Digital Rights Ireland is looking for your support

On the 6th December, Digital Rights Ireland formally launched. Our stated mission is to protect civil, legal and human rights in a digital age.

Now we're asking people who share that aim to help us out by pledging their money to DRI. If you're in a hurry and don't need to know more, here's where you can sign up:

www.digitalrights.ie/support

Since our launch, and without funding, we've managed to do the following;

Focus attention on data retention, by lobbying, use of parliamentary questions and encouraging media scrutiny of the European Parliament's vote to bring in a Data Retention Directive.

We've established ourselves as a point of contact for the media on digital rights issues. This is important, as editors are much more likely to run a story where they are able to present two competing views to their audiences. We've raised the profile of these issues across the entire range of media, including the Pat Kenny show, Newstalk FM, the Irish Times, Six One News, 2FM, Metro Ireland, the Star on Sunday, various local stations and (of course) internet news outlets such as The Register.

We have intervened in the filesharing debate to speak up for the privacy rights of innocent parties. We have also attempted, with some limited success, to inform the courts of relevant precedent.

We've started producing reliable, readable, guides to users' rights. So far, we have pamphlets on SMS Spam and Online Libel completed. More are in the works.

We have begun to introduce DRI to the other players involved in rights protection. We've met with the Data Protection Commissioner and with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and have been in contact with the Human Rights Commission. We've made a formal submission to the European Commission on Irish privacy laws.

We've also established DRI as Ireland's point of contact internationally in the digital rights sphere. We've joined EDRI , and have close relations with the Open Rights Group in the UK. We have also established informal links with other groups, such as the EFF, Liberty and Privacy International.

At the same time, we're working away behind the scenes on researching some of the issues which we expect to have to tackle in the months to come, such as the planned DNA Database and the proposals to introduce ID cards in Ireland.

Not a bad record for a three month old voluntary organisation working on a shoestring.

However, we're now reaching the limits of what we can do with no euro and no cent behind us. With your support, we could launch a flotilla of Freedom of Information requests, seeking information in targeted areas. We could raise awareness of digital rights issues in the professional spheres with a public conference. We could ship a representative to Brussels for crucial votes, to lobby our MEPs face to face. We could even pay for tea and coffee at our press conferences.

And, if needs be, we would be in a position to consider the possibility of seeking to block unconstitutional measures through the high-stakes gambles of the courts, as other advocacy groups regularly do.

Our suggested subscription rate is €10 per month. That is the cost of 2 pints. If we get 100 members willing to pledge that much to us, we will have a solid income base to work from.

We also have a concession membership of €5 a month. We aren't going to be checking IDs or anything like that - if you don't think you can afford to forgo both pints every month, then we'll happily spare you the effort of drinking one of them.

We have both a Paypal subscription option and our bank details for standing orders. Or if you like, you can bung us your full year's subscription in a single lump sum. And if you're not sure where you'll be for the next year, but know you'd like to send us something, we'd be most grateful.

Mechanics: Where does the money go? Money pledged to DRI will go to a bank account owned by Digital Rights Ireland Limited, a company limited by guarantee, registered with the Companies Registration Office in Dublin. As such, annual accounts will be filed for the company, which will be publicly available.

Who are Digital Rights Ireland Limited? Our Directors are listed here with links to their personal sites. Full details can be inspected via the Companies Registration Office.

[Cross-posted from digitalrights.ie]

Your personal information is for sale - Mobile Phone Location edition

The Guardian has an interesting story by Ben Goldacre entitled"How I stalked my girlfriend":

For the past week I've been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I'm going to tell you how I did it.

...

First I had to get hold of her phone. It wasn't difficult. We live together and she has no reason not to trust me, so she often leaves it lying around. And, after all, I only needed it for five minutes.

I unplugged her phone and took it upstairs to register it on a website I had been told about. It looks as if the service is mainly for tracking stock and staff movements: the Guardian, rather sensibly, doesn't want me to tell you any more than that. I ticked the website's terms and conditions without reading them, put in my debit card details, and bought 25 GSM Credits for £5 plus vat.

