Internet News

Facebook writes about their 1st transparency report

Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook. We strive to embody them in all aspects of our services, including our approach to responding to government data requests. We want to make sure that the people who use our service understand the nature and extent of the requests we receive and the strict policies and processes we have in place to handle them.

We are pleased to release our first Global Government Requests Report, which details the following:

The report details the following:

• Which countries requested information from Facebook about our users
• The number of requests received from each of those countries
• The number of users/user accounts specified in those requests
• The percentage of these requests in which we were required by law to disclose at least some data

The report covers the first 6 months of 2013, ending June 30.

As we have made clear in recent weeks, we have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests. We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users. We scrutinize each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name.

Data Requests (for countries with 50 or more requests)
 

Total Requests Users/Accounts Requested Proportion actioned at least in part Argentina 152 218 27 % Australia 546 601 64 % Belgium 150 169 70 % Brazil 715 857 33 % Canada 192 219 44 % Chile 215 340 68 % France 1,547 1,598 39 % Germany 1,886 2,068 37 % Greece 122 141 54 % India 3,245 4,144 50 % Israel 113 132 50 % Italy 1,705 2,306 53 % Malta 89 97 60 % Mexico 78 127 37 % New Zealand 106 119 58 % Poland 233 158 9 % Portugal 177 213 42 % Singapore 107 117 70 % Spain 479 715 51 % Sweden 54 66 54 % Taiwan 229 329 84 % Turkey 96 170 47 % United Kingdom 1,975 2,337 68 % United States 11,000 - 12,000 20,000 - 21,000 79 %

 

Comment: Why do we find out more about British snooping in snippets published by American companies than we do from the British authorities themselves?

30th August 2013. See article from bigbrotherwatch.org.uk

It is absurd that we learn more about Government surveillance from Microsoft, Google and Facebook than our own authorities. These figures were never mentioned during the Parliamentary debate on the draft communications data bill, nor in the annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner's report.

It is particularly concerning that 32% of requests did not result in any data being provided, yet in theory these requests had been signed off as necessary and proportionate by the police force making the request. This should be addressed by the Interception Commissioner and we will be writing to him to make this argument. It also highlights the ongoing questions about the skill base within the police to understand the data that is available -- far, far more than ever before.

What we do not know from these figures is how many requests were made through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty process (which involves a formal legal request being made through the US legal system) and how many were voluntarily complied with by Facebook. This is also the case with other companies.

Ultimately, it should not be for US companies to be the ones publishing data on how our own police forces are using these powers. It is impossible to have a realistic debate about capability gaps and how powers are being used if we do not have the data, and the Government should be far more proactive in publishing information.

BT has sought greater legal clarity from the Government in relation to the implementation of website blocking as mandated by the government internet censors.

According to the Financial Times:

BT executives met with Oliver Letwin MP recently to discuss a range of policy issues, a BT spokesperson said. During this meeting the issue of filters came up and we expressed a view that greater legal clarity would be welcome given external legal advice we have received. We have made this point several times during the past year as it is important that any plans are practical and not unintentionally derailed.

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), the interception of communications is generally prohibited. It is only legal to intrude on private communications if you have a warrant or both the sender and recipient of information consent to the activity, even if the interception is done unintentionally.

Telecoms firms are allowed to unintentionally intercept communications in line with RIPA if it takes place for purposes connected with the provision or operation of that service or with the enforcement, in relation to that service, of any enactment relating to the use of postal services or telecommunications services.

Perhaps BT should also consider the legal liability for businesses trashed by their websites being blocked by cheapo keyword checking algorithms. To date these have a long history of failure resulting in unfair and negligent blocks. ISPs have probably got away with it in the past because the algorithms have been used for requested child protection where users were probably happy with a 'better safe than sorry' approach. But in the next round users will be expecting ISPs to block only what they sign up for.

Lawmakers in California are currently debating a bill targeting the posting of so called revenge porn , when compromising pictures are posted after a relationship has broken up.

The bill would make it a crime to post pictures of anyone in a state of full or partial undress even if the picture was originally taken with that person's consent. But a crime would have only been committed if the pictures were posted with the intent to cause serious emotional distress, and [that] the other person suffers serious emotional distress .

