US Threatened To Blacklist Spain For Not Implementing Site Blocking Law

United States government interference in Spain’s intellectual property laws had long been suspected, but it was revelations from Wikileaks that finally confirmed the depth of its involvement.

More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.

Now, another diplomatic leak has revealed how the US voiced its anger towards outgoing President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last month upon realizing that his government was unlikely to pass the US-drafted Sinde (site blocking) Law before leaving office.

In a letter dated December 12th and sent by US Ambassador Alan D. Solomont to the Spanish Prime Minister’s office, the US expressed “deep concern” over the failure to implement the SOPA-style censorship law.

“The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain,” read the letter obtained by El Pais.

Racing against the clock in the final days of the government, Solomont had one last push.

“I encourage the Government of Spain to implement the Sinde Law immediately to safeguard the reputation of Spain as an innovative country that does what it says it will, and as a country that breeds confidence,” he wrote.

But along with the pleas came the stick.

In the letter, which was also sent to Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde after whom the law is named, Solomont noted that Spain is already on the Special 301, the annual report prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) detailing ‘trade barriers’ based on intellectual property issues.

Solomont’s threat was that should Spain not pass the Sinde Law (described by some as the Spanish SOPA) then the country would be degraded further and placed on the Priority Watch List. This serious step would mean that Spain was in breach of trade agreements and could be subjected to a range of “retaliatory actions”.

In the event Zapatero’s government left office without passing the law, but the incoming Partido Popular (People’s Party) were quickly pressured by the US to take the necessary action.

In another media leak it’s now been revealed that American Chamber of Commerce in Spain chief Jaime Malet wrote a cautionary letter to incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. He warned of the potential flight of foreign investment from Spain and urged him to take action on the protection of intellectual property once in office.

“[The law's] lack of approval before the elections has been a blow to the country’s seriousness in this matter of such importance,” said Malet, while urging Rajoy to “to retrieve the consensus reached.”

Rajoy’s government quickly responded and fully implemented the legislation within 10 days of taking office.

PayPal Gave FBI Details Of 1,000 Hackers

After the FBI raids against Anonymous members that were carried out a few weeks ago, some might wonder where exactly the police was getting the names and addresses of the hackers the FBI claimed to arrest. Now the answer seems to be close to us: it turned out that such information was included into the shopping list details provided to the FBI by PayPal.

According to the media reports, PayPal, the online financial entity, is no longer a friend of Anonymous, and is known for collecting a thousand of IP addresses of people noticed to carry out Anonymous' denial-of-service attacks against PayPal late last year.

Meanwhile, everyone who understands that a hacker must know at least some ways to mask their address before doing things like this will realize that the names on the provided list most likely appear the bottom feeding script kiddies. Considering that the FBI is trying to catch the high-profiles Anonymous leaders rather than average members, there are some doubts that the clever hackers won’t think about hiding their IP addresses first. Still, an FBI affidavit suggests that the authorities may have many more people to arrest.

According to one of the FBI agents, PayPal security department has been cooperating with the bureau since the beginning of December, a couple days after the online payment system froze WikiLeaks’ donation account, because it soon found out that the company website started receiving serious DDoS traffic.

The FBI agents started monitoring Anonymous press releases, and at the same time PayPal started collecting traffic logs on its intrusion prevention system that had been installed on its network. The online payment company provided the FBI a USB thumb drive with the traffic logs in question, which contained about one thousand of IP addresses sending malicious network packets to the service within the DDoS attacks. The FBI receives the IP addresses engaged in sending the largest number of packets coming from hackers. Those packets contained such strings as “Wikileaks” and “Goodnight”.

According to the media reports, the affidavit was offered in support of a search warrant for the house of a Texas couple and their son. Although the family hasn’t been charged yet, the house became the source of over 3,500 packets in about 2.5 hours.

UK Will Enforce Internet Filtering

Blocking access to websites has been widely discussed in the United States with the PROTECT IP act first proposed this past spring. However, with the Senate approving the legislation, it turned out that the US isn’t the only country discussing the possibility of filtering the web.

Some leaked document, labeled “confidential”, has been posted on Open Rights Group website. The document in question details a proposal by the entertainment industry to pressure UK broadband providers to take part in a voluntary website blocking agreement. Such system is described as an approach to preventing access to online services which are focused upon copyright violation.

