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Operation Black March: An Anonymous Movement

Jon Kaykin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:19:34 +0000

Hacktivist group Anonymous has called for Operation Black March, a movement against the media industry. Unfortunately, it might not be as successful as others think. As you may know, SOPA and PIPA have been postponed and have lost much support but the fight isn't over. Thankfully, many groups are still fighting against the music, film and media industry, the most important group being; Anonymous. Anonymous has been very vocal in letting the public know their plans for what they will do next and meanwhile, they have been diligently working; taking down many sites and issuing statements on Youtube (see this and this). On Friday, Anonymous released a set of leaks and hacks ( including the shutdown of the Greek government's Ministry of Justice website and a leak of a conversation between the FBI and Scotland Yard) that were publicized on their Twitter feed using #FFF. This was a large effort and received a lot of support from the public. But for Anonymous this was just scraping surface. Recently, they announced something they call: "Operation Black March." This operation is a boycott of the music, film and media industry, with the hopes that during March, people will not go see films, buy CD's, download songs, buy magazines, purchase video games -- do anything that will support the aforementioned industries: [embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWzRHnVbw5I[/embed] As the video states, "We will not tolerate the Media Industries' lobbying for legislation which will censor the Internet," and Anonymous is asking for our support. Although the cause is great and there is much support for this type of action, I don't know how successful this will be considering how massive the media industry is. The problem is that many people can not live one day, let alone a month without supporting big time media conglomerates. Think about it; you can't download apps to your favorite devices, you can't download new music (legally or illegally) as Anonymous states, you can't even see a movie. The idea is right and the support for this movement is necessary but with media ruling everyday of our lives, I just don't see how feasible of a task this is. It's quite intriguing what Anonymous has done and what they continue to do. With words such as, “[i]f you didn’t dig it then then you better dig it now. We are calling upon all allied battleships to rise up and make some mayhem. NDAA/PIPA/SOPA for real? The internet is ours for the taking, and we will destroy every corporation and government that attempts to stand in our way," it will be interesting to see where and/or what Anonymous attacks next. If Anonymous can get the support of many, which they already have, then anything is possible. We will just have to wait and see... You can follow Anonymous on Twitter and on their blog. Keep your eyes peeled and let us know if you discover any new Anonymous attacks. Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

Really?! The FBI May Soon Monitor Social Networks

Jon Kaykin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:20:34 +0000

The FBI has submitted a request for the creation of software that will search through "publicly available" information on social networks in order to discover emerging threats. After shutting down Megaupload, it seems as if the FBI isn't quite satisfied, they want more control over information. So what's their next plan? A social media application. You heard right; the FBI has posted a Request For Information (RFI) regarding the development of a social media application that can monitor online activity. "The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow the SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats." Although the RFI is lengthy and its jargon is technical, it isn't hard to understand and I recommend you read it. But if you don't feel like reading it, here are some important features that the application should have:

Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the defined search parameters.
Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

While I believe that it is great that the FBI would like to use social media to discover possible threats, the idea of a "spider" searching through online interactions doesn't appeal to me. The FBI says that it would monitor "publicly available" information but with 67% of online social networking account owners having concerns about privacy on social networking sites (ESET), I think that a lot of people would add strict privacy settings to their accounts, thus making that information private. Lillie Coney, the associate director of a Washington-based privacy group commented on the FBI's request calling it "ridiculous. "Get a warrant," she said. "You don't know half the people you communicate with on Twitter. They are going to launch investigations and start looking at all sorts of people that they have no right to be investigating. There is no accountability, no transparency and no oversight." It's true, the FBI doesn't have the right to investigate our private interactions but unfortunately it's the FBI and they can do whatever they want. With tight privacy settings on many social networks, a lot of information is considered private, so I don't know how viable this will be. It could cause many court cases and civil liberty actions. I guess we will have to wait and see how the application turns out. Any thoughts? Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

ZeroPaid Speaks to Executive Director of Tor Project About PROTECT-IP Act

Drew Wilson — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:39:40 +0000

We've discussed the PROTECT-IP Act at length here at ZeroPaid. While we have plenty of ways of examining the PROTECT-IP Act, we've decided to talk to Andrew Lewman, the Executive Director of Tor Project, about Tor, and the PROTECT-IP Act.

