This week at the end of April 2012: Rush Limbaugh doesn’t understand the Internet, No trial for Megaupload, Bradley Manning pre-trial is in secrecy, the cellphone industry opposses privacy, Democracy Now has a series on surveillance, and a big report on CISPA.

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©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.

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April 27th 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie

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This week at the end of April 2012: Rush Limbaugh doesn’t understand the Internet, No trial for Megaupload, Bradley Manning pre-trial is in secrecy, the cellphone industry opposses privacy, Democracy Now has a series on surveillance, and a big report on CISPA.

- The Digital Millenium Copyright Act is being misused to censor critisism, adding more fuel to the fire of how existing copyright laws are decades behind the Internet: Rush Limbaugh issued a takedown notice for a video that used his footage. Video reuse is allowed under fair-use terms when it’s used in critique.

- Back in January, Megaupload was raided the day after massive protests against SOPA and PIPA, the proposed legislation that lead to both of the bills being shelved. This week, Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that MegaUpload was never served criminal charges that which are required to start trial. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that, unlike people, companies can not be served outside US jurisdiction. Kim Dotcom of Megaupload is outraged. The damage to their company and website can not be undone. Dotcom in an interview with TorrentFreak said towards closing, “This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood [...]”

- Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing was this week. He has already spent two years in prison for being accused of releasing state secrets on the Internet on Wikileaks. One of the released files was a video entitled “Collateral Murder” which included an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver, none of which were taking hostile action. Several are critisizing the hearing for being kept in secret. Coombs, in Bradley’s defence, has said, the charges against Manning have been exaggerated, by treating single violations as multiple seperate offenses. They are seeking to dismiss all charges. Judge, Colonel Denise Lind, has asked for documents accessing the “damage” from the release of secret state documents, to determine if the released documents did any harm to US national interests. There has been several solidarity events for Bradley, one in Brea, CA. You can get more information in support at bradleymanning.org

- Industry trade group for the cellphone industry, CTIA, is lobbying against the California Location Privacy Bill, saying that it will “[...] create unduly burdensome and costly mandates on providers and their employees [...]“. Currently it costs less than $1,000, and as low as around $300 with AT&T, for police to have your location tracked by your cellphone, and without a warrant. Both the EFF and ACLU are in support of this bill, as location data can be used to reveal so much about ourselves, such as health, hobbies, politics, and who you visit and when. EFF says the bill strikes a balance between cellphones as a useful tool to solve crimes and protecting the public’s privacy.

- DemocracyNow has a four part series our surveillance state this week. One video has interview with Tor hacker, Jacob Appelbaum, who says he’s being targetted by authorities. He now keeps nothing important on a computer now because of it, as well as not having any important calls in the United States. Ex-NSA William Binney talked about how his surveillance for foreign intelligence was turned on its own citizens after US planes were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

And now for the contentious CISPA bill:

- Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation, to Secrectary of State, Hillary Clinton made a statement that “The Obama administration opposes CISPA. The president has called for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. [...] part of what has been communicated to congressional committees is that we want legislation to come with necessary protections for individuals.” Later in the week, Obama’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. “The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, in its current form. If H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.” Remember Obama also made a statement opposing the NDAA and then later signed it. Afterwards he made a public statement stating his “reluctance” and “hesitancy” over the clause around detaining American citizens without a trial.

- Ron Paul made a statement against CISPA on “Texas Straight Talk”, hey says “[...]CISPA represents a form of corportism, as it further intertwines goverments with companies like Google and Facebook [...]“. He also made statements against SOPA stating they could be used against our freedom and our privacy.

- American Conservative Union, Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Liberty Coalition sent a letter stating how CISPA is bad for privacy and fails to protect sensitive information and lack of strict goverment oversight.

- Eighteen members of the House wrote a letter to CISPA’s lead sponsors stating their disaproval and lack of privacy protections. The signitures include representatives: Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, Jan Schakowsky from Illinois, Zoe Lofgren from California, Gerald Nadler from New York, Scott and Jared Polis from Colorado.

- A group of security experts, academics and engineers sent a letter to Congress, in a summary they say to reject any legislation that, “Exempts ‘cybersecurity’ activities from existing laws that protect individuals’ privacy and devices, such as the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.” and “Gives sweeping immunity from liability to companies even if they violate individuals’ privacy, and without evidence of wrongdoing.”

