A Dangerous Ploy - Seizing Control of the Internet

Qbit.cc has found a particularly troubling piece of legislation currently in Congress. The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced by Senators Rockefeller, Bayh, Nelson, and Snowe, aims to "ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States." The Act then goes on in legalese to further explain and elaborate upon how exactly this fine goal is to be achieved. Steven Bellovin, a professor of Computer Science at Colombia University, has a wonderful analysis of the technical efficiency of the various provisions, citing both good and bad applications of the law. The major fear that Qbit has brought to mind, though, lies in Section 9.

SEC. 9. SECURE DOMAIN NAME ADDRESSING SYSTEM.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Within 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information shall develop a strategy to implement a secure domain name addressing system. The Assistant Secretary shall publish notice of the system requirements in the Federal Register together with an implementation schedule for Federal agencies and information systems or networks designated by the President, or the President’s designee, as critical infrastructure information systems or networks.

b) COMPLIANCE REQUIRED.—The President shall ensure that each Federal agency and each such system or network implements the secure domain name addressing system in accordance with the schedule published by the Assistant Secretary.

Essentially, this section calls for the eventual phasing in of a federal replacement of the current DNS (Domain Naming System). Currently, the DNS is administered by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In order to understand the implications of a change in control, it is important to understand what exactly the DNS does.

The DNS is a hierarchical system that allows for translation between human-meaningful phrases and computer code. It's the system that translates icanhascheezburger.com into 72.233.69.8, to allow the computer to understand what exactly it is looking for. In order to make these mappings consistent, however, there needs to be a unique bijection between the two - only one web site per name. This is what the ICANN currently does. ICANN oversees the domain registration and allocation process in a fair, balanced manner. This is the power that the government is currently seeking - the ability to control domain registration.

This power holds much potential for government abuse, though. We've already seen the abuse of the Terrorist Watch List for political benefit, with police departments adding protesting activists to the List for merely protesting, and children as young as 7 being placed on the List. Effectively, the government would hold veto power over anyone wishing to publish on the internet, and pull the plug if it disagrees with the message. Even though the current administration says it has no plans to use the power thusly, putting such powers in the hands of government in the first place is a dangerous undertaking. Especially if the power granted would have little effect on the cause the act is trying to promote.

The DNS only controls attempts to connect to other computers via what most people consider regular methods. Attempts that use only IP addresses to connect to servers, i.e. most hackers, would be completely unaffected by the changeover in power. In effect, the government seizure would hinder honest citizens while having no effect on the criminal class the Act is trying to protect against.

A combination of 2 further sections, Sections 18 and 23, holds even further chilling possiblities for abuse.

SEC. 18. CYBERSECURITY RESPONSIBILITIES AND AUTHORITY

The President—
. . .
(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network
. . .
(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security

SEC. 23. DEFINITIONS.

(3) FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND UNITED STATES CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS.—

The term ‘‘Federal government and United States critical infrastructure in formation systems and networks’’ includes—

(B) State, local, and nongovernmental information systems and networks in the United States designated by the President as critical infrastructure information systems and networks.

Section 18 gives the President the ability to declare a cybersecurity emergy, shutting down "Federal government and United States critical infrastructure in formation systems and networks". These are then defined in 23 to be pretty much whatever the President wants it to be. The President, therefore, can shut down whatever communication systems he/she decides to in the name of cybersecurity, which also has been helpfully left up to the President to decide when a cybersecurity crisis is occuring. This simply cannot stand. The government can not be in the business of deciding which voices get heard and which do not on the Internet. Even though there is little history of the Internet, the Internet has been established as a public forum, open to anyone to post. If the government controls whoever gets to post there, inroads will be made to erode the openness of the Internet, and eventually the government will be able to usurp one of the greatest tools free speech has seen in a long, long time.

When Good Ideas Get Corrupted - Hiding Behind Charges of Racism and Free Speech

Next week, Geneva, Switzerland will be host to the Durban Review Conference, a review of the Durban Declaration of 2001. The Durban Declaration, and supporting documents, are anti-racist, meant to declare and condemn those who would perpetrate racist policies and other forms of intolerance, such as that against women or HIV+ people. A rather noble cause, one the U.S. would be sure to get behind, you'd think.

However, according to CNN, the U.S. will be boycotting the conference, along with Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and Israel, due to revisions that did not meet the expectations of the U.S. Specifically, the Programme of Action adopted contains language that "prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians," according to the State Department. Other countries voiced similar concerns over the singling out of Israel and the Palestinian Conflict. Obama's administration also rejected language concerning the incitement of racial hatred, citing First Amendment conflicts with free speech. However, the Obama administration will still be committed to ending bigotry and racial inequality with other nations.

Ironically, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay released a statement in response to the boycott, saying "A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance to a pernicious and life-damaging degree on a daily basis all across the world, in both developed and developing countries." While charging the boycotter's with narrow-mindedness and tunnel vision, she fails to recognize that such single-minded determination on a single issue is what caused these nations to boycott the conference in the first place. The first Durban Conference was plagued by constant attacks on Israel's side in the Palestinian conflict, and reaffirming the Durban documents is rather counter to what Israel and its allies consider fair. As noted before in this blog, the UN is not infallible in rooting out the forces of intolerance. The UN is merely a conglomerate of its members, and if the members continue to be unabashedly intolerant, then the UN can not claim to be above such things either. Hiding intolerance behind the guise of attacking intolerance does not justify anything - the ends do NOT justify the means.

