the public is entitled to know the facts, and as the eyes and ears of the public, journalists are entitled to investigate and report the facts … Inconvenient or embarrassing revelations, whether for the security services, or for public authorities, should not be suppressed."Legal proceedings directed towards the seizure of the working papers of an individual journalist, or the premises of the newspaper … tend to inhibit discussion … Compelling evidence would normally be needed to demonstrate that the public interest would be served by such proceedings."Otherwise, to the public disadvantage, legitimate inquiry and discussion, and 'the safety valve of effective investigative journalism' … would be discouraged, perhaps stifled."In 2009 the police threatened to prosecute Conservative MP Damian Green for "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office". The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, intervened in that case, saying he did not consider that the damage caused by the leaked information outweighed the importance of the freedom of the press.Only last week the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told MPs: "There is an important difference between off-the-record briefing and the payment of money by or to the police in return for information."Journalists must operate within the law, but … we must be careful not to overreact in a way that would undermine the foundations of a free society."

At a speech at the Royal Television Society this week, Hunt praised the Guardian's coverage of the hacking scandal, describing it as "investigative journalism of the highest quality".The former Met commissioner Stephenson admitted to MPs that he had tried to talk the Guardian out of its phone-hacking campaign in December 2009. He added that "we should be grateful" to the Guardian for ignoring his advice and continuing its campaign.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/16/phone-hacking-met-court-order

Freedom Not Fear: Ending A Decade Long Legacy of International Privacy Erosion

2011-09-14T18:11:00.000+10:00

Commentary by Katitza Rodriguez

This Saturday, September 17th, concerned European citizens with the Freedom not Fearmovement have decided to take their protest to the capital of the European Union, Brussels. Their slogan: Stop the surveillance mania! For five years in a row, Freedom Not Fear has taken to the streets in several cities in Europe and beyond to demand an end to suspicion-less surveillance measures. These include mandatory data retention laws and other reactionary surveillance measures that have been justified by the rhetoric of fear. Their protest efforts have been among the most meaningful demonstrations for this cause. Previously, Freedom not Fear protests were spread out across various European towns. For the first time, protesters from throughout Europe are descending on Brussels to directly confront the European Union’s policies at its headquarters.
Last week, protests were also organized in Dresden, Vienna, and Berlin. With mottoes such as: “Privacy is not a crime”, “mass surveillance threatens an open society”, and “mountains of data compromise our security”, thousands of people took the streets of Berlin to protest the surveillance of air travelers and to stop any attempt to re-introduce a German mandatory data retention law. A coalition of German activists is also urging fellow citizens to sign a petition against data retention. Its ultimate goal is to persuade the German government to fight for the repeal of the overall European Data Retention Directive.
As the world reflects on the decade following September 11th, Freedom not Fear protesters are attempting to reverse the unfortunate post-911 legacy of online anti-privacy measures. In the wake of 9/11, international government responses had significant impact on Internet privacy. The “war on terror” rhetoric enabled one of the most effective international policy launderingcampaigns to quickly enact unpopular and often covert policies with minimal fanfare. Within 45 days of 9/11, then-president George W. Bush already sent his much-wanted surveillance wish list to the European Union. In a letter to the European Commission President in Brussels, the United States sets out a blueprint for privacy erosions the EU could undertake that have sacrificed privacy for little gain in the struggle against terrorism.
The letter called on the EU to eliminate existing privacy protections so that online companies would be free to retain their customers’ online activities: “[r]evise draft privacy directives that call for mandatory destruction to permit the retention of critical data for a reasonable period.” What did this proposed revision mean? One of the key European privacy protections is the data minimization principle. This provision compels companies to limit their collection of personal information to a specific purpose [e.g., billing], and keep their data for only a specific period of time before destroying or irreversibly anonymizing it. This helps prevent online companies from developing sweeping databases on their customers’ activities, while the U.S. Government wished to encourage retention of everyone’s data, whether innocent or not, so investigators will have access to it. The impact of 9/11 on deliberations at the EU was evident at the time:

"We think this new version of the directive sends a powerful signal and it responds to the events of Sept. 11," said a European Union diplomat involved in the Wednesday meeting who insisted on anonymity. "Since that date there has been a reappraisal of the issue of data retention."

These initial U.S. efforts to facilitate a permissive data retention regime evolved to something worse: a mandatory Data Retention Directive adopted by the EU in 2006. Mandatory data retention is an extreme measure that the U.S. government has perennially tried--and failed--to pass through Congress. It was reintroduced by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee once again this year, in a bill that will require any commercial providers of Internet access to keep, for at least 12 months, a record of which users were assigned to particular network addresses at particular times.
As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we should reflect on the way in which a climate of fear has been exploited to advance Bush’s controversial proposals into international policies and practices. The fear of 'imminent threats' has made rational assessments aimed at achieving actual security and privacy difficult. Ten years later, the rhetoric of threats continues to pervade the dialogue.
As James Bamford said, in his recent op-ed, Post-9/11, NSA 'enemies' include us “somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide.” Bamford is right, but the problem isn't limited to the U.S. In many countries around the world ordinary people morphed into potential criminals and governments took free reign to invade their privacy. If we allow the tragic attacks of 9/11 to create a cloud of fear, confusion and paranoia, we give in to the terrorists, and threaten the very freedoms that make open societies great. Freedom not Fear’s bold march into Brussels and across the European Union brings hope that the political climate is shifting and that we can re-establish our privacy rights and the principle of data minimization in the face of a decade’s worth of massive civil liberties breaches.

Some new film/cinema links

2011-09-14T12:03:00.000+10:00

The Art of the Title SequenceA compendium and leading web resource of film and television title design from around the world. Honouring the artists who design excellent title sequences. The site discusses and displays their work with a desire to foster more of it, via stills and video links, interviews, creator notes, and user comments.

News Corp board shocked at evidence of payments to police, says former DPP

2011-09-14T12:01:00.000+10:00

By Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent, via guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011

Lord Macdonald tells committee it took him 'three to five minutes' to decide NoW emails had to be passed to police. Lord Macdonald was in charge of the CPS when the phone-hacking prosecution of the NoW’s royal correspondent took place.

"Blindingly obvious" evidence of corrupt payments to police officers was found by the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, when he inspected News of the World emails, the home affairs select committee was told. Explaining how he had been called in by solicitors acting for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation board, Lord Macdonald said that when he inspected the messages it took him between "three to five minutes" to decide that the material had to be passed to police. "The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task. It was evidence of serious criminal offences."