The bill reads:

This bill would provide that any person who photographs or records by any means the image of another, identifiable person without with his or her consent who is in a state of full or partial undress in any area in which the person being photographed or recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and subsequently distributes the image taken, with the intent to cause serious emotional distress, and the other person suffers serious emotional distress would constitute disorderly conduct subject to that same punishment.

The law has been passed by the State's senate and is now under consideration by the state assembly.

If convicted offenders could be fined up to $2,000, or face a month in prison - or both, according to the BBC. More severe penalties would follow if more offences were proven.

The bill been opposed by anti-censorship groups who argue its definition is too broad in the context of the US constitution.

Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian programmer residing in Canada, was sentenced to death in Iran for designing porn websites. This death sentence has now been commuted to life imprisonment, with the explanation that Malekpour had repented.

As AVN reported in January of last year, Malekpour was detained by Iranian authorities in 2008 after traveling back home to visit his father, who was ill. He was charged with helping design porn sites in Canada, and despite appeals from the Canadian government, his family and others that he was innocent of the charges, he was convicted and sentenced to death in December 2010.

Iran had accused Malekpour of being the head of the biggest Persian-language network of pornographic websites. But credible supporters said he had simply worked as a freelance website developer and programmer, creating a program to allow designers to upload photos to their websites.

The head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has personally ordered preparations for laws that would block the Tor anonymity network from the entire Russian sector of the Internet.

FSB director Aleksandr Bortnikov announced the initiative at a recent session of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, saying that his agency would develop the legislative drafts together with other Russian law enforcement and security bodies.

The FSB official said that the agency initiated the move as internet anonymizers were used by weapon traffickers, drug dealers and credit card fraudsters.

At the same time, an unnamed source told the newspaper that not all Russian security specialists welcomed the idea, as various criminals often overestimated the protection provided by the Undernet, acted recklessly and allowed themselves to get caught. The blocking would require the development of some new methods of search and control in new anonymity networks that would appear soon after the Russian audience loses access to existing ones, the source noted.

Lower House MP Ilya Kostunov noted that the problem was important but doubted that it was technically executable. As far as I know, it is impossible to block Tor, Kostunov said. The network re-tunes quickly, switches to different hubs and starts working again.

The Tor Project administration also said that the blocking of the system was extremely difficult, adding that even Tor's own specialists could not control the information flowing through their servers or identify users.

Egypt's judiciary has turned down a court case calling for banning of internet pornography websites.

The case was filed by lawyer Ibrahim Atteya, citing article two of the now suspended 2012 constitution. The article stated that the principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation. Atteya claimed that internet websites which spread indecency do not comply with Islamic Sharia.

The case was turned down since Atteya failed to abide by proper procedure when filing his original requests to cancel the decision.

Hassan Azhary, lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) had argued that: Technically speaking, the internet pornography ban is almost impossible . He explained that the ban is very costly; it could costs millions of Egyptian pounds. He added that it's very difficult to list down the names of all pornography websites. Azhary also said there are some programs which can open banned websites: A ban would be a waste of public money.

A week after we met Naked Breast-feeding Yoga Mom, the hippie-fabulous, clothing-optional earth mama has been censored by Instagram.

Baby Center blogger Sara McGinnis reports that Amy tells me all of her photos are gone and her account has been locked with no explanation from the image-sharing site.

McGinnis believes Amy's @DaughterOfTheSun account was banned after curious folks worldwide saw the 'breastfeeding yoga mom' photo and objected. Instagram supposedly allows breast feeding but bans nudity.

There is now a hashtag opposing Instagram censorship, #SaveDaughterOfTheSun.

Porn or literature? Don't bother asking ISPs

The current crop of website blocking options are totally over the top in overblocking with a safety first approach that blocks websites over totally trivial use of eg strong language. It is not clear if the Government or ISPs are intending to upgrade their filters to prevent businesses being trashed over negligent website blocking decisions by automated software. But presumably they will stick with the current crap. Related issues are that educational websites are being likewise blocked merely for using words associated with sexuality.

