Loss of Privacy

Current legislation makes it illegal for the US government to use propaganda on its own citizens. The House of Representatives, however, has placed an amendment on the defense authorization bill that eliminates this ban.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

According to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bill’s supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are needed to help fight Al-Qaeda, a borderless enemy whose own propaganda reaches Americans online.

Clearly, it should now be evident that the US government no longer has our best interests at heart. They are eager to use their propaganda machines on the civilian population in order to sway public opinion in their favor as a means of justifying whatever they want to do.

“Clearly there are ways to modernize for the information age without wiping out the distinction between domestic and foreign audiences,” says Michael Shank, Vice President at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Washington D.C. “That Reps Adam Smith and Mac Thornberry want to roll back protections put in place by previously-serving Senators – who, in their wisdom, ensured limits to taxpayer–funded propaganda promulgated by the US government – is disconcerting and dangerous.”

Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so “under the radar,” as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling.

The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment.

In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.

Anyone who is paying attention should be deeply concerned by the actions of Congress.

The Pentagon spends some $4 billion a year to sway public opinion already, and it was recently revealed by USA Today the DoD spent $202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.

In an apparent retaliation to the USA Today investigation, the two reporters working on the story appear to have been targeted by Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.

Contractors for the Pentagon are already targeting individual journalists who don’t adhere to their desires. Whilstleblowers are under constant threats. A passage of this bill would elimi9nate any need for the government to tell the truth. At the moment, it is still relatively easy to tell when the media is attempting to spin a news story, providing you aren’t watching FOX News. If the bill passes, the lines between government propaganda and legitimate news will be impossible to differentiate.

This is no a partisan issue either. This is a bill that has support from both sides of the political aisle. Given the fact that the Pentagon already spends $4 billion annually in an attempt to sway public opinion, this bill would allow the Pentagon to utilize that money for propaganda and outright lies. Once the general public is fed enough propaganda it is an easy step to convince Americans to fight and die to “preserve the American way of life.” Those that can’t fight can pay more taxes, buy bonds, and be patriotic to the cause.

The defense authorization bill and its amendments is yet another bill in an ever-increasing line of disturbing ways the government is attempting to legislate control over the general American population. The fact that this information was posted on a Friday proves that the government knows and understands that many Americans and privacy advocates would protest if it had been released earlier in the week. Releasing it at the end of the week ensures that nearly everyone will miss any amendments slipped into the bill.

Fortunately, the Senate version of the bill has dropped the added measure of propaganda.

The version of the defense appropriateions bill that passed through markup in the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday afternoon does not include an amendment to “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda says Glen Caplin, Communicaitons Director for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a member of the committee.

Even though the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed through Senate committee includes no mention of altering the Smith-Mundt Act, it remains possible for an amendment allowing for domestic propaganda to be introduced on the Senate floor, or added when the House and Senate versions of the bill are reconciled.

It is unclear how much support Thornberry and Smith’s amendment has in the Senate, but it faces some opposition.

“Senator Gillibrand is hopeful this troubling language will remain out of the Senate bill and stripped out in conference committee when the House and Senate bills are reconciled,” Caplin said.

Now is not the time to relax. Call and write your Senators and make sure it stays dropped.

Picture credit.

In case you missed these videos when they were released in December 2011, here they are again.

NDAA/FEMA 72-hour notice/MTV Commercial

MTV warns Martial Law in America 1

MTV warns Martial Law in America 2

I’ve written before about many European countries taking a stand against ACTA. Today, four more countries join in opposition of passing the controversial trade agreement. Austria, Bulgaria, and The Netherlands have stood up and agreed that ACTA needs to be seriously rethought and possibly scrapped altogether.

Two million people are already supporting an online petition against the international anti-piracy agreement. It would undermine the privacy, Internet service providers should provide the authorities of private data from users. “People are confused,” Interior Minister recognizes Johanna Mikl-Leitner (VP), the sign of the times and today announced over a veto on the ratification of the Council of Ministers on ACTA.

Now the European Parliament on the train. On 12 June in Brussels on ACTA entschieden.Auch the local Social Democratic Party faction opposes ACTA. If the contract in the EU do not find a majority, he would have to be confirmed in this country in the National Council. “The freedom of the Internet is for us young ones a very valuable asset,” says VP-Secretary Sebastian Kurz.Auch he wants ACTA shelve.

Bulgaria, who also originally signed ACTA, have said they are freezing the ratification of the agreement after numerous protests against it.

Bulgaria will not ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement over fears it will curb freedom to download movies and music for free and encourage internet surveillance, economy minister Traicho Traikov said on Tuesday.

Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov says Sofia will not ratify the agreement until the EU member states elaborate a joint position on the document.

So, Bulgaria, like Germany, awaiting the decision of the EU Parliament, but they appear firmly on the side of abandoning ACTA. The Netherlands also haven’t signed the treaty and it looks like they aren’t planning on it any time soon.

They only intend to change this position if there’s irrefutable evidence that it doesn’t violate basic human rights.

Right now this is certainly not the case, as professors Douwe Korff and Ian Brown examined ACTA’s compatibility with human rights and concluded:

“Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others.”

“It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end. “

“This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and -standards.”

Again, The Netherlands is looking into it and, if it doesn’t violate basic human rights, the would sign it.

The European Commission is even advising that a partial retreat be taken on ACTA.