He first showed it to the News Corp board in June this year. "There was no dissent," he recalled. "They were stunned. They were shocked. I said it was my unequivocal advice that it should be handed to the police. They accepted that." That board meeting, the former DPP said, was chaired by Rupert Murdoch. Lord Macdonald shortly afterwards gave the material to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick at the Metropolitan police. The nine or 10 emails passed over led to the launch of Operation Elveden, the police investigation into corrupt payments to officers for information. Lord Macdonald, who had been in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service when the phone-hacking prosecution of the NoW's royal correspondent took place, said he had only been alerted to the case due to the convention that the DPP is always notified of crimes involving the royal family.

Members of the committee were highly critical of the CPS's narrow definition of what constituted phone hacking, claiming that it was at odds with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Mark Reckless, the Conservative MP for Rochester, said that the original police investigation was hindered by the advice from the CPS that phone hacking was only an offence if messages had been intercepted before they were listened to by the intended recipient. However, Reckless said, a clause in the RIPA makes it an offence to hack in to messages even if they have already been heard. Keir Starmer, the current DPP, said that the police had been told that "the RIPA legislation was untested". Listening to messages before they had been heard by the intended recipient was illegal, the police were told, but the question of whether intercepting them afterwards constituted a crime was "untested", he said.

Mark Lewis, the solicitor who has followed the scandal since its start, said he was the first person to lose his job over the affair when the firm in which he was a partner said it no longer wished him to pursue other victims' claims. Lewis also told MPs that he had been threatened by lawyers acting for John Yates, the former assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, because of comments he had made about phone hacking. "I have copies of a letter from Carter Ruck [solicitors] threatening to sue me on behalf of John Yates," Lewis told the home affairs select committee. He said the Guardian and the Labour MP Chris Bryant had also received threats of being sued. "The costs of the action were paid for by the Metropolitan Police, by the taxpayer," he added. Lewis said the reason for the investigation taking so long was not due solely to the police. "The DPP seems to have got it wrong and needs to be helped out," he said.

[via]

Rupert Murdoch attacked at phone-hacking hearing
by John Plunkett and Jane Martinson via guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 17.24 BST

Select committee brought to halt as activist attempts to hit News Corp chief in face with paper plate covered in shaving foam

The Murdochs' appearance before MPs for a grilling about the phone-hacking scandal was brought to a dramatic halt after an activist attempted to hit Rupert Murdoch in the face with a paper plate covered in shaving foam. Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng, who was sitting behind her husband at the culture, media and sport committee hearing, leapt up to defend her husband and appeared to hit out at the attacker as security guards and police rushed across the room to apprehend him. The attack happened just before 5pm on Tuesday and the News Corp chairman and chief executive was back answering MPs' questions within 20 minutes, having removed his foam-spattered suit jacket.

Murdoch's assailant, who was sitting four rows back in the committee meeting room at Portcullis House near the Houses of Parliament, apparently identified himself on Twitter shortly before the attack as a standup comic and UK Uncut activist called Jonnie Marbles. Marbles appears to have tweeted moments before he invaded the hearing. "It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat," he wrote on the social media network.

Moments after the committee chairman, John Whittingdale MP, suspended the meeting, a man wearing a checked shirt was seen outside the meeting room at the House of Commons in handcuffs. Cries of "no, no," could be heard as the man ran towards Rupert Murdoch, who was sitting in front of MPs on the committee alongside his son James. "He was sitting four rows back," said Guardian journalist Jane Martinson, who was among the reporters in the room when the attack took place. "He walked calmly to the front and smacked it in Rupert's face." Marbles had earlier tweeted: "I'm actually in this committee and can confirm: Murdoch is Mr Burns." He added: "Rupert Murdoch appears to be going senile." He also tweeted: "It might be quicker if Baby Murdoch simply listed all of the things that he does know. "One gets the sense that they haven't really done the required reading ahead of their presentation. Think they may fail this module."

Marbles describes himself on his Twitter page as an "activist, comedian, father figure and all-round nonsense. Tweeting in an impersonal capacity." But UK Uncut moved swiftly to distance itself from the invader. "The pie in Murdoch's face was NOT a UK Uncut action, everyone!" it tweeted soon after. Martinson added: "The man lobbed a plate of shaving foam into Murdoch's face at point-blank range. There was an astonishing reaction from Wendi, who, sitting behind her husband, immediately returned fire. "James looked stunned, several members of room gasped, but Wendi then sat on the desk calmly wiping foam from her husband's face. There was foam all over her blue-painted toes as well as two police officers who immediately grabbed him. There was shock that he got the foam in given the tight security. Another man with a long beard was also questioned. "She added: "All the press were kept in an overspill room as the committee resumed. I'm not sure how the foam man hid the paper plate. He was wearing black combat trousers and walked straight past me from the back row where the public was sitting to within inches of Murdoch. "Wendi was on her feet lobbing the plate back at her husband's assailant before James got up. Another woman – small and dark-haired – was the one who accosted the assailant first."

Labour MP Tom Watson, one of the members of the select committee, told Murdoch: "Your wife has a very good left hook." Louise Mensch, a Conservative MP and fellow select committee member, said Murdoch had shown "huge guts" in being willing to carry on. Another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, described the attack as "just despicable". He said witnesses should not be treated in such a manner and described it as contempt of parliament. Associates of Marbles said he "lives and breathes politics" and had been involved in previous UK Uncut protests.

Australia to investigate media after UK phone-hacking scandal

2011-09-14T11:56:00.001+10:00

Inquiry could cover protections for privacy and the role of the print media's self-regulatory watchdog

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 09.28 BST
Article history

Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, threatened to sue the Australian newspaper last month.
Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters

The Australian government has promised an inquiry into the country's media as politicians complain that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns too many newspapers.

Calls have been growing for an Australian inquiry into News Corp since the New York-based company closed the News of the World in July over phone-hacking allegations. News Corp owns 70% of Australia's newspapers.