Meanwhile, for the public there are many reasons to be concerned, the main one being that the proposal is being discussed behind closed doors. In fact, this is the same as when pro-copyright outfits were trying to push for many controversial provisions in ACTA. This time, everything is being planned behind closed doors as well. However, when Wikileaks published the documents relating to ACTA back in 2008, it caused a major outcry from the public and human rights groups, and the same is expected now with the filtering proposal.

Indeed, according to the leaked document, “voluntary” Great Firewall of Britain will be just the same. Criticisms of the current proposal are all the same as well: was the system so bad that the industry decided to hide it from the public?

In addition, there are more reasons to be concerned. For example, the document, whilst mentioning evidence gathering, “prior warning and liberty”, also notes a turn-around time which is quick enough for “live events”, as well as a balance between swift action and evidence. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a technical solution enabling Internet service providers to enforce an effective block within the time scale of a “live event”, regardless of the time it takes a court to act.

The Open Rights Group was the first to express concern for this policy, saying that it sets out a dangerous voluntary scheme involving so-called “expedited court procedures” as well as a “balance” between evidence and speed of action. Meanwhile, definitions of which content should be blocked are quite scarce, and there are no references to exactly how filtering would work. In the end, everyone understands that ISPs won’t be able to really prevent Internet users from accessing blocked services, since all it really takes to access them is the right proxy.

US Government Sued For Stealing Laptop

According to Washington Post, one of the co-founders of an outfit advocating for Bradley Manning launched a lawsuit against the American government for taking his PC and copying its contents without authorization in order to help a criminal investigation of Wikileaks.

David House, the MIT computer scientist, was at the airport when his laptop was seized by Department of Homeland Security agents. Initially, he thought that his computer was searched just as part of a security check. However, it appeared that the laptop was seized because House was supporting Bradley Manning, the accused leaker.

Now David House is backed by the US Civil Liberties Union, which claims that the country’s government employs too aggressive border search policies in order to gather data about political activities of the citizens and aid criminal investigations. American Civil Liberties Union argues that House's laptop seizure was unconstitutional, as the device contained a lot of personal content like private membership lists. The Union even claimed that reviewing the latter is a thought crime.

Instead, before seizing laptops, the government should have provided a suspicion of a crime, as well as a "border related" justification to perform such searches. If you are leaving the United States, a search warrant based on cause of a crime is necessary for examining someone’s laptop. But if a person is entering the country, government believes that it needs neither a warrant nor even any reason for suspicion.

As for the Supreme Court, it believes that if a search is routine or reasonable, then it doesn’t matter what the intent of it is. But at the same time the government didn’t say if searching a PC with plenty of personal information is reasonable at all without any suspicion of a crime.

The authorities held the laptop in question for 49 days. House was neither charged, nor allowed to see a lawyer all this time. After 49 days, the US government released the device without any explanation.

The device, among many other, contained a few years' worth of personal e-mails with relatives, friends and colleagues, as well as passwords to House’s bank account and workplace PC, and the most suspicious part – confidential messages of the Bradley Manning Support Network over further strategy and fund-raising.

ACTA Might Harm National Security

The letter sent by the Department of Homeland Security said that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement turned out to be a potential national security risk back three years ago. 

One of the outfits following the ACTA development has received very interesting information over the agreement way back in 2008. When the treaty was first discovered, it was the worst that ever happened to copyright legislation. The agreement included a global “three-strikes” regime, which demanded that all digital devices including laptops and MP3 players be seized at borders and checked for infringing content. Moreover, it featured DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions, and any negotiations over the treaty were entirely secret. It actually became known thanks to Wikileaks, which blew the lid off the treaty.

Ever since the information leaked online, there were many criticisms of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, one of them being that it represents a national security risk due to containing a “three-strikes” provision. France, which has already introduced the similar regime, was “yelled” at by the NSA for that. That’s what Homeland Security pointed out back then.