Almost immediately, my girlfriend's phone vibrated with a new text message. "Ben Goldacre has requested to add you to their Buddy List! To accept, simply reply to this message with 'LOCATE'". I sent the requested reply. The phone vibrated again. A second text arrived: "WARNING: [this service] allows other people to know where you are. For your own safety make sure that you know who is locating you." I deleted both these text messages.

On the website, I see the familiar number in my list of "GSM devices" and I click "locate". A map appears of the area in which we live, with a person-shaped blob in the middle, roughly 100 yards from our home. The phone doesn't go off at all. There is no trace of what I'm doing on her phone. I can't quite believe my eyes: I knew that the police could do this, and telecommunications companies, but not any old random person with five minutes access to someone else's phone. I can't find anything in her mobile that could possibly let her know that I'm checking her location. As devious systems go, it's foolproof. I set up the website to track her at regular intervals, take a snapshot of her whereabouts automatically, every half hour, and plot her path on the map, so that I can view it at my leisure. It felt, I have to say, exceedingly wrong.

...

Your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. If you have any reason to suspect that your phone might have been out of your sight, even for five minutes, and there is anyone who might want to track you: call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you. It could be me.

This particular service isn't available in Ireland just yet. But other mobile phone location services are. MyHome.ie use similar technology to advertise houses based on their proximity to your mobile phone. 02 sell companies the ability to monitor the movements of their employees via their mobiles. And of course our Department of Justice has ensured that the movements of every mobile phone owner are tracked and stored for three years. It's time to make sure that adequate safeguards are put in place to control mobile phone location data - and by that I mean independent monitoring with teeth, not the ineffective and unaccountable internal administrative practices of mobile phone operators.

Dutch biometric passport cracked - personal details vulnerable

Biometric identity cards are being sold on the basis that they're supposedly secure. Before this debate comes to Ireland, it's worth noting that the Dutch biometric passport has already been cracked - allowing anyone to intercept your date of birth, facial image and fingerprint. To do this, they don't have to ever see your passport - merely come within 10 metres of a place where it is being used. (via The Register)

The innocent have nothing to fear: CCTV edition

We're often told that the innocent have nothing to fear. That extraordinary powers of surveillance won't be abused. This lady might disagree. From BBC News:

Two council CCTV camera operators have been jailed for spying on a naked woman in her own home.

Mark Summerton and Kevin Judge, from Sefton Council, Merseyside, trained a street camera into the woman's flat.

[...]

The images from the camera, including the woman without her clothes on, were shown on a large plasma screen in the council's CCTV control room in November 2004, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

Over several hours, she was filmed cuddling her boyfriend before undressing, using the toilet, having a bath and watching television dressed only in a towel.

[The trial judge said:]

"You only have to read the impact statements of the lady to realise the harrowing effect that this had on her.

"Her life has almost been ruined, her self-confidence entirely destroyed by the thought that prying male eyes have entered her flat."

It's worth noting that the Irish Law Reform Commission warned about the abuse of CCTV in 1996 and again in 1998. To date, the Department of Justice has taken no steps to act on these warnings, despite rolling out extensive CCTV systems throughout Ireland.

[Edited to add:] The Garda Siochana Act 2005 does address CCTV operations in section 38. That section provides no real safeguards however, and certainly does not meet the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission. It authorises the installation and operation of CCTV by the Garda or Community CCTV schemes. It does not prohibit others from putting CCTV in place to monitor public areas, nor does it require any permission before they can do so. Although authorisations to install Garda / Community CCTV systems can have conditions attached to them, those conditions are not backed by any criminal or civil sanction - the worst that can happen is revocation of the CCTV authorisation. The activity referred to in the above story, if it happened in Ireland, would most likely see the perpetrators escape any punishment.

Garda Traffic Surveillance - Privacy Implications for Motorists?