The communications minister, Stephen Conroy, told colleagues in his ruling centre-left Labor party on Tuesday that there would be an inquiry into the Australian media. He said the terms of reference were under discussion with the Greens party that supports Labor's minority government. But Conroy said the inquiry would not be "an attack on News Ltd", the Australian subsidiary of News Corp. He said the inquiry could cover areas including protections for privacy and the role of the print media's self-regulatory watchdog, Australian Press Council. Conroy said the government disagreed with a motion to be proposed by the Greens leader, Bob Brown, in the Senate on Thursday. That motion would call on Conroy to "investigate the direct or indirect ramifications for Australia of the criminal matters affecting" News Corp's British subsidiary, News International. There have been no allegations made in Australia of the type of phone hacking that has led to at least 16 arrests in Britain.

Labor politicians have long complained that News Ltd publications are biased towards Liberal party conservatives and that the company has too much control over Australian newspapers. They blame the media for their party plumbing record lows in opinion polls four years after Labor first came to government. The Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, dismissed the need for a media inquiry, saying there was no evidence of any new problems in the industry. "This looks like a naked attempt to intimidate the media," Abbott said.

The prime minister, Julia Gillard, has had an increasingly testy relationship with News Ltd publications and its executives. The Australian newspaper withdrew an opinion piece from its website and published an apology last month after Gillard threatened to sue over an incorrect claim that she had once shared a house with a corrupt union official that had been paid for with embezzled union money. Gillard attacked the News Ltd broadsheet, saying no one had contacted her for comment before publishing "a false report in breach of all known standards of journalism". "This is a question of ethics and standards for the Australian," she said. John Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Ltd, described Gillard's comments as "pedantic" and "disappointing", and said it was accepted practice not to seek comment for opinion pieces.

UPDATE:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/media-groups-warn-on-government-regulation/story-e6frf7jx-1226137264538

Media groups warn on government regulation

From:AAP
September 14, 2011 9:34PM

MAJOR news groups have warned against government regulation of print and online media, as Labor launched the first big inquiry into the sector in two decades and flagged the possibility of a single body to deal with complaints.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today announced the independent inquiry, which was sparked by government and Greens MP concerns about the blurring of news and opinion in Australian political coverage, and privacy issues raised by the News of the World phone hacking scandal in the UK. But the minister said the aim of the inquiry - which won't have the power to compel witnesses - was not to provide a forum for politicians to attack the media. "The government is not interested in attacking any one media organisation or in seeking to reduce the necessary scrutiny of the political process that is at the heart of a functioning democratic media," he said.

John Hartigan, the chairman and chief executive of News Limited, which controls 70 per cent of Australia's print media and whose newspapers have been accused of bias by some MPs including Senator Conroy, said the way the inquiry had been set up was "regrettable".

"This inquiry started life as a witch-hunt by the Greens and has morphed into a fairly narrow look at a mixed bag of issues ostensibly focussed on print journalism," he said in a statement. "Any substantive inquiry into the media should cover all media and all media equally, particularly if it intends to investigate the need for a new overarching regulatory system."

Currently, the electronic media is regulated by a statutory body, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the print media is covered by an independent industry-funded body, the Australian Press Council (APC). Senator Conroy said the APC was widely seen as a "toothless tiger" in a world of 24-hour news cycles and converging media platforms. "I don't think any editor and any of you quake in your boots about a complaint to the Press Council," Senator Conroy told reporters in Canberra.

He said the idea of a single regulator - overseeing complaints about all media from print to television and the internet - was "a legitimate question in the converged world".

APC chairman Professor Julian Disney, who took over the role 18 months ago, told AAP that council's staffing needed to be bolstered if it was going to have more bite. "It's not toothless, but it doesn't have enough teeth and it's also been too timid in using the powers that we have." At the moment, the council has four staff members. Prof Disney told AAP that he wants at least eight, so they could undertake systemic monitoring on issues such as the use of fair and accurate headlines. "That kind of system monitoring is something we really want to strengthen but that's not easy and it's actually impossible unless you have better resources that we have now," he said. "Our concern is not so much for the future of the press council, it's for the future of a strong effective model."

Greens leader Bob Brown said while he did not think media firms should be forced to divest their interests, he hoped the inquiry would find other ways to improve the number of voices in the Australian media and flagged his support for a single regulator. "Surely that seems to be one good option that inquiry might assess," he said. Fairfax Media and Australian Associated Press (AAP) cautiously welcomed the inquiry and pledged their participation, but warned against government regulation of the press. "Fairfax Media will be an active participant in the inquiry, championing the importance of independent journalism the likes of which are best able to flourish in a less regulated environment," CEO Greg Hywood said in a statement.

AAP CEO Bruce Davidson said it was vital the print media remained independent and free from any regulation that would impede its role in a democratic society. "I trust that this inquiry would rightly reject such a notion, and AAP certainly will be pressing that point in any submission to the inquiry," he said. Opposition communications spokesman and former journalist Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the inquiry, to be headed by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein and assisted by journalism academic Dr Matthew Ricketson. "This is just a political stunt by a government that is bitter about being criticised by the media, in particular by News Limited," Mr Turnbull said. The inquiry will also look at the effectiveness of media codes of practice and the impact of technological change on the media business model. But Mr Turnbull said its four terms of reference could easily be covered by the government's ongoing convergence review. Australians should be suspicious of more regulation placed on the media, he said.

The inquiry will report to the government by February 28, 2012.

Guy Accused Of Being Part Of Anonymous Banned By Court From Using His Real Name Online

2011-09-14T11:34:00.004+10:00

from the say-what-now? dept

byMike Masnick, TechDirt, Mon, Sep 12th 2011 1:00pm

Ah, the bizarre legal results of confused courts and confused laws. Four of the people arrested in the UK and accused of being a part of the not-actually-a-group Anonymous last week won a small part of a court battle. Prosecutors apparently had asked the court to bar the four from using Twitter or other social networking and chat services, such as TinyChat, arguing that "Anonymous as a group continues to be active." The court decided that it would not issue such a complete ban, though it had already blocked them from using IRC. Instead, it said that they could continue to use social networking and chat programs... but not use their existing online personas. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that one of the people in question used his real first name as his online persona previously:

Peter David-Gibson, aged 20 from Hartlepool, who went by the online nickname “Peter”

Yes, you read that right. A guy accused of being Anonymous, but who used his real name online, can now no longer use his real name... because he may have been a part of Anonymous. That makes sense.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/10255815907/guy-accused-being-part-anonymous-banned-court-using-his-real-name-online.shtmlhttp://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/10255815907/guy-accused-being-part-anonymous-banned-court-using-his-real-name-online.shtml

Responses to the London Riots

2011-08-12T08:19:00.006+10:00

This Won’t End Well: Speaking before parliament, UK PM David Cameron said he has ordered an inquiry into the possibility of banning users from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook if it is determined that they are planning to engage in criminal behavior. “Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill,” Cameron said. “And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.” Cameron added that he asked the police “if they need any other new powers.”