While this issue may not be a specific offense against free speech, it is still an example of what is to come, and what has passed - the continual, deliberate erosion of freedoms by those who cover themselves in the cloak of "equality." The equality they fight for, however, is the "freedom" to continue their own inhumane and intolerant policies while denying others the ability to criticize them. It is unfortunate that it should seem the divide fall along religious grounds, but if such is the case, then such are the terms to be used - no pussyfooting around it.

However, the incitement clause is a heavy indictment against free speech. Free speech includes the right to hold opinions different from our own, no matter how repugnant we may find them. It is this variance of thought that is embedded in the Constitution. The Durban Programme of Action, though, calls for the signatories to "denounce and actively discourage" racist and xenophobic comments on the internet. Under US judicial precedence, the closest exceptions to protected speech are incitement to crime, breach of the peace, and fighting words. Fighting words, however, must be addressed to a single person, and racist/xenophobic comments on the Internet are not exactly addressed individually. Incitement to crime requires that the speaker deliberately attempt to convince the listener to commit racial violence. Merely ranting about the intellectual and moral inadequacies of racial groups is not enough cause to indict on incitement. Causing a breach of the peace requires some form of unwilling, unreasonable disruption of "peace and quiet," which doesn't exactly happen on the Internet. There is a certain kind of deliberate action that must be taken to access Internet content, and that level of implied consent denies any claim to "peace and quiet." Since mere transmission of racist/xenophobic comments don't fall under unprotected speech categories, that means that they are protected under the free speech doctrine, and constitutionally, the US can not accept the terms of the Durban Programme of Action as they stand.

When Cops Go Rogue - Blatantly Illegal Police Actions

On March 12, 2009, the Police Department of Phoenix, Arizona, raided the home of Jeff Pataky for "petty theft and computer tampering with intent to harass", and recently added identity theft to the charges for stealing name plates of police officers and harassing them.

Sounds innocent enough, until you find that Jeff Pataky is the operator of Bad Phoenix Cops , a blog dedicated to exposing corruption and deceit within the Phoenix Police Department. Pataky started the site after he was "maliciously prosecuted" by police after his ex-wife falsely accused him of harassing her, which he quite obviously disproved by being out of town on every occasion. According to Pataky, the police took computers, modems, routers, hard drives, memory cards, and other equipment - basically anything that would allow Pataky to continue blogging. They also took numerous personal files pertaining to Pataky's pending lawsuit against the department for their harassment of Pataky and attempts to illegally stifle his criticism on the blog. Pataky dismisses these charges, as the "stolen" nameplates were made at a local trophy shop, with instructions posted on the blog for further dissemination, and his "harassment" of the police is the public exposure of their corruption and disregard for legal processes - as immediate in the public concern as it can get.

Excuse me for a moment, but WHAT. THE. FUCK. Police are raiding a blogger critical of them and essentially stealing the equipment necessary for him to reach his audience. This is, quite possibly, the greatest hypocrisy of "serving the public" that I have ever seen.

However embarassing the information Pataky posts on his blog may be, as public officials, the police officers lambasted have no legal recourse against the criticism, unless they can show Pataky made his comments with actual malice. The Supreme Court ruled as such in New York Times v Sullivan, when it was ruled that public officials could not silence their critics unless they could show that the criticism was knowingly false and malicious in content. While Pataky's postings may be malicious, they certainly are most likely true, as the source for all of Pataky's work comes from insiders in the police department, both current and retired. Given the nature and source of the complaints against these police, and the complete over-reaction against Pataky's home, it will be extremely difficult for them to prove actual malice on Pataky's part - if the charges are false at all. If the charges are true, then as public officials, such information is critical for an honest evaluation of the police force, and a critical public interest is vested in the information. With such a heavy public interest, Pataky has every right to publish the complaints and accusations against Phoenix police officers. The burden of proof is on the officers. If they don't want to see their names on the web, stop doing illegal shit and telling everyone about it.

Final Thought: Assistant Chief Andy Anderson claimed the case was "unique" because Pataky was running an "unaccredited grassroots web site." Umm, hello, but since when did people need "accreditation" to publish information about the public sphere? Never, ever, ever has there been a requirement to be part of the mainstream media circuit to engage in your First Amendment right to speech. Even if accreditation was required, the police department is in no way, shape, or form the legal authority on what sources can be accredited. The Phoenix Police Department, as a whole, is clearly in the wrong here. Stop trying to usurp the First Amendment.

Update: Due to several questions in the comments, I will point out that Bad Phoenix Cops has evidence that the officers involved had been informed by dedicated lawyers for the Phoenix Police Department that they are in fact public officials, despite the non-democratic process by which they are hired.

UPDATE: The Economist Weighs in on Religious Sensitivity

The Economist has its take on the UN Resolution against Religious Defamation up here.