David Cameron's plan for UK households to block internet porn with default search filters will be very damaging for LGBT people and vulnerable adults who could be denied access to legitimate sexual health and education sites, a group of authors and journalists has warned.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, prominent figures including the Belle de Jour writer Brooke Magnanti and feminist blogger and author Zoe Margolis, warned that the Government was taking:

A dangerous and misguided approach to internet safety. Focusing on a default 'on' filter ignores the importance of sex and relationship education and sexual health. Worse, you are giving parents the impression that if they install Internet filters they can consider their work is done.

They point out that faults with existing internet service provider filters have been reported numerous times and warn that any default filters could:

Unintentionally block important sites related to sexual health, LGBT issues, or sex and relationship education. This will be very damaging for LGBT young people, for example, or vulnerable adults who may be cut off from important support and advice, in particular those with abusive partners who are also the Internet account holder.

Lee Maguire, technical officer at the civil liberties organisation the Open Rights Group, said that filters could never distinguish:

Between sites that seek to titillate and those with frank discussion of sexuality.

Sites dealing with issues surrounding sexuality are likely to fall foul of miscategorisation as they often contain certain keywords that filters see as inappropriate for children. Even when humans categorise sites, categories will often be set by individuals with their own cultural values.

The open letter, which was also signed by the science-fiction writer Charles Stross and the New Statesman journalist Laurie Penny, said that by promising families one click to protect the whole family , the Prime Minister was:

Giving parents the impression that if they install Internet filters they can consider their work is done. We urge you instead to invest in a programme of sex and relationship education that empowers young people and to revisit the need for this topic to be mandatory in schools. Please drop shallow headline grabbing proposals and pursue serious and demonstrably effective policies to tackle abuse of young people.

Social networking site Ask.fm has unveiled changes to make its site safer after recent online bullying cases.

It said it would view all reports within 24 hours, make the report button more visible, and include bullying and harassment as a category for a report. It said some of the changes would be live on the site by September.

Ask.fm said it would:

• Hire more staff, including a safety officer, to moderate comments on the site
• Create a bullying/harassment category for reported comments, alongside spam or scam , hate speech , violence and pornographic content
• Raise the visibility of a function to opt out of receiving anonymous questions
• Limit the number of features unregistered users were able to access, and
• require an email address upon sign-up for registered users

The UK Safer Internet Centre, which promotes the safe use of technology, said it was delighted by Ask.fm's proposed changes, and added the increased visibility of the anonymous opt-out option was an important development. We strongly advise users, especially children, to switch off anonymous questions, and to report any abuse they see on the site, the group said.

The web inevitably makes available some content which is unsuitable or inappropriate for children to access. Some of this will be illegal, but much more will not, or may be suitable say for over 13s or over 16s only. A traffic light system may therefore struggle to distinguish between these and runs the risk of imposing the strictest warning on masses of content by default.

A greater concern however, is how the new system will guard against becoming a tool to enable prejudices of one kind or another to be played out. The system can only operate if it is the crowd's decision which counts - the reason this is even being considered is because there is too much content for a regulator or platform to consider. Relying on the crowd assumes that a collective consciousness emerges from the great mass of web users and their shared values, rather than a set of subjective reactions. This is a dangerous assumption. As a recent MIT study reported in Science suggests, the wisdom of the crowd may be a myth, its mentality more akin to that of a mob or herd.

...Read the full article

In the UK, rightsholders have the power to demand arbitrary censorship of websites they dislike, and ISPs are required to block those sites. The Premier League carelessly added the IP address of a major web-host to its censorship list, and as a result blocked The Radio Times, Galaxy Zoo, and many other legitimate sites.

People who tried to visit those sites instead saw a warning saying that the sites were devoted to copyright infringement and that anyone visiting them was also infringing copyright.

ISPs were flooded with complaints, and began to unblock the sites themselves.

But the Premier League is outraged at this. They say that even if the Premier League censored the wrong sites, it isn't up to the ISPs to uncensor them,  the ISPs are supposed to comply with the lists they get from rightsholders, no questions asked.

People sending email to any of Google's 425 million Gmail users have no reasonable expectation that their communications are confidential, the internet giant has said in a court filing.

