Big Government and Big Business Collude to Outlaw Municipal Broadband

As if you needed another reason to detest the dictatorship of the two-party state.  From Ars Technica:

It's no secret that private Internet service providers hate when cities and towns decide to enter the telecommunications business themselves. But with private ISPs facing little competition and offering slow speeds for high prices, municipalities occasionally get fed up and decide to build their own broadband networks.

To prevent this assault on their lucrative revenue streams, ISPs have teamed up with friends in state legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult or impossible for cities and towns to offer broadband service.

Attorney James Baller of the Baller Herbst Law Group has been fighting attempts to restrict municipal broadband projects for years. He's catalogued restrictions placed upon public Internet service in 20 states, and that number could be much higher already if not for the efforts of consumer advocates.

The Internet Strikes Back

From the reddit blog:

Today we must fight back against mass, suspicionless surveillance. Today we must protect both our civil liberties and the digital tools connecting us all.

Indiscriminate bulk surveillance programs by the NSA and their allies (detailed below) violate the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.

In addition to individual privacy issues, these surveillance programs are damaging for online businesses like reddit. These programs undermine the basic freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables.  The potential for a business to be legally and secretly compelled to violate the privacy of both foreign and domestic users casts a pall over any U.S.-based site. In turn, this threatens to place U.S.-based internet companies, one of the most dynamic and booming sectors of our economy, at a global disadvantage.

Fortunately, there are real opportunities for reform, but they need our support. Please consider joining us in taking action today. Together we can push back against powers that seek to observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action. Together, we can make it clear that such behavior is not compatible with democratic governance. Together, if we persist, we will win this fight.

If you're in the U.S., Call Congress today. Dial 202-552-0505 or click here to enter your phone number and have the call tool connect you. Ask your legislators to oppose the FISA Improvements Act (a bill that attempts to legalize bulk data collection of phone records), support the USA Freedom Act (a bill that works to curtail NSA surveillance abuses), and enact protections for non-Americans. Details on these bills and other legislation can be found below.

Here's what you should say:

I'd like Senator/Representative __ to support and co-sponsor H.R. 3361/S. 1599, the USA Freedom Act. I would also like you to oppose S. 1631, the so-called FISA Improvements Act. Moreover, I'd like you to work to prevent the NSA from undermining encryption standards and to protect the privacy rights of non-Americans.

If you're not in the U.S., demand that privacy protections be instituted.

You can also join in one of the offline protests happening today around the world. A partial list is available at thedaywefightback.org/events.

Below are detailed resources on what the NSA is doing, what legislation is out there, and common excuses for NSA surveillance—and how to bust them, courtesy of the EFF.

Router Vulnerability Allows Easy Exploit

From the Hacker News:

In past months, we have reported about critical vulnerabilities in many wireless Routers including Netgear, Linksys, TP-LINK, Cisco, ASUS, TENDA and more vendors, installed by millions of home users worldwide.

Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska) recently noticed a large scale cyber attack ongoing campaign aimed at Polish e-banking users.

Cyber criminals are using known router vulnerability which allow attackers to change the router's DNS configuration remotely so they can lure users to fake bank websites or can perform Man-in-the-Middle attack . . .

NYPD Testing Google Glass

The next phase on the surveillance arms race has begun.  From Gothamist:

If we've learned anything from Hipster Cop, it's that even the NYPD isn't Google Glass. "We signed up, got a few pairs of the Google glasses, and we're trying them out, seeing if they have any value in investigations, mostly for patrol purposes," a law enforcement official told VentureBeat. "We're looking at them, you know, seeing how they work." . . .
immune to shifting fashion trends. To that end, the NYPD is reportedly experimented with outfitting its officers with

Vincent Cannistraro, a former ranking clandestine operator with the CIA, told VentureBeat that he doubted that Glass would be useful for cops, but the NYPD source noted, "We think it could help impact patrol operations in New York City. We shall see." That's one possible reason for it—but another is that the NYPD may finally be looking into Judge Shira Scheindlin's suggestion that the NYPD adopt body-mounted cameras to monitor officers' encounters with citizens.

UT: ISPs Continue Fight Against Competition and Better Service

From Ars Technica:

Kansas isn't the only state considering legislation that would limit the growth of government-funded broadband networks that threaten incumbent Internet service providers.

The latest such attempt we've learned of is a Utah House bill called the "Interlocal Entity Service Prohibition," which would prevent a regional fiber consortium from building infrastructure outside the boundaries of its member cities and towns.

