The United States remains far ahead of all governments who request user information from Google according to the company’s latest Transparency Report (July through December 2012) which was released on Wednesday.

American government agencies (including federal, state, and local authorities) made over 8,400 requests for nearly 15,000 accounts—far exceeding India, the next largest country in terms of information requests. In 88 percent of those queries, Google complied with at least some, if not all, of the request.

For the first time, the search giant is also breaking down the type of legal requests that were made.

Google said that 22 percent of those requests were made under probable cause driven search warrants delivered via the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Authorities have also been known to request information using ECPA suboenas, which are much easier to obtain. It is unclear how many of the subpoenas or warrants that Google complied with—the company has only said it complied in part or in full to 88 percent of total requests from American authorities.

“In order to compel us to produce content in Gmail we require an ECPA search warrant,” said Chris Gaither, Google spokesperson. “If they come for registration information, that’s one thing, but if they ask for content of email that’s another thing.” …

Google has revealed the full scale of the US government’s use of controversial legislation that bypasses judicial approval to access the online information of private citizens.

According to its latest transparency report, the number of requests for private data Google received from US officials had increased by 136% by the end of 2012 from the second half of 2009, when the search firm first started collecting data.

In the US, 68% of requests were made under Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) subpoenas, which, unlike wiretaps or physical search warrants, typically circumvent the need for officials to make their case to a judge. Google said it complies to some degree with 90% of those requests.

This is the first time Google has disclosed the legal processes used by US officials to gather electronic information.

The ECPA has been widely criticised by privacy advocates, and was passed in 1986, long before electronic communication became so common. Under the act, email stored on a third party’s server for more than 180 days is considered abandoned. To access that information, officials need only a written statement certifying that the information is relevant to an investigation.

But Holmes Wilson, co-founder of online advocacy group Fight For the Future, said the Justice Department had argued that emails are “abandoned” once they are opened. “Ironically, the emails that now have the most protection are the spam that you never open,” he said. “ECPA is under dire need of reform. Right now the government can access almost anything that you have online without a warrant and at anytime. Electronic communication should be afforded the same protection as your physical mail or files stores in a cabinet,” he said. …

… The case against Dotcom and his allies rests on proving that they were profiting, knowingly and willingly, from the illegal sharing of copyright-protected material – in effect, that the exchange of pirated goods was part of the Megaupload business model. “That’s complete bullshit. Excuse my language, but that’s just crap,” says Dotcom.

“Megaupload was created initially as a service that allows you to send large files because email attachments had limitations … and that’s still the case today. The popularity and initial growth was all around that. This was never set up with the intent to be some kind of piracy haven. If the US government says that we are a mega-conspiracy, a mafia that has created this kind of thing to be a criminal network of pirates, they’re completely wrong … for them it was about shutting it down and dealing with it later on the fly. They are hacking the legal system.” …

ambisyllabicity:

“Europeans, take note: The U.S. government has granted itself authority to secretly snoop on you.

That’s according to a new report produced for the European Parliament, which has warned that a U.S. spy law renewed late last year authorizes “purely political surveillance on foreigners’ data””if it is stored using U.S. cloud services like those provided by Google, Microsoft and Facebook.”

THIS IS IMPORTANT FUCKING SHIT PEOPLE

WTF, Yankistan?!

thinkmexican:

Take Action! Tell Harvard to Rescind Felipe Calderón’s Fellowship

Felipe Calderón left Mexico less than 3 days after leaving office, arriving at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday at approximately 2:20 p.m., local time, reports Reforma.

Calderón is expected to begin a Fellowship at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the coming weeks, but many are outraged that Harvard would disregard reports from Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Mexico’s Human Rights Commission, and several civil organizations that have condemned the violence and human rights violations under his administration.

Calderón’s drug war leaves more than 100,000 dead, 25,000 disappeared, 250,000 displaced, and a countless number of traumatized children.

“In awarding Mr. Calderón a high-profile fellowship, the Kennedy School is telling the world that former leaders, however questionable their leadership, are worthy of recognition. It is an unfortunate and dangerous message,” wrote Marion Llyod in a piece for the Chronicle for Higher Education titled “Why Harvard Should Not Welcome Felipe Calderón.”

A petition started by retired US Border Patrol agent John Randolph calls on Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust to rescind Calderón’s Fellowship invitation.

It’s time to act and not allow Harvard University, or any other US institution, to give shelter to a man directly responsible for the skyrocketing amount of violence, torture, corruption, and impunity that Mexico lived through in the last six years.

