To promote freedom of expression on the Internet, to protect United States businesses from coercion to participate in repression by authoritarian foreign governments, and for other purposes.

While the original version of this proposal was well intentioned I raised some serious objections to it. This version is much better. The export provisions have been cleaned up considerably and the right answers are far more likely to be reached through the process envisioned here than the one that was proposed by the prior bill.

The provisions about hosting computers have been improved as well, but it remains to be seen if the changes are sufficient to make this workable. This bill simply prohibits U.S. companies from storing personal information about their customers in "internet restricting" countries. It really depends on how people have their technologies architected, but this is at least plausible. I think minimally there should be a grace period for reaching this goal, but if anything kills the bill it will be this provision.

Unfortunately the bill that I did like last year, which funded development of circumvention technology, does not appear to have been reproposed. However, that work could be funded under the Office of Internet Freedom proposed here.

The Global Online Freedom Act is back, and this time it looks much better!

A Georgia senator worried about the safety of young teenagers who log on to Internet social networking sites such as MySpace.com and FaceBook.com has proposed a bill that would force such companies to tighten up their access to minors.

The measure would make it illegal for the owner or operator of a social networking Web site to allow minors to create or maintain a Web page without parental permission. Senate Bill 59 also would force MySpace.com and FaceBook.com to allow parents or guardians to have access to their children’s Web pages at all times.

Oh great. Looks like this is going to be an interesting few months. Here is the bill.

Senator wants restrictions on social networking sites | Capitol Updates

Ixquick's position:
- You have a right to privacy.
- Your search data should never fall into the wrong hands.
- The only real solution is deleting your data.
- We delete our users' privacy data within 48 hrs.
- We are the first and only search engine to do so.
- Our initiative is receiving an overwhelmingly positive response!

This search engine claims that they delete their logs.

Ixquick Protects Your Privacy!

[Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton] has clearly staked out her positions on [digital-era privacy], and they're sending electronic civil libertarians' hearts a twitter.

Speaking as an electronic civil libertarian it is simply not possible for any position taken by the video game censorship candidate to send my "heart a twitter." If Clinton was interested in reaching people like me she wouldn't have been so vocal in attacking our culture over the past few years. What is, however, interesting is that Clinton is picking up this issue because it resonates with the people she is interested in reaching, mainstream Democrats. If mainstream Democrats care about privacy thats a good thing for privacy, regardless of who wins the Presidency.

Wired News: Hillary: The Privacy Candidate?

My computer is my most private possession. I have other things that are more dear, but no one item could tell you more about me than this machine.

Yet, a rash of recent court decisions says the Constitution may not be enough to protect my laptop from arbitrary, suspicionless and warrantless examination by the police.

Wired News: Computer Privacy in Distress

We pro-regulators were making an assumption that history has shown to be completely false: That something as complex as an OS has to be built by a commercial entity. Only crazies imagined that volunteers outside the control of a corporation could successfully create a system over which no one had exclusive command. We knew those crazies. They worked on something called Linux.

I think about this mistake whenever I think about the current Microsoft-like network-neutrality debate – whether network owners can pick the stuff that flows across "their" network.

Wired 15.01: Lessig on his mistake

Oh boy...

Any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender.

Because "social-networking site" isn't defined, it could encompass MemeStreams.

"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts," said EFF's Bankston.

In other words, Sen. McCain would like to welcome you to the social wedge issue for the 2008 election: Internet Predators.

Calling this "Constitutionally dubious" is the understatement of the year. However, anyone who raises their voice in opposition to this will be branded as a pedophile sympathizer, so you can rest assured that this will roll through Congress like a hot knife through butter. The inevitable result will be a Constitutional challenge and a lot of really pissed off people on the Internet, as every independent blogger, and every small website like this one, will be forced to comply with federal regulations that were designed with multi-million dollar companies in mind. Of course, thats impossible, but unlike Clinton, Bush will not forgo enforcement pending the outcome of the challenge, resulting in what will basically amount to a fundamental threat to the future of online discourse.

As the 2008 election season unfolds this thing will be winding its way through the federal appeals process, with a literal 5 alarm fire burning online as site after site shuts down out of fear of liability that some user might have committed statutory rape while in high school 30 years ago. Conservative pundits will be handed a constant stream of angry commentary from Internet users and quotations from civil liberties attorneys like Bankston to hold up before the masses while saying things like "these liberals want to defend child molestors, this is what you get if you vote for a Democrat!"

But, there is one thing they're not counting on. This isn't 1995. Today, all of the smart, well educated, powerful people in this country use online discussion systems. Obviously, the Republicans haven't figured out where their money is coming from. If they really decide to carpet bomb the Internet they may be in for a surprise. Would you donate money to the guy who killed your favorite website?

Illegal Images Must Be Reported!

I'm sure that many of you have seen the rash of news media reports this year discussing the use of MySpace by online predators to contact young children, and calling on the government to "do something" about it. While this certainly does happen, I don't know how widespread the problem is, and I suspect the news media has overhyped it because it makes for dramatic television. The U.S. House responded on July 28th, 2006 by passing the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), by a landslide margin (410-15). I find this legislation to be deeply troubling, and that is why I am posting this bulletin.

There are many ways that Congress could have decided to respond to the problem of online predators. The most obvious approach is to seek to educate children and their parents about the danger of interacting with strangers online, in exactly the same way that we educate them about the danger of interacting with strangers in real life. DOPA creates the appearance of attempting to do this by directing the Federal Trade Commission to establish a website with this sort of information on it, but its primary purpose is different. DOPA's primary purpose is to make it illegal for any school or library which receives federal funding (about 2/3rds of them) to allow people under the age of 18 to use any website that enables users to create a personal profile, keep an online journal, chat with friends, or otherwise express themselves.

The United States Constitution protects certain fundamental human rights. Foremost
among these are the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of association. We protect these two rights in particular because they are prerequisites to democracy. The ability to vote for the representative of your choosing requires an environment in which you can consider and discuss the options freely. It is obvious that much of our democratic discourse has moved online in the past decade. Given how important these rights are to our identity as Americans, I am deeply troubled that so many of our representatives would be so eager to pass a broad prohibition on online discourse by minors.

DOPA will have three primary effects. The direct impact will be to remove online social communication tools from most schools and libraries. I'm talking about websites like MySpace, Facebook, Livejournal, Friendster, Google Groups, Blogger, Slashdot, and MemeStreams, as well as instant messagers like AIM and other chat software. Even adults will find it difficult to access these resources from libraries as they'll be forced to ask that library administrators remove blocks and filters for them. The secondary impact is that DOPA sends a message to schools and libraries that don't receive federal funding, as well as parents, that a complete ban on the use of online communications tools is a reasonable response to the problem of online predators. It is no more reasonable then prohibiting teenagers from going outside of their... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California handed down an important ruling today rejecting motions to dismiss EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T for its participation in the NSA domestic surveillance and call records program.

I am very, very suprised by this result, and thats a good thing.

OrinKerr.com » Lawsuit on NSA Domestic Surveillance Can Go Forward, Court Rules

A hearing on the Bush administration's request to dismiss the case on national security grounds has been scheduled for June 23.

I guess I misread one of the EFF's postings. It will be a month before they discuss whether or not they're going to allow this case. The article here seems to indicate that AT&T may have other ways of shutting this down quickly.

Legal loophole emerges in NSA spy program | CNET News.com