Home Secretary Theresa May will hold meetings with representatives from Facebbok, Twitter, and RIM to discuss their role in preventing future riots. “All of them should think about their responsibility and about taking down those images,” Cameron said in reference to Facebook and Twitter posts he believes could incite further unrest.

In related news:

Among the post-riot measures to be enacted in Britain, Reuters reports, will be controls on face coverings and the possible use of the army to suppress future disturbances. Britain will crack down on gangs and may call in army support if this week's riots are repeated, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday, saying he would not allow a "culture of fear" to exist on the streets. The government will also give the police powers to demand people remove face coverings after many looters who ransacked shops during riots in London and other English cities this week wore masks to avoid being identified.

For what criminal activities (such as looting) is the appropriate response to demand someone remove a mask, instead of being arresting for the crime?

The Guardian has full details on Prime Minister David Cameron's report today in Parliament:

Instant messaging services will be reviewed. "We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," he said.

The police will have new powers to order people to remove facemasks. "On facemasks, currently [the police] can only remove these in a specific geographical location and for a limited time," Cameron said. "So I can announce today that we are going to give the police the discretion to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity."

Curfew powers will be reviewed. "On dealing with crowds, we are also looking at the use of existing dispersal powers and whether any wider power of curfew is necessary," he said.

Obviously the use of social media can only be used for evil, never for good. One of the most pernicious uses of social media and the internet is this horrific example:

Help Wanted of the Day: 89-year-old Aaron Biber has been cutting hair in Tottenham for decades. Last year, Aaron lost his wife. This year, he lost his business. Rioters ransacked his barbershop, smashed windows, and stole hairdryers. “I will probably have to close because I haven’t got insurance and I can’t afford the repairs,” Aaron says. “Not so fast,” responds the Internet. A website has been launched to help Aaron fix his shop. So far nearly £17,000 have been donated.

Bastards.

So here are some of the measures being proposed in response to the riots:

Cameron says Army could be called in if riots are repeated

Police are handed powers to unmask the wild rioters

Inquiry under way into how to clamp down on social media

There'll be talks with ex-US police chief about tackling gangs

Cameron shrugs off Labour's plea for police cuts U-turn

Prime Minister: 'This is a time for our country to pull together'

Labour leader Ed Miliband calls for full, independent inquiry

Calling on councils to use their powers to evict offenders from social houses;

Ministers looking into whether wider powers of curfew are needed;

A £20million fund to help high street firms affected by riots;

Businesses very badly hit will be allowed to defer tax payments;

Councils permitted to grant business rate relief;

Bellwin Scheme of emergency support to councils enacted;

£10million recovery scheme to help town halls in clean-up;

Government to meet immediate costs of housing families left homeless;

Gang injunctions scheme to be extended across the UK;

Ministerial group to prepare an action plan on gang culture.

No soul-searching into the reasons behind the riots.

UPDATE: "Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”
—Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain addressing Parliament during a special debate on the UK riots.

Britain considers mask ban; may use army if unrest continues

Stay classy, Murdoch Media.

2011-08-11T09:56:00.003+10:00

From Wikipedia: The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions.^[2] Since 1993, it has been owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which had owned it previously from 1976 to 1988. It is the seventh-largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation.^[3] Its editorial offices are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, in New York City, New York. The Post is known for its sensationalist headlines.

The Murdoch years

One of the paper's most famous headlines, from the April 15, 1983 edition.

Murdoch imported the sensationalist "tabloid journalism" style of many of his Australian and British newspapers, such as The Sun (the highest selling daily newspaper in the UK). This style was typified by Post's famous headlines such as “Headless body in topless bar”. In its 35th-anniversary edition, New York Magazine listed this as one of the greatest headlines ever. It also has five other Post headlines in its "Greatest Tabloid Headlines" list.^[25]

Because of the institution of federal regulations limiting media cross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of WNYW-TV to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company, Murdoch was forced to sell the paper for US$37.6 million in 1988 to Peter S. Kalikow, a real-estate magnate with no news experience.^[26] When Kalikow declared bankruptcy in 1993,^[26] the paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg,^[26] a financier who later pleaded guilty to securities fraud;^[27] and, for two weeks, by Abe Hirschfeld,^[28] who made his fortune building parking garages. After a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership — which included publication of an issue whose front page featured the iconic masthead photo of Alexander Hamilton with a single tear drop running down his cheek^[29]—The Post was repurchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous political officials, including Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo, persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier.^[30] Without that FCC ruling, the paper would have shut down. Under Murdoch's renewed direction, the paper continued its conservative editorial viewpoint.

Criticism

The Post has been criticized since the beginning of Murdoch's ownership for sensationalism, blatant advocacy and conservative bias. In 1980, the Columbia Journalism Review opined that "the New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem – a force for evil."^[31]

Perhaps the most serious allegation against the Post is that it is willing to contort its news coverage to suit Murdoch's business needs, in particular that the paper has avoided reporting anything that is unflattering to the government of the People's Republic of China, where Murdoch has invested heavily in satellite television.^[32]

Ian Spiegelman, a former reporter for the paper's Page Six gossip column who had been fired by the paper in 2004,^[33] said in a statement for a lawsuit against the paper that in 2001 he was ordered to kill an item on Page Six about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club because it would have "angered the Communist regime and endangered Murdoch’s broadcast privileges."

Critics say that the Post allows its editorial positions to shape its story selection and news coverage. Post executive editor Steven D. Cuozzo, has responded that the Post "broke the elitist media stranglehold on the national agenda."

According to a survey conducted by Pace University in 2004, the Post was rated the least-credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than credible (44% not credible to 39% credible).^[34]

The Public Enemy song "A Letter to the New York Post" from their album Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black is a complaint about what they believed to be negative and inaccurate coverage African-Americans received from the paper.

Believe it or not

2011-07-31T09:03:00.006+10:00

By John Elder, The Sunday Age, July 31, 2011

Illustration: Frank Maiorana.

Trust between the public and the media is eroding and that's bad news for everyone.

