We’ve discussed how the State Department, and Hillary Clinton in particular, have been spending a lot of time talking up the importance of internet freedom, and speaking out against countries that censor the internet. That even resulted in Joe Biden’s unintentionally hilarious explanation of why internet censorship is horrible… while he supports internet censorship at home.
It seems like there’s a real disconnect in our government, however, when the censorship is couched in the word “copyright.” We just wrote about how Spain adopted its SOPA-like law this week, despite widespread public outrage. We had noted that the US State Department was a major force behind the bill, and (no surprise) more news has leaked that there was more of the same behind this new decision to adopt the Sinde Law. It’s been leaked that, just last month, State Department officials threatened the Spanish government that if it didn’t pass the law, there would be repercussions. This was a letter from US ambassador Alan Solomont to the outgoing Spanish government, sent December 12th, in which he talked about “promises” made to the US government:
“The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain… The government of Spain made commitments to the rights owners and to the US government. Spain can not afford to see their credibility questioned on this issue.”
Stunning. Because, in actuality, the commitment the Spanish government has is to its own citizens — who are very much against the bill. The only thing that raises questions about Spain’s “credibility” is caving to US diplomatic pressure to censor the internet.
Meanwhile, if we want to talk “credibility,” the US State Department is increasingly losing its credibility on this issue. How can any diplomat, with a straight face, go public talking about internet freedom and being against censorship, when the State Department demanded Spain pass a law that allows for censoring the internet?
At nearly the exact time that Dajaz1 was getting its domain back, after the US government wrongly censored its domain for over a year with absolutely nothing resembling due process (and actively stifling attempts by the site to get its day in court and get its domain back), US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was giving a speech in Europe about the evils of internet censorship.
Let’s take a look at some of the quotes, and remember that she’s saying this just as Dajaz1 was coming back online after a year.
This is an urgent task. It is most urgent, of course, for those around the world whose words are now censored, who are imprisoned because of what they or others have written online, who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content, or who are being tracked by governments seeking to keep them from connecting with one another.
Of course, we don’t even have to look “around the world.” We can just look right here at home in the US, where ICE and the Justice Department seem to have no problem doing the same thing. Or we can look to SOPA and PIPA and their plan to expand the ability to censor the web in the US.
In Syria, a blogger named Anas Maarawi was arrested on July 1st after demanding that President Asad leave. He?s not been charged with anything, but he remains in detention. In both Syria and Iran, many other online activists ? actually too many to name ? have been detained, imprisoned, beaten, and even killed for expressing their views and organizing their fellow citizens. And perhaps the most well known blogger in Russia, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 days in jail after he took part in protests over the Russian elections.
In America, a blog named Dajaz1, was seized last November after posting music sent to it by various copyright holders for the purpose of promotion. It was never brought up under forfeiture rules, but the domain remained in detention… Now, clearly, having a site seized is not in the same category as being “detained, imprisoned, beaten or even killed” but if we’re against censorship abroad, it seems pretty crazy to be ignoring it when it happens at home.
It seems like the State Department should issue a message calling out ICE and DOJ for doing the exact same thing Clinton is complaining about in other countries.
But when ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices, the internet is diminished for all of us. What we do today to preserve fundamental freedoms online will have a profound effect on the next generation of users. More than two billion people are now connected to the internet, but in the next 20 years, that number will more than double. And we are quickly approaching the day when more than a billion people are using the internet in repressive countries. The pledges we make and the actions we take today can help us determine whether that number grows or shrinks, or whether the meaning of being on the internet is totally distorted.
Well, given the blatant wrongful censorship of Dajaz1, do we include the 245 million or so online Americans in the count of the number of people using the internet in repressive countries? I certainly want to believe that we’re not a repressive country, but with a story that horrifying…
So right now, in various international forums, some countries are working to change how the internet is governed. They want to replace the current multi-stakeholder approach, which includes governments, the private sector, and citizens, and supports the free flow of information, in a single global network.
Not just in international forums….
The United States wants the internet to remain a space where economic, political, and social exchanges flourish. To do that, we need to protect people who exercise their rights online…
Unless you promote hip hop music. Then, too bad.
… and we also need to protect the internet itself from plans that would undermine its fundamental characteristics.
Unless it means protecting campaign donations from Hollywood. Then we can change the fundamental characteristics of the internet with a snap.
Our government (inaudible) will continue to work very hard to get around every barrier that repressive governments put up.
But will it still censor at will at home?
Honestly, it’s tough to see how Hillary and the State Department can legitimately support SOPA and PIPA after that speech and the evidence of direct US censorship.