The minutes of the meeting, Which have been Obtained by EDRI, say that the head of cabinet Described the “strong mobilization” against the agreement by “Certain NGOs and movements active on the Internet” and stated that a referral of the Agreement to the Court of Justice is being considered. It is noteworthy that the only suggestion is to check the compatibility of ACTA with primary EU law. Such a referral, Depending on how it is framed, risks being quite vague and may not lead to a comprehensive response. However, any broadly Favourable response from the Court would most certainly be used to push through the agreement, on the basis that the ruling “Proves” that there is no problem.

The head of cabinet added that it is Necessary to instigate a period of reflection on how the EU should position itself on this issue and to make an effort to go beyond the argument that growth in the digital economy is only possible with adequate protection of intellectual property . The Secretary General of the Commission closed the discussion by saying the Commission would return to the dossier in due course, after a “period of reflection thorough.”

Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission and EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, is also backing a review of ACTA before it proceeds any further.

she states “for me, blocking the Internet is never an option” and goes onto argue the current  situation “can and must not be changed by the ACTA agreement”.

“I therefore welcome the intention of several members of the European Parliament to ask the European Court of Justice for a legal opinion to clarify that the ACTA agreement cannot limit freedom of expression and freedom of the Internet.”

If these lawmakers had not taken it upon themselves to vote for such agreements in secret, actually read the documents they were voting on, and considered the people they are supposed to represent, we would be having riots and demonstrations and ACTA would either never have been signed or a different version would have emerged. Now, there is a mess that needs to be cleaned up and those who were supposed to uphold the law are scrambling to figure out what they should do.

Mitchell Baker, the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, has come out strongly against ACTA as well.

One aspect of the controversy about ACTA is the closed process where only a tiny subset of people affected by the law were allowed to participate. Another great controversy is about the actual content of ACTA. We know that the goal of stopping unauthorized access to digital content can lead to very dangerous results. The proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the U.S made this abundantly clear. This is an area where even good intentions can lead to imbalanced and dangerous results.

More people are learning about ACTA. If they can put the pressure on like they did with SOPA/PIPA, there’s a very real chance that ACTA will never be ratified or enacted. The pressure just needs to be applied continually until June when the EU Parliament decide the matter.

Photo from Heute.at.

Many countries that have signed ACTA are now rethinking their positions and apologizing for screwing up their countries with such legislation. Once everyone actually took the time to read and research what ACTA does, they discovered that they aren’t happy with what it entails at all.

One of the biggest regrets came from Poland this week when it suspended its ratification process for ACTA. Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said that there were insufficient consultations made before signing it.

Tusk’s backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the union. As it stands, there are already five member countries that have not even signed ACTA.

Poland has seen the biggest protests against ACTA, with thousands demonstrating on the streets last week. Hackers believed to be associated with Anonymous attacked Tusk’s website, as well as the European Parliament site, after the signing.

Critics of ACTA say it has insufficient safeguards for online liberties, particularly in signing countries that do not already have strong principles of freedom of speech and expression. In addition, the agreement negotiations, which took place without the contributions of civic groups or elected representatives, have been widely described as undemocratic.

Although Slovenia also signed the agreement, their ambassador, Helena Drnovšek Zorko, has publicly apologized to her country for doing so, saying that it was a mistake.

I signed ACTA out of civic carelessness, because I did not pay enough attention.

Quite simply, I did not clearly connect the agreement I had been instructed to sign with the agreement that, according to my own civic conviction, limits and withholds the freedom of engagement on the largest and most significant network in human history, and thus limits particularly the future of our children.

The final version of ACTA is also very watered down from what it once was.

Here are some major improvements:

The provision that proposed to criminally punish ordinary users (think college kid downloading music) with fines, jail time, seizure of computers, etc., was significantly scaled back as the negotiation process moved on and finally eliminated in the final text.
The provision that required all ACTA countries to hold third parties, such as ISPs and consumer electronics manufacturers, liable for their customers’ infringement was eliminated. This provision, as drafted, was inconsistent with U.S. law and would have required changes to this complex and evolving policy space.

The provision that required countries to institute safe harbors for ISPs from their customer’s infringement was eliminated. While the idea of providing ISPs with a safe harbor is a good one and facilitates the development of platforms and services on the Internet, the way in which ACTA would have required these safe harbors was not good. It lacked safe guards for users that are contained in U.S. law. Further, it could have provided the excuse for measures such as three strikes and deep packet inspection.

The DRM provisions of ACTA were improved significantly. Earlier leaked drafts had called upon countries to prevent circumvention of DRM, treat them as both civil and criminal offenses, and consider them illegal even when there was no underlying attempt to infringe copyright. Furthermore, these drafts had not acknowledged that circumvention could be done for lawful purposes. The final text overcomes these deficiencies and gives countries flexibility in how they implement DRM provisions.

ACTA hasn’t been ratified in Europe yet, so there’s still time to protest it if you care anything at all about democracy and free speech. Protests are being called for on Saturday, 11 February 2012 across Europe.

If you’re still confused about ACTA, visit EFF’s page or this discussion on reddit.

This is Part I of the debate between Viacom’s General Counsel and EVP, Michael Fricklas and David Sohn, General Counsel and Director of the Center for Democracy And Technology.

Check TechCrunch later for the rest of the debate.