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NYT-Op-Ed: "The Supreme Court Saves Cellphone Privacy"
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 26, 2014

June 26, 2014

*The Supreme Court Saves Cellphone Privacy* By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JUNE 25, 2014 The nine justices of the Supreme Court --- whose average age is 68 --- often admit to being unfamiliar with modern technology, if not befuddled by it. While listening to oral arguments in April, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked, with apparent sincerity, why anyone other than a criminal would carry two cellphones. Yet in a gratifyingly sweeping ruling on Wednesday, the court embraced a central reality of the digital age and protected such phones from being searched without a warrant during an arrest, except in rare circumstances. "Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience," Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a unanimous court. "With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life.' " [...] Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/opinion/the-supreme-court-saves-cellphone…

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Chiusi: "Perché non abbiamo accesso ai nostri stessi dati"
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 26, 2014

June 26, 2014

*Perché non abbiamo accesso ai nostri stessi dati** * Fabio Chiusi Pubblicato giugno 24, 2014 Nell'era della sorveglianza di massa dare ai cittadini il diritto di sapere chi sta raccogliendo quali dati sul loro conto, e verificare che quella raccolta avvenga nel rispetto della legge, è fondamentale. Il problema è renderlo effettivo, utilizzabile. Un miraggio, argomenta unlungo e dettagliato studio <http://irissproject.eu/?page_id=9>coordinato dall'Università di Sheffield, e parte del progetto del progetto IRSS (Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies) finanziato dall'Unione Europea. Intitolato'Exercising Democratic Rights under Surveillance Regimes' <http://irissproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IRISS-WP5-Executive-Summa…>, il lavoro pubblicato in queste ore si addentra in tre problemi macroscopici: comprendere il quadro normativo all'interno dei singoli Paesi dell'Unione e darne un'analisi comparativa, studiare sul campo quanto è semplice o meno reperire chi è responsabile del controllo dei nostri dati (/data controller/), e da ultimo -- sempre dal punto di vista empirico -- osservare la effettiva capacità di risposta di questi soggetti alle richieste dei cittadini. Il risultato è deludente. L'implementazione non omogenea della Direttiva europea per la protezione dei dati personali, si legge nel lavoro a guida di Clive Norris e Xavier L'Hoiry, insieme a un quadro normativo contraddittorio a livello delle singole legislazioni nazionali, fa sì che i cittadini (/data subject/) siano "/naturalmente svantaggiati già prima che possano dare il via al processo per inviare una richiesta di accesso/" ai loro dati. [...] Continua qui: http://www.wired.it/internet/regole/2014/06/24/perche-non-abbiamo-accesso-a…

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Supreme Court: Police can't search smartphones without a warrant
by gianluca June 25, 2014

June 25, 2014

chissà cosa ne pensano alla NSA... The Supreme Court has decided that Americans have a constitutional right to privacy in the personal information they carry on smartphones, ruling unanimously that police may not search such devices without a warrant from a magistrate. The decision is major victory for privacy advocates and the most surprising criminal law ruling handed down in years by the conservative-leaning high court. “Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life.’ ” [...] continua qui http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-supreme-court-search-20140… qui la sentenza http://documents.latimes.com/supreme-court-ruling-smart-phone-searches/

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Researchers Find and Decode the Spy Tools Governments Use to Hijack Phones
by gianluca June 25, 2014

June 25, 2014

Newly uncovered components of a digital surveillance tool used by more than 60 governments worldwide provide a rare glimpse at the extensive ways law enforcement and intelligence agencies use the tool to surreptitiously record and steal data from mobile phones. The modules, made by the Italian company Hacking Team, were uncovered by researchers working independently of each other at Kaspersky Lab in Russia and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs in Canada, who say the findings provide great insight into the trade craft behind Hacking Team's tools. [...] continua qui http://www.wired.com/2014/06/remote-control-system-phone-surveillance/?mbid…

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Guardian: "Pepper-spray drone offered to South African mines for strike control"
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 25, 2014