There's been plenty of discussion about the PROTECT-IP Act. One way we've examined it is the technical side of it. The main question we asked a little while ago is essentially, is it technologically possible to actually stop alleged piracy on the internet through the PROTECT-IP Act. Our findings were really an overwhelming "no" after we explored 8 technical methods that, in theory, could easily circumvent DNS censorship. We even picked apart and debunked a piece by Don Henley who supports the PROTECT-IP Act late last month. One of the technical measures we suggested would be likely effective against DNS censorship was using Tor which is sometimes referred to as the onion router. It can be described as a network of proxies one can use to better protect their online privacy among other things. Since then, we asked Andrew Lewman, Executive Director and press contact of the Tor Project for his take on a few things. We mentioned to Lewman that there was some debate over which solution was best to bi-pass internet censorship. Is one solution better over another? This was the subject of some debate in our comments section and websites linked to our article. Lewman had an interesting take on that. "The first issue with the story is that there is no best solution for everyone. Censorship circumvention is very localized. Generally, using the least sophisticated method to circumvent is all you need to do." Lewman also explained, "The arms races with the censors proceeds slowly, in some cases by design, so as to not accelerate it for little gain on either side. The general population cannot keep up with the technical arms race, at least from our experience. It takes time for people to understand the risks and act accordingly." I think that is a very important point to make. It's one thing to say one person will start using tools to better protect their privacy, but it's quite another for the general population in a given country to start using such tools. In our e-mail conversation, I said to Lewman, "one person [in the debate over whether or not one technical measure is better than another] said that officials would start creating honey-pot nodes in the Tor network. To me, that doesn't make any sense because Tor uses multiple proxies, so it would make such an effort be almost a waste of time." "Law enforcement organizations already create 'honey pot' servers on many networks, including Tor. These servers fully log all accesses at a service, network, and ISP level. If the core, underlying protocol is correctly implemented, then the users have little to fear. Law enforcement agencies around the world are known to run Tor, I2P, Freenet, and generic socks/http proxies servers as part of a dragnet to catch criminals. While this statement may get you lots of page views, anyone that has thought about this for 30 seconds will realize this is of course the reality. Whether protecting someone's audio/video bits is equivalent to murder, rape, extortion, bribery, and slavery is for individual societies to determine." It is interesting that Lewman brought this up given one of our more recent reports noted that, in France, someone could get the same legal punishment for manslaughter as they would for online copyright infringement. We asked Lewman, "looking at what lawmakers are proposing in the PROTECT-IP Act, do you think that the proposed law is a threat to the internet? If DNS censorship is one way the government wants to remove remove copyright infringement, do you see that as being effective or do you see potential pirates simply routing their way around it?" "PROTECT-IP will break the American Internet." Lewman told ZeroPaid. He said, "It will simply move innovation elsewhere and drive the arms race towards an alternate domain name system not controlled by the US government. It may temporarily quell some sorts of piracy, but that victory will be short lived. In the beginning, there were many DNS root servers, not one single set. AlterNIC and many universities ran their own DNS root servers for their own purposes. Having spoken to various agents, they privately wonder why protecting someone's commercial bits is now equivalent to stopping child pornography, human trafficking, and other heinous crimes." ZeroPaid also asked, "if governments like the US government decide on trying to censor the internet, do you see it being possible that users will start using things like Tor more so than before because of a perceived threat to something like free speech?" It's already happening. See [Tor Metrics Portal - User Statistics] Lewman explained, "Our top ten countries by users is filled with "free democracies" that have started to either censor the Internet or implement Internet traffic data retention in some way." We would like to thank Andrew Lewman for taking the time out of his busy schedule to speak to us. To learn more about Tor Project or download and try out Tor project or otherwise support Tor in general, you can check out their homepage at TorProject.org. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Censoring Civil Unrest in Social Media Exacerbates Rioting – Study

Drew Wilson — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 14:27:08 +0000

We've been covering the technological side of the UK riots for some time now. After all that has happened to date, it seems a new study has surfaced in France that might serve against Prime Minister David Cameron should he try to go through and censor social media.

