A story in the New York Times (via Seattle Times) tells of the surveillance powers the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA, gives to the government and to 474 local governments and 318 agencies — including the Ambulance Service and the Charity Commission — powers once held by only a handful of law-enforcement and security-service organizations.

“Under the law, the localities and agencies can film people with hidden cameras, trawl through communication traffic data, such as telephone calls and Web site visits, and enlist undercover “agents” to pose, for example, as teenagers who want to buy alcohol.”

In a report this summer, Christopher Rose, the chief British surveillance commissioner, said local governments conducted nearly 5,000 “directed surveillance missions” in the year that ended in March and that other public authorities carried out roughly the same amount.

Examples given in the article are chilling.  The law is being used by localities to determine such things as whether a family really lives in the school district they are sending their child to, using such means as covertly following the mother and children around for three weeks.  Local governments regularly use these surveillance powers — which they “self-authorize,” without oversight from judges or law-enforcement officers.

It turned out that the Paton family had done nothing wrong.  Mrs. Paton said she would have been perfectly willing to answer any questions if they had just asked.  Instead a “surveillance log” was created and now no one has answered her questions, such as ” ‘How many people were in the car? Were they men or women? Did they take any photos? Does this mean I have a criminal record?’”  “They said my privacy wasn’t intruded on because the surveillance was covert,” she said.

Could it happen here?  We’ve been living uncomfortably with the PATRIOT Act since shortly after 9/11/2001.  Image by takomabibelot.  Creative Commons license.

A Washington Post article notes that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has been working on possible revisions.   Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute says that it has “omitted the most elementary civil liberties safeguards from legislation.”

Michael MacLeod-Ball, acting director of the Washington office of the ACLU says,

“Stating that the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Patriot Act reauthorization bill strikes a fine balance between civil liberties and law was misguided [editorial, Oct. 13].  Americans have a constitutional right not to be spied upon by the government unless there is some reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, and this bill forgoes that suspicion in far too many provisions.

Though the Obama administration has claimed that it needs every inch of power that the Patriot Act affords, not everyone is convinced. Even after receiving a classified briefing from the administration last week, Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) still felt that further privacy protections should be written into the bill. The administration has yet to make a public argument for why modest reforms to these provisions would harm investigations and, it seems, those arguments made behind closed doors are not wholly convincing, either.

By extending these Patriot Act surveillance provisions virtually untouched for another four years, Congress will be once again endorsing the overreaching policies of the Bush administration. Only now these policies come with the Obama administration’s stamp of approval.”

Report from Wired: “In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”

The idea for use of Visible Technologies is to keep track of foreign social media, and “give spooks early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally”, but of course the tool can and is being used internally by companies tracking the “buzz” (e.g., bloggers, tweeters) about their products or companies.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists.  But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations.  Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage.  That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”

Read more at Wired.  Adapted image by Crys.  Creative Commons license.

The Internet Archive (IA) is in the early stages of development of BookServer, with the “lofty goal to essentially create an open web of books where anyone can publish their books and make their content available via search,” says ReadWriteWeb.

According to IA, BookServer is “a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet.  Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices.  BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books.”

BookServer will provide book publishers and online libraries with the means to more effectively compete with online bookstores like Amazon and Google.  It will allow publishers to set their own pricing and manage the distribution of their books.  A secondary goal of BookServer’s open system is to fight back against the proprietary marketplaces, such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and other booksellers using proprietary formats.  It’s confusing for consumers who face a multitude of choices with limited information about which formats will work on which devices.

RWW notes that “while Google promises its Google Editions store will allow anyone to access digital books as long as they have a web browser and internet access, it’s still unknown at this time how the company plans to make the digital content available offline.  Will it require the use of special web browser plugins to do so? Until Google reveals more about the technical details, it is not possible to know how truly open their online store will be.  And even if their store is 100% open, they are still a company whose ultimate goal is to profit from their work of digitizing books.  BookServer’s goal, on the other hand, is to provide universal access to book data made available in open formats.”

IA says that many will benefit from BookServer:

• Authors find wider distribution for their work.
• Publishers both big and small can distribute books directly to readers.
• Book sellers find new and larger audiences for their products.
• Device makers can offer access to millions of books instantly.
• Libraries can continue to loan books in the way that patrons expect.
• Readers get universal access to all knowledge.

They have provided a slide show called Web of Books on Slideshare to explain how BookServer will work.

24 CEOs and founders representing the world’s leading Internet and technology companies — including Facebook, Sony, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Google — threw their support behind the effort to protect an open Internet in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski today.

Google Public Policy blog notes that “an open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.”

The open Internet has been a platform for innovation, economic growth and free expression — “an environment where consumers, not broadband providers, choose winners and losers.”

Support for “net neutrality” by tech companies was expressed at an appropriate time since this is the beginning of Open Access Week, “a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge.  It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.”

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hopes for formal Net Neutrality legislation to preserve a “free and open Internet.”  A new website, OpenInternet.gov will foster future discussion about the topic.  Mr Genachowski makes his case in a video at the site which explains the historic importance of the Internet and the need to continue its openness.  According to him,

“Broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes.

Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

Mashable noted a few days ago that it is likely that Genachowski’s proposal will ultimately pass, as 3 of 5 voters on the FCC’s board have voiced support for Net Neutrality. “Nonetheless, it’s nice to see that the FCC has taken the proactive approach of explaining the importance of the issue to the public, and hopefully OpenInternet.gov will follow through on its promise to evolve and support more user engagement,” they said.