Last week, as part of our trip of startup entrepreneurs, innovators, artists and venture captialists, we were able to meet with senior White House staff about our concerns over the E-PARASITE/SOPA bill that would fundamentally change the regulatory and policy framework of the internet, seriously hindering the ability to create new startups, new jobs and new platforms to help everyone. The White House has not officially taken a position on the bill, but one thing was made clear from the very start of the meeting: the legacy players in Hollywood and at the US Chamber of Commerce were putting a ton of pressure on the White House to support E-PARASITE, despite the fact that the State Department itself is quite worried about the bill, as it would almost entirely undermine all of its efforts to promote internet freedom around the globe.
I’m usually not one to believe in the power of various “online petitions,” but since the White House has set up its own petition system, in which 25,000 signatures will guarantee a response, this actually seems like a case where just such a petition would work well. So it’s great to see that someone has created just such a petition against E-PARASITE. Of course, technically it should be against SOPA, since the framers of the bill recognized just how silly E-PARASITE sounds, and removed that from the bill after everyone started making fun of them. Still, it’s important to push this point home and let the White House know, in no uncertain terms, that the public is against this bill.
And it should be clear, by the way, that it’s not just the public. Many people within the federal government are equally worried about this bill, which appears to serve no other purpose than to keep a few legacy players in Hollywood fat and happy, and keep them from having to actually innovate for a short while longer.
The real question, however, is whether or not the Obama White House wants to directly contradict Hillary Clinton and the State Department. Remember, Clinton has become a staunch defender of internet freedom against attempts to censor the internet worldwide. In her speech earlier this year, she noted:
So this is a critical moment. The choices we make today will determine what the Internet looks like in the future…. For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. We recognize that an open
Internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground-rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And Internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But its benefits are worth it.
And that’s exactly the opposite of the approach being taken by Congress, which aims to put forth a top-down policy of censorship. A top down policy that nearly perfectly mimics the functional nature of the Great Firewall of China. Should the Obama administration go against its own State Department, it will serve to undermine Clinton’s long term efforts in pushing internet freedom around the globe. That would be quite a legacy to leave: to contradict one’s own Secretary of State who is pushing for greater internet freedom, and impose a system of censorship on the US. Please tell the White House not to take such a drastic measure.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the obviously vindictive investigation of long term State Department diplomat Peter Van Buren. Van Buren, who recently published a book that was critical of the US’s efforts in Iraq (which he was a part of), wrote a blog post on his own website that merely linked to a leaked State Department cable on the Wikileaks site.
As we’ve noted many times, such info is clearly public now. But the US has a “head in the sand” approach to such things, and pretends that even though anyone with internet access can easily see this document, that it’s still really “classified.” So it began an “investigation” of Van Buren, which has now resulted in his top secret security clearance being yanked. And, demonstrating what a cowardly, childish and petty action this is, they didn’t even fully revoke his clearance — a move that could be appealed. Instead, they put it on an indefinite “temporary suspension,” which can’t be appealed.
So, uh, now what? It’s not like he revealed anything that he got because of that clearance. He can still sift through the leaked Wikileaks documents like anyone else in the world and point stuff out. What good does the State Department think it has done here, other than making themselves look like completely vindictive idiots who take pointless actions against those who criticize them? This doesn’t help protect classified info (at all). If anything, it draws a lot more attention as to what’s in that document, and it makes our State Department look foolish. I want a State Department that deals in reality. Punishing someone for linking to public info is a move that is from an organization that lives in a fantasy world. That’s scary.
We’ve discussed a few times just how ridiculous it is that the US government still pretends that the State Department cables available via Wikileaks are somehow classified and secret. It’s a head-in-sand approach, in which government employees have to pretend that information, which the rest of the world knows about, isn’t actually known. This makes no sense. In the business world, if you sign a non-disclosure agreement, and content becomes public through other means, you’re free to talk about it. The way the government does it is crazy… and opens up the possibility of abuse, such as in the following case.
So, instead, it appears to being coming up with other ways to be vindictive. Such as investigating him for “disclosing classified information.” And, no, it’s not because of info in the book, which was pre-vetted by the government. It’s because he wrote a blog post, where he dares to link to a Wikileaks cable, which is public to the whole world.
But, in the vindictive little minds of folks in the State Department, since such info is still technically “classified,” they can go after van Buren for “disclosing classified info.” And, making it even better, the investigators who interrogated him over this told him that if he wrote about the interrogation, he could also be charged with “interfering with a government investigation.” It makes you wonder if the people involved in this recognize how petty and childish they appear in their actions. No one who can think straight thinks that van Buren linking to a very public document reveals classified information — and on top of that, speaking publicly about State Department bullying is not, in any way, interfering with a government investigation.