Last week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron stood before the House of Commons and said that he wanted to "stop people from communicating" on social media when they wanted to find ways of participating in civil unrest. At the time, we suggested that this was unwise because whatever Cameron meant specifically, if he were serious, there are too many ways of getting around it. Whether it's simply using different social networks or encrypting the messages, it's highly unlikely such a plan would even be successful in the first place. In any event, state media in China took full advantage of the situation in the UK and pretty much praised the move, using the idea that the UK is now censoring the internet to justify the countries own censorship of the internet. It was certainly a surreal moment when praise is coming from China over a "western" first world country wanting to implement a censorship regime on the internet of any kind that's political. In another turn of events, one man (as it turns out, actually two men) were sentenced to 4 years in prison for creating a Facebook page that could be seen as inciting the riots. Later reports confirmed that the page never actually incited any riots in the first place. That didn't do a whole lot to quell criticisms over the length of the sentence. Now, a study has surfaced that could put further doubt into Cameron's idea of stopping people from communicating on social media. Numerama reports (Google translated, original) that a study released by Telecom ParisTech (EHESS) suggests that trying to censor civil unrest will make matters worse if your ultimate goal is to stop rioting. From the report:

Their study is based on modeling the behavior of crowds during civil unrest produced by JM Epstein in 2002. According to this model, the decision of an individual to express dissatisfaction is determined by its active neighborhood social police if he sees around him, he will act only if a sufficient number of demonstrators offset the police presence. One of the factors considered in this model is the "vision" which has the potential of expressing this neighborhood. Does he see the police and other protesters? To simulate the cutting of social networks and media, the researchers then used this model by imagining that censorship led to a vision of zero neighborhood. It is not possible to know where to find a group of demonstrators, or places where the police is absent. Yet, against so-intuitive, their simulation concludes that the more confidence, so the fewer vision among protesters, the higher the level of violence remains high. Conversely, the failure to censor at all leads to the average level of violence the lowest obtained by larger peaks of violence, but occasional periods of calm many more.

The report points that while this is a computer model, one only needs to look at the civil unrest in Tunisia and Egypt as a real world example of the effects of censoring the internet at all. This, I certainly agree with. When certain countries do try to censor the internet, this tends to reflect poorly on the government - especially in countries on the African continent. I think that this is another case of something being obvious after it is pointed out. In the context of the UK riots, maybe some people think that maybe a crackdown on social media isn't such a bad idea. Then you look at a study like this, start connecting the dots and realizing that, no, censoring social media during times of civil unrest might be an unwise move. I think that if the UK government is now more focused on gang activity, then all power to them. I have no problem with it. Censoring social media in general, though, not such a bright move. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

UK PMs Internet Censorship Insinuation Receives Praise from China

Drew Wilson — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 11:00:56 +0000

You know your internet censorship plans are too strict when China praises you for it.

I'll say this right off the bat, if someone told me one month ago that I would end up writing a headline like that, I would have told them they were insane. I am simply stunned that it has come to this. Last Thursday, British Prime Minister said that he wanted to "stop people from communicating on social media" whenever that person is using it to instigate violence. A growing majority of observers are interpret this as meaning that he wants to block social media websites altogether whenever civil unrest is suspected. Blocking social media has certainly caused some debate in many places - especially in the UK. The discussions around possibly censoring the internet has received international attention. This includes China. Chinese state media website Global Times weighed in on the debate suggesting that "Western" countries are coming to realize that free speech cannot go unhindered on the internet. From the report:

The British Government’s wariness of the Internet and Blackberry Messenger – symbols of freedom of speech – is a forced reaction, which might upset the Western world. Meanwhile, the open discussion of containment of the Internet in Britain has given rise to a new opportunity for the whole world. Media in the US and Britain used to criticize developing countries for curbing freedom of speech. Britain’s new attitude will help appease the quarrels between East and West over the future management of the Internet. As for China, advocates of an unlimited development of the Internet should think twice about their original ideas. On the Internet, there is no lack of posts and articles that incite public violence. They will cause tremendous damage once they are tweeted without control. At that time, all governments will have no other choice but to close down these websites and arrest those agitators. Turbulence must lead to self-examination, otherwise it’ll lead to great peril in one’s destiny.

