spriteleigh

The "Guaranteed takedowns in 5 hours or less" that web-watching outfit Cyveillance promises aren't so guaranteed when they're illegal: a lesson in the Streisand Effect having just been dealt to its client, Comcast, by a particularly ill-advised attempt to bully TorrentFreak into removing public court documents.

But it's not their first rodeo, and Cyveillance has always been as trivially sleazy about it as they are now. Here's a blog entry from 2003 complaining about its efforts to hide what it does.

Cyveillance uses a couple of dirty tricks when they crawl the web. First, they ignore the robot exclusion protocol. ... Another problem with the way Cyveillance crawls is that they provide fradulent header information in the HTTP request. ... You could try to keep Cyveillance out of your web site by blocking their network. The problem is that if enough people do this, they may try to hide their origin to get around the blocks. That would be a pretty sleazy thing to do, but no more sleazy than what they do already.

Here's another post about this outfit, which points out that the parent company, QinetiQ, is a now-privatized former branch of British Intelligence agency DERA, which "since its formation has made numerous acquisitions, primarily of United States-based companies."

Which should make the fact that it also works for Uncle Sam's own spooks unsurprising. [PDF link]

Cyveillance, a subsidiary of QinetiQ of North America, is under contract by the Secret Service to search available information related to the Secret Service and its missions. The information captured by Cyveillance is reviewed by Cyveillance personnel to identify the results that appear to fall within the parameters of the Secret Service’s stated requirements. Potentially relevant information related to the Agency’s missions is forwarded to Secret Service personnel who determine whether further investigation is required to assess the content (e.g., to determine if it is a viable or potentially viable threat). If further investigation is deemed necessary, the information obtained through Cyveillance is incorporated into the Protective Research Information Management System (PRISM-ID)1 , an existing Secret Service system. Content that relates to the Secret Service brand (i.e., mention of the Secret Service name) is forwarded to Secret Service personnel for informational purposes only; following its review, this information is deleted and is not retained by the Agency.

But let's look at the real problem here. Really, Cyveillance? That's the name they picked. Just imagine the focus group where they cooked that up.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming today, and thanks for watching that presentation. There's coffee over there by the vending machine, and--George, we put decaf in the other carafe?--yes, right there in the green carafe. There'll be some snacks out soon, too. If you look at the form, you'll see a number of candidate names and branding insignia for the company whose product you just saw described. What I want you to do is rate each candidate from one to ten for each of the associations next to it. That's right, yes, just draw it right in there. One to ten each for "Warmth," "Competence," and "Evil cyberpunk dystopia." Then we'll start the discussion. George, the donuts.

“We made a great album… but I do think we have benefited from being white and the media grabbing on to something. A song like ‘Thrift Shop’ was safe enough for the kids. It was like, ‘This is music that my mom likes and that I can like as a teenager,’ and even though I’m cussing my ass off in the song, the fact that I’m a white guy, parents feel safe. They let their six-year-olds listen to it. I mean it’s just … it’s different. And would that success have been the same if I would have been a black dude? I think the answer is no.”

Pfc. Bradley #Manning sentenced to 35 yrs (w 1294 days credit) . Reduced E-1. Forfeit of all pay & allowances. Dishonorably discharged.

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

In a courtroom at Fort Meade today, Judge Army. Col. Denise Lind delivered the sentence in the trial of Bradley Manning: 35 years in a military prison, less 1,294 days for time served, and a 112-day credit for enduring "unlawful pretrial punishment," when he was held for 9 months at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, VA. During that stay, Manning was confined alone for more than 23 hours each day in an 8-by-6 foot cell.

The 25-year-old former intelligence analyst was convicted of charges related to sharing more than 700,000 secret government documents with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The transparency group published those documents online, and shared them with various news organizations.

Manning faced a maximum of up to 90 years in prison. Human rights advocates say prolonged extreme solitary confinement Manning received is a form of torture. No minimum sentence applied in this case. Judge Lind convicted him last month of most charges brought against him by the government, including 6 violations of the US Espionage Act of 1917.

From Ft. Meade, Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola writes, "Guards quickly escorted Manning out of the courtroom as supporters in the gallery shouted, 'We’ll keep fighting for you, Bradley,' and also told him he was a hero."