Tragically, this is not an isolated incident. Despite the President’s insistence that he wants to see more whistleblowing, every time we see whistleblowing in the federal government it seems like it’s followed up by vindictive attacks by the federal government.
When the State Department cables leaked via Wikileaks, some government employees and agencies were put in a tough position, in that they couldn’t officially view those documents, since they were still classified. As we’ve noted in the past, this is stupid. In business, any boilerplate non-disclosure agreement says that if some info becomes public due to a third party, the NDA no longer applies. The US government, for reasons that escape me, refuses to do the same thing for classified info that leaks — even after the press has run stories on it.
We heard all sorts of bizarre stories about government agencies trying to block access to this content which was everywhere, including reports that any Techdirt article that mentioned “Wikileaks” in the title was blocked from Defense Department computers.
Jason Smathers decided to submit a Freedom of Information Act request (via the awesome Muckrock.com platform) to the US Air Force to find out what sites it was blocking. And while the Air Force initially denied the request, on appeal it just changed its mind and handed over the list, which you can see below. Most of the blocked URLs are to various Wikileaks mirror sites, but it also covers the major media properties that Wikileaks initially worked with on releasing these documents, including the NY Times and The Gurdian.
I’m at a complete loss as to what the Air Force thinks it accomplishes in blocking the entire NY Times website because some stories mention content that everyone already knows about. How does that possibly make sense?
When it comes to copyright issues, the various State Department leaks via Wikileaks have only served to confirm what pretty much everyone already knew. Earlier we’d covered revelations about US diplomatic involvement in new copyright laws in Spain, and the latest (as a bunch of you sent in) is the rather upfront admission that the MPAA was absolutely behind the decision to sue iiNet in Australia. As you may recall, the lawsuit, which was officially organized by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) along with the Australian arms of various movie studios, complained that Australian ISP iiNet didn’t do enough to stop unauthorized file sharing. This was really a trial balloon of a case, because the MPAA knew damn well that blaming ISPs for the actions of their users was a tricky game to play. So, they tried to hit up iiNet from a slight tangent, sending over examples of infringement and then freaking out when iiNet didn’t somehow magically stop all infringement.
Of course, the reality was that this was all driven directly from the MPAA in the US and iiNet was carefully chosen as a trial balloon given its size. As Richard Chirgwin notes, iiNet got to enjoy this experience because of its “Goldilocks status. iiNet was just right: Telstra is large, loud, litigious, and possessed of significant lobbying experience; too small a target and the case risked inviting the ?bullying? perception that the MPAA was keen to avoid.”
Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of
Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network,
this is an MPAA/American studios production. Mike Ellis, the
Singapore-based President for Asia Pacific of the Motion
Picture Association, briefed Ambassador on the filing on
November 26. Ellis confirmed that MPAA was the mover behind
AFACT’s case (AFACT is essentially MPAA’s Australian
subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence
here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved.
MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public.
AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the
Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on
the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at
stake, and this isn’t just Hollywood “bullying some poor
little Australian ISP.”
Why iiNet? Ellis said they were the right target on
several levels. First, they are big enough to be important –
iiNet is the third largest ISP in Australia. (Telstra,
owners of top Australian ISP BigPond which has about half of
the market, are the “big guns”, Ellis admitted. It was clear
Ellis did not want to begin by tangling with Telstra,
Australia’s former telecom monopoly and still-dominant player
in telephony and internet, and a company with the financial
resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and
dirty, in court and out.) Ellis also said iiNet users had a
particularly high copyright violation rate, and that its
management has been consistently unhelpful on copyright
infringements.
Amusingly, the cable claims the case is “very strong.” Turns out that was wrong. iiNet famously won the case, and AFACT was even told to pay iiNet’s legal costs. While an appeal somewhat limited the original (excellent and perceptive) ruling, it still crowned iiNet the winner. Perhaps the US government shouldn’t trust the MPAA in setting the odds on its own lawsuits.
Anyway, while most people already knew that the MPAA was the key player here, it’s nice to see it laid out in black and white. I’m also curious if the folks who usually rush to the comments to claim that the MPAA/RIAA aren’t involved in some of the lawsuits we talk about will have any comment on this, since we’ve explained that most of these legal actions are coordinated from those two groups.