FOR more than 30 years as a journalist, I've heard people say, ''You blokes make it all up anyway''. Yet, these same people clearly watch the news on television, follow events in their newspapers and make decisions based on what they hear and read. The question I have to ask myself is why? What do people actually believe and how do they come to believe it? And if they genuinely doubt the veracity of what they are consuming, to what degree does the truth matter to them? It's a conundrum that is only becoming more complex with the rise of the internet. News is a bigger, more frantic and competitive business than ever - and the News of the World phone hacking scandal has further damaged journalistic credibility. People increasingly doubt that the information they consume is completely factual.

According to a study by the Pew Research Centre's project for excellence in journalism, when Osama bin Laden was reportedly shot and killed by US Navy Seals and hastily buried at sea, one in six Facebook pages and twitterings debated if it was a hoax. A significant number believed it to be so. One in 10 blogs similarly frothed with conspiracy theories. Clearly, a big part of the world did not believe the reports they saw on the evening news. The Pew Research Centre, which examined 120,000 news stories, 100,000 blog posts and 6.9 million posts on Twitter, found these doubts continued to hold ''significant'' and consistent purchase for days afterward. While this is mostly a matter of lack of trust in authority - whether President Barak Obama lied to us - it also reflects negatively on the news media that reported it. If bin Laden's death was staged to prop up a wobbly Obama administration, news media organisations are either incompetent, complacent or, to take a stroll on the lunatic fringe, colluding in a massive fraud. But none of this matters to the people drawn to the bin Laden hoax theory. The role of news media as a fundamental pillar of a democratic society isn't what they care about. (I could only find a handful of rants online that accused the media of failing to uncover the ''truth'' of the matter.) For some, the mainstream media was all but irrelevant to one of the biggest stories of the year. How did this come to be?

Social scientists have long argued there is a broad disconnect between journalism and its voracious consumers, where the hole in the transaction is trust. What the bin Laden story illustrates perhaps is how big that hole has become. ''The issue of trustworthiness is increasingly difficult for media outlets,'' says Nick Couldry, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. He points to surveys that show declining levels of trust in journalists and to serious-thinking media critics who question whether news media can reliably deliver truthful information. In a long email discussing the relationship between truth and trust in the media, Couldry cites: Philosopher Bernard Williams, who argued that a disposition towards truthfulness - and specifically a will to strive for accuracy and sincerity - are basic human virtues. ''But he is sceptical about whether media markets can satisfy our needs for truthful shared information,'' Couldry says.

British Guardian journalist Nick Davies, in his 2007 book Flat Earth News, who argues that staff and other resource cuts in the British broadsheet press and press agencies ''mean that there are no longer the resources available for journalists to be truthful, except by accident''. Couldry says Davies' work raises an important question about truth and media. ''What if, as trust in media falls further, we were to come no longer to expect media to be in the business of truth-telling?'' Couldry asks. ''That would generate a deep conflict between the apparent - and officially pronounced - aims of media in a democracy and our expectations of their actual practice.''

The fact is, as Couldry points out, despite the compromised trust, the need for truthful information about what's going on in the world - news - continues to exist. However, if people don't believe fully what they're being told … how do they decide what is true for them? Social researchers and sociologists say consumers have always responded to news emotionally more than cognitively and the truth of the situation will be what their heart tells them. University of New England sociologist Peter Corrigan says: ''We generally need to know very quickly if we can trust somebody and often we don't have complete information. We neither have the time nor the evidence to make a more intellectual judgment - so we are left with emotion as a quick and dirty guide.'' It's somewhere in this gap of partial belief dirtied with distrust that people make up the truth that suits them best. Social researcher David Chalke says: ''Without jumping on the post-post-modern bandwagon, truth, like beauty, has always been in the eye of the beholder.'' Chalke is the head of AustraliaSCAN, an annual monitor of cultural change in Australia that started in 1992. This pulse-taking includes the level of confidence that adult Australians have in various institutions and bodies.

According to the 2010 survey:

12 per cent of Australians have a great deal of confidence in news reports in newspapers. By comparison, ASIO scores 11 per cent. Radio and television reports do a little better at 14 per cent (the same as the federal government).
Chalke says the electronic media earns the extra 2 per cent because it's more immediate. Journalists, however, score a measly 4 per cent, the lowest of the low. Trade union officials score 6 per cent. These attitudes are ruthlessly indiscriminate, says Chalke.

It’s not only tabloids or news media at large that have suffered a steady decline in reputation over the past 15 years - in tandem with the rise of the internet - but also consumer advocacy publications such as Choice magazine. Chalke says: ''Choice is now regarded to have become an elite propagandist machine, while confidence in recommendations from local shopkeepers has gone up. People trust somebody they can eyeball.'' It's not that most people have completely written off news media as rubbish, but rather that public trust exists on a sliding scale. ''Most people say they have some confidence, but they reserve the right not to believe what they're reading,'' he says.

David Braddon-Mitchell, a senior lecturer in philosophy at Sydney University, wonders if intellectual laziness and a form of cool snobbery by the consumer also play a role. ''My guess is that we live in a time when possibly more genuinely true and interesting material is available through the old and new media, but no one is prepared to believe much of it, even what's reputable, because believing anything is uncool.'' Braddon-Mitchell believes this attitude assists a lazy rejection of truth as a goal to aspire to. ''I say lazy because I think that's the motivation … much easier to say, 'Well that's your truth and I've got my truth'. Then no more actual thinking has to be done.'' Brian McNair teaches journalism, media and communications at the University of Queensland. He believes media audiences approach their news and journalism with quite a sophisticated understanding of its potential flaws. ''The UK, where I've just come from, has been through many scandals and debates about the limits of truth, even on esteemed channels like the BBC,'' he says. ''There is, however, a legitimate expectation that journalists do not lie, even in the popular end of the press. A commitment to truth is still an essential part of the contract between the journalist and his or her reader/viewer and without it journalism loses its value.''

At the top end of the tree, the truth, and the appearance of telling the truth, seem to matter a great deal. Fabrications and plagiarism by reporters at The New York Times (Jayson Blair in 2003) and The New Republic (Stephen Glass in the late 1990s) were not only major scandals, they sparked a lot of angst and a review of practices at both publications. Closer to home, Channel Seven reporter Mike Duffy last year threatened to sue journalist Paul Barry for defamation after Barry accused Duffy of a ''shocking beat-up''. Duffy's story about the lack of security for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi was picked up by news agencies around the world. It featured Duffy acquiring a detonation unit in a suitcase that he then carried into a reportedly restricted area outside the Games stadium. Paul Barry, hosting Media Watch, alleged the detonation unit was a fake and the suitcase was empty when Duffy walked into the stadium area that was not at that time in ''lockdown''. At one point, Channel Seven offered The Sunday Age interviews with Duffy and the network head of news and current affairs, Peter Meakin, and access to all the footage from the story. We declined to do so while legal threats were in play. Months later, Barry says he ''hasn't heard a squeak'' from Seven and believes the lawsuit has been dropped. Last week, a Channel Seven spokesman said they could no longer help with this story.

