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The 6th Round of Negotiations on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Sweedish Presidency of the EU
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:46 EST

The 6th round of negotiations on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was held in Seoul on November 4th to 6th, 2009, hosted by the Republic of Korea. Participants in the negotiations included Australia, Canada, the European Union, represented by the European Commission, the EU Presidency (Sweden), and EU Member States, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America (alphabetically ordered).

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Gheewhan Kim, Director-General, and Ms. Miyon Lee, Director, Multilateral Trade Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Participants underlined the importance of ACTA as an agreement which shall provide for an enhanced framework to fight global infringement of intellectual property rights, particularly in the context of counterfeiting and piracy.

David Kravets
Wired.com
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:42 EST

The blogosphere is abuzz over an apparently leaked document showing the United States trying to push its controversial DMCA-style notice-and-takedown process on the world. But since Threat Level already lives in the land of the DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we're more bothered by the fact that the U.S. proposal goes far beyond that 1998 law, and would require Congress to alter the DMCA in a manner even more hostile to consumers.

John Oates
The Register
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:57 EST

The planned universal electronic identity for all European citizens has moved a step closer - the technical interoperability standard has been agreed.

The full details will be unveiled 18 November at a conference in Malmo. But following a 14-country, 12-month trial, Brussels has agreed a common specification.

The project, which breaks every rule of acronym club, is called STORK - Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed.

In essence the scheme will allow you to use your UK electronic identity, for example, if you needed to access an electronic government service in any other member state. So once you have a guaranteed identity to get into the UK Government Gateway you could use it to pay French property taxes or a Spanish speeding fine.

Tom Whitehead
The Daily Telegraph
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:37 EST

Innocent people, including thousands of teenagers, will still have their DNA profile kept on a national database for up to six years, the Government will announce.

Ministers have ignored growing demands to radically reduce or scrap the proposed period the samples of people arrested but never charged or convicted of crimes are retained.

Instead, in one climbdown, those suspected of the most serious offences will see previous plans to hold their details for up to 12 years halved.

The Home Office is to publish revised proposals over the retention of innocent DNA after its original plans in May faced a fierce backlash from liberty groups and MPs.

They were drawn up in the wake of a European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a blanket policy of retaining profiles of innocent people indefinitely was illegal.

Big Brother is in your home

Spencer Aland
Adam Smith Institute
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:33 EST

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will shortly be required by law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications. This all inclusive 'Big Brother' system will record phone calls, emails, text messages, and even the links clicked on the internet, all stored for at least a year under government control. According to government officials this type of surveillance is absolutely critical in combating terrorism and hardened crimes.

This is the same kind of rhetoric that was given when CCTV was installed up and sown the country. However, according to the London Police Chiefs less than 3% of crimes were solved with the assistance of CCTV in 2008, even though the number of CCTV cameras in England had reached 4,200,000 in the year 2002. The most fitting use for CCTV has proved to be in discovering which parents lied about where they lived in order to enroll their children in better schools and who is not disposing of their rubbish properly. CCTV is conceivably the best example of a tool implemented to fight crime that quickly turned into a mechanism for domestic control, even going as far as attempting to install them in school toilets.

Richard Edwards
The Daily Telegraph
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:17 EST

Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.

Despite widespread opposition to the increasing amount of surveillance in Britain, 653 public bodies will be given access to the information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Shelly Roche
Bytestyle.tv
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:14 EST

Tom Burghardt
Global Research
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:00 EST

President Barack Obama instructed Justice Department attorneys to argue last week in San Francisco before Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker, that he must toss out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Shubert v. Bush lawsuit challenging the secret state's driftnet surveillance of Americans' electronic communications.

This latest move by the administration follows a pattern replicated countless times by Obama since assuming the presidency in January: denounce the lawless behavior of his Oval Office predecessor while continuing, even expanding, the reach of unaccountable security agencies that subvert constitutional guarantees barring "unreasonable searches and seizures." EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston wrote:

Best of the Web: US Resistance to Speed Cameras goes Mainstream

Neely Tucker
Washington Post
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:45 EST

You rip open the envelope and there it is: Another darned photo-enforcement traffic ticket.

The photograph, the zoom-in on the tag, it's you, baby. Your car. Two weeks ago. Forty-one in a 30-mph zone.

It's from your favorite municipality. You can pay $40 now or $80 later. You can also contest it, the infraction letter says, and that's a laugh. You remember seeing that the folks who went down to fight their automated tickets in Montgomery County got convicted 99.7 percent of the time. Like a Soviet election, you think, a sham, a joke, and you, the chump in the parade.

There's something that doesn't smell right about these tickets, but you're not quite sure what.

Is it the huge profits the government and their cohorts, the camera manufacturers, make on them? The District doubling the number of tickets it issued just two years ago, raking in $36 million last fiscal year? The fact that Redflex, one of the big manufacturers of these cameras, posted a 48 percent jump in revenue last year while the rest of the economy tanked?

People get worked up. Put these cyborgs on a ballot, and the voters beat them to the pavement.

Comment: It is interesting for the Washington Post to present compelling statistical evidence for the ineffectiveness of speed camera's in reducing road injuries. It is true that as soon as the camera is behind a reckless driver they put their foot down again. These camera's have been introduced as easy profit generating machines and it is encouraging to see some success stories of the people fighting back against the machines.

Tim Shipman
The Mail Online
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:38 EST

Labour's plans to build Big Brother databases of everyone's phone calls, text messages and internet activity have been put on hold..

Ministers kicked the £2billion surveillance state proposals into the long grass, so they will not now be enacted before the next election.

The Home Office announced yesterday that plans to force internet and phone companies to store billions of pieces of personal data on everyone in Britain will not now feature in the Queen's speech next week.

The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners, who believe the technology would be a 'snooper's charter' that would be misused by ministers to spy on innocent citizens.

The U-turn means that the most intrusive elements of Labour's plans may now never happen.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Bill Moyers

"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know.": Murray I. Gurfein

One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free. N.A. Scott