June 25, 2014

*Pepper-spray drone offered to South African mines for strike control* Desert Wolf, maker of Skunk Riot Control Copter, says aim is to 'prevent another Marikana' -- the strike when 34 workers killed * David Smith <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith>in Johannesburg * * The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>,Friday 20 June 2014 18.57 BST A South African company has built a drone designed to shower pepper spray on unruly crowds and says it has begun supplying units to an internationalmining <http://www.theguardian.com/business/mining>company. Desert Wolf claims it wants to help in "preventing another Marikana" -- a reference to aprotest <http://www.theguardian.com/world/protest>in August 2012 at which34 striking mineworkers were shot and killed during clashes with the police <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/17/south-african-police-shot-mine…>. But the "Skunk Riot Control Copter" was condemned by labour activists as "absolutely outrageous" and compared with deadly US militarydrones <http://www.theguardian.com/world/drones>in Pakistan. Desert Wolf is marketing the 500,000 rand (£27,400) machine, unveiled at a recent trade show, as"designed to control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of the protesters or the security staff" <http://www.desert-wolf.com/dw/products/unmanned-aerial-systems/skunk-riot-c…>. [...] Continua qui: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/20/pepper-spray-drone-offered-sou…

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Wired: "What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality"
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 25, 2014

June 25, 2014

Essere a favore della neutralità della rete (come il sottoscritto) non significa credere che il problema sia semplice, tutt'altro... juan carlos * What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality** * BY ROBERT MCMILLAN 06.23.14 Even Sunday night HBO watchers are worried the Federal Communications Commission will soon put an end to net neutrality. Earlier this month, on the HBO comedy news show "Last Week Tonight," host John Oliver went on a 13-minute rant against the new set of internet rules proposed by the FCC. He warned that the rules would lead to a world where internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon can sell special treatment to web companies like Google and Netflix, charging extra fees to deliver their online videos and other content at fast speeds, and he urged viewers to bombard the FCC website with protests, saying the rules would end up hurting smaller web outfits that can't afford to pay the fees. The next day, the FCC site buckled under the traffic and went offline. It was just part of a sweeping effort to squash the proposed rules. When the rules first leaked out in May, protesters camped out in front of the FCC's Washington offices. Big tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix signed a letter asking the government communications agency to bar internet providers from discriminating "both technically and financially against internet companies." And last week, two big name Democrats on Capitol Hill unveiled a bill that seeks to undermine the new rules. Nearly everyone, it seems, wants to prevent the FCC from allowing some companies to have internet "fast lanes" while others toil at slower speeds. [...] Continua qui: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing/

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"Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem"
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 24, 2014

June 24, 2014

*Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem */A bogus SoundCloud takedown reveals a much larger issue with private sites and the public domain./ by Parker Higgins I received a bogus copyright takedown notice for using public domain audio on SoundCloud yesterday. The sound in question---the famous "Houston, we have a problem" snippet of the Apollo 13 mission---is incontrovertibly available to all, for any use, without copyright restrictions. The fact that it's been yanked from my SoundCloud page, though, is a sad demonstration of how completely many online services have swallowed the fallacy that "unauthorized" means "unacceptable." It's a dangerous myth, that we should all need permission any time we're getting value out of a piece of culture. And it's one that gets entrenched deeper each time we accept the idea that we're able to make use of a work because a copyright owner is or would be OK with it, and not just because we have a basic right to participate in culture that is more fundamental than anybody else's desire to maximize profits. [...] Continua qui: https://medium.com/@xor/houston-we-have-a-public-domain-problem-bd971c57dfdc

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Berkman Center Webcast live oggi ore 18.30 - (In)Security in Home Embedded Devices
by Giuseppe Futia June 24, 2014

