United States
The United States was where the Internet started but it was also where electronic surveillance of it began. The 11 September attacks have only strengthened the government’s determination to monitor the flow of information on the Internet. A new step was taken on 20 November 2002 with Senate approval of the Homeland Security Act, which set up a super-ministry with the job of preventing terrorist attacks. It will eventually have a staff of 170,000 drawn from 22 government departments and bodies. Section 225 of the law allows ISPs to disclose the content of their customers’ messages at the request of federal or local officials if, “in good faith” they think this will prevent death or serious injury. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says this means ISPs will be doing the work of a court. It deplores the fact that disclosure will be on the basis of “good faith” rather than “reasonable belief” as before and says the threats cited can be very general. Section 225 also allows police to record without permission any message sent or received by a “protected computer” (one used in interstate commerce or communications) which is under attack. It also increases to 20 years the penalty for computer crimes that cause serious injury and life imprisonment if they result in death.Encryption in the dockMany US officials have also criticised encryption, which allows Internet users to keep their messages and activity confidential by encoding it with software. Encryption, mainly used by companies to exchange sensitive economic data, has never been banned in the United States. But its export is restricted under the Wassenaar Arrangement, which required inspection of material that could be used for both civil and military purposes. The 11 September attacks have revived the debate between supporters and opponents of encryption.The director of the FBI said in March 2001 that terrorists were using encryption. On 13 September that year, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg proposed a blanket ban on encryption software whose makers had not handed over the decoding key to the government.The authorities noted that plans to hijack 11 US airliners had been found on the laptop computer of the man behind the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and that the FBI had needed 10 months to decode the files, most of which were encrypted with the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software. PGP’s inventor, David Zimmerman, who nearly went to jail in the 1980s for widely distributing his programme, recently defended it in an interview in Futur(e)s magazine. He said the US Congress, courts and media had discussed the issue for the past decade and concluded society had more to gain than lose from powerful encryption. PGP was saving lives all over the world, he said, and was used by human rights organisations everywhere, especially in countries ruled by dictatorships.Encryption software has under attack from the FBI’s Magic Lantern programme, an e-mail that can secretly record the keystrokes of an Internet user, so the FBI can see the passwords and codes employed by encryption users. After press reports about it, the FBI denied having such a programme but admitted it was working on one.Against censorship, but in favour of monitoringAs well as seeking to monitor the flow of online information to check what is being said and exchanged, the authorities are also trying to use the Internet to put out US propaganda in their war against terrorism. The New York Times reported on 19 February this year that the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) had proposed planting disinformation in the foreign media, mainly through websites set up and secretly run by the OSI and through e-mails sent to journalists or media offices. The revelation caused an outcry and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer quickly said President Bush knew nothing about the project and had ordered the OSI closed down because, said defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon “does not lie to the American people” or to “foreign audiences.”The Bush administration could also use the Internet to break the information monopoly under some dictatorships. Two members of the US House of Representatives proposed a law on 2 October 2002 to fight censorship worldwide. The Global Internet Freedom Act would set up a federal Office of Global Internet Freedom to counter jamming and censorship of the Internet by authoritarian regimes and persecution of those who use it. The office would be part of the International Broadcasting Bureau, which runs several radio stations that already combat censorship, such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia. It would have a $50 million budget for 2003 and 2004.But what is censorship? The Global Internet Freedom Act would have the US take no steps against government censorship aimed at protecting minors. A legal battle pitting several civil liberties groups and public libraries against the Bush administration over the Children’s Internet Protection Act is growing. The US supreme court said on 12 November 2002 it would rule on the Act, passed in 2000 and obliging all libraries receiving federal funds for Internet facilities to install anti-pornography filters on their computers.The Act’s opponents say it violates the first amendment to the US constitution concerning freedom of expression and also blocks access to other websites as well as pornographic ones. In May 2002, a federal court in Philadelphia said forcing public libraries to install filters was indeed censoring freedom of expression protected by the constitution. The federal government has appealed to the supreme court, saying the filter software was the best available to prevent taxpayers’ having to subsidise the spread of obscene websites and material unsuitable for children. Ten per cent of the 143 million Internet users in the US go online at public libraries, 80 per cent of which have received federal funds to set up Internet facilities.An Orwellian future?In early November 2002, the US media reported that the Pentagon had set up an Information Awareness Office to develop technology to trawl Internet navigation records to spot activity such as credit card purchases and airline reservations that might indicate a potential terrorist. The head of this $200 million a year project, John Poindexter, says software will pick out travel in dangerous parts of the world, suspicious e-mail and dubious money transfers. The data will be regularly gathered by intelligence services with the permission of governments and companies.Opponents of the project call it “Orwellian” and several civil liberties organisations say personal information unrelated to terrorism and which is none of the government’s business would also be obtained. Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), says the authorities would have data in their hands hitherto only obtainable by court order as part of criminal investigations. He deplores the lack of a body to monitor the collection of such information.Poindexter was sentenced to six months in prison in 1990 for lying to the US Congress in the Iran-Contras scandal but the conviction was quashed on grounds that his legal rights were not respected. News About Carnivorefbi.govepic.orgwired.comNews for specialists Receive email alerts RSF_en United StatesAmericas April 28, 2021 Find out more News United StatesAmericas to go further June 3, 2021 Find out more WhatsApp blocks accounts of at least seven Gaza Strip journalists
News Help by sharing this information Follow the news on United States Facebook’s Oversight Board is just a stopgap, regulation urgently needed, RSF says More than half of all Americans are online and most have high-speed connections. The Internet is a vital means of communication in the United States. However, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the terrorists’ presumed use of it to contact each other in preparing that operation abruptly changed the government’s attitude to the Internet.Just a few hours after the attacks, FBI agents went to the head offices of the country’s main ISPs, including Hotmail, AOL and Earthlink, to get details of possible e-mail messages between the terrorists. The online magazine Wired said FBI agents also tried to install the Carnivore surveillance system (since renamed DCS 1000) on the ISPs. It said they turned up at ISP offices with the software and offered to pay for installation and operation. They reportedly demanded and obtained material from certain e-mail accounts, most of whose names included the word “Allah.” All major US-based ISPs are thought to have complied fully with the FBI demands.Easing the rulesCarnivore, designed by the FBI, can record and store all messages sent or received by an ISP’s customers, using word filters that make no distinction between different kinds of messages, thus exceeding the bounds of normal surveillance. US civil liberties campaigners fought Carnivore, which had never been used before without a court order. However, the Combating Terrorism Act, passed urgently by the Senate on 13 September, after 30 minutes of debate just two days after the attacks, allowed intelligence services to use it without having to seek such approval. A prosecutor can now order electronic surveillance of someone for 48 hours without getting a judge’s permission.Monitoring Internet data was legalised on 24 October 2001 when the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the “USA Patriot Act” (Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). It confirmed the authority already given to the FBI to install Carnivore on an ISP’s equipment to monitor e-mail messages and store records of Internet activity by people suspected of being in contact with a foreign power. This requires only the permission of a special secret court. The Act also expands the kind of information a prosecutor can ask for from an ISP without a judge’s permission and invites ISPs to freely hand over to the authorities data unrelated to content, such as records of websites visited. June 18, 2003 – Updated on January 20, 2016 United States News June 7, 2021 Find out more Links:American Civil Liberties UnionThe Center for Democracy and TechnologyThe Digital Freedom NetworkThe Electronic Frontier FoundationThe Electronic Privacy Information CenterPeacefireThe Reporters Committee for Freedom of the PressBasic documents :USA Patriot ActHomeland Security ActGlobal Internet Freedom ActInformation Awareness OfficeChildren’s Internet Protection Act NSO Group hasn’t kept its promises on human rights, RSF and other NGOs say Organisation 
Facebook is Becoming Less Personal and More Pro… Tags:#Facebook#NYT#web A Comprehensive Guide to a Content Audit In some ways, it’s actually extremely surprising that it took Facebook this long. After all, civil unions and domestic partnerships have both been around for many years now and have even achieved legal status in a number of states and countries. Of course, whenever something new is added, it immediately calls into question why other options aren’t available. Facebook-alternative Diaspora alluded to this when it made gender an open-ended text field rather than a multiple-choice question. Now that Facebook has gone a step further with its relationship options, how will it handle gender definitions? Will it remain binary or will it open up to more possibilities, as Diaspora did?Facebook had this to say on the topic: “This has been a highly requested feature from users. We want to provide options for people to genuinely and authentically reflect their relationships on Facebook.” Related Posts 
mike melanson Guide to Performing Bulk Email Verification The Dos and Don’ts of Brand Awareness Videos Sometimes, websites like Facebook or Google make the tiniest change and it makes headlines. This is one of those times. Today, 600 million member strong Facebook added two new options to its list of relationship status possibilities: “In a civil union” and “In a domestic partnership.”It’s not that this change has wide-reaching effects in terms of usability or functionality, but rather that it is an acknowledgement and acceptance of newly adopted societal norms. It is a validation, by the site many people use to define themselves online, that same-sex marriages, civil unions and other non-traditional relationships have reached a level that deserve recognition.The Huffington Post’s Bianca Bosker first noticed the change, writing that the new fields are being rolled out in the U.S. and several other countries, including Canada, France, the U.K., and Australia and were introduced “in consultation with Facebook’s Network of Support.”We confirmed the new relationship statuses on our own accounts and took a screenshot of our own.