Enrique Peña Nieto will do everything in his power to protect Calderón, therefore it’s imperative for those outside of Mexico, especially those in the United States, to take action and speak for the millions being silenced within Mexico’s media monopoly.

If you or your family was affected by Calderón’s drug war, if you’re a student or alumni of Harvard, you’re voice should be heard.

Call or email President Faust, and Dean Ellwood, and tell them Calderón’s Fellowship should be rescinded immediately.

Harvard’s School of Government says Calderón’s Fellowship will continue through December 2013. Those at Harvard concerned with seeking justice for the thousands of victims and millions of children and civilians affected by Calderón’s negligent and belligerent offensive are in a unique position to pressure the university, and should contact us if interested in working towards his dismissal.

Stay tuned for more information on those seeking to prosecute Calderón at The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sign the Petition Here.

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This evil fucker should be flipping burgers at a fast-food joint!

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.” …

Telling people what they must and must not do isn’t religion, and it certainly isn’t spirituality. It’s politics.

imswaggernaut:

♥

New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key, has launched a inquiry into “unlawful” spying by government agents leading to the arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the US where he faces charges of internet piracy and breaking copyright laws.

The investigation may deal another blow to the US case after a New Zealand court ruled in June that search warrants used in the raid on Dotcom’s home earlier this year, requested by the FBI, were illegal.

Key has asked the government’s intelligence and security division to investigate “circumstances of unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the government communications security bureau”, his office said in a statement on Monday.

Key’s spokesman would not comment on whether the “certain individuals” referred to Dotcom, his three colleagues also arrested and facing US charges, or all of them.

“The bureau had acquired communications in some instances without statutory authority,” Key’s statement said. …

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee has signed a Homeless Bill of Rights into law, the first of its kind in the nation.

The law is designed to fight discrimination and harassment directed against homeless individuals. That includes ensuring the right of individuals to move freely in public spaces, to have equal opportunity for jobs and to be treated fairly by employers, to vote and receive the necessary state documents to be able to vote and to expect respect of personal property. The bill places an individual’s housing status in the same category as religion, gender, sexuality and race as illegal grounds for discrimination.

The legislation was first seen as controversial, with some members of Rhode Island’s legislature fearing that the bill would prove a hindrance to police officers and city workers, and could draw the state into costly lawsuits. Proponents rebutted that, if state employees were treating everyone with respect, such concerns would be a non-issue. …

Ta much, dear Edosan!

… While we’ve been extremely impressed by the strides some of these companies have made since last year, there’s plenty of room for improvement. We’re hopeful that next year we’ll see more protections for users from location services providers like Loopt and Foursquare, since location information is so sensitive and increasingly sought by the government. In addition, Amazon is entrusted with huge quantities of information as part of its cloud computing services and retail operations, yet does not produce annual transparency reports, publish a law enforcement guide, or promise to inform users when their data is sought by the government. We were pleased that Comcast and Yahoo! stood up for user privacy in courts, but neither company has hit any of the other criteria for earning recognition in our other categories. AT&T, Microsoft, and Apple are members of the Digital Due Process coalition, but don’t observe any of the other best practices we’re measuring. And this year, as last, Verizon and MySpace earned no stars in our report. The overall poor showing of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who provide Internet connectivity to so many people, is especially troubling. …

(via Who Has Your Back? | Electronic Frontier Foundation)

(via Are You Living in a Constitution Free Zone? | American Civil Liberties Union)

(via (Image) - Derpy’s Soup)

As we welcome the glimmers of democracy in Burma and applaud the heroic struggle for freedom and rights in countries such as Russia, China and Syria, it beggars belief that Britain now contemplates a law that will allow police and security services to access data from every phone call, email, internet connection and text message, without a warrant.

The millions who suffer under dictatorships will be astonished that we are about to let slip – with so little protest – the freedoms for which they continue to sacrifice so much.

Privacy from state snooping is the defining quality of any true democracy.

If the bill that is reported to be in the Queen’s speech next month is made law, Britain will overnight become a substantially less free country, our status as one of the beacons of freedom seriously diminished. This is among the most serious threats to freedom proposed anywhere in the democratic world. It competes with the very worst of Labour’s authoritarian laws and the last government’s morbid obsession with personal information.

Those promoting the bill, which will allow GCHQ to conduct real-time surveillance of a person’s communications and their web usage, insist that the state only wants to know who’s calling who, and that the content of messages, emails and texts will remain private.

It is an assurance that should be treated with the greatest possible scepticism for two reasons. …

Despite coalition proposals to monitor public email, there remain numerous free or low-cost methods to keep messages private