If you think that David Cameron is trying to censor the internet and that there is no difference between his policy and China's policy, then this will no doubt pretty much cement that opinion. If you think that David Cameron should be censoring the internet, I think, for some, this revelation will make your position a little more uncomfortable. I think that David Cameron should think very carefully how he plans on going forward on his plans to prevent rioting. On the one hand, the move to crack down on rioters will receive little resistance. On the other hand, trying to control the internet in any way is an extremely slippery slope with respect to free speech. [Via BoingBoing] Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

US Cell Phone Service Provider Shuts Down Services to Disrupt Potential Protest

Drew Wilson — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:02:42 +0000

There's some disturbing news coming out of the United States. BART, a San Francisco cell phone service provider that provides cellphone services for subways, shut down all services after rumors circulated that a protest might occur. An official did confirm that this was the sole reason for shuttering services.

Accusations of censorship are flying right now over the move to shut down the services to disrupt a protest in the US. A report from SFGate details a story about a subway cell phone service provider shutting down cell phone services to disrupt a rumored planned protest against police officers accused of shooting a knife-wielding man to death. From the report:

"All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to stop them," said Michael Risher, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "It's outrageous that in San Francisco, BART is doing the same thing."

A BART official confirmed that the reason for the shutdown was to try and disrupt the planned protest, but used the excuse of safety:

"Organizers planning to disrupt BART service stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police," the transit agency said. "A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators."

Other civil rights groups are also outraged at the move. From the EFF:

This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home — first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest. Last month, protesters disrupted BART service in response to the fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill by BART police on July 3rd. Thursday’s protest failed to materialize, possibly because the disruption of cell phone service made organization and coordination difficult. Early reports indicated that BART cut off cell phone service by approaching carriers directly and asking them to turn service off. Later statements by James Allison, deputy chief communications officer for BART, assert “BART staff or contractors shut down power to the nodes and alerted the cell carriers” after the fact. AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile have not yet made comment as to whether or not they were complicit in the shutdown. Obviously, we'd like to know exactly what the carriers said to BART, but many other unanswered questions remain as well. Was pulling the plug on people's phones a quick, on-the-spot decision, or part of a protest-response plan vetted by BART's lawyers? Who decided that blocking all cellphone calls at these BART stations was the right response to news that there might be a protest? Were the carriers ever in the loop about this plan or action? Who decided that the news of this planned protest justified the shutdown? How do we know this isn't going to happen again?

The move comes on the heels of UK Prime Minister David Cameron wanting to stop people from communicating on social media in the midst of the UK riots. I, for one, am not one bit surprised some are comparing this to things that Mubarak would do. I'm also not surprised others are saying this is a clear case of infringement of free speech. If anything else, this will only serve to make awareness of the "No Justice, No BART" protest explode in to public consciousness like never before thanks to the efforts to censor it. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

UK PM Wants to “Stop People from Communicating” on Social Media

Drew Wilson — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:45:04 +0000

The riots in Britain has certainly been a story major media outlets around the world have been following closely, but recent comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron on the riots have certainly raised a few eyebrows recently. Some people are saying that the comments insinuate that the Prime Minister wants to, in essence, censor the internet in the event of civil unrest.

