In other news, the European parliament is about to vote on the Medina Report, which is going to set the direction for all future IP-rights enforcement work. It suggests, among other things, censorship of uncomfortable sites and traffic throttling. It also names The Pirate Bay as a primary target and this has not been well recieved here in Sweden as it can be considered interfering with an ongoing investigation and trial.

Not very nice. More information about this report and it’s ramifications can be found here:

IPTegrity – A Net dilemma for the European Parliament
IPTegrity – Libraries call to reject Medina report
La Quadrature Du Net – Copyright dogmatism ridiculously strikes the European Parliament

In other “work news” I recieved a request for comment on the surfacing issues of states implementing laws that make it legal for police to hack into computers and plant trojans from Christian Rudolf (Swedish site) over at Mjukvara.se (Swedish site). The question was if we as a security vendor would cooperate with the police in these situations and our position in this matter was summarized nicely internally when we discussed this:

Our position is that we will always detect all trojans to protect our customers, even if they pass a law to make a legal police trojan in Germany or anywhere else. If they take us to court of justice or make any type of pressure to make us whitelist their trojan, we will fight against it.

The americans have a typical phrase that fits well into this situation: “they’ll have to pry the detection signature from our cold, dead hands!”

It’s nice to see Panda Reseach and Labs have a sober view on this. Not that I didn’t expect them to, but the silence from some vendors are speaking for itself. The only ones responding to the inquiry on Mjukvara.se was Panda Security, Symantec and Avast. All of us stating that we would not whitelist any trojans. Ever.

Worth noting though is that there has been some trouble with this earlier with some vendors involving a specialized FBI-trojan called Magic Lantern. Let’s hope that the vendors that ignored this trojan change and follow up on their current promises.

And one last thing, I’m in need of some help from someone that knows virtualization (VmWare or similar). Working on setting up a multiple host, multiple network, multiple function solution and I would like to ask someone that knows more about this than me. So if you’re skilled and feel like giving me some quick A’s to my Q’s, please drop me an e-mail (daniel dot nystrom at icmpecho dot com) or comment on this post!

Cheers,

Attention to the EFF & ORG Sound Copyright petition!

This is an effort to petition against the extension of copyright in the European Union. Extending copyright from 50 to 95 years will not lead to anything positive and will only harm artists and culture. Sign the petition here.

More info:

EFF – EU Copyright Extension: Help MEPs Hear the Other Side
ORG – Consumers, citizens and information professionals around the world unite to condemn copyright extension
Ars Technica – EU pays for, then ignores study on copyright extension
TheRegister – EU commissioner backs record biz on copyright extensions
The Guardian (Cory Doctorow) – Love music? Hate exploitation? Now’s the time to make your voice heard

How copyright extension in sound recordings actually works:

Want more? Do a search on Google. They link to stuff

So the European Unions Data Retention directive is moving on and will soon be up for voting in the Swedish parliament. I wrote a short note about this here back in September.

So what does this mean? It means that all ISP’s and telecom carriers will have to save traffic data linked to specific subscribers and hand it over to the police when requested. This will lead to several things:

1) All you internet habits “are belong to” the police.
2) All your phone usage data “are belong to” the police.
3) All you phone positioning data “are belong to” the police.

In other words, you will be constantly tracked when you surf, when you IM, when you read e-mail, when you call your mom, when you call your work, when you’re in your car with your phone turned off, when you’re at a political meeting carrying your phone, when you’re on an airplane, when you’re in a bus, when you go to the toilet, when you… hrrm.. you get the picture… whatever you do, your actions will be registered and stored in a huge database.

I would really appreciate any comments on the proportionality on this from people that think it’s a good idea as I can’t come up with any arguments to train against. Just don’t say “terrorists!” or “think about the children!” as those has been broken a long time ago.

Patrik Fältström (paf) summarize what I feel quite nicely in the end of his blogpost about this:

That people at this point in time is like in SvD arguing about who’s fault it is while pushing and not stopping and thinking, is embarrassing.

Embarrassing for Sweden, embarrassing for the people working with IT Policy, and embarrassing for the people that have their names connected to quotes in the newspapers.

Not many of them even know who is responsible to do what according to the legislation. But they still push for it. An unclear legislation, implementation of a directive that does not lead to harmonization.

I know we can do better in Sweden. Or else we should just give up.

I know we can do better in Sweden. Or else we should just give up.

UPDATE: Fixed a link to paf’s blog.

As the days are closing in on our country wide EU-elections we, the Swedish Pirate Party, has presented our list of candidates and I’m number 17. However, even if we get many seats of the ones available the chances of me being voted in are very small, except if I get a huge amount of personal votes.