At the racier end of the market, however, some news outlets appear to have given up even trying to be truthful if there's a dollar to be made in doing otherwise. Late last year, a week after Barry gave both barrels to Duffy, Media Watch thumped Woman's Day for fabricating a cover story about actor Kate Richie's wedding. The apparently exclusive photographs of the bride and groom's September 2010 wedding were in fact taken at the 2009 AFI awards and crudely Photoshopped to make it appear as if the happy couple were on the verandah of the wedding venue. The magazine also provided a breathless eyewitness account of the ceremony: ''The dappled golden sunlight streams through the massive glass windows catching the tears gently pooling in Kate Ritchie's eyes as she gazes at the man she adores … and says, 'I do'.'' The story was as bogus as it was cheaply lyrical. It had to be: the magazine's scheduling meant the edition was printed one or two days before the wedding even took place. At the end of his report, Barry raged at this flagrant bucketing of the truth: ''In the media, it's the bottom line that really counts.'' Woman's Day editor Fiona Connolly didn't respond to emails or phone calls from The Sunday Age. However, there was a curious development in the wedding affair that suggests the social scientists are on to something: the truth is an elastic toy in the hands of some consumers, if only because they half expect to be lied to in the first place. A Woman's Day reader, M. Clements, of Albany, Western Australia, had been awarded the $50 letter of the week prize by the magazine for praising the wedding story. ''There is nothing like a good wedding to lift the spirits,'' she wrote.

Media Watch contacted Ms Clements and asked if she was concerned the magazine had deceived her. She replied: ''It wouldn't bother me that much actually because it's media so, yeah, I'm not that stupid as to realise everything's true in the magazine.'' With a shake of his craggy head, Barry seemed genuinely dismayed: ''Remarkable isn't it? Just tell me a story, who cares if it's true?'' Well, it depends on what kind of truth you are talking about. Jonathan Marshall, an anthropologist with the University of Technology, Sydney, says it's fundamental that people tend to consume information in a fashion that meets their own needs. ''People are likely to judge information by what they already know, or the purposes they have for it,'' Marshall says. ''For the person who liked the wedding story in Woman's Day, it was a good wedding story about people she cared about … The real story would not have worked so well.'' This isn't an ivory tower notion. As one viewer wrote on Media Watch's online forum: ''The people who read Woman's Day got exactly what they wanted - more so perhaps than if it had been a true account - and since they're probably not Media Watch types, there's not much chance of their investment in such a dopey reality being challenged any time soon.''

In the grand scheme of things, does a fraudulent wedding story in Woman's Day matter that much? Couldry reckons it does. ''Small scandals well beyond the broadsheet press can matter a lot, depending on their details, because they may disturb people's broader assumptions about the point of media operations, and so our point in consuming media,'' he says. Braddon-Mitchell agrees. ''I'm pretty sure it does have a knock-on effect,'' he says ''The horrible truth is that lots of readers of Woman’s Day don't really know it's trash and take it seriously. When they get disillusioned, they don't draw a distinction between Woman's Day and the ABC. They just form the view that in this corrupt world of ours, what you read is no guide to the truth. And then that's what they start to tell everyone they know and the cynicism spreads.''

House Committee Approves Bill Mandating That Internet Companies Spy on Their Users

2011-07-30T11:52:00.003+10:00

Legislative Analysis by Rainey Reitman

Despite serious privacy concerns being voiced by both Democratic and Republican leaders and by thousands of digital rights activists using EFF's Action Center, this afternoon the House Judiciary Committee voted 19 to 10 to recommend passage of H.R. 1981. That bill contains a mandatory data retention provision that would require your Internet service providers to retain 12 months' worth of personal information that could be used to identify what web sites you visit and what content you post online. EFF had previously joined with 29 other civil liberties and consumer privacy groups in signing a letter to the Committee members that condemned the bill as a "direct assault on the privacy of Internet users."

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston had this to say about today's vote: The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans' expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets. Today's vote is therefore very disappointing, but we are especially thankful to GOP Representatives Sensenbrenner, Issa and Chaffetz, who chose principle over party-line in opposing this dangerous tech mandate. We hope that bipartisan opposition will grow as the bill makes its way to the House floor and more lawmakers are educated about this anti-privacy, anti-free speech, anti-innovation proposal.

Please help us defeat this legislation before it is made law by contacting your Representative today.

Related Issues: Mandatory Data Retention, Privacy

[Permalink]

Sound Librarian

2011-07-27T20:01:00.004+10:00

I recently stumbled across this website after seeing Stephan Schultz give a lecture on Why Sound Matters on YouTube [click here to view his lecture in 5 parts]. In it he mentions his project "Sound Librarian" a great, free sound library for schools and amateurs. Below is the text from their Home page. Please check it out, it is an amazing body of work, a great resource and the result of a passion for helping students to learn how to utilise sound.

Welcome to Sound Library a free online audio resource centre with over 17,000 high resolution sound effects. Sound library also includes tutorials, equipment reviews and a blog that spans five years and three continents.

My goal is to create a large online audio resource centre that is beneficial to all users from students and amateur users to casual professional users and large studios with a regular need for high quality material. By offering the entire library free in its download format as well as offering DVD sets for purchase I can provide a high quality resource for students and casual users to access free, while professionals gain instant access to the complete library for well below the average cost of high quality professional sounds.

There are two main motivations for creating Sound Library in this way,

Firstly I am tired of living in a world where people produce poor quality goods and services and still charge top dollar for them. I am proud of the work I do and I will stand by its quality. I will always make all the content I record available at its highest quality free to download. It is completely impossible to protect digital data from piracy anyway so rather than waste time and effort trying to prevent the unpreventable I would rather spend my time creating useful assets that people can use. If someone wants to access digital data without paying for it they will, if however they feel they are getting good service and a good quality product I believe most people will appreciate the value of that service.