Since trying to figure out what David Cameron is saying is in dispute, we have decided to post a video of what David Cameron said, in full, with regards to the riots: The relevant portion is 6:40 - 7:03. In the event the video is taken down, we also decided to offer this transcription of what Cameron said: "Mr. Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck- will be struck by how they were organized via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services, and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people from communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality." The question is how would this be carried out? Would the government try and block certain individuals from accessing social media or would this be suggesting that the government intends to block out social media altogether? If that is uncertain, which possibility would be feasible? If the government intends to block specific individuals instead, that would mean that everyone on different web services would have to be monitored. For that, there would essentially be a need for a massive amount of man power to monitor every communication on a given network. If it can be broken down to one person monitoring ten people's communication, the number of people needed for such a task would be completely unfeasible just on wages, working space and training alone. The next logical step, in that case, would be to somehow automate the process. The only logical method to do so, that I can see, is have a system that monitors certain keywords. Such a method would be easily circumvented. For example, if the keyword being looked for is "riot", then all people would have to do is use the word "ri0t" instead and a simple word search would not be able to find it. If there's some Boolean involved where the word is "ri*t" (where the "*" can be anything) then the word can be changed again to "rio7". If multiple variations are in place, then one can simply use services like upsidedowntext.com and use "ʇoıɹ". What's more, messages can be further encoded by other means including Morse Code where "riot" would become ".-. .. --- -". There's really hundreds of ways to send a message in text to another party in the first place that don't include any of these ideas. No automated process would ever be bullet proof. The only other way is to track down individuals spreading such messages via other means. Really, if the government or industry interests has enough information on someone to censor them on the internet via alternate means, they might as well bust down his or her door and pick them up instead of wasting their time trying to keep them off of social networking sites in the first place. In any event, this possibility just doesn't seem one bit feasible. Forget whether it's right or wrong, I'm not convinced that it's even possible in the first place. That really leaves the other option, an option that Thinq is concerned about, blocking out social networking entirely during times of civil unrest. Some people say that Cameron didn't directly say that he wants to censor social networking entirely, but given what he did say and how implausible the other possibility is in the first, it's not a fear without merit in my view. For the sake of argument, let's say that Cameron did mean to say that he wants social networks censored during times of civil unrest. So Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry instant messaging is switched off. Then what? Well, people can simply use private IRC channels as an alternative. What if all IRC servers where somehow successfully switched off? Then people can use serverless chatrooms instead. What if the protocol is blocked at the ISP level in that case? Then the data stream can be encrypted. I'm sorry, but I don't see it working. The only way it would work is if the entire internet was shut down completely. No service for anyone period. That could reduce things down to a localized level at worst given the possibility of creating home-brew radio services among other possibilities. Ultimately, a solution like killing off all internet access in the country would really cause more problems then it would solve - both politically and legally. So even that, while more feasible then censoring individuals, is not all that feasible either. Since this is a political statement, I can honestly say that the most that can come from this at this time is simply the prime minister trying to portray an image of control over the situation. His comments with regards to social media, I think, can be taken as little more than hot air because it doesn't sound like he is able to wield power. In practice, it's very doubtful he would have that much power. [Via /.] Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Guide: How to Defeat US DNS Censorship (Using DNS Web Tools)

Drew Wilson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:30:09 +0000

In our previous guide, we showed you how it is possible to defeat basic web censorship solely using things you already have on a Windows machine. Unfortunately, this might not always be successful, so we would like to show you a second way to obtain a server IP address that relies on tools available for free.

