In our 636th issue:
FBI Issues Reflection Warnings
Starting this week,
department stores will begin affixing "FBI Anti-Piracy" stickers to
mirrors, warning consumers that placing a reflective object in the same
room as a television could constitute a violation of U.S. copyright law.
In a related lawsuit, EFF is representing Dana Auerbach, a ballet
instructor who was caught watching The Black Swan in her dance studio
while on lunch break. She faces a $750 to $150,000 penalty for each of
her infinite charges of infringement.
New "Six Drone Strikes" Agreement Targets File-Sharers, Militants
A troubling new agreement
between the MPAA, the RIAA, several large ISPs, and the Department of
Homeland Security has paved the way for a new government program aimed
at combatting the violent overthrow of the United States and/or
moderate-to-heavy copyright infringement. The initiative, officially
named the Unmanned Aircraft Copyright Notification System, is said to
work on a "six strike" basis of warnings and destruction. The first
three accusations of infringement or terrorism by the U.S. government
will deliver pop-up notifications to targeted users. Subsequent offenses
will be addressed with a range of "mitigation measures" that will be
determined by the drones' onboard autonomy software. EFF is
concerned about the possibility of innocent American citizens being
caught in the (literal) crossfire of the program. In response, a DHS
spokesperson pointed to evidence compiled by the entertainment industry
that terrorists and file-sharers frequently hang out in the same seedy
bars, and often stay on each other's couches.
Nobody Expects the Cyber Inquisition
The House Subcommittee on
Cybersecurity released a report Tuesday blasting the United States'
cyber-preparedness for a wide range of cyber-tastrophes. "Though
Senators and Congressmen have discussed an impending
'Cyber-Pearl-Harbor' literally hundreds of times, U.S.
cyber-preparations have been in-cyber-adequate for a host of possible
disasters, such as a cyber-Vesuvius, a cyber-Teapot-Dome-Scandal, or
most alarmingly, a cyber-Bicholim-Conflict." The report goes on to
recommend a nearly threefold increase for the annual spending on the
Cyber-Department of Cyber-Prefixes.
EFF Updates
In a surprising response
to a recent Freedom of Information Act request filed by EFF, the
Department of Homeland Security has revealed ███████ ██ ██████ ██████
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Citing the rising costs of
observing local privacy laws in Europe and other jurisdictions as well
as the cost of compliance with government data requests, Facebook has
announced plans to move its datacenters to a skull-shaped volcanic
island believed to be some 200 miles off the coast of Chile. In a video
promoting the move, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also touted the
security benefits of the new location and its roaming packs of
bloodthirsty wolves. EFF is researching legal arguments that local
privacy laws should still apply, without also requiring compliance with
overreaching government access requests. But when asked about the
relationship between these doctrines, EFF Junior Staff Attorney Mackey
said "It's
complicated."
Industry sources say that
representatives of Google's executive board are deep in negotiations
with an internal "skunkworks" start-up originally dedicated to
researching online marketing opportunities, but which has since expanded
to cover the entirety of evil services. The morally errant division,
nicknamed Googollum, is understood to be arguing internally that the
Internets stole the precious social networking, they did, and gave it to
the Facebooks, and must be punished. While some at the company have
suggested that it mustn't steal the Internets' privacies, other
Googollum workers, who asked not to be identified, have said that no-one
would notice, and anyways, what has the nasty Internetsies done for
Google lately? Talks are ongoing, although setbacks did occur when
Googollum's management, speaking at the company's Friday meeting,
refused to tell anyone where the Google Plus development team was
hidden, and went on to eat the Google Reader product manager raw.
For the first time, the Internet Archive will have a full and
complete archive of the U.S. Internet, including social media, email,
and VOIP telephone calls. Thanks to a deal with the National Security
Administration announced Wednesday, the San Francisco non-profit will
begin mirroring all online communications piped into the NSA's famous
SigInt operations centers to its own datastores. During the same press
conference, the NSA announced that archive.org will no longer be
accessible to the public and officially denied its existence.A Kickstarter project with the lofty goal of producing a smartphone that doesn't suffer from the same privacy drawbacks as the top offerings from Apple and Google has captured the Internet's attention, raising nearly $1 million from over 7,000 users in just three weeks. The designers' initial prototype -- a piece of balsa wood roughly the size of a deck of cards -- appears to deliver on the privacy promises, but some have criticized the phone's inability to run apps, take photos, place or receive calls and text messages. Battery life is, however, said to be "impressive."
On Thursday, EFF received a formal cease-and-desist letter from a group claiming to represent the Kalmar Union of Scandinavian Countries, urging the organization to stop using the terms "Copyright Troll" and "Patent Troll" in its campaign against abusive intellectual property litigants. Citing the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a Kalmar Union spokesperson said said, "Trolls are a cherished element of Scandinavian folklore and the misuse of Nordic mythology results in the denigration of our culture and compromised search-engine optimization." In the event EFF refuses to comply, the group threatened that his country would post comments on Reddit and Hacker News comparing EFF lawyers to Nazi Germany.
The US State Department's Internet Freedom division has begun soliciting applications for a $1 million grant intended to foster open government worldwide, and aimed at "hackers, coders, and other activist brainiacs". The money, which will be divided between a number of applicants, is intended to improve access to and understanding of the State Department's own set of internal cables, previously only available to three million US government personnel. The cables are understood to contain information of interest to citizens of many countries worldwide. "It's a great step forward for open government," said a State Department official, "We can only hope that there's some lone hacker out there who wants to take us up on our offer." Payments for the grant will be available through PayPal, Mastercard and Visa.
miniLinks
In drones today, drones drones droney droney drones. EFF Activist Trevor Timm reiterated, "Drones and drones drone droney drone drone. And nanodrones."In response to last week's exceedingly polite Canadian Supreme Court ruling on text message privacy, EFF will print a limited edition run of "Sorry if this is a bother, but I'd really prefer if you returned with a warrant, eh" stickers for Canadian mobile devices.
In a heartfelt video, former Senator and current MPAA chief Chris Dodd has lamented the sequester-motivated closure of the Senate barbershop. Dodd appears to be choking back tears at one point, yelling into the camera, "Leave the barbershop alone!"
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Administrivia
Editor: Parker Higgins, Activist
editor@eff.org
editor@eff.org
EFFector is a publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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