Privacy Roundup #0044 • March 2010
March 2010 was dominated by surveillance reckonings, from a German court striking down data retention to American judges and lawmakers turning on warrantless wiretaps, webcam spying and Google Buzz.
1. German constitutional court strikes down blanket data retention
Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the law forcing telecoms firms to store six months of phone and internet traffic data was unconstitutional. The judges ordered the retained data deleted at once, upholding a complaint brought by nearly thirty-five thousand citizens.
2. EFF documents twelve years of DMCA harm to free speech
The Electronic Frontier Foundation published an updated "Unintended Consequences" report cataloguing how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act had chilled fair use, research and competition. The collection arrived as the Copyright Office weighed fresh exemptions to the law's anti-circumvention rules.
3. Thousands petition the FCC over a net neutrality copyright loophole
EFF handed the Federal Communications Commission a petition from more than seven thousand people opposing a carve-out that would let internet providers police copyright while breaking neutrality rules. The group warned that providers should not get to interfere with lawful content under the guise of copyright enforcement.
4. Census confidentiality promises draw fresh scepticism
As the decennial count began, commentators questioned whether Americans could trust the Census Bureau to keep their answers private. Critics pointed to past disclosures of Japanese American and Arab American data to other agencies, and to enumerators logging the GPS coordinates of every front door.
5. Energizer USB charger ships with a backdoor trojan
Security researchers found that the Windows software for the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contained a backdoor trojan opening a remote control channel on the victim's machine. Energizer pulled the software and worked with US-CERT, urging customers to uninstall it.
6. Netflix cancels its second prize over privacy fears
Netflix abandoned plans for a follow-up to its million-dollar recommendation contest after a lawsuit and Federal Trade Commission concerns about re-identification. Researchers had shown that the supposedly anonymised viewing data released for the first prize could be tied back to individual subscribers.
7. Leaked US Army report brands WikiLeaks a security threat
WikiLeaks published a 2008 US Army counterintelligence assessment that described the site as a potential tool for foreign intelligence services and weighed ways to undermine it. The document fretted that insiders might be feeding classified material to the organisation.
8. EFF releases records on police mining of social networks
EFF posted the first tranche of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, revealing how agencies harvested data from social media for investigations. One IRS training course showed staff using social networking sites and Google Street View to scrutinise taxpayers.
9. AT&T whistleblower's account of NSA spying reaches the public
EFF spotlighted Mark Klein's memoir describing the secret room he found at an AT&T facility where the National Security Agency tapped internet traffic. Major outlets had earlier shelved his story under government pressure, yet his evidence underpinned the legal fight against mass surveillance.
10. FTC closes its "Exploring Privacy" roundtable series
The Federal Trade Commission held the last of three roundtables examining whether its approach to consumer privacy still fit modern technology. Participants pressed for fresh thinking and warned that notice-and-choice frameworks had largely failed to protect people.
11. Open Rights Group warns over web blocking in the Digital Economy Bill
The Open Rights Group briefed Parliament against rushing the Digital Economy Bill's disconnection and website-blocking clauses through without debate. It cautioned that a blocking procedure could be abused for malicious takedowns and would drive infringers towards encryption.
12. Fresh ACTA leaks expose criminal enforcement demands
Newly leaked sections of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement revealed proposals for criminal penalties covering even non-commercial copyright infringement, plus an oversight body with treaty amendment powers. The leak fuelled wider alarm about the pact's threat to privacy and due process.
13. EFF appeals the dismissal of its NSA mass surveillance suit
EFF filed its appeal to the Ninth Circuit after a district judge threw out Jewel v. NSA, the case built on Mark Klein's evidence of AT&T routing internet traffic to the agency. The lower court had ruled the plaintiffs' claims amounted to a mere general grievance.
14. Google stops censoring search and moves China users to Hong Kong
Google shut down Google.cn and redirected mainland users to its uncensored Hong Kong service, months after disclosing the Operation Aurora attacks on Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The company kept research and sales staff in China while serving uncensored results from outside the firewall.
15. EFF prepares to testify against secret webcam surveillance
Ahead of a Senate hearing prompted by the Lower Merion school webcam scandal, EFF announced that staff attorney Kevin Bankston would urge Congress to extend wiretap protections to hidden video. The Pennsylvania district had remotely activated cameras on laptops issued to students at home.
16. TJX and Heartland hacker handed twenty years
Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to twenty years for masterminding the breaches at Heartland Payment Systems, TJX and other firms that exposed well over a hundred million payment cards. It was the longest sentence ever imposed in the United States for computer crime at the time.
17. Members of Congress demand an FTC probe of Google Buzz
Eleven House members wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate Google Buzz, which had auto-followed Gmail contacts and exposed users' email relationships. The lawmakers warned the launch could reveal a journalist's sources or a person's medical history.
18. Tech firms and rights groups unite to reform electronic privacy law
EFF joined the Digital Due Process coalition, alongside Google, Microsoft, AT&T and the ACLU, to call for an overhaul of the ageing Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The group wanted clearer warrant protections for cloud-stored messages and mobile location data.
19. EFF tells Congress webcam spying must be outlawed
Testifying before the Senate, EFF argued that federal wiretap law shielded private conversations but left a glaring gap around covert video. Bankston warned that laptop webcams carried into homes made remote activation a serious threat, and a senator pledged to legislate.
20. Judge rules the NSA's warrantless wiretapping broke the law
Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the government had illegally wiretapped an Islamic charity's communications in 2004 in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The ruling rejected the state secrets privilege the government had invoked to shield the programme.
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