Tag: Privacy

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CISPA is dead! (again) (for now)

After months of activist agitation and a crushing disappointment from the cowards in the House of Representatives, the US senate has effectively killed CISPA, a sweeping Internet surveillance proposal. This is astoundingly great news! But CISPA died once before, and came back from the dead, and it will not likely stay dead this time around either. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, etc etc etc:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement on April 18 that CISPA’s privacy protections are “insufficient.”

A committee aide told ZDNet on Thursday that Rockefeller believes the Senate will not take up CISPA. The White House has also said the President won’t sign the House bill.

Staff and senators are understood to be “drafting separate bills” that will maintain the cybersecurity information sharing while preserving civil liberties and privacy rights.

Rockefeller’s comments are significant as he takes up the lead on the Commerce Committee, which will be the first branch of the Senate that will debate its own cybersecurity legislation.

Michelle Richardson, legislative council with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the publication she thinks CISPA is “dead for now,” and said the Senate will “probably pick up where it left off last year.”

CISPA ‘dead’ in Senate, privacy concerns cited [Zack Whittaker/ZDNet]

    

Posted on

CISPA is dead! (again) (for now)

After months of activist agitation and a crushing disappointment from the cowards in the House of Representatives, the US senate has effectively killed CISPA, a sweeping Internet surveillance proposal. This is astoundingly great news! But CISPA died once before, and came back from the dead, and it will not likely stay dead this time around either. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, etc etc etc:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement on April 18 that CISPA’s privacy protections are “insufficient.”

A committee aide told ZDNet on Thursday that Rockefeller believes the Senate will not take up CISPA. The White House has also said the President won’t sign the House bill.

Staff and senators are understood to be “drafting separate bills” that will maintain the cybersecurity information sharing while preserving civil liberties and privacy rights.

Rockefeller’s comments are significant as he takes up the lead on the Commerce Committee, which will be the first branch of the Senate that will debate its own cybersecurity legislation.

Michelle Richardson, legislative council with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the publication she thinks CISPA is “dead for now,” and said the Senate will “probably pick up where it left off last year.”

CISPA ‘dead’ in Senate, privacy concerns cited [Zack Whittaker/ZDNet]

    

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Snooper's Charter is dead! (for now)

Aw, yeah! The UK Communications Data Bill — AKA the “Snooper’s Charter,” a sweeping, totalitarian universal Internet surveillance bill that the Conservative government had sworn to pass — is dead! Yesterday, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Parliament, announced that his party would not support the bill, and effectively killed it. Though I’ve been bitterly disappointed with some of the terminal compromises the LibDems have made, this makes me grateful to have them in Parliament. The kind of universal surveillance proposed in the Snooper’s Charter was broadly supported by the last Labour government, which radically expanded state surveillance powers, and by the Tories — thank goodness for the LibDems mustering a scrap of backbone at last!

The only downside is that the Open Rights Group had a whole series of great “Professor Elemental” videos that used pointed, excellent humour to mock and undermine the bill and drum up opposition to it, and now that’s all going to go to waste (I blogged episode one yesterday).

Aw, who’m I kidding? This kind of thing never stays dead.

The snooper’s charter has reminded Nick Clegg, finally, he is a liberal

    

Posted on

Snooper’s Charter is dead! (for now)

Aw, yeah! The UK Communications Data Bill — AKA the “Snooper’s Charter,” a sweeping, totalitarian universal Internet surveillance bill that the Conservative government had sworn to pass — is dead! Yesterday, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Parliament, announced that his party would not support the bill, and effectively killed it. Though I’ve been bitterly disappointed with some of the terminal compromises the LibDems have made, this makes me grateful to have them in Parliament. The kind of universal surveillance proposed in the Snooper’s Charter was broadly supported by the last Labour government, which radically expanded state surveillance powers, and by the Tories — thank goodness for the LibDems mustering a scrap of backbone at last!

The only downside is that the Open Rights Group had a whole series of great “Professor Elemental” videos that used pointed, excellent humour to mock and undermine the bill and drum up opposition to it, and now that’s all going to go to waste (I blogged episode one yesterday).

Aw, who’m I kidding? This kind of thing never stays dead.

The snooper’s charter has reminded Nick Clegg, finally, he is a liberal

    

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Google indexed a private site… WTH?

So there is this site which is still private (has a non divulged URL — other than two other co-maintainers — so the old site is simultaneous accessible) and I was very surprised to have received comment moderation notification for some spam comment.

WTH? The domain doesn’t even exist explicitly, it’s under a wildcard subdomain so how did this happen?

Well, it turns out that Google has already indexed it… how? A few #disturbing suspicions come to mind:

  • Both co-maintainers use GMail (Google scans email contents for better advertisement targeting, maybe it also scans for previously unknown websites…)
  • They also use Chromium (with likely safe-browsing from Google’s service, maybe it also scans for previously unknown websites…)
  • Maybe they also do that on Jabber communications
  • Maybe they also do that on private Plus communications (I’d not wonder if they did it on public ones, it’s the “private” ones I wonder…)

So there you go, if you’re working on a private website, mind your communication channels, maybe they’re being scanned and interpreted…

Maybe that’s why Larry Page is one of the heads behind tasteless CISPA…