The second reason for Sound Library is to create the kind of resource that didn’t exist when I was studying. I want to create a large, useful, high res sound library for students, teachers or anyone interested in audio design.
The site will continue to grow regularly with more sounds (at least 100 a week), new tutorials, gear reviews, journal entries as well as exhibits, video journals and projects logs. I would like to create a community around the site that can be a useful educational resource for audio for film, TV, radio, games and media production.

This is what I do, and this is what I love doing. Sound and music recording, design and creation are my passion and if you are not doing something you are passionate about then you may be wasting your life. I have created Sound Library to give people the tools and some of the knowledge to help them create their own audio material. Sound Library is available for everyone, both amateur and professional to access and use in project production.

80 students suspended over web security breach

2011-07-27T13:13:00.008+10:00

Posted July 25, 2011 21:09:31ABC Newshttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/high-school-students-suspended-over-internet-security-breach/2809744

Eighty students at Prairiewood High School in Sydney's south-west have been suspended for illegally accessing a teacher's internet account. A statement from the New South Wales Education Minister says the students logged into the teacher's departmental computer account to access sites like Facebook and Twitter, which students are not allowed to view from their own accounts.

The statement says no illegal, pornographic or student record material was accessed, but police were called. The 80 students have been suspended for four days. They will have to attend a meeting where they will be warned by police about the criminality of accessing computer material without authorisation. All Prairiewood High School teachers have now changed their computer passwords and have been reminded about following appropriate IT security measures.

News Corp paid out $655m for corporate wrongs

2011-07-20T09:39:00.001+10:00

by David Carr NEW YORK TIMES July 20, 2011

RUPERT Murdoch's News Corporation has paid about $655 million ($A617 million) to make embarrassing charges of corporate espionage and anticompetitive behaviour go away. It spent $500 million just days before a case against News America Marketing, its obscure but profitable in-store and newspaper insert marketing business, went to trial. Valassis Communications, had already won a $300 million verdict in Michigan, but dropped the lawsuit in 2010 in exchange for $500 million and an agreement to cooperate on certain ventures. That single payout to Valassis represented one-fifth of the company's net income that year and matched the earnings of the entire newspaper and information division of which News America was a part.

In 2006, the state of Minnesota had accused News America of engaging in unfair trade practices, and the company settled by agreeing to pay costs and not to falsely disparage its competitors. In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of hacking its way into its password-protected computer system. The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it had "illegally accessed plaintiff's computer system and obtained proprietary information" and "disseminated false, misleading and malicious information'' about it.

Floorgraphics stated that the breach was traced to an internet address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly. Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistleblower. After a few days of testimony, News Corporation had heard enough. It settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.

News America was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in The Untouchables in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr Emmel testified that Mr Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy. According to Mr Emmel's testimony, Mr Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company's philosophy - "bed-wetting liberals'', in particular, was the description he used - he could arrange to have those employees sacked. Mr Carlucci was later promoted - he became the publisher of the tabloid New York Post in 2005. He continues to serve as head of News America.

Mr Murdoch has recently stated his desire to "absolutely establish our integrity'' in the eyes of the public. A representative for the News Corporation did not respond to a request for comment. Keeping a lid on News America turned out to be a busy and expensive exercise. At the beginning of this year, News Corp paid out $125 million to Insignia Systems to settle further allegations of anticompetitive behaviour and violations of antitrust laws. On the other side of the Atlantic, according to The Guardian, whose reporting pulled back the curtain on the phone-hacking scandal, News Corporation paid out $1.6 million in 2009 to settle claims related to the scandal. While expedient, and inexpensive - the company still has gobs of money on hand - the strategy may have backfired in the long run. If some of those cases had gone to trial, it would have had the effect of lancing the wound. Litigation can have an annealing effect on companies, forcing them to re-examine the way they do business. But as it was, the full extent and villainy of the hacking was never known because News Corporation paid serious money to make sure it stayed that way. But the money the company reportedly paid out to hacking victims is chickenfeed compared with what it has spent trying to paper over the tactics of News America.

Even as the flames of the scandal begin to edge closer to Mr Murdoch's door, anybody betting against his business survival will most likely come away disappointed. He has been in deep trouble before and not only survived, but prospered. The News Corporation's reputation may be under water, but the company itself is very liquid, with $11.8 billion in cash on hand and more than $2.5 billion of annual free cash flow.

Phone Hacking Scandal News Update of the Day

2011-07-20T08:13:00.001+10:00

What You Need To Know:

• Main Event: Rupert Murdoch and his son James testify before the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport; the Murdochs apologize to phone hacking victims in opening statement they weren’t allowed to read; Rupert Murdoch calls today “the most humble day of my career” (see video below), but refuses to accept responsibility for scandal; Murdoch says he “seldom” speaks with his editors, isn’t very involved, but has no plans to resign; News International’s legal fee aid to convicted phone hackers Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire,alleged to be hush money, surprises James Murdoch; are Glenn Mulcaire’s legal fees still being paid? Possibly; James Murdoch admits paying to settle out of court with phone hacking victim Gordon Taylor, stands by his decision; Rupert Murdoch says PM Cameron invited him to Downing Street to thank him after election, asked him to use back door.
• From Rebekah Brooks’ testimony: The former News of the Worldeditor and News International chief executive “clarified” her 2003 statement on having “paid the police for information,” saying she never “knowingly” sanctioned payments to police for information, but “was referring to various crime editors on Fleet Street discussing payments to police officers”; claims to have had no knowledge of Milly Dowler phone hack until two weeks ago (despite strong evidence suggesting otherwise); said the use of private investigators was/is widespread in the British newspaper industry.
• From earlier testimonies: Former Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson: “Damnably unlucky” that former News of the Worldexecutive editor Neil Wallis worked for spa; former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner John Yates: received “categorical assurances” on potential embarrassments before hiring Wallis. (The Guardianreported today that, according to a Tory Party statement, Wallis provided “informal advice” to PM Cameron’s former communications director Andy Coulson prior to last year’s election.)
Further Reading:
• Elsewhere: A misrepresentation of a passage from CNN host Piers Morgan’s book The Insider by Conservative MP Louise Mensch during Brooks’ testimony suggests that Morgan admitted to phone hacking; Morgan took to Twitter to blast Mensch: “She clearly hasn’t read my book.”
• #humblepie: Rupert Murdoch gets a face full of shaving foam during his testimony, courtesy of comedian Jonnie Marbles; James Wolcott is not amused: “this guy has made Murdoch senior look vulnerable and sympathetic and Wendi heroic. Well done, fool“; Related: Wendi Deng’s Five Best Enraged Expressions.
• Counter-Hacking: LulzSec: We have a large cache of News Corp. emails, will be releasing them tomorrow; Sabu: “New York Times, Forbes, LA Times, we’re going in“; how LulzSec hacked The Sun‘s website.
• Misc: Interactive Infographic: Phone-hacking scandal: Who’s who;Mad Magazine: Rupert Murdoch’s Apology Letter.