- I would like to thank Lucille Roybal-Allard of California’s 34th Congressional District in Downtown Los Angeles for voting no on CISPA, though it seems it was not enough. On Thursday, April 26th, 2012 the House of Representatives in the 112th Congress passed the contentious Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. The final vote was 60/40 with a total of 248 ayes to 168 noes. The bill had recieved five ammendments. One for “Use” which extended the use of the cyber threat information to include cybersecurity crimes, which includes any provision of lengthy title 18, United States Code, Another to the Definitions that omitted “intellectual property” from “cyber security purpose”. And an ammendment which in part says, “No department or agency of the Federal Goverment shall retain or use information shared pursuant to subsection (b)(1) for any use other than a use permitted under subsection (c)(1).” Section (c)(1) states that at least one purpose should be for “the protection of national security of the United States” or a “cybersecurity purpose”. A “cybersecurity purpose” is to “ensure the integrity, confidentiality, or availablity of, or safeguarding, a system or network, including protecting a system or network from …” in summary: vulnerability, threat to integrity, confidentiality, or availability of a system, efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy a system, and efforts to gain unauthorized access to a system or network.” Violations of unauthorized access based on consumer terms of service are later excluded.

- It’s quite clear what the problem really is here when these bills include Microsoft’s signature “C:/” in their path names. Microsoft, Facebook and AT&T are laughing all the way to the bank.

EFF and ACLU kicked off this Monday with Stop Cyber Spying Week, with a campaign to sway congress against the proposed CISPA bill, HR 3523, sponsored by Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers of Michigan. The bill has 100 co-sponsors, and 6 additional in the last week, likely because of recent changes made to the bill. Several sources have reported that the definitions “Intellectual Property” have been removed. This is now an entirely other issue around security and privacy.

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April 20th, 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie / Poobah Records

Partial Transcript:

EFF and ACLU kicked off this Monday with Stop Cyber Spying Week, with a campaign to sway congress against the proposed CISPA bill, HR 3523, sponsored by Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers of Michigan. The bill has 100 co-sponsors, and 6 additional in the last week, likely because of recent changes made to the bill. Several sources have reported that the definitions “Intellectual Property” have been removed. This is now an entirely other issue around security and privacy.

Many people have made statements against the bill this week, including Tim Berners-Lee, who made the first successful communication between HTTP client and server via the Internet. As well as a statement from White House spokeswoman Caitlin Kayden to not pass “cybersecurity” legislation without “robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens”. She did not mention CISPA specifically. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a list of organizations that have also made statements.

The bill still leaves many grey areas and defines protecting against release of private or confidential information, by legally allowing corporations and government to share information for “cyber security purposes” with “authorized people”. No this is not out of Orwells 1984 fiction.

This bill as an intentional attack on our privacy and liberties, and the government is being disobedient to it’s own people. Yay or nay, there is a will, and that is already too much. CISPA goes to the House floor for vote this Monday. Ultimately, we the people need to grow stronger regardless. Security will not come from any laws passed in Congress, it will start at the bottom and build up.

Still a significant portion of American citizens depend on Windows, Mac OSX, Facebook, Google and others because of ignorance of computing. This software is controlled by a dictatorship, and thus after twenty some years of rule, the lines between the corporations and the government are beginning to bleed into each other. This isn’t the first time either, back in the 70s-80s, AT&T went through a process of locking down Unix. This was one of the significant reasons that the free software movement started in 1983 by hackers who left MIT, such as Richard Stallman. We’ve become addicted to our gadgets that we’ve sacrificed our rights away, against our own liberty and freedom. These bills are coming from politicians responding to the behaviors of the people. It’s about time we start to rebel against not our government, but against the dictatorship of software.

If Congress is not willing to stand up for the people, than we need to stand up for ourselves and rise up. The tech companies supporting the bill are shooting themselves in the foot. It just might take the next twenty years to repair all the damage that has been caused by them. We need to build solidarity with the people and the State, restoring the relationships that have been divided an conquered. A massive campaign in computing education is needed, in our schools, on the streets, in libraries, far and wide people need to hear about computing liberty. Let’s declare our independence and sovereignty from the dictatorship of those controlling software unjustly.