The list is as follows (blogs linked from the top names, probably in Swedish):

1. Christian Engström, f. 1960, Nacka
2. Amelia Andersdotter, f. 1987, Lund
3. Mattias Bjärnemalm, f. 1979, Uppsala
4. Anna Troberg, f. 1974, Järfälla
5. Rickard Olsson, f. 1967, Östersund
6. Rick Falkvinge, f. 1972, Sollentuna
7. Anna Svensson, f. 1980, Norrköping
8. Gustav Nipe, f. 1988, Malmö
9. Johanna Julén, f. 1980, Västerås
10. Björn Felten, f. 1948, Säve
11. Malin Littorin Ferm, f. 1990, Vällingby
12. Jan Lindgren, f. 1979, Enskede
13. Ellen Söderberg, f. 1991, Malmö
14. Andreas Larsson, f. 1983, Rättvik
15. Camilla Westrin, f. 1983, Umeå
16. Snild Dolkow, f. 1986, Lund
17. Daniel Nyström, f. 1983, Tyresö
18. C Magnus Berglund, f. 1962, Karlstad
19. Sandra Grosse, f. 1990, Helsingborg
20. Mikael Nordfeldth, f. 1987, Umeå

For the official message, see the press release (in swedish).

For those that doesn’t know what we stand for, it’s not just that “downloading everything for free” as some seem to think. We have three primary points and those are Respect for the right of privacy, Reformed copyright legislation and and Abolished/Reformed patent system.

In the European union our outspoken tactics are to join the group we think is closest to our key points (probably the liberal or green ones) and then focus all of our energy on the questions and issues relating to citizens rights and making sure that the EU is democratic (Subsidiarity, transparancy and accountability).

We have no position on if Sweden should be a member of the EU or not, but now that we are, things should be done in a democratic and sane manner.

Well, just don’t add them.

A-R-G-H-H-H.

Swartz used this as an illustration. It’s right on.

The situation is now like this;

The parliament has voted on the Telecoms package. As familiar, amendment 166 was voted into the package and thus providing european citizens with protection against arbitrary disconnection from the internet and privacy.

So far all good and here’s the voting results from EU-parliament so you can read for yourselves.

Now the matter moved on to the “WORKING PARTY ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION SOCIETY” whose job is to prepare the package for either a second hearing, or if everyone are still agreeing, for the ministers for OK’ing.

HOWEVER (always seem to be a however in my posts), what they are now doing is more or less editing away the amendments that were added and making it as they (the french, primarily) want it. Yep, that’s right, they are actually editing the democratic decision by the parliament to fit the lobbying organizations needs. A leaked document shows us this progress and the evidently left out “Article 32a” which would be the one containing amendment 166′s content.

We now need to make some noise! But not just the (crazy?) swedes, everyone! If you are from another European country please send e-mails to your MEP’s and/or call them and ask them to follow-up on and verify that their democratically voted decisions stands firm! Remind them that if this can be changed, so can their own main issues and that this should not go unnoticed through a democratic system!

I’m getting seriously tired of writing about politicians and others tricking and removing citizens rights.

Can’t any of them please break the trend so I can write something nice?

Others writing (mostly in Swedish, use the translator): Oscar Swartz, Opassande, Josef, scaber_nestor, farmorgun, Frihet-Fildelning&Feminism, satmaran, Jens. O, HAX.

Even though it doesn’t need to be… Here we go again… Not really sure I’ve got the energy for this lunacy…

First off, what’s the IPRED1 directive?

Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive 1 (IPRED1) is a directive created by lobbyists and pushed through the EU by a woman married to a record company executive. The gist of the directive is to enable rightsholders to force counterfeiting middle-men to tell where they got the goods from. So in the beginning this was but this was about physical counterfeiting. Along the way it got a bit manhandled by the IP-lobbyists and record companies and finally was voted through in the form of a law that would allow private companies to demand ISPs to hand over their client data for a specific client, so that the rightsholder could sue.

However,

The EU IPRED1 directive is not forced upon any member state in the European Union as ruled by the European Court of Justice (source EFF). From the article:

In a much-anticipated decision, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that European Community law does not require EU Member States to impose an obligation on ISPs to divulge customer data in response to a request from a copyright holder who alleges that copyright infringement has taken place. The decision in Promusicae v. Telefonica involved a request made by a Spanish music rightsholder association (Promusicae) to Spain’s leading ISP (Telefonica) for personal data about Telefonica subscribers using particular dynamic IP addresses, which Promusicae alleged were engaged in filesharing.

The European Court of Justice was asked to interpret a mesh of overlapping EU Community laws and answer the question: does European community law require EU Member States that are implementing this suite of EU directives to impose an obligation on ISPs to divulge their customers’ personal data to rightsholders in a civil copyright lawsuit? The court ruled no, but with some qualifications. Thus, the Spanish law is valid and Telefonica will not be forced to divulge its customers’ data.