I’ve been using Facebook more lately as I have mentioned, so these reminders to guard my privacy were timely.

First, remember that over-sharing on the Net, especially on social networks designed to help us build and keep connections, is all too easy and not a good idea.  Be mindful of who can see your information and think about just what and how you want to share it.  For example, ReadWriteWeb asks, “did you know that 30% of today’s employers are using Facebook to vet potential employees prior to hiring?” (they use other networks, as well)  The question of whether information or photos may be detrimental to yourself or friends should be considered before posting.

There are many privacy controls which you should take the time to explore and seriously consider.  RWW recommends these simple precautions when using Facebook:

• Make a Friends list.  Click on “Friends” at the top of the Facebook homepage.  In the left-hand column, click “Friends” again under the “Lists” section.  Now you’ll see a button at the top that says “Create New List”.  Click it and name your list and pick members.  When you’ve finished making lists, you’ll be able to use them when selecting who can see what (or who can’t!) when configuring the security settings.
• Who can see what’s on your profile?  Use the Settings>Privacy>Profile page to decide and choose.
• Who can see your address and phone number?  Are you open to the world?
• Who can find you on Facebook via Search?  Use the “Search Visibility” drop-down box to make your selection.  Choose “Only Friends” for the most restrictive privacy.  That means only the people who you’ve already friended can find you in a Facebook search.
• Stop sharing personal info with unknown applications.  Using Facebook’s default settings, you’re unknowingly sharing personal information (and your friends’ info too!) with various Facebook applications and the developers who created them.  The problem is so bad that the ACLU recently created their own Facebook Quiz to demonstrate how much information an app has access to.

A new Google map showing challenges to books in schools and libraries in the U.S. has been posted on the Banned Books Week website.

More than 120 challenges nationwide have occurred since the beginning of 2007.  The cases have been documented by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Kids’ Right to Read Project, which is sponsored by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the National Coalition Against Censorship.  It is estimated that 70 to 80 percent of challenges are not reported.

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read.  This year’s events will occur from Sept. 26 through Oct. 3.  The website includes a state-by-state listing to help people find displays and events in their area.

Tynt’s Tracer sounds like an interesting and potentially useful free tool.  When content from your website is highlighted and copied, Tracer automatically adds a link back to the original page that is copied.  For instance, when I copied and pasted the bulleted information below from Tynt, the attribution info came with it:  “Read more. Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives.”

Tynt says that you can use it to:

• Generate more visits and page views.
• Get credit when content is copied from your site.
• Measure and understand user engagement.
• Improve your search engine ranking.

Creative Commons featured the Tynt Tracer tool in a blog post and I saw it referred to here, as well.  The tool adds a “few lines of JavaScript that automatically add license and attribution information to a user’s clipboard when they copy text.”  One could remove the code, but it does make attribution convenient.

Tynt answers the question, “Why Tracer?” and gives information about how to add Tracer to your blog, with specific instructions for the most popular types such as Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and more.

Several websites have been launched to further President Obama’s goals toward improving transparency and encouraging citizen participation in government, notes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The much anticipated data.gov site provides public access to machine readable datasets from government agencies, with the goal of inspiring innovative uses of government data by developers and researchers — a process that has already begun with the Apps for America 2 contest and the Innovations Gallery, which highlights pro-transparency efforts of government agencies.

To improve citizen participation, the government is seeking public submissions to the Open Government Dialogue, a collaborative “idea” site similar to the “Join the Discussion” site used by the Obama transition team earlier.  The site will collect and rank policy ideas from the public on topics such as transparency, participation, collaboration, capacity building, and legal and policy challenges.  This is the first step in a three-part policymaking process that will include blog discussions and collaborative editing of the recommendations on a wiki.  The Administration also relaunched regulations.gov to let the public voice opinions about government rulemakings.

The EFF says they are excited to see the government using the participatory, collaborative power of the web to enhance policymaking processes and look forward to seeing more steps from the Administration to make the promise of government transparency a reality.

Google’s Public Policy Blog is attempting to answer questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers as it expands access to books in the U.S.

Authors and publishers with questions should visit the settlement Notice website.

Here’s some basics of the settlement:

• When you find the book you’re searching for, you’ll be able to preview 20% of the book over the Internet from anywhere in the U.S. If you want to look at the whole thing, you’ll be able to go down to your public library where there will be a computer station with access to the whole book for free. And if you don’t want to leave home or want a copy for yourself, you’ll be able to purchase access to an electronic copy of the book. As always, if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, you’ll be able to download the whole book for free.
• If you’re at a university, in addition to your libraries’ free access points, your school can obtain an institutional subscription that gives you access to most books that we’ve scanned. And scholars and students who don’t keep the same study hours as the library will be able to look at any book, anywhere, any time.
• If you are vision impaired, the settlement will open a world of books to which you’ve never had access. Visually impaired people will be able to search for books through the Google Books interface and purchase, borrow, or read at a public library any of the books that are available to the general public in a format that is accessible to the vision impaired.
• If you want to read in foreign languages, you will have access to tens of thousands of more books than you have today. Books in Spanish add up to almost 10% of the books already scanned. If you account for the difference in numbers between books in Spanish and English, the usage per book in Spanish is more than three times what it is for books in English.

“The settlement won’t just expand access to out-of-print books, either.  Because authors and publishers will have the ability to let users preview and purchase their in-print books through Google Book Search, readers will have even more options for accessing in-print books than they have today.”