June 24, 2014

(In)Security in Home Embedded Devices http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/06/gettys <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/06/sigal> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/06/sigal> *Jim Gettys* Today, 6.30 pm Webcast live: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast http://nexa.polito.it/berkman-webcast-live From Jim: We now wander in Best Buy, Lowes and on Amazon and buy all sorts of devices from thermostats, hi-fi gear, tablets, phones, and laptops or desktops as well as home routers to build our home networks. Most of these we plug in and forget about. But should we? "Familiarity Breeds Contempt: The Honeymoon Effect and the Role of Legacy Code in Zero-Day Vulnerabilities <http://www.acsac.org/2010/openconf/modules/request.php?module=oc_program&ac…>", by Clark, Fry, Blaze and Smith makes clear that ignoring these devices is foolhardy; unmaintained systems become more vulnerable, with time. Structural issues in the market make the situation yet worse, as pointed out in Bruce Schneier's Wired editorial in January: "The Internet of Things Is Wildly Insecure --- And Often Unpatchable <http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/01/theres-no-good-way-to-patch-the-intern…>", which I instigated and fed Bruce the ammunition. "Binary blobs" used in these systems have the net effect of "freezing" software versions, often on many year old versions of system software. Even if update streams are available (which they seldom are), blobs may make it impossible to update to versions free of a vulnerability. There are immediate actions you can personally take, e.g. by running open source router firmware in your network, but fixing this problem generically will take many years, as it involves fundamental changes and an attitude change in how we develop and maintain embedded systems, and hardest, changes in business models to enable long term support of popular hardware. About Jim Jim Gettys is an American computer programmer. He coined the term "bufferbloat" and has organized efforts to combat it in the Internet (see gettys.wordpress.com) and has been working on home routers. He was the Vice President of Software at the One Laptop per Child project, working on the software for the OLPC XO-1. He is one of the original developers of the X Window System at MIT and worked on it again with X.Org, where he served on the board of directors. He previously served on the GNOME foundation board of directors. He worked at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and was the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification in the Internet Engineering Task Force through draft standard. Gettys helped establish the handhelds.org community, from which the development of Linux on handheld devices can be traced.

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SCL Technology Law Futures Forum - 26-27 June 2014, London
by Alessandro Mantelero June 23, 2014

June 23, 2014

Segnalo il seguente evento, per chi fosse interessato e si trovasse a Londra in questi giorni. L'evento è co-organizzato dal network EINS, di cui fa parte anche Nexa. http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ev36209 SCL Technology Law Futures Forum - Thursday 26 and Friday 27 June 2014, London Co-organised with EINS Network of Excellence in Internet Science Forum Chair: Dr Ian Brown, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute and Associate Director, Cyber Security Centre, University of Oxford Opening keynote - day one: "Default on? Privacy in a broadcast society - trusting the future" Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy, Public Policy, GSM Association Forum keynote speech: (Sold out for non-Forum attendees) Paul Nemitz, Director, Fundamental rights and Union citizenship European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice Opening keynote - day two: "The Internet of Things" Alistair Maughan, Partner, Morrison & Foerster (UK) LLP Programme Thursday 26 June 2014 9.30-10.15 – Opening keynote: "Default on? Privacy in a broadcast society - trusting the future" Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy, Public Policy, GSM Association. The GSM Association is an association of mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardising, deployment and promotion of the GSM mobile telephone system. 10.15-11.30: Healthcare Chair: Roger Bickerstaff, Partner, Bird & Bird LLP Speakers: Dr Akram Alomainy, QMUL Barry Jennings, Bird & Bird LLP Andelka Phillips, University of Oxford 11.30-11.45: Tea and coffee break 11.45-13.00: Personal Robots Chair: Tim Pitt-Payne QC, 11KBW Speakers: Dr Joss Wright, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford Professor Lilian Edwards, Strathclyde University Professor Burkhard Schafer, University of Edinburgh 13.00-14.00: Lunch 14.00-15.15: Drones Chair: Roger Wiltshire, Deputy European Legal Director, Northrop Grumman Speakers: Peter Lee, Taylor Vinters LLP Nick Miller, Business Director, ISR and UAV Systems, Thales UK Robin Higgons, Managing Director, Qi3 Lachlan Urquhart, University of Nottingham 15.15-15.30: Tea and coffee break 15.30-16.45: Wearable Tech Chair: Judith Rauhofer, Lecturer in IT Law, University of Edinburgh, Associate Director, Centre for Studies of Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT). Speakers: Marit Hansen, Independent Centre for Privacy Protection, Schleswig-Holstein Andrew Charlesworth, University of Bristol Neil Cameron, Neil Cameron Consulting Group 16.45: Day one - closing remarks 17.15-18.15: Forum Keynote speech: "#Bigtrust for #Bigdata and the Cloud? EU Data Protection Reform and the EU-US Safe Harbour" To be given by Paul Nemitz, Director, Fundamental rights and Union citizenship, European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice. 18.15-19.00: Drinks Reception Close of day one Friday 27 June 2014 09.30-10.15: Opening keynote: "The Internet of Things" Alistair Maughan, Partner, Morrison & Foerster (UK) LLP 10.15- 11.30: Personal Data Lockers Chair: Hazel Grant, Partner, Bristows LLP Speakers: William Heath, Chairman, MyDex CIC Achim Klabunde, Secretariat of the European Data Protection Supervisor Judith Rauhofer, Edinburgh University 11.30-11.45: Tea and coffee break 11.45-13.00: Panel and audience discussions on Data Reform and Regulating Robots Panel session 1: Where next for data protection reform? Chair: Professor Chris Marsden, University of Sussex Panel will include: Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy, Public Policy, GSM Association Andrew Charlesworth, University of Bristol Professor Lilian Edwards, Strathclyde University Hazel Grant, Partner, Bristows LLP Panel session 2: Regulating Robots Chair: Dr Ian Brown, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute and Associate Director, Cyber Security Centre, University of Oxford Panel will include: Professor Andrea Matwyshyn, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Professor Alessandro Mantelero, Politecnico di Torino 13:00: Close of Forum -- Avv. Alessandro Mantelero, PhD Aggregate Professor, Politecnico di Torino Director of Privacy and Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet and Society Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute Research Consultant, Sino-Italian Research Center for Internet Torts at Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology Programme Coordinator, Double Degree program in Management and IP Law, Politecnico di Torino–Tongji University of Shanghai http://staff.polito.it/alessandro.mantelero Politecnico di Torino Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino - Italy in libertate fortitudo