Adam Klasfeld at Courthouse News writes, "Though Col. Denise Lind warned spectators not to disturb the hearing, which wrapped up in under five minutes, a gasp was heard after the military judge read the sentence. Two sergeants-at-arms appeared angered - grabbing Manning roughly and pulling him from the courtroom - as dozens of supporters began shouting words of encouragement to their whistle-blower."

"Like his sister and aunt seated in the audience, Manning remained composed during the reading of his sentence," writes Klasfeld. "The wife of lead defense attorney David Coombs meanwhile cried in her seat."

Alexa O'Brien, who has been covering the trial at Fort Meade nearly every day for the past 20 months, has created this detailed chart explaining how various charges were merged, leading to the sentence Manning received today.

Pfc. Manning's sentence is 5 years longer than a man who passed "sophisticated defense secrets to communist East Germany," notes Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake.

As Quinn Norton writes at Medium, "Private Bradley Manning didn’t kill anyone, or rape anyone, but by nabbing information from his commanders and giving it to WikiLeaks, he lit up the world, like a match discarded into a great parched forest."

Defense attorney David Coombs has previously said that he plans to pursue all available options for appeal, which may include the Supreme Court. It is very rare that the nation's highest court will agree to review cases of military law, but this may be a likely exception. Other options include a presidential pardon.

Kevin Gosztola:

Manning is unlikely to serve his entire sentence in prison. He will immediately be able to petition for clemency from the court martial Convening Authority Major General Jeffrey Buchanan. A clemency and parole board in the Army can look at his case after a year. After that initial review, he can then ask the board to assess his sentence on a yearly basis for clemency purposes. Manning has to serve a third of his sentence before he can be eligible for parole. Appeals application to the Army Criminal Court of Appeals will automatically be entered after the sentence is issued. If Manning or his lawyers do find issues to press, they can take the case to the Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces and then possibly the US Supreme Court. There is “good behavior” credit, which can be as much as ten days for each month of his confinement.

Here are transcripts of trial proceedings [PDF], captured by stenographers who were crowdfunded and hired by Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Manning's attorney David Coombs will give a press conference at 130pm ET. Follow this Twitter list, for updates from reporters who are there at the Fort Meade media operations center. Tweets from them gathered, below.

Inside media center: Crowd-funded stenographer getting set for sentencing announcement. Press still being inspected & processed. #Manning

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) August 21, 2013

When considering proportionality, #Manning will be punished to far greater extent than any soldiers or officers involved in torture

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) August 21, 2013

When #Manning sentence is handed down, compare to sentences for spies for Iraq and East Germany http://t.co/gkL1SbYBW3

— Matt Sledge (@mgsledge) August 21, 2013

Bradley #Manning to be sentenced at 10 AM. David Coombs to give press conference at 1:30 PM. Protest at White House at 7:30 PM. #FreeBrad

— Nathan Fuller (@nathanLfuller) August 21, 2013

Accord to @SaveBradley Coombs to make application after sentencing to President Obama to pardon, for clemency, and time served. #Manning

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

Here is a IMAGE of how #Manning 's conviction was merged for sentencing purposes. He faces MAX 90 years. No MIN. pic.twitter.com/27fI4T75Hs

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

Journalists are asking for a camera to be FIXED on #Manning so they can see his reaction from the media operations center. #Manning

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

The Internet will be cut off as soon as the court is called to order. #Manning

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

PAO director informs media not to sneak in cell phones or won't be able to get credentials in military district of Washington #Manning

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) August 21, 2013

Journalists will not be able to file (get up, use phone) regarding the sentencing until after she recesses Court. #Manning

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) August 21, 2013

What #WikiLeaks revealed: http://t.co/5G6GWzBwHo (torture, corruption, govt-corporate collusion, abuse) #Manning

— Nathan Fuller (@nathanLfuller) August 21, 2013

Bradley #Manning's defense implored Judge Lind for a sentence that "allows him to have a life" http://t.co/1QWlrQVJAB

— Nathan Fuller (@nathanLfuller) August 21, 2013

Amnesty Intl: "President Obama should commute US Army Private Bradley #Manning’s sentence to time already served"

— Matt Sledge (@mgsledge) August 21, 2013

The Lawrence Massacre, also known as Quantrill's raid during the Civil War took place 150 years ago today. Pro-slavery forces from Missouri attacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas, because its citizens were anti-slavery. Historians (with accounts in the names of real people who were there) are reenacting the entire sequence in real time …on Twitter! You can follow along as different characters give 140-character updates on what they are experiencing. Link -via Boing Boing

In an article published last week, TorrentFreak reproduced Comcast's response to a subpoena regarding the copyright troll Prenda Law. Since then, Comcast's agents Cyveillance have sent a series of escalating legal threats to TorrentFreak and its hosting provider, LeaseWeb, asserting copyright over a document that is not copyrightable, and whose reproduction would be Fair Use in any event. TorrentFreak's hosting provider has given them 24 hours to resolve the issue or face shutdown.

“The thing that we would like you to remove from you post is the copy of the subpoena form that contains Comcast subscriber’s information, The rest of the post can stay,” we were told.

While the response is clear, it still doesn’t explain what the actual infringement is. According to our knowledge court records are public domain and can be freely used by reporters, especially when they are the center of a news piece.

When we pointed this out to Cyveillance the company suddenly informed us that Comcast told them to “hold off on working on the removal of the post in question.” Baffled by the situation, and unclear how to proceed we asked for further details. However, everything went silent and several follow-up emails sent by us since Monday afternoon have gone unanswered.

Meanwhile, the situation further deteriorated when we learned that our hosting provider LeaseWeb received the same cease and desist notice. LeaseWeb alerted us to this problem on Tuesday and stated that our IP-address would be blocked if the issue was not resolved within 24 hours.

Copyright Troll Ran Pirate Bay Honeypot, Comcast Confirms [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "Happy mutants may remember a post on August 8 about why standards bodies explain why access to standards should be copyrighted and paywalled. The piece explained the perspectives of Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) in their suit against Public.Resource.Org. I'm pleased to announce that in the matter of SDOs v. Internet, Team Internet has now made a first appearance. EFF has the details on their site."

This is either Gordon Lightfoot singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" or Ms. Parton's original slowed down. Either way, it's fantastic. (Thanks, Sean and Jake!)

I've written about artist Randy Regier quite a few times because I love his work. He not only makes beautiful one-shot retrofuturistic toys complete with made-in-China style cardboard boxes, he also builds the stores in which to display the toys. I like the fact that you can't enter the stores -- you can only peer through the windows to get a glimpse at his creations from an imagined future that never was.

Lucky residents of Hays, Kansas will get to see NuPenny's Last Stand on the corner of 10th & Main during the first two weeks of September.

Groklaw, an award-winning campaigning website that played a pivotal role in the SCO case (a proxy war in which Microsoft tried to kill GNU/Linux) and others, is shutting down, over the revelation of widespread, deep email surveillance. In an open letter, Pamela Jones, the site's owner, cites the open letter posted by Lavabit founder Ladar Levison when he shut down rather than cooperating in surveillance of his users. Specifically, he said that he'd stopped using email, and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.

Jones says that she can't run the site without email, and implies that the knowledge that she'd be putting her sources, collaborators and users in jeopardy of surveillance crossed a line for her. She compares the knowledge that her email is being intercepted by the surveillance apparatus to being robbed when she first moved to NYC, "how deeply disturbing it is to know that someone, some stranger, has gone through and touched all your underwear, looked at all your photographs of your family."

She cites the testimony of Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, who said, "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread," and recommends the services of Kolab, a Swiss mail-provider, for those looking for a haven from snooping.

I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don't know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you.

They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read. If it's encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world.

I'm not a political person, by choice, and I must say, researching the latest developments convinced me of one thing -- I am right to avoid it. There is a scripture that says, It doesn't belong to man even to direct his step. And it's true. I see now clearly that it's true. Humans are just human, and we Gro don't know what to do in our own lives half the time, let alone how to govern other humans successfully. And it shows. What form of government hasn't been tried? None of them satisfy everyone. So I think we did that experiment. I don't expect great improvement.

Forced Exposure ~pj

(YouTube link)

Supercutonline says this supercut is a tribute to the iconic shot of movie characters through a windshield. It is a handy shot: in a car, all the characters face the front so you can see everyone's faces at once. They can react to events around the the car without the filmmakers actually having to stage those events. How many of these movies do you recognize? It gets exciting about halfway through. -via Tastefully Offensive

Do you love the humorously morose lyrics of Morrisey? What about the adorable children of the Peanuts gang as created by Charles Schulz? Then imagine the wonder of the two being combined and you'll have the brilliant new Tumblr, This Charming Charlie.

Link Via BoingBoing

(Video Link)

It's a brutal world out in the concrete stacks. Watch these two hard-boiled librarians circulate crime out of library. The Mike and Duane Show re-shot the Beastie Boys' classic music video for "Sabotage."

-via Amy Duncan

(Video Link)

If the makers of Brokeback Mountain, The Notebook and Knocked Up created Breaking Bad, it would be a lot less about meth and a lot more about two men exploring their sexuality and somehow making a baby together.

Via Laughing Squid

The music generated at the site Listen to Wikipedia may sound random at first, but what you're hearing is real data.

Using the data provided by Wikipedia's recent changes feed, bells are used to convey additions, while string noises represent subtractions from articles. Higher pitched noises are for smaller edits, while larger edits are translated into lower pitched tones. Deep swells of sound accompany new users joining the service. All of the various noises work together in surprising harmony, creating a zen-like mood to go along with the furious edits being made to Wikipedia's database.

At the same time, you can see what's happening onscreen. It may be soothing music, but you might also be sucked into the thrill of watching the encyclopedia of the internet being built in real time.  

Link to story. Link to website.  -via mental_floss

No, not Grumpy in the Seven Dwarfs. THE Grumpy One. You’ve got your movie deal, your Grumppuccino, your book deal (book? hmmm…more on that LATAH.) So what would happen if GC starred in these well-known Disney flicks? They’d prolly look something like this…artwork by TsaoShin.

Spotted on DesignTaxi.

This Charming Charlie masterfully blends Peanuts comics with lyrics by The Smiths. (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

It's a sad day: the photoshopping remix site Worth1000 is shutting its doors, victim of being "technologically orphaned" after refactoring its codebase and then losing its programmer. The site's owner, Avi Muchnick, can't make any changes or updates to the site. He's looking for buyers, or suggestions for turning the site into "a static browsable museum." I've blogged plenty of great stuff from Worth1000 over the years and it will be sorely missed. Our commiserations to Avi and the W1K community.

As a direct result of the lack of maintenance, traffic has rapidly declined. Obviously the site can't continue to operate like this and thrive, which leaves me with three choices:

A) Let it continue as is and suffer a slow, drawn-out death. This doesn't appeal to me (or, I'd imagine, to any of you).

B) Try to find a new owner who does have the intent and means to maintain and fix the site going forwards. Or who has a good plan for how to improve / integrate aspects of the site - I don't want the amazing work here to ever go away. Unfortunately, over the last year, although I have found some interest and searched exhaustively, I haven't found the right person who would make a good owner yet or that a transition would be worthwhile for both parties. At this point, I think Choice B highly unlikely enough to consider it a dead-end.

C) Retire Worth1000 and turn it's content into a static museum that doesn't require maintenance and will hopefully be available for everyone to browse forever, as a respectful enduring testament to the amazing creativity of Worth1000 participants. At the very least, I'd like it to forever be a beautiful, streamlined gallery archive of Worth1000's most amazing content, a tribute to the artists who participated here, and a timeline of milestones and important events in Worth1000's history. This is the option I have decided to move forwards with.

The future of Worth1000 - EVERYONE PLEASE READ (Thanks, Galoot!)

Since the Bush administration, successive US Trade Representatives have favored secret treaties, made outside of the UN, without any public scrutiny or accountability. Treaties like ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership introduce brutal regimes of surveillance, censorship, criminalization, and control in the name of preventing copyright infringement. Only one problem: even if the USTR signs up to the agreement, Congress still has to approve it.

But not for long. A clutch of rogue Congresscritters have introduced legislation that would let the president unilaterally sign the US up to trade agreements that would require changes to US law, without any oversight or debate from America's lawmakers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Maira Sutton has named-and-shamed the lawmakers who're rushing to abandon their duty and hand unchecked power over to the administrative branch. They're heavily funded by the entertainment industry, and publicly committed to undermining democratic, transparent process in favor of back-room deals brokered in the service of multinational corporations. Read on to learn their names, then visit EFF's action center to find out how you can fight the undemocratic "Trade Promotion Authority."

So who are the proponents of this unconstitutional procedure? Unsurprisingly, the most ardent supporter is the new US Trade Rep himself, Michael Froman. On multiple occasions, he has called fast track authority a “critical tool” for passing secretive trade agreements. Really that’s just a cute, misleading euphemism for a procedure that directly undermines checks and balances in government. What Froman is saying is that he could do his job more easily if only he didn’t have to deal with those pesky lawmakers who have the power to question his office’s trade priorities. Fortunately for us, that’s just not how democratic lawmaking works. It's just not possible that his office could represent the broad interests of the public [PDF] while giving a few entrenched corporate interests preferential access to negotiations.

More strangely, some of the biggest proponents for fast track authority are Congress members themselves: Notably, Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Max Baucus of Montana. They’ve called on the U.S. Trade Rep to “aggressively protect” intellectual property through its trade agenda, and ahead of Froman’s confirmation for US Trade Rep, Sen. Hatch made a dramatic speech that again reiterated the idea that fast track is a “tool” necessary for trade negotiators do their job. Hatch has had a long-standing relationship with the entertainment industry and also attempted to pass a bill to create a new “Chief Intellectual Property Negotiator” for the US Trade Rep’s office in an effort to entrench copyright and patent issues as a policy matter in secret trade negotiations.

Hatch and Baucus are only a few of many Congress members who support or who have supported fast track (you can see how lawmakers have voted on this in the past here and here). Thankfully, there are some lawmakers who are taking a stand against this unbalanced trade process. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took a stand against Froman’s confirmation as the U.S. Trade Rep due to lack of assurances from him during his nomination hearings that he would improve transparency in the negotiating process. The Senate went ahead and confirmed Froman, but immediately following the vote, 36 Democratic freshmen in the House wrote a letter to the top Democrat on the trade panel to declare their opposition to giving fast track authority to the Obama administration. Then just last week, a bipartisan coalition of Congressional members called for the US Trade Rep to uphold digital, economic interests in trade agreements and to publicly release “detailed information” about copyright provisions in the TPP.

Congress' Copyright Cowards: the Members Who Could Betray Internet Users

On yesterday's "This Week in Google," a Google engineer called Matt Cutts revealed that the company started encrypting its queries in 2008 after reading my novel Little Brother, in which one of the plot-elements is a guerrilla movement that gets a friendly ISP to encrypt a lot of its traffic so that the movement's own encrypted connections won't stand out. I am incredibly honored and flattered to learn about this!

Coincidentally, I learned about this at the same time that Jens brought #oplittlebrother to my attention: it's a plan to organize a mass purchase of Little Brother on Saturday (tomorrow!).

This Week in Google 211: We Just Installed the Internet

Earlier this summer, the German Booksellers Association announced a daft "watermarking" process for ebooks that would introduce random variations in the text as a means of uniquely identifying them. At the time, I pointed out that this was just silly: firstly, it's not hard to detect and vary the watermarks (just compare two different copies of the text using a 40-year-old program called "diff") and secondly, because the fact that a pirate site has a copy of a book with "your" watermark in it doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong. It's not illegal to lose your computer, be hacked, or give your hard-drive away.

What I totally failed to anticipate was that booksellers and publishers would use watermarking as a rubric for tracking and sharing information about everything that everyone is reading. In the Netherlands, ebook sellers have announced that they will retain full reading records on their customers for at least two years, and will share that information with an "anti-piracy" group called BREIN (a group that already has the power to order Dutch ISPs to censor the Internet, without due process or judicial oversight; and who, ironically, were caught ripping off musicians for their anti-piracy ads).

I am not often shocked by the insanity of anti-piracy efforts, but this one has me agog. As a former bookseller, I can't believe that people in the business of putting books into readers' hands would casually spy on their customers' reading habits, and, worse still, turn them over to a sleazy third party with a track-record of bullying, corruption, and censorship.

It's hard to imagine a less ethical business practice. Piracy (that is, "reading books the wrong way") pales by comparison alongside of it. If the Dutch booksellers had set out to build the case for piracy as the safest, most virtuous reading practice, they could have done no better.

The new digital distribution deal for eBook merchants will see them ‘watermark’ unique codes into the digital eBooks they sell which will identify a specific transaction number. These transaction numbers will be linked directly to a specific customer account.

So far the process isn’t much out of the ordinary, but the new deal will also bridge the missing link between random-looking transaction numbers in a digital file on the Internet and a real person’s identity.

The agreement will see vendors connected to the eBoekhuis platform share previously-private customer data directly with copyright holders and anti-piracy group BREIN. This means that should digital books turn up on BitTorrent networks or Usenet for example, with a minimum of fuss BREIN will be able to match the embedded watermarks with the customer who bought them.

According to the document seen by EReaders.nl, eBook vendors will be required to store customer transaction data and make it available to BREIN and rightsholders for a minimum of two years.

EBook Sellers Strike Deal To Share Customer Details With Anti-Piracy Outfit

Posting (with permission) an e-mail I got from an occasional Whatever commenter, because this seems something worth pointing people’s attention to. For reasons that will become clear, I’m trimming out the person’s name, although I know who it is and I find them to be credible.

At the time of the posting here, the character in question has his Twitter account suspended, but his Storify account is still up and running. And, yup, it’s exactly as it’s described.

For my part, it seems pretty clear that Storify can deal with this dude, based on its own Terms of Service. The question is whether it will, and if not, why not.

What follows is this person’s e-mail and interpretation of events. I have added in relevant links.

—–

A Twitter and Storify user who goes by the handle “@elevatorGATE” is a well-known cyberstalker of women via social media. His latest method of doing this is to compile thousands of pieces on Storify, often including every single tweet sent by his chosen targets, and then publish them, which notifies the women in question that he had published yet another piece archiving their every word. After repeated complaints and requests for help, Storify temporarily deactivated the notification feature on his account, which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

In a conversation yesterday with Xavier Damman, the Storify CEO suggested that the women @elevatorGATE is targeting turn off all notifications from Storify, which essentially suggests that they withdraw from the medium if they don’t like being stalked, and which also wouldn’t solve the problem of this user archiving everything these women say. One of the users pointed out that this is very much like telling a woman who is being harassed via telephone to never answer the phone. It was at this point in the conversation that Damman went from passively enabling a stalker to actively assisting one. He tweeted, in response to the women, that they “…can’t do anything about that. It’s @elevatorgate’s right to quote public statements…”

Prior to this point in the conversation, the women had named their stalker, but not used the @ symbol in front of his username. You know enough about Twitter to know why that’s a big deal. Damman either carelessly or deliberately notified a man stalking multiple women that they were seeking some way to prevent him from continuing to harass them, and then claimed it was no big deal because anyone searching for the information would have been able to find it. But there’s a very big difference between information existing and that same information being directly brought to a person’s attention.

If you know much about stalking, you’ll know what happens next. @elevatorGATE has substantially stepped up his harassment of the women who had asked Damman for help. Men who follow him on both Storify and Twitter have been bombarding these women via Storify notifications and Tweets with additional harassment. He has also increased his harassment of known online associates of the women in question, making it difficult for them to seek out help or support from fear of his beginning to stalk their friends as well. It’s the reason I’m contacting you privately, via email, rather than via social media: I’m afraid. I don’t want to be added to his list of targets.

Despite Damman’s claims that they can’t do anything, @elevatorGATE is violating Storify’s Terms of Service, which forbids users to:

Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any Content that: (ii): violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation… (v) promotes discrimination, bigotry, racism, hatred, harassment or harm against any individual or group…

Violate any applicable law or regulation…

Encourage or enable any other individual to do any of the foregoing.

@elevatorGATE’s conduct is encouraging his followers to stalk and harass several women. Since cyberstalking is against US law under 47 USC § 223 and the Violence Against Women Act, he is violating other Terms of Service as well.

Please help us put pressure on Storify to follow their posted Terms of Service, post a clear harassment policy, and ban this known stalker and delete his thousands of posts.

In the UK, rightsholders have the power to demand arbitrary censorship of websites they dislike, and ISPs are required to block those sites. The Premier League -- the multibillion-dollar football organization -- carelessly added the IP address of a major web-host to its censorship list, and as a result blocked The Radio Times (the BBC's listing service), Galaxy Zoo (an important astronomical research project), and many other legitimate sites. People who tried to visit those sites instead saw a warning saying that the sites were devoted to copyright infringement and that anyone visiting them was also infringing copyright.

ISPs were flooded with complaints, and began to unblock the sites themselves. But the Premier League is outraged at this. They say that even if the Premier League censored the wrong sites, it isn't up to the ISPs to uncensor them -- the ISPs are supposed to comply with the lists they get from rightsholders, no questions asked.

The way the system works is that the rights-holders are responsible for identifying which IP addresses are being used and then sending the details to the ISPs.

The court specifically said that ISPs are "wholly reliant" on the rights-holders "accurately identifying" which IPs should be blocked and had "no obligation" to check them themselves.

In addition to Radio Times, several football clubs - including Blackburn Rovers, Reading and Brentford - as well as the Notes from Nature science project and Galaxy Zoo space education site have been affected...

... "The court order that requires internet service providers to block this website clearly states that any issues they have in implementing the block must be raised with the Premier League before taking any further action," said a spokesman.

"This is the first we have heard of this issue and are looking into it as a matter of urgency.

"The fact remains that the High Court has ordered an injunction requiring ISPs to block First Row Sports and we will continue to implement it and expect the ISPs to respect the ruling."

Radio Times caught up in Premier League's piracy fight

Photo: "Free Bradley Manning" flyer on a pole, seen on 3rd Ave in Seattle, photo by Bryan W. Jones in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.

Yesterday at Fort Meade, Maryland, Pfc. Bradley Manning spoke in his defense in the sentencing phase of his court-martial. Col. Denise Lind, the judge in this trial, may determine that Manning must be sentenced to up to 90 years in prison for leaking government documents to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. In his statement before the court, Manning apologized for the "hurt" he inflicted on the United States, and referenced the gender identity issues that triggered a personal crisis in Iraq. Snip from his unsworn testimony:

First your Honor. I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I am sorry that it hurt the United States. At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues-- issues that are ongoing and they are continuing to affect me.

Although they have caused me considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions. I understood what I was doing and the decisions I made. However, I did not truly appreciate the broader effects of my actions. Those effects are clearer to me now through both self-reflection during my confinement in its various forms and through the merits and sentencing testimony that I have seen here.

Manning's defense is doing what any competent legal team would: trying to convince the judge to reduce the sentence as much as possible.

But Rainey Reitman at Freedom of the Press Foundation argues that while this strategy is understandable, the world should know that the 25 year old former Army intelligence analyst has nothing to apologize for because "The public has benefited tremendously as a result of Manning’s disclosures."

For years now, the government may have attempted to paint a dire picture of WikiLeaks’ potential impact, but they’ve also admitted, quietly but repeatedly, that the results have been more embarrassing than harmful.

Even when the WikiLeaks hysteria was in full swing, government officials from the State Department have briefed Congress on the impact of the Wikileaks revelations, and have said that the leaks were "embarrassing but not damaging." U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that, while some of the information may have been embarrassing, “I don’t think there is any substantive damage.”

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has admitted the leaks caused no serious damage, telling Congress that the reactions to the leaks were "significantly overwrought." He went on to say: “Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’

At the same time, Reuters reported that other officials were admitting in private that they were exaggerating the damage that resulted from the leaks in order to bolster the legal efforts against WikiLeaks and Manning.

This has born out in Manning’s trial and sentencing hearing. It’s why the government fought so hard to keep its official WikiLeaks “damage assessments” from being revealed in court. It’s why, despite all the government’s overwrought pronouncements early on of “blood on the hands” of those responsible, a U.S. official was forced to admit under oath in Manning’s sentencing hearing that not a single person died as a result of the releases.

• Here is Boing Boing's coverage archive of the Bradley Manning trial.

Related reports from journalists/bloggers who are at Fort Meade, covering the trial:

• Bradley Manning, family, and doctors take stand: report and analysis: trial day 34 [Nathan Fuller]
• Manning, Facing Prison for Leaks, Apologizes at Court-Martial Trial [Charlie Savage]
• Manning Gives Contrite Remarks at Sentencing [Adam Klasfeld]

• Alexa O'Brien spoke on Democracy Now today about Manning's statement. Video below.

The transcript of Bradley Manning's full statement to the court yesterday (starts on page 90): https://t.co/Jmy9NkXBLT

— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) August 15, 2013

Remember Jacques Nazaire? He's the lawyer who represented notorious, disgraced copyright trolls Prenda Law (who victimized thousands of Americans by threatening to link them to spurious lawsuits over downloads of pornography with embarrassing titles unless they paid hush-money)? He got written up here when he told a judge in Georgia that a California judge's rebuke of Prenda should not be taken into consideration because California is a horrible, strange place where gay people get married.

Now Mr Nazaire has asked the court to seal the rest of the proceedings from the case, because he's worried that people might make fun of him on message boards. Because someone who thinks ZOMGCALIFORNIAGAY is a legal argument clearly has something to worry about on that score.

By the way, lawyers for one of Prenda's victims are fundraising to get the money to depose the Prenda team. I pitched in.

That case has continued and there was a hearing back in January that didn't go particularly well for Nazaire. Andrew Norton attended and wrote about it. Anyway, the latest in the case is that Nazaire is asking the court to seal all future filings in the case, mainly because the comments here on Techdirt, along with a few other blogs, have been really really mean about Nazaire. The main purpose of the filing is to try to stop the discovery efforts opened up by the defendant in the case, Rajesh Patel, represented by Blair Chintella, as they're seeking attorneys' fees from Nazaire and Prenda -- and, as part of that, are trying to do detailed discovery to reveal more about the Prenda scam. Nazaire throws a bunch of excuses at the wall for why this shouldn't be allowed. But the request to seal the records is much more interesting to us:

Additionally, the Plaintiff is respectfully requesting that any future filings in this case may be filed under seal. This case has generated much unneeded attention on the internet. Please see Exhibits N-S. While the writers listed in exhibits N-S have the right to post these articles, unfortunately, these articles and blogs have created an embarrassment, misleading characterizations and perhaps an unsafe environment for plaintiff's counsel and third parties. As such, plaintiff is respectfully requesting that all future filings be permitted to be made under seal.

Plaintiff 1) understands that the articles attached hereto have not been authenticated and apologizes to this Court for the same. In such a short notice of time, it is difficult to authenticate these press releases and postings; however, a search on any search engine will prove these articles and postings to be real; and 2) Plaintiff is not criticizing the authors of the press releases and postings and realizes that the attached postings were meant to be humorous and not spiteful; nevertheless, those not familiar with this case may misinterpret said postings. This may lead to anger by those not quite familiar with the case but yet familiar with the captions. As such, it may be best for the court to allow sealing further filings (which may include addresses and personal information of the parties and counsels herein)

Prenda Lawyer Would Like Future Documents Sealed Because Techdirt Commenters Said Mean Stuff About Him

On two occassions, the Dayton Daily News accidentally switched the captions for Gary Larson's The Far Side and Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace. They should have done this more often! The alterations definitely work.

Link -via reddit

Amy Goodman at Democracy Now interviewed Ladar Levison, founder/owner/operator of Lavabit, the security-focused email service Edward Snowden used to invite attendees to a Moscow press conference; the service was abruptly closed last week with an explanation pointing to US government interference. He joined the show from Washington DC with his lawyer, Jesse Binnall. Goodman asks Levison to explain why he closed the company:

LADAR LEVISON: I’ve compared the decision to that of, you know, putting a beloved pet to sleep, you know, faced with the choice of watching it suffer or putting it to sleep quietly. It was a very difficult decision. But I felt that in the end I had to pick between the lesser of two evils and that shutting down the service, if it was no longer secure, was the better option. It was, in effect, the lesser of the two evils.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you facing? When you say "the lesser of two evils," what was the other choice?

LADAR LEVISON: Unfortunately, I can’t talk about that. I would like to, believe me. I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore, which is why I’m here in D.C. today speaking to you. My hope is that, you know, the media can uncover what’s going on, without my assistance, and, you know, sort of pressure both Congress and our efforts through the court system to, in effect, put a cap on what it is the government is entitled to in terms of our private communications.