As you no doubt may be aware of by now is that a website can really be described as something with two components. The first being a server and the second being the domain name. As an example, "google.com" is merely a domain name. When you type in that to an address bar, your browser will rely on a list of domains and a matching IP address. That IP address can really be a server for a website. In essence, the domain really can be simply described as an easy, user friendly way of getting to a website. Without it, we might have to rely on typing in a series of numbers and periods just to access websites instead of actual website names. Domains are so common on the internet, it's really become just an expected part of browsing the internet. Unfortunately, things like the PROTECT IP act would put this secure and simple way of browsing the internet at risk. You don't have to take my word for it, just ask the security consultants that wrote a whitepaper on that. In our previous guide, we showed you how to manually locate a server IP address. In essence, by following through on those steps outlined in the guide, you are really, in a way, taking steps to remove DNS completely from the process of accessing a website - something that can be affected by the government should they pass the PROTECT IP Act. The question is, what would happen if they pass the PROTECT IP Act and you are unable to obtain IP address information via the command prompt? You are not out of options and this guide will explain how you can obtain a server IP address using third party web tools that are typically found on the web for free. Step 1 - Finding the Appropriate DNS Tool Online DNS lookup web tools are all over the web. You can simply go to Google and look up "DNS Records" or "DNS Lookup" and you'll find a long list of different websites offering these services. If you find out a website you are using is being censored via DNS censorship, it can take a few days for these tools to update that information that the server has moved. That can leave a window of opportunity to obtain the server IP address in the mean time. After searching around on Google, we found network-tools.com. It might be preferable in the future to stick with lookup tools outside of the United States in the future, but for now, just about any DNS lookup tool on the web that finds our server IP address will do. Step 2 - Search for the DNS Information. We should point out that not every DNS search tool is the same and you may need to try different options for a DNS look-up that will be helpful for you. For us, in this instance, what worked for us was to click on the DNS Records radial, then typed in our example website, hotfile.com. After that, we clicked on "Go" as we can see in this screen capture: After the search was completed, we were able to obtain lots of helpful information including the fact that Hotfile has numerous server IP addresses under the Type A DNS Records (for more information on DNS record types, check out the Wikipedia entry on this subject). This includes exactly what we are after, the server IP addresses for the website we are after: A list is way better than a single IP address because it gives us numerous IP addresses to try when accessing the website. So, we really hit a jackpot here. The IP addresses is all we need. Copy the numeric values and save it wherever you like - so long as its convenient for you to use later should the US government decide to censor the DNS address. Step 3 - Test the IP Address Now that we have the IP addresses, we can start testing them in our web browser. You can open a new tab and type in "http://[insert IP address here]" This will point the browser directly to an IP address, bypassing any possible DNS-based censorship you might encounter. Since we, in this example, have obtained a list of possible IP addresses to try, we decided to try the second one (it really doesn't matter which one you use so long as you find that the IP address works and directs you to the proper website. Sure enough, our test worked! Probably best to save every IP address just in case, but we know at least one of those IP addresses work. Should one fail, we got plenty of other server IP addresses to try out instead. Congratulations! We've defeated the the US government DNS censors! Now, if you type in that working IP address instead of the DNS name, no amount of making "hotfile.com" (as is our example) redirect to a different website by the government will stop you from accessing the website. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

AFACT Accused of Extorting ISPs to Import Three Strikes Law to Australia

Drew Wilson — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 20:40:28 +0000

Some interesting things coming out of Australia this week. It seems that AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) is attempting to pressure ISPs into implementing a three strikes law for Australian internet users. That has the Australian Pirate Party crying foul.

We turn things to Australia where tension between international corporate entities and Australian ISPs are growing. Things are not going well for AFACT in the courts and that has left AFACT seeking other options to get ISPs to agree to a three strikes deal. According to Delimiter, AFACT sent letters to ISPs demanding that they meet their "obligations". From that report:

One local ISP to receive the letter was Exetel, which in comparison with other ISPs, already has a number of provisions in its agreement with its customers that are favourable to content owners. For example, the ISP has committed to forwarding any copyright infringement notices received to customers. If three or more such notices are received, or if Exetel “reasonably suspects” that a customer is infringing copyright, and the customer fails to provide a valid defence for their activity, Exetel reserves the right to disconnect customers’ connections.