“SDM Sadar and CO City told me that I and Jitin Prasada have been put under house arrest. When they were asked as to why a heavy police force was deployed outside residence of Prasada, we were told that no one will be taking out any padyatra,” he told PTI.There was heavy police deployment outside the residence of Mr. Prasada from 10 a.m.“U.P. is no Kashmir yet today I am in preventive custody for simply wanting to highlight the plight of the Shahjahanpur rape victim. This BJP govt has no qualms in quashing an individual’s fundamental rights,” Mr. Prasada tweeted.Also Read Whole administration protecting, embracing Chinmayanand: Priyanka Gandhi Congress leaders Jitin Prasada and Kaushal Mishra on Monday said they were put under house arrest ahead of a ‘Nyay Yatra’ in support of the jailed law student who has accused former Union minister Chinmayanand of rape.Besides former Union Minister Mr. Prasada and district Congress President Mr. Mishra, Ajay Kumar Lallu, leader of Congress Legislative Party in the UP Assembly, and senior party leader Dheeraj Gurjar were arrested and kept at the Police Lines, police sources said.Mr. Mishra claimed authorities told him that no one would be taking out any rallies.Also Read Not allowed to meet jailed Shahjahanpur law student, Samajwadi Party workers stage protest Police personnel, along with the PAC, have been deployed in the district in large numbers.According to Superintendent of Police (city) Dinesh Tripathi, Congress workers were holding a meeting in front of the party office at a time when prohibitory orders were promulgated in the city and 80 of them have been arrested.“They had not taken any permission from the administration. After arrest, they have been taken to Police Lines,” Mr. Tripathi said.Speaking to reporters in Lucknow on Sunday, Aradhana Mishra, deputy leader of the Congress Legislative Party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, had claimed that the BJP government was helping Chinmayanand.“The BJP government is helping Swami Chinmayanand in every possible way. It has slapped extortion charges on the woman and arrested her, so as to weaken the case against Chinmayanand. In order to ensure delivery of justice to the woman, the Congress will take out a 180-kilometre-long march from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow on Monday,” she had said.“The Congress demands that the hearing of the rape case against Chinmayanand be taken up in a fast-track court,” Aradhana Mishra had said, adding that the priority of the opposition party was to ensure that justice was delivered to the woman. This fight will be fought by the party from the streets to the state Assembly. The fight for justice will commence from Shahjahanpur on September 30,” she had said.
We’re about to all go off-line in 1 hour. Pls pray for us #LabanPilipinas #Puso #💪❤️ pic.twitter.com/kRSc21ehBB— Chot Reyes (@coachot) August 8, 2017Facing the regions’s best teams is not the only thing Gilas Pilipinas has to deal with in the 2017 Fiba Asia Cup in Beirut, Lebanon.FEATURED STORIESSPORTSSEA Games: Biñan football stadium stands out in preparedness, completionSPORTSPrivate companies step in to help SEA Games hostingSPORTSWin or don’t eat: the Philippines’ poverty-driven, world-beating pool starsFormer national team coach Tab Baldwin said the Gilas will also have to get accustomed to the living and playing conditions in Lebanon, where, according to the American-Kiwi, traffic is much worse than it is in Manila.ADVERTISEMENT Robredo should’ve resigned as drug czar after lack of trust issue – Panelo “I’m just like everybody else. I’m hopeful that they’re gonna be really well over there. I don’t really know what the competition is exactly,” said Baldwin, whose squad Ateneo nearly pulled off the upset against the Cadets in a tuneup Tuesday. NGCP on security risk: Chinese just technical advisers View comments Trending Articles PLAY LIST 00:50Trending Articles00:50Trending Articles03:07PH billiards team upbeat about gold medal chances in SEA Games02:49Robredo: True leaders perform well despite having ‘uninspiring’ boss02:42PH underwater hockey team aims to make waves in SEA Games01:44Philippines marks anniversary of massacre with calls for justice01:19Fire erupts in Barangay Tatalon in Quezon City01:07Trump talks impeachment while meeting NCAA athletes02:49World-class track facilities installed at NCC for SEA Games Don’t miss out on the latest news and information. Trump signs bills in support of Hong Kong protesters Celebrity chef Gary Rhodes dies at 59 with wife by his side MOST READ
Rally in support of Kaepernick planned “They’re gonna face some tough teams there. It’s tough conditions to play in Beirut. It’s usually traffic–we think we understand traffic here but it’s a different kind over there. It can really be frustrating.”It seems like Gilas Pilipinas is already experiencing what Baldwin is talking about.Head coach Chot Reyes posting updates of their struggles getting to the practice venue because of traffic. Lacson: SEA Games fund put in foundation like ‘Napoles case’ LATEST STORIES Robredo should’ve resigned as drug czar after lack of trust issue – Panelo NATO’s aging eye in the sky to get a last overhaul Lebanon is hostile territory to many but it used to be a place that Baldwin once referred to as home.“Lebanon is a different place. I lived there for awhile and coached there. It’s not an easy place to play and we’re a long way from home,” said Baldwin, who coached in Lebanon for two years from 2010-2011.The Philippines opens its campaign against reigning Asian champion China on Wednesday in a rematch of the 2015 finals.The 59-year-old Baldwin was at the helm when Gilas settled for silver two years ago in Changsha, China.“Like everybody else, I hope we do well.”Sports Related Videospowered by AdSparcRead Next DILG, PNP back suspension of classes during SEA Games