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Supreme Court deals blow to computer patents in 9-0 ruling
by Stefano Quintarelli June 23, 2014

June 23, 2014

Supreme Court deals blow to computer patents in 9-0 ruling By Jeff John Roberts Jun 19 2014 <http://gigaom.com/2014/06/19/supreme-court-deals-blow-to-computer-patents-i…> SUMMARY: A new Supreme Court decision will cut down the number of computer-related patents, but will not, as some had hoped, eliminate software patents altogether. The Supreme Court declared Thursday that a patent related to a centuries old financial concept was invalid since it was an abstract idea, even though the concept was implemented through a computer. The court’s unanimous ruling serves to narrow the type of “inventions” that can be eligible for patents, and amounts to a minor victory for the technology industry and other companies that have long claimed about software-related patents. The case itself involved a patent for escrow services held by Alice Corp, a shell company regarded by many as a patent troll. The patent’s validity was challenged by CLS Bank, which runs a currency transaction network, and which argued that Alice’s patent simply described a settlement mechanism that banks have used for centuries. “We conclude that the method claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas also cautioned against allowing patents that relied on “the draftsman’s art” to turn abstract notions into monopolies on ideas. The ruling appears to call into question the validity of thousands of patents which describe a familiar idea, but rely on a “method” of implementing it with a computer. Although the decision does not unequivocally declare software patents to be invalid, it expresses deep skepticism of “simply appending conventional steps” to an abstract idea in an effort to make it patent-eligible. The opinion does suggest, however, that patents may still be obtained that “improve the functioning of the computer itself or effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field.” It also cautions that the goal of preventing patents that cover abstract ideas should not “swallow all of patent law.” Thomas’s opinion drew heavily on the reasoning from another recent case, called Myriad Genetics, in which the Supreme Court invalidated patents over human genes. Both opinions hold that applying familiar techniques to non-patentable things does not result in a patentable invention. The Alice case amounted to unfinished business of sorts for the Supreme Court. In 2010, the court addressed the same issues in a case called Bilksi, but failed to provide any clarity about what type of subject matter can — and cannot — be patented, which in turn produced another rat’s nest of lower court opinions.

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