We just wrote about a GAO report showing how the Defense Department is somewhat incompetent at dealing with online threats. Of course, it’s not clear that anyone else in the government is any better. The GAO is back with yet another report, dinging the State Department for its dreadful computer security monitoring program. In this case, it’s talking about threats to the State Department’s network, rather than to third parties. And while the State Department spent a whopping $1.2 billion of taxpayer money on a fancy computer system, called iPost, to monitor everything, it turns out that it only works on Windows machines:
But the iPost service only covers computers that use Microsoft’s Windows operating system, not other assets such as the roughly 5,000 routers and switches along State’s network, non-Windows operating systems, firewalls, mainframes, databases and intrusion detection devices, GAO auditors said.
I mean, this is the kind of stuff that makes you shake your head in disbelief. Somewhere in the process of building a $1.2 billion system, no one thought to point out that there are more computer assets than those that run Microsoft Windows? Really? Someone seriously deserves to be fired.
Also, for the Windows computers where you can install it, it appears that the system barely works.
For instance, iPost tools did not always scan computers when scheduled, or they created false positives that had to be analyzed and explained. One scanner vendor failed to update its technology to detect the latest, most common vulnerabilities. And tools manufactured by different suppliers produced disparate scores that staff then had to interpret and modify.
Apparently, all of this is leading to confusion where people don’t even know who’s responsible for what.
So can someone explain why the federal government is coming down so hard on Bradley Manning, rather than taking some of that energy and focusing on securing the State Department’s computers? Honestly, from the sound of things, you have to imagine that lots of people (including tons of foreign spies) long ago broke into State Department computers and had access to all of this info, based on reports like this. If anything, it makes you wonder if the Wikileaks leak may help get the State Department to better secure things.
Of all the spectacle surrounding the Wikileaks/Cablegate situation, nothing has proven to be more bizarre than the U.S. government’s actions and policies concerning the continued classification of the leaked cables. One of its first efforts was its patented "escalating response", in which it first blocked off the Wikileaks site, followed by any site with the word Wikileaks in the title and, when this didn’t seem to be burying its employees’ heads in the sand quickly enough, it reached out to various security firms to see if they could build some sort of Wikileaks filtering system for its computers.
Things turned even more surreal when lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were not allowed to view leaked documents that had been published online by various news services. When is public information not truly "public?" Well, when it’s "classified," of course. Had the principles not been currently fighting a legal battle in a U.S. court, they could have joined the rest of the U.S. (and the world) in reading and using these leaked documents.
In the business world, if a document is considered secret, it’s commonly accepted that if it becomes public by other means, those with a contractual obligation not to discuss are now free from their obligations. This makes sense. Pretending that documents that are publicly available for all and which have been widely discussed in the press are not “public” doesn’t make sense.
With a recently filed lawsuit against the State Department, the ACLU hopes to bring this legal catch-22 to its illogical conclusion and make publicly published documents officially public. Andy Greenberg (Forbes) explains the ACLU’s rationale:
Given that all those memos have already been covered by the news media, why bother to declassify them anyway? "The point is to expose the legal fiction that the secrecy system rests on," says Ben Wizner, a staff attorney for the ACLU. "The government uses this formality of secrecy to avoid having to answer for real violations of the law."
Wizner says that keeping the documents classified makes them much more difficult to use in courts, for instance, and allows the government to avoid confirming their authenticity.
The files that WikiLeaks released on Guantanamo detainees in April, for example, can’t be used by the defense lawyers for those prisoners unless they’re viewed in a secure government facility. “Government employees can’t read the New York Times. When I go to court in a real lawsuit seeking to get compensation for a victim’s ordeal and hold people liable, I can’t use this information,” Wizner says.
This should prove to be an alternately infuriating and entertaining case. There’s going to be a whole lot of circular reasoning in play, all of it under the pretense of protecting state secrets that everyone already knows. The sad part is that taxpayers will be footing the bill for the government’s last-ditch attempt to close several barn doors, while warily keeping an eye on all the free-roaming horses.
It appears the US government is giving out mixed messages these days. On the one hand, we keep hearing about the need for laws to stop “rogue sites,” to punish Wikileaks, and to shut down online black markets and alternative currencies like Bitcoin… but then you have President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton constantly praising the importance of internet freedom.
The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype ?Internet in a suitcase.?
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.
The article also discusses “stealth” networks being deployed in various other countries as well. It’s a fascinating article, and while I’m not sure that these projects are really quite as interesting (or, in some cases, workable) as the article and the project cheerleaders suggest, it is certainly nice to see the US government supporting such projects. It just seems pretty odd that it’s doing it at the same time as it’s supporting efforts to censor other forms of internet communication at home. Of course, all that needs to happen then is for people to use the same “stealth” technology here at home as well…