It turned out that the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the US ambassador, where it expressed concerns over the treaty negotiations. More specifically, the concern was about border security, or the priority IP Enforcement had as compared to other national security threats. The Department of Homeland Security asked where all the extra resources needed for seizing and searching all staff at borders would come from. What is more important, the letter was sent before the stock market crashed and the country considered tightening the belt. You can imagine what costs it would be today, if 3 years ago it was a matter of concern already. How does this relate to national security? Easy. Now ACTA would demand Homeland Security to do more with less resources, and if it tries to allocate all its resources to searching though every mobile phone and MP3 player at borders, then national security would be put at risk.

In other words, it looks like there’s a choice between huge national security risks and counterfeiters. That would be weird if the governments prefer corporate interests to issues of national security, but this war on copyright infringement is really getting out of hand.

WikiLeaks Collected Data From P2P Networks

A company called Tiversa is engaged in providing “P2P Intelligence services”. It recently made an interesting report, revealing some examples in which information published on WikiLeaks appeared to first have been exposed by government employees that used file-sharing programs on PCs containing sensitive information.

It’s not the first time that the reports emerge, saying that classified data is being inadvertently available on file-sharing networks. The public has already seen Congress holding a number of hearings proclaiming the chances of a so-called “cyber Pearl Harbour.”

Usually it was suggested that the information has been sought by spies, or “bad actors”. However, no-one has ever considered that the information would be collected and leaked by individuals with good intentions.

According to Tiversa, it has collected evidence proving that the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks may have used some P2P clients to collect classified data. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks CEO, Robert Boback, announced that it is doing searches themselves on P2P networks, and that there would be no chance that somebody else from Sweden is issuing the same searches and finding the same type of data. WikiLeaks claimed that the accusations are entirely false, but the company is pointing at the list of coincidences.

For example, in 2009 Tiversa detected 4 Swedish PCs that have been searching for and downloading content on file-sharing networks. It turned out that their searches resulted in finding a computer of Department of Defence in Hawaii sharing some survey file of the Pacific Missile Range Facility. The file, of course, was downloaded, and, what is more interesting, posted later on WikiLeaks.

Robert Boback pointed out that there are not that many whistle-blower sites to get you many documents, but if you are getting those documents yourselves, such data is out there and available.

Another example provided by Tiversa is a spreadsheet listing potential terrorist targets in California, also published on WikiLeaks. The document detailing locations of caches of bomb-grade fertilizers and other sensitive information turned out to have been shared by a California state employee, again through some P2P program. Tiversa adds that it has more examples in which information published on WikiLeaks proved to be first exposed by government employees using file-sharing clients on PCs with sensitive information.

US Government Interested In Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Wikileaks is about to release a cable from the American Embassy in Stockholm, which reveals that the US government was interested in file-sharing issues in Sweden. Actually, the American Embassy was cooperating with the Swedish government in order to reduce file-sharing threats. This cooperation resulted in The Pirate Bay raids in 2006 conducted under the US pressure.

Actually, everybody knew that the American government has been actively participating in copyright enforcement in many other countries throughout the world, Sweden being one of them. The raid on TPB’s servers back in 2006 proved that the United States had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s blacklist if they fail to solve The Pirate Bay problem.

However, that was far from the end of the US-Sweden collaboration on this front. Wikileaks is going to publish a US Embassy cable in possession of Swedish Television, proving that the American pressure on Sweden to settle the file-sharing problems went on in the following years. In the cable, dated back 2 years ago, the American Embassy outlined 6 items they wanted to be solved, all of them connected with online copyright violation. Just in a year, 5 of those 6 items were turned into action. Among them were appointment of more copyright police and educational anti-piracy campaigns. As you might have already guessed, The Pirate Bay tracker was mentioned in this cable, too.

It is said in the cable that it was not easy for the US Embassy to get openly involved in piracy issues, as a lot of press coverage was unfavorable towards them. This made Minister of Justice to deny that Sweden was ever under the US pressure in piracy related issues.

Meanwhile, ex-Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde seems to be surprised about the leaked cable’s content, even though it wasn’t news for him that the US put pressure on the Swedish authorities. He admitted that it was known for a long while that the United States was hiding behind the raid and pressured Sweden. However, it was news to them that they were still doing it.

This cable hasn’t been published by well-known service Wikileaks yet. However, it is expected that they will release it in the near future. This, along with some other cables, can add more insight into the backroom deals connected with file-sharing and copyright infringement.

US Government Interested in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts