Civil Liberties

Tomorrow night on PBS’s Frontline is “Spying on the Homefront”: FRONTLINE addresses an issue of major consequence for all Americans: Is the Bush administration’s domestic war on terrorism jeopardizing our civil liberties? Reporter Hedrick Smith presents new material on how the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program works and examines clashing viewpoints on whether the president has violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and infringed on constitutional protections. In another dramatic story, the program shows how the FBI vacuumed up records on 250,000 ordinary Americans who chose Las Vegas as the destination for their Christmas-New Year’s holiday, and the subsequent revelation that the FBI has misused National Security Letters to gather information. Probing such projects as Total Information Awareness, and its little known successors, Smith discloses that even former government intelligence officials now worry that the combination of new security threats, advances in communications technologies, and radical interpretations of presidential authority may be threatening the privacy of Americans.(Via the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)

Today’s the day that providers of VoIP and broadband Internet in the United States must comply with CALEA, mandating that they supply a way for law enforcement to eavesdrop on any communications carried over those mechanisms. I suspect many VoIP providers are in compliance but that fewer broadband Internet providers are, since the draft standard for CALEA for data over broadband Internet only came out in March. (And if you’d like to read the standard, it will cost you $164 for the PDF or $185 for a paper copy.) Bob Hagen at the Global Crossing blog points out some free tools that can be used to protect your privacy.

The LaClair family and the Kearny Board of Education have settled their dispute regarding David Paszkiewicz’s proselytization in U.S. history class, as reported in the New York Times: The Kearny Board of Education in New Jersey and the parents of Matthew LaClair, a 17-year-old junior at Kearny High School, settled their dispute on Tuesday night about a teacher who proselytized in class. The settlement will include training for teachers and students about the separation of church and state and a public statement by the board praising Matthew for bringing the matter to its attention. ...

70 D0 87 F2 02 2E 37 96 EB 84 B3 1B B5 92 10 E7 This 128-bit integer was used to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and all rights to decrypt that haiku with this integer have been given to me. You may not use this 128-bit integer for any purpose; if you distribute it or publish it you are in violation of the DMCA's restrictions on circumvention. (Actually, I've probably blown it by publishing this number--but there are others which are mine and which you also may not obtain or distribute. And that goes for you, too, AACS LA.) You can get your own 128-bit integer and read the haiku for yourself at Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog. Einzige (2007-05-08): Is only the hexidecimal version yours, or do the base 10 and base 3 (and base x) versions also belong only to you? ...

AACS keys are used to encrypt the content of HD-DVDs (this is an oversimplification; see Ed Felten’s Freedom-to-Tinker blog for more detail). A particular “processing key” for AACS has recently been distributed on the Internet, with the AACS Licensing Authority issuing cease and desist orders to try to stop it. This has led to new and creative ways of distributing this 128-bit number, just as occurred with the DeCSS code for decrypting DVDs. When a cease-and-desist order went to digg, digg’s users proceeded to give diggs to many different sites, at one point leading to the entire front page of digg being full of nothing but links to pages with the AACS key. A couple of the more interesting methods include making the number into a song and displaying it with satellite photos of buildings that resemble hex digits. One individual appears to have had it tattooed on his chest. This is exactly what we saw with DeCSS, which is memorialized in Dave Touretzky’s Gallery of CSS Descramblers. This case is even more absurd, in that AACS LA is claiming ownership of a number–and a relatively short one–not because it encodes any content or algorithm, but because it’s one of potentially millions of keys assigned for use with its system. UPDATE (May 11, 2007): As this t-shirt makes clear, trying to protect against the distribution of a 128-bit number is futile when knowledge of the number can be easily distributed without using the number itself. I’d love to see AACS LA try to make a case against the marketing and sale of this shirt.

You aren’t allowed to say if you’ve received a National Security Letter. But there’s no law that says you can’t say that you haven’t received one. Thus, rsync.net has a “warrant canary”–they periodically post a cryptographically signed statement that they have not, to date, received any PATRIOT Act warrants or had any searches and seizures. If they stop updating the statement, then you can draw your own conclusions. The second of these library signs uses the same principle: “The FBI has not been here [watch closely for removal of this sign]." (Via jwz’s blog, where some commenters question whether the recent Washington Post piece by the recipient of a National Security Letter is truthful. Note that the ACLU has a lawsuit going on about this case, which I previously noted back in 2005.) ...

Alberto Santos, the mayor of Kearny, New Jersey, has spoken out on the David Paszkiewicz affair, with a cogent statement. Historical Comments Einzige (2007-03-09): I note with some dismay (but no real surprise) that the Mayor's recommendations don't seem to include any sort of disciplinary action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.

When Matt LaClair spoke before the Kearny board of education earlier this week, he gave the board a CD recording of his initial meeting with David Paszkiewicz and Kearny High School principal Al Somma, in which Paszkiewicz denied making the statements that LaClair attributed to him. LaClair had also recorded those, and proved to Somma that Paszkiewicz had lied when he denied making the statements. This recording now proves to everyone other than LaClair, Somma, and Paszkiewicz that Paszkiewicz actually made the denials. The recording of the meeting is available via the website of The Observer editor Kevin Canessa. Canessa also has photos of the board meeting, where Paszkiewicz supporters in the audience held up signs to prevent camera crews from recording the statement made by Paul LaClair, Matthew’s father.

The Florida state appeals court ruled that a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy in Tallahassee who took digital photos of themselves having sex were guilty of violating child pornography laws. The appeals court panel rules 2-3 that the Florida Constitution’s right to privacy did not protect them. Judge James Wolf, in the majority opinion, wrote that they could sell the photos to child pornographers, and “if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors’ careers or personal lives.” Apparently he’s not concerned about the damage he’s doing to them by causing them to become convicted child pornographers for taking pictures of themselves. Judge Philip Padovano, in his dissent, wrote that the law was intended to prevent children from being abused by others, not to punish them for their own mistakes. More details in Declan McCullagh’s story at News.com. ...

Last week in class David Paszkiewicz was discussing Adolf Hitler and the “Big Lie” propaganda technique. His example of a “Big Lie” being spread today: global warming. In Paszkiewicz’s backwards world, it’s not global warming denial that’s a big lie, it’s the scientific evidence supporting it. Kearny High School has taken action regarding Paszkiewicz’s continuing embarrassment of the school–by banning classroom taping without permission of the instructor. (They have also planned mandatory training for teachers on “how to interpret the Constitution’s separation of church and state and how it should apply to classroom discussions,” as I reported last month.) The New York Times has the story. ...