Yesterday, Kader Arif, rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament quit his role as rapporteur stating the following:

“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.
As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.
Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.
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.”
– Source

(Members of the Polish Parliament protesting against ACTA yesterday)

Information on ACTA:

• stopacta.info
• Ante put together a rebuttal of the document published by the European Commission in defense of ACTA.
• Wikipedia

Wikipedia will be down for 24 hours, starting at 05:00 UTC tomorrow. The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, these bills would “seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia”.

(EDIT1, January 18th 1am: that’s how Wikipedia looks like at the moment!)

(EDIT2, January 18th 2am: I just saw this ad on a news website.)

(EDIT3, January 18th 3am: google.com)

(EDIT4, January 19th: open letter by Neil Gaiman and “musicians, actors, directors, authors, and producers” against SOPA and PIPA).

“It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. Read the rest of this entry »

On December 5th, Forbes.com described the “National Defense Authorization Act” as the “Greatest Threat to Civil Liberties“:

“[The law] would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.”

Shortly thereafter, the NYTimes posted a great article called “Guantanamo forever“, in which a lot of very serious issues were raised.

Spencer Ackermann also wrote an extensive report on wired.com about the consequences if Obama signed the act:

“So despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge, and for the lifespan of an amorphous war that conceivably will never end. And because the Senate is using the bill that authorizes funding for the military as its vehicle for this dramatic constitutional claim, it’s pretty likely to pass.”

Yesterday, Obama signed the bill.

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” Mr. Obama said in a statement issued in Hawaii, where he is on vacation. “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.” [...] [He] said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”

To sum up: Obama signed a bill which gives himself and any future president the power “to break with America’s most important traditions and values as a nation” (quote Obama).

He didn’t even try to talk himself out of this. You can find the full speech on thinkprogress.org.

Change we can believe in.

EDIT: Jon Stewart talked about the Law on December 7th (the first 10 minutes of the show). The first time I see him being very critical about Obama.

“This patent was submitted by Amazon on December 6, 2011. It describes a method of tracking individuals through mobile phone GPS location data and then using the information to predict future shopping destinations to present more specifically targeted advertising. For more analysis of the patent, see this article from CBS.”

– Source: PublicIntelligence.net

This is no hoax.

… home of the brave.

(1) After serious and longlasting privacy discussion regarding data of passengers flying from Europe to the United States, there is a new agreement now. The US is provided with data like name, address and credit card number by default. However, “sensitive data” like religion or sexual orientation underlie “very severe restrictions”, the restrictions being: they can only be saved up to 15 years, and can be given to other countries. The German minister of interior says the new agreement is a success. And I agree: if handing over very personal data to the US which then stores the data for up to 15 years and is allowed to hand it over to other countries isn’t “severely restricted”, I don’t know what is (German source).

(2) The US police is using unmanned drones. Probably that isn’t new, but it fits together with the today’s news. What this means for you is: no matter who you are and what you do, you are automatically accused of being a criminal. There is very little privacy left, at home or outside. You are a suspect, from the day you are born. Many people listed convincing evidence that general surveillance does not decrease crime rates, so did I. Look for it, the Swedish and English police publish reports regularly in which they have to admit that all the surveillance really doesn’t help, is a massive waste of tax-payers money, and infringes upon basic human rights.
Stand up for your privacy. Not because you want to hide something. Because you have the right for privacy.

“For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws.”

(Sidenote: Russian bloggers are using unmanned drones in Moscow at the moment to stream the protests live on the internet, because Russian media do not report about the demonstrations of up to 80.000 people in Russia’s capital)

(3) The FBI seems to be using information from the App CarrierIQ that is installed on “millions of phones” (second source).

• US knowingly ignored well known cancer risks and objections by experts: “Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as ‘safe’, glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation […] increase the risk of cancer.”
  (– propublica.org)
• “GlaxoSmithKline pays $3 billion to resolve U.S. criminal and civil investigations into whether the U.K. company marketed drugs for unapproved uses and other matters.” In other words: they payed $3 billion to stop investigations. If you screw up enough people and make enough money, you can actually pay a court not to investigate.
  (– bloomberg.com/news)
• “We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies.”
  (– NYdailynews.com)
• “Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total […] Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.”
  (– rollcall.com)
• Anonymous hacked different Israeli websites, among them the military and the secret service: “We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behaviour against unarmed civilians. If you continue blocking humanitarian vessels to Gaza or repeat the dreadful actions of 31 May 2010 against any Gaza freedom flotillas then you will leave us no choice but to strike back. Again and again, until you stop.”
  (– English link, German link)
• The four biggest German electricity companies seem to have consistently reported wrong information to relevant German agencies.
  (– German link)
• German government wants to make export of weapons even easier. After all, war is such a wonderful way to make money.
  (– German link)

Once the stuff of science fiction and high-tech crime fighting, facial recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even though privacy concerns abound.
[...]
The Venetian resort, hotel and casino in Las Vegas has started using it on digital displays to tailor suggestions for restaurants, clubs and entertainment to passersby.
– Source: LA Times

It seems to be widely used in Japan already, Kraft Foods Inc. and Adidas announced their plan to start using the system this year to “push their products”.

Welcome to the future. Isn’t it amazing?
………. not.

Do you remember what the idea of the “USA Patriot Act” (2001) was?
To remind you, it is an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act”.

Terrorism. Right.
About 1.700 delayed-notice search warrants were issued under the expanded powers of the Patriot Act from 2006–2009. Whatfor? The New York Magazine has a lovely graphic:

Please keep that in mind when they want to restrict the rights of people in your country. It is most likely that politicians aren’t quite honest with you.

(There are dozens of other examples, but I’m too tired and too upset for an extensive list. Feel free to google. A good example is the data we have for internet censorship in Australia: they established it to fight child pornography, but only less than one percent of the websites blacklisted actually contain child pornography – the list is published on wikileaks)

The riots in England continue. What is the reaction of the police, the state, the democracy?

Cameron considers to ban people from social media websites to “stop them communicating” (see also here).
China (!) applauds (see also: here).

“You know your internet censorship plans are too strict when China praises you for it.”
– zeropaid.com

Two young males (20 and 22) without criminal record are going to prison for four years. What did they do?

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, set up an “event” called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant.
[...]
Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan [...] used his Facebook account in the early hours of 9 August to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologised, saying it had been a joke. His message was distributed to 400 Facebook contacts, but no rioting broke out as a result.
– The Guardian

Four years? Really?

There are considerations to introduce a curfew; in Birmingham pictures of rioters are being displayed on vans and driven around by police (“Dou you know this person?”).

Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim, Libya, stated:

“Cameron and his government must leave after the popular uprising against them and the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations by police [...]. Cameron and his government have lost all legitimacy. These demonstrations show that the British people reject this government which is trying to impose itself through force.”

Mugabe and several politicians in Iran made similar statements:

“A member of Iran’s parliament, Hossein Ebrahimi, told the semi-official Fars news agency that Britain should allow a delegation of human rights monitors to examine the situation.”

Rioting and stealing and looting is wrong. But there are reasons why you have thousands of people in the streets in England. Acting like China or Libya now will not solve problems, only create more.

EDIT: added the tag “dystopia” to this blog.