And what does the Swedish government, with the help of record company lobbyists do now?

They go ahead and suggest a Swedish implementation and law which would grant MORE power to the IP-holders, effectively creating a corporate police which can, without any real evidence, get the identity of the person owning a specific IP-adress.

The law that is now proposed actually grants these commercial interests more power than the Swedish police.

Actually, it is so over-implemented so it actually breaches the directive’s own regulations which states:

3. Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall apply without prejudice to other statutory provisions which:
(a) grant the rightholder rights to receive fuller information;
(b) govern the use in civil or criminal proceedings of the information communicated pursuant to
this Article;
(c) govern responsibility for misuse of the right of information; or
(d) afford an opportunity for refusing to provide information which would force the person
referred to in paragraph 1 to admit to his own participation or that of his close relatives in an
infringement of an intellectual property right; or
(e) govern the protection of confidentiality of information sources or the processing of personal
data.

I mean come on.. If I, an uneducated IT-nerd with a taste for bodybuilding can find, read, and understand this, then why can’t the people preparing our laws do the same?

So, the question remains;

WTF?

Yep. That’s really the question. What the f*ck?

This, if voted through in parliament, will create a situation like the one in the US where companies threaten with lawsuits that no one can afford to challenge, effectively forcing you to pay up even though you haven’t done anything wrong.

Next question is the use of IP-addresses as evidence. What value does an IP-address have in Sweden today where most ISPs ship unsecured wireless APs as the default router? Not much.

This also presents more questions, like “If downloading torrents in an internet café, is the café liable?” and “What are your rights if a neighbour uses your WLAN, willingly or without knowing it, and downloads pirated material? Are you liable?”.

And again, why does this law grant commercial interests powers that now even our police have? Where’s the logic? It’s so glaringly see-through, ordered and paid for, lobbyist crap that has been suggested as a law.

As I wrote in some of the first FRA-posts… Where will this end?

Other writing about this in Swedish (plz use Google translate): Rick Falkvinge (PP), Opassande, HAX, El Rubio.

And here’s the whole crapfest that our swedish, newly suggested, law claims to be born out of.

“24. Encourages an open discussion on all issues relating to the status of weblogs.”

Seems like the European union is more sensible than our own government when it comes to democracy after all…

Got an e-mail from the Swedish socialdemocrats in the EU-parliament with good news on the Telecoms package, but it was kind of fuzzy. Turned to HAX‘s blog (Swedish) and during the vote on the Telecoms Package today some good things happened:

* The frech parlamentarian Toubon withdrew his amendment (132) which was going to make things even worse!

* Amendment 138 was accepted, making it impossible to disconnect european citizens from the internet without a fair trial!

* Amendment 166 was accepted (!!!!!!) which means no internet filtering in the european union!

The last one passed with 346 votes against 312. Frightening how many MEPs are for filtering of the internet. Really chilling.

But as HAX notes, no champagne yet. The package needs further analysis until we can be sure that no other strange/bad things are included.

The package also contained some good and market-liberal (good) things such as

* Shorter subscription times on cellular, broadband and other communication services.

* Shorter times for switching between providers (more competitive market) for these services.

* The right to be notified when a breach exposing personal or economical details has been detected.

All-in-all it seems like a good day in the European Union, but I’ll get back with more info if there’s an ugly frog somewhere.

Tomorrow it’s time for the handling of Marianne Mikko’s “Media-report”. This has been fixed up a bit now, so if it’s OK’d it will not mean that all bloggers and internet publicists need to be registered. Anonymous blogging is still OK in other words.

Cheers,

Hello!

Daniel Nyström, daniel.nystrom [A T] icmpecho.com, [phone number]

This has been sent to all Swedish (but in Swedish), Scandinavian and Baltic countries so far. Sending to the rest of Europe tomorrow.

I know that my english is not all that great, in particular when it comes to legal words and strong definitions but I hope it’ll suffice.

Feel free to borrow parts, but again, write in your own words so that it does not get disregarded as a massmail campaign.

You can find the MEPs e-mail add’s HERE!

UPDATE: Links to other blogs writing about the EU Telecoms Package (in english)
- http://this-is-sparta.blogspot.com
- http://nhw.livejournal.com
- http://www.laquadrature.net
- http://www.libertysecurity.org

Yes, it is supposed to be pixelized

In this previous post about the EU Telecom package I mentioned that the resistance was being mobilized, and now the conference in the parliament has been held.

Henrik Alexandersson (HAX) has a good report on this in swedish, and here it is translated with “Google Translate”. Quite OK English output, suggested some grammatical and linguistic corrections but we’ll see if it makes the cut