Brooks husband tries to reclaim mystery computer found in trashcan near home

2011-07-19T06:59:00.000+10:00

by Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing, Jul 18, 2011

The husband of former News of the World editor and Murdoch lieutenant Rebekah Brooks tried to claim possession of a computer, papers and cellphone discarded in a trashcan near her home today. He claims it is his computer, not hers, and that he "left the bag with a friend" who "dropped it in the wrong part of the garage" where the bin is. Someone handed it in to garage security, which gave it to police. From The Guardian:

Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International. ... It is understood the bag was handed into security at around 3pm and that shortly afterwards, Brooks's husband, Charlie, arrived and tried to reclaim it. He was unable to prove the bag was his and the security guard refused to release it.

Losing your computer in the trash immediately after your wife's arrest on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications? Really?

Police examine bag found in bin near Rebekah Brooks's home

Review of Transformers 3: Machines are Subjects, Women are Objects, and Female Leadership is a Joke

2011-07-06T06:57:00.005+10:00

By Caroline Heldman, Sociological Images

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” the third instalment in this $1.5 billion franchise that just set a new record for a Fourth of July weekend opening, follows what has become a Hollywood action movie tradition of virtually erasing women, despite the fact that women buy 55% of movie tickets and market research shows that films with female protagonists or prominent female characters in ensemble casts garner similar box office numbers to movies featuring men.

Only two featured characters in the large ensemble Transformers cast are women, and none of the Transformers (alien robots, for the uninitiated) are female. And the two female humans consist of an unmitigated sexual object and a caricatured mockery of female leadership. Let’s start with “the object,” Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), the one-dimensional, highly sexualized damsel-in-distress girlfriend of protagonist Sam Wikwiki (Shia LaBouef). Carly wears stiletto heels, even when running from murderous machines (except when the filmmakers slip up and her flats are visible), and she is pristine in her white jacket after an hour-long battle that leaves the men filthy. The movie opens with a tight shot of Carly’s nearly bare ass as she walks up the stairs:

In a later scene, Carly is reduced to an object as her boss (Patrick Demsey) compares her to an automobile in a conversation with Sam:

And in case the audience doesn’t know to leer at Carly, they get constant instruction from a duo of small robots that look up her skirt and Sam’s boss (John Malkovich) who cocks his head to stare at her ass:

Sam’s “friend,” Agent Simmons (John Turturro), also ogles Carly and suggests she be frisked against her will:

In a disturbing scene of sexualized violence, Carly’s (robot) car sprouts “arms” and threatens to violate her:

Normalization of female objectification causes girls/women to think of themselves as objects, which has been linked to higher rates of depression and eating disorders, compromised cognitive and sexual function, decreased self-esteem, and decreased personal and political efficacy. Ubiquitous female sexual objectification also harms men by increasing men’s body consciousness, and causes both men and women to be less concerned about pain experienced by sex objects. Transformers 3 is pitched as a “family movie” and the film studio carefully disguises it as such with misleading movie trailers showing a story about kid’s toys. (Okay, I still have an Optimus Prime robot…) Young kids were abundant at both screenings I attended, taking in the images with little ability to filter the message.

It would have been easy for Michael Bay to positively present the second female character, Director of National Intelligence Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand). Instead, she is a tool to openly mock female leadership and promote female competition. McDormand does her best to breathe some realism into Director Mearing, but the script calls for a caricature with “masculine” leadership traits – arrogance, assertiveness, stubbornness, etc. who is ultimately “put in her place” at the end of the movie with a forced kiss. Women continue to be vastly under-represented in positions of corporate and political leadership, partially due to the double bind of women’s leadership where, in order to be considered acceptable leaders, women have to project a “masculine” image for which they are then criticized.

Director Mearing’s authority is challenged by virtually everyone she encounters in a way that simply wouldn’t make sense for a male character in her position. Sam openly challenges her in this scene:

Director Mearing’s authority evaporates when Agent Simmons comments, ”moving up in the world, and your booty looks excellent”:

Director Mearing is even challenged by a transformer. [SPOILER ALERT: Director Mearing is the only one to challenge this transformer’s intentions, and she gets no credit when it turns out she was right.]

This Transformer again puts her in her place with the dual meaning of “I am a prime. I do not take orders from you”:

Director Mearing also has a running theme of not wanting to be called “ma’am.” The “ma’am” theme doesn’t readily make sense since Director Mearing isn’t young and doesn’t appear to be trying to look young. But it does make sense when viewed through the lens of director Michael Bay intentionally mocking women’s leadership. Remember the flap when Senator Barbara Boxer at a hearing requested that a general use her professional title instead of “ma’am”?:

The “ma’am” theme resurfaces in a particularly troubling scene where Director Mearing meets with Sam and Carly, who, in good double-bind fashion, challenges whether she is even a woman:

Bay does include a few minor female characters with lines – Sam’s mother, the nagging mother/wife; Director Mearing’s subservient Asian assistant; a scene with both the “Olga” and “Petra” Russian woman stereotypes; and a Latina with a bare midriff who has a “Latin meltdown”:

If Michael Bay can buy off the most accomplished actors and even musician/social activist Bono to participate in such harmful media, what hope is there in the war that pits girls/women (the Autobots) against unrepentantly sexist movies makers (the Deceptacons)?

Plot Device: a filmmaker's fondest dream and worst nightmare

2011-07-04T06:46:00.002+10:00

A young filmmaker obtains a mysterious device that unleashes the full force of cinema on his front lawn.

Director: Seth Worley

Executive Producer: Aharon Rabinowitz

“Plot Device,” a nine minute short film directed by Seth Worley, and executive produced by Red Giant’s own Aharon Rabinowitz. Aharon and Seth co-wrote the film, working together in close collaboration throughout the project. Plot Device was created to demonstrate first hand the high caliber work that can be created when using Magic Bullet Suite 11, even on a limited budget.

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.