So, clearly, AFACT is pressuring ISPs to get them to agree to disconnecting users based on mere accusations of copyright infringement. Judging by this paragraph, it's very likely the three strikes law we have seen in France and seeing in New Zealand to name just two examples. In a more recent recent article on Delimiter, it seems that the Pirate Party of Australia has decried what they consider "extortion". The comments of the Pirate Party of Australia can also be found on their homepage as well. "These veiled threats are nothing more than intimidation tactics that once again clearly display the extent that Big Media will go to in their failing attempts to protect their flawed business models. Extortion is a new low even for AFACT." said Acting Secretary, Brendan Molloy. "It is completely inappropriate to have closed-room discussions even before the iiNet court case has concluded, and even more inappropriate to make veiled threats to begin yet another court case for not attending these 'voluntary talks'." There's two possibilities as to why this is happening now. The first possibility is that the court case is not going well at all for AFACT. Sweating over the outcome, AFACT may be trying to use new tactics to make sure they don't get a judgement they don't want. If both sides agree to AFACTs demands, there probably wouldn't be much of a reason to continue on with court proceedings. The other possibility is that AFACT got some inspiration from the US's new agreed upon '6 strike' regime which we did discuss at length before. It's entirely possible that AFACT has taken some insight in to the backroom deal going on between ISPs and the copyright industry in the US and imported them to Australia, hoping that they will get a similar outcome. Regardless of how we got to this point in Australia, there doesn't seem to be any effort to address existing problems seen everywhere else. A three strikes regime still violates international obligations to free speech, it is still a fundamentally flawed method of identifying the correct person and it is still a bad idea both politically and on the public relations front. Ironically, I see this certainly helping the Pirate Party even if this isn't something being codified in to law because a number of people will see how corporate interests are circumventing government to effectively put laws in place that stifles their freedom. So, this can all very well be made in to a political issue anyway whether or not politicians want to touch this with a ten foot barge pole. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

OSCE – Three Strikes Laws Incompatible with International Obligations to Free Speech

Drew Wilson — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:29:44 +0000

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization has issued a report that explicitly states that a three strikes law is a disproportionate response to dealing with copyright infringement.

Last month, Frank La Rue, the UN’s Special Rapporteur slammed attempts to put in place three strikes laws as a violation of human rights. Now, it appears, that another large organization agrees with this. The OSCE recently published a paper documenting freedom of speech on the internet and laws that impacted such freedoms. The available PDF states the following with regards to the emerging of three strikes laws around the world:

The increased use of so-called “three-strikes” legal measures to combat Internet piracy is worrisome given the growing importance of the Internet in daily life. “Three-strikes” measures provide a “graduated response” resulting in restricting or cutting off the users’ access to the Internet in cases where a user has attempted to download pirated material. The third strike usually leads to the user’s access to the Internet being completely cut off. This disproportionate response is most likely to be incompatible with OSCE commitment on the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” (55) In the Charter for European Security, the participating States in 1999 “reaffirmed the importance of independent media and the free flow of information as well s the public’s access to information [and committed] to take all necessary steps to ensure the basic conditions for free and independent media and unimpeded transborder and intra-State flwo of information, which [they] consider the be an essential component of any democratic, free and open society.” (56) Any interference with such a fundamental human right, as with any other human right, must be motivated by a pressing social need, whose existence must be demonstrated by the OSCE participating States and must be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. (57) Access to the Internet must be recognized as a human right, and therefore “graduated response” mechanisms which could restrict users’ access to the Internet should be avoided by the OSCE participating States.

(55) Paragraph 9.1. of the Final Act of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, June 1990. http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2006/06/19392_en.pdf (56) Paragraph 26 of the Charter for European Security adopted at the OSCE Istanbul Summit 1999. See at http://www.osce.org/mc/17502. (57) See Paragraph 26 of the Final Document o fthe Moscow Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, at http://www.osce.org/fom/item_11_30426.html. See also Olsson v. Sweden (No. 1), judgment of 24 March 1988, Series A no. 130, § 67, and Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas v. Norway [GC], no. 21980/93, ECHR 1999-III.

In other words, if a government of a given state supports their international obligations to free speech, then the "graduated response" laws where users are cut off after a third accusation of infringement must be avoided. You can't have free speech and a three strikes law at the same time. It's particularly interesting that this finding was made since France, the country that has a three strikes law already in place, is also a member of the OSCE. Another member of interest is the US, the same country that has been pushing other countries to implement a three strikes law. What this report essentially does is help solidify the point that a "graduated response" or a three strikes law is a violation of human rights. There are international bodies that do agree with this. The next question will no doubt be whether countries will actually listen to the report or push for laws that disregards human rights. We already know that the United States seems to be content with sacrificing their national security in favor of a six strikes agreement, so, it's difficult to say that free speech will be a motivating factor to slow down the implementation of these laws. Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.