The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog uncovered the filing and called the revelation a stunning admission. John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director said:

Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy. People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail.

Google set out its case last month in an attempt to dismiss a class action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of breaking wire tap laws when it scans emails sent from non-Google accounts in order to target ads to Gmail users. That suit quotes Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman:

Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.

The filing continues that Google:

Unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people's private email messages. Unbeknown to millions of people, on a daily basis and for years, Google has systematically and intentionally crossed the 'creepy line' to read private email messages containing information you don't want anyone to know, and to acquire, collect, or mine valuable information from that mail.

A man using the British Library's wi-fi network was denied access to an online version of Shakespeare's Hamlet because the text contained violent content .

Author Mark Forsyth was writing his book in the library, and needed to check a line from the famous play. He revealed on his blog that the filter had logged his attempt to access the page.

The British Library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider.

A spokesperson for the British Library said Hamlet had since been made accessible.

Internet filters have recently come under increased scrutiny, after the government announced that pornography will be automatically blocked by UK internet providers, unless customers choose otherwise. In general the most minute examples of a few words alluding to adult content can be enough to trigger a block. The software then errs on the side of caution and unfairly blocks many websites.

And of course these companies show little concern about legitimate businesses that suffer as a result.

Prof Ross Anderson, a security expert at Cambridge University, told the BBC that internet filters were pointless and that it was completely inappropriate to have one in the British Library. He added:

Everything that is legal should be available over the library's wi-fi network. The only things they should block are the few dozen books against which there are court judgements in the UK. One of the functions of deposit libraries is to keep everything, including smut.

Meanwhile one filter maker has a bit of a Gerald Ratner moment

15th August 2013. See  article from  techradar.com

Some customers of newly filtered ISPs are finding that porn is still getting through , but bona fide sites are being blocked . That's because filter algorithms struggle to distinguish between porn and legitimate sites, like lingerie retailers.

None of these systems are perfect, says George Anderson from online filtering security firm Webroot:

If you're an underwear site that's pretty close [to a porn site] and you get blocked because of this ban, that's going to cause issues.

Ministers want parents and teenagers themselves to be able to assign age-ratings (that don't seem to align with ages) to videos and other content which has been uploaded by internet users onto websites.

The government is working with ISPS and internet censors to test how crowd sourcing such age ratings can work, The Telegraph has learnt.

David Cameron said last month that he lamented the lack of rules on age controls that apply to websites.

The government and industry has formed a working group, led by the British Board of Film Classification, to develop the new system.

Ministers accept that there is far too much material generated by users on their mobile phones or webcams for conventional censors such as the BBFC to be able to monitor.

However, a prototype has been designed, under which website users are asked to complete a simple questionnaire on the depiction of behaviour, drugs, horror, language, sex and violence for videos posted online.

The BBFC and Nicam, the Dutch media regulator, have designed a scheme which can be linked to online filters and which includes an alert feature allowing users to report content to the authorities.

A senior government source said ministers were supporting the developments, which would help protect children from potentially damaging and inappropriate material . The source said

On YouTube at the moment people put comments but there is no way of crowd sourcing, where you can say whether you think this is an appropriate clip for 12 year olds or 14 year olds.

It is a bit strange therefore that the government is supporting a scheme with no obvious differentiation between 12 and 14 year olds. One option being considered would be a traffic light system. A video could be rated as green if it is safe for all, amber if it requires parental guidance and red if it is suitable for adults only.

Green for videos suitable for young children and red for adults only are pretty straightforward, but the large gulf between doesn't seem to make much sense. Most horror films are 15 rated and would be scary for younger children. How does one have a combined 12 and 15 rating. It could nether be said to be either a 12 or a 15. If it is vaguely called 'parental guidance', it then does not convey enough information for parents to know whether it is suitable for their 12 year olds.

Update: Trial

2nd September 2013.  See  article from  huffingtonpost.co.uk

Italian viewers will soon be able to make use of this international ratings tool. Italian media giant Mediaset will shortly being trialling the rating tool for users of its 16MM website and television channel.

We will be monitoring the results of this pilot project closely. What we learn from this trial will help us as we work with other platforms to see how they might apply the tool.