While it would affect any such group, the bill seems to be directed at UTOPIA, the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, a consortium of 16 cities that operates a fiber-to-the-premises broadband network. The bill explicitly targets fiber only, not affecting cable or other types of networks.

Lobbyist for Comcast, Cox, TWC wrote bill to stifle rivals like Google Fiber.

"It actually is aimed specifically at UTOPIA," the group's legislative policy director, Gary Crane, told Ars. Crane is also a city attorney for Layton, one of UTOPIA's member municipalities. "I think there's probably a lot of fear in those who hold the monopoly currently in our cities that this model may be a good model for other cities to adopt." 

The bill, sponsored by Republican legislator Curt Webb, "prohibits an interlocal entity that provides telecommunication service through a fiber optic network from constructing infrastructure or providing telecommunication service in locations outside the boundaries of its members."

We've tried to reach Webb by e-mail and phone but haven't heard back yet.
UTOPIA's network is open access, allowing private Internet service providers to sell broadband over the fiber.

Of course, this is not surprising, the very notion of utopia is anathema to the alliance of Big Business and Big Government.

NJ: Professional Political Hysteric Demands to Interrogate Students Over Proof-of-Concept Program

New Jersey's Attorney General, John Hoffman, and the rest of his office appear to be nothing more than a technophobic gaggle of professional hysterics.  And they are out to prove it by harassing a group of young student programmers who came up with an interesting new decentralized Bitcoin app.  It appears these students may get a real lesson on the ignorance, arrogance and degeneracy of the ruling political class.  From the EFF:

As the popularity of Bitcoins has increased, government officials are concerned about criminal activity associated with the virtual currency. But a recent issued by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to 19-year-old Bitcoin developer and MIT student Jeremy Rubin goes too far, and we're fighting back by moving to quash it.
subpoena

Rubin and some other MIT classmates developed a computer code called Tidbit for the Node Knockout Hackathon in November 2013. Tidbit uses a client's computer to mine for Bitcoins as an alternative to website advertising: in exchange for removing ads from a website, a user would give some CPU cycles to mine for Bitcoins instead. Tidbit was clearly presented as a proof of concept, with the developers making clear the code was configured not to mine for Bitcoins. That's because in addition to refining the code, they needed to work out the legal details, like drafting a terms of service, and the ethical details, like making sure there was a way for users to opt-in to the service so their computers weren't being used to mine Bitcoins without their knowledge. Tidbit won the Node Knockout award for innovation and the students thought they were on their way to continuing with their project.

But in December, the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs issued a subpoena to Rubin, requesting he turn over Tidbit's past and current source code, as well as other documents and agreements with any third parties. It also issued 27 interrogatories -- formal written questions -- requesting additional documents and ordering Rubin to turn over information like the names and identities of all Bitcoin wallet addresses associated with Tidbit, a list of all websites running Tidbit's code and the name of anybody whose computer mined for Bitcoins through the use of Tidbit, although Tidbit's code was not configured to mine for Bitcoins.

Who exactly are the people who continue to vote for the brain dead politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties?  And what the hell is wrong with them? 

EFF: No Easy Solutions for Net Neutrality

From the EFF:

In light of these threats it is tempting to reach for easy solutions. But handing the problem to a government agency with strong industry ties and poor mechanisms for public accountability to fix the very real problem of network neutrality is unsatisfying. There’s a real danger that we would just be creating more problems than we’d solve.

One alternative that would go a long way would be to foster a genuinely competitive market for Internet access. If subscribers and customers had adequate information about their options and could vote with their feet, ISPs would have strong incentives to treat all netowrk traffic fairly. The court agreed with us on this point:

“a broadband provider like Comcast would be unable to threaten Netflix that it would slow Netflix traffic if all Comcast subscribers would then immediately switch to a competing broadband provider.”

Another scenario would be for Congress to step in and pass network neutrality legislation that outlines what the ISPs are not allowed to do. But fighting giant mega-corporations like AT&T and Verizon (and their army of lobbyists) in Congress promises to be a tough battle.

Yet another option: empower subscribers to not just test their ISP but challenge it in court if they detect harmful non-neutral practices. That gives all of us the chance to be watchdogs of the public interest but it, too, is likely to face powerful ISP opposition.

These are not the only options. Internet users should be wary of any suggestion that there is an easy path to network neutrality. It’s a hard problem, and building solutions to resolve it is going to remain challenging. But here is one guiding principle: any effort to defend net neutrality should use the lightest touch possible, encourage a competitive marketplace, and focus on preventing discriminatory conduct by ISPs, rather than issuing broad mandatory obligations that are vulnerable to perverse consequences and likely to be outdated as soon as they take effect.