The Irish Times reports that the police are proposing to bring Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to Ireland:

The computer will be installed in Garda Traffic Corps vehicles and is due to be introduced in the coming months, The Irish Times has learned.

The computer and camera system will allow for the instant reading and analysis of registration plates of all traffic passing a Garda car. The system will be linked to the Garda's Pulse computer database.

It means any vehicles which are not taxed or insured or which have been reported stolen will trigger a warning notice on an in-car computer screen.

A warning will also be triggered for cars which have not passed the National Car Test (NCT) or which have any other outstanding infringement.

This will allow gardaí to give chase and issue a fine to the motorist. It will also allow gardaí to instantly identify repeat offenders who have ignored previous fines and other sanctions and to put them off the road.

Currently, if gardaí want to check on a vehicle they must call their local station via in-car radio and ask a colleague to manually check the registration on the Pulse system. This is time-consuming and means only a small number of checks can be carried out.

Under the new system, 50 Garda Traffic Corps vehicles will be fitted with two small in-car cameras. One camera will face to the front of the vehicle and the other to the rear.

The two cameras will allow for instant analysis of registration plates of all vehicles passing in both directions, whether a Garda vehicle is moving or parked by the roadside.

This scheme raises many questions. Will the Gardaí have access to the name and address of every motorist passing by? (In the US, where systems like this have been in place for some time, it's common for police to look up the details of an attractive woman in a passing car - known as "running a plate for a date".)

Given that the vast majority of motorists scanned will be entirely innocent, what happens to their data? Will it be retained? If so, for how long? What privacy safeguards have been built into the system? Has legal advice been taken on the data protection issues of ANPR? Will this be a precursor to a much wider system?

ANPR has already been controversial in other countries - notably England - so there is no excuse if it turns out that the Gardai and/or the Department of Justice have failed to consider these issues.

Last Chance to Fight EU Data Retention

Next Tuesday, the 13th of December, the European Parliament will vote on a Data Retention Directive. This proposes to extend data retention to the Internet, and will result in your ISPs logging every email you send, every web page you visit, and everything else you do online and storing that information for several years.

We urge you to email, fax or phone your MEPs as soon as possible to express your opposition to this measure, which will introduce mass surveillance of every man, woman and child in the EU.

As to what you should say, it is best if that comes directly from what you consider important. However, Privacy International and EDRI have adopted a position (which DRI has endorsed) setting out five key criticisms of the Directive. Feel free to copy and paste these if you wish.

1. This Directive invades the privacy of all Europeans. The Directive calls for the indiscriminate collection and retention of data on a wide range of Europeans’ activities. Never has a policy been introduced that mandates the mass storage of information for the mere eventuality that it may be of interest to the State at some point in the future.

2. The proposed Directive is illegal. It contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights by proposing the indiscriminate and disproportionate recording of sensitive personal information. Political, legal, medical, religious and press communications would be logged, exposing such information to use and abuse.

3. The Directive threatens consumer confidence. More than 58,000 Europeans have already signed a petition opposing the Directive. A German poll revealed that 78% of citizens were opposed to a retention policy. The Directive will have a chilling effect on communications activity as consumers may avoid participating in entirely legal transactions for fear that this will be logged for years.

4. The Directive burdens EU industry and harms global competitiveness. Retention of all this data creates additional costs of hundreds of millions of Euros every year. These burdens are placed on EU industry alone. The U.S., Canada and the Council of Europe have already rejected retention.

5. The Directive requires more invasive laws. Once adopted, this Directive will prove not to be the ultimate solution against serious crimes. There will be calls for additional draconian measures including:
* the prior identification of all those who communicate, thus requiring ID cards at cybercafes, public telephone booths, wireless hotspots, and identification of all pre-paid clients;
* the banning of all international communications services such as webmail (e.g. Hotmail and Gmail) and blocking the use of non-EU internet service providers and advanced corporate services.

Helpfully, we in Ireland are in a unique position to lobby our MEPs - because the Government has already stated it is so opposed to this particular draft that they will bring a case to the European Court of Justice to block it if the European Parliament approves it. Thus even MEPs from the Government Parties have no reason to support the proposed text in Tuesday’s vote.

It is not too late to stop this law: please join us by contacting your MEPs to say no to a surveillance society.

[Cross-posted from Digital Rights Ireland.]

Digital Rights Ireland Launches

Next Tuesday, December 6th sees the formal launch of Digital Rights Ireland, with a press conference in the Conference Room, Pearse St. Library, Dublin 2 at 11.00am. (Directions). We would like to formally invite to you to come along - we'd welcome your support, and the chance to chat with you about your concerns after the main conference. Please feel free to invite anyone else who you think would be interested in digital rights.

Your personal information is for sale - Motorists edition

The Mail on Sunday headline says it all: "DVLA sells your data to criminals"

The Government is selling the names and home addresses of motorists on its drivers' database to convicted criminals, a Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) tells would-be wheel-clampers there is "no problem" with them buying drivers' home addresses - even if they have a criminal record.

Indeed, the two bosses of one clamping firm on the list of companies to whom the DVLA is happy to sell drivers' details are currently serving seven years' jail between them for extorting money from motorists.

The Mail on Sunday has now forced the DVLA to hand over its list of 157 firms which can buy personal information about drivers at £2.50 a time. All the companies need do is tap in a registration plate, and back comes the full name and address of the vehicle's owners.

The dossier shows that details of millions of drivers have been made available to bailiffs, credit control companies, debt collection agencies, property management firms, leisure centres, solicitors - and even one of the world's biggest loan and financial services companies.

A number of other companies on the list appear to be dissolved or simply not to exist.

The revelations, which suggest that the DVLA is in flagrant breach of data protection laws, last night caused a storm of protest, with MPs demanding an immediate end to the practice.

In Ireland the bodies which hold this information are the motor tax offices of each local authority. Queries have to be made by letter, and they charge somewhat more per query at €6. The legal basis for disclosure is Regulation 23 of the Road Vehicle (Licensing) Regulations, 2003:

A licensing authority shall, upon application, supply particulars from the licensing records or the joint licensing records:
(1) upon payment of the relevant amount specified in the Third Schedule to these Regulations, to any person who satisfies the licensing authority that he has reasonable cause therefor

The Regulations don't define "reasonable cause", leaving this up to the judgment of the manager in the relevant local authority. There doesn't appear to be any particular system in place to vet applications for release of these details. There may be scope for an enterprising journalist to put in a freedom of information request to see whether any similar abuses have taken place over here.

Introducing Digital Rights Ireland

I've been involved recently in helping to set up Digital Rights Ireland, a civil rights group which will focus on issues such as privacy and freedom of expression online. We're now working towards a launch, and as part of the pre-launch publicity I recently did a podcast interview with Tom Raftery.

The interview covered how DRI came to form, what are our core beliefs and where we'll be taking the campaign for online civil and human rights. You can listen to the mp3 of the podcast here:
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/everything-you-blog-is-false/

Your personal information is for sale - private eye steals information to track down victim of domestic abuse

Via The Register

A private detective was fined this week for unlawfully obtaining information relating to 'vulnerable women' from medical centres. Ray Pearson, a director of North London-based Pearmac Ltd, was prosecuted by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Pearson also persuaded an employee from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to hand over his Employee Identity Number, and then misrepresented himself in order to find out about a customer of HMRC.

The Office of the Information Commissioner adds details on further offences also committed by Pearson.

Appalling as this report is, the full story behind it is worse. Two of the cases involved will show why.

One of the people whose information was stolen, Ms. X, was a victim of domestic abuse. She had left her husband, taking her daughter with her, to start a new life. The husband hired a private eye to track her down. He, in turn, subcontracted the work to Pearson. Pearson decided to track Ms. X via her father. Knowing that her father was a patient of a particular medical centre, Pearson rang the centre pretending to be from the local health authority and stating that he needed to contact the father in relation to a prescription. The medical centre gave him the father's telephone number, taking him one step closer to tracking down Ms. X on behalf of her abusive husband.

Another victim, Ms. Y, had recently been a prosecution witness in a criminal case. She discovered that her friends and associates were receiving suspicious telephone calls. Her utility company also received suspicious calls, as a result of which some of her personal information was revealed. British Telecom was also called in an attempt to obtain personal information. Most seriously, her GP was contacted by a person pretending to be a psychiatrist, seeking access to her medical file. Inquiries by the Office of the Information Commissioner revealed that these phone calls all came from Pearson's premises.

Why do these cases matter? When we express concern about issues such as data retention the official response is often that "the innocent have nothing to fear". These cases prove the contrary - you do not have to have done anything wrong to have your personal information stolen by unscrupulous criminals. The more information stored on you, the easier it will be for these abuses to take place, and the more risk you may be put in as a result.

(The information on the two cases above was supplied by the Office of the Information Commissioner and is redacted to protect the identities of the victims.)

Your personal information is for sale - Social Welfare edition

The Sunday Times reports that civil servants have been caught snooping through the social welfare files of lottery winner Dolores McNamara:

Officials at the Department of Social and Family Affairs have discovered there were up to 150 hits on McNamara’s welfare files after she scooped the EuroMillions prize. Departmental managers are now asking civil servants to explain why they opened her records.

While a small number of staff may have genuine reasons, it is believed the majority did not and could have broken data protection laws and department rules. Civil servants face disciplinary action or even criminal prosecution if they cannot show good cause for accessing the Limerick woman’s details.

The investigation was ordered after McNamara’s social welfare history was reported in detail by the media. The amount of social welfare payments she supposedly received, including specific dates, were published. The figures and dates, if correct, suggested the information could only have come from someone extremely close to her, or from someone with access to her social welfare records.

Presumably some civil servants were browsing her records for their own curiosity: but obviously some have realised that there's money to be made by selling information to the media. This isn't the first time that this has happened in Ireland, prompting the question: why should we trust the Government on data retention when they are incapable of protecting the personal information which they already have?

Tackling spam - some freedom of expression problems

Wendy McElroy explains that new US anti-spam / child protection laws could criminalise perfectly ordinary email mailing lists, while attempting to comply with the laws will involve handing a list of recipients over to the government for vetting:

Both Utah and Michigan have created a 'child protection registry' for email addresses that belong to children or to which children have access. It functions like a 'no call list.' Spamfo.co explains, 'Once an email address is on the registry, commercial emailers are prohibited from sending it anything containing advertising, or even just linking to advertising, for a product or service that a minor is otherwise legally prohibited from accessing, such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, prescription drugs, or adult-rated material.' In short, e-newsletters (such as ifeminists.net) are not permitted to send to registered email addresses if those newsletters include URLs to news sites that, in turn, link to child-inappropriate commerical information or products such as casino or viagra ads, tobacco or alcohol for sale.

Many credible news sources -- especially British ones, it seems -- offer links to adult-themed sites or products. These links can change constantly, which means that it is impossible to check a URL and 'clear' it of so-called objectionable links or ads.

Moreover, e-mailing to registered addresses is illegal even if the newsletter was requested, and the legal penalties for doing so are imposed without notifying the offender so that he/she can rectify the situation. What are those penalties? To quote Prof. Mitchell again, 'Under these laws...that email sender faces strict liability which can include up to 3 years in prison, and fines of $30,000 or more. In addition, ISPs and the individuals whose email addresses are on the registry have a right of action against the sender, as does the state attorney general.'

The only protection is for the emailer to make sure that a particular address is not 'illegal' by matching his/her mailing list against the registries. That process requires at least two things that I am unwilling to do: 1) turn my mailing list over to the government; and 2) pay a per-address fee.

There's more on these new laws from Declan McCullagh at News.com.

Linking as copyright infringement?

From ZDNet Australia:

It took almost two years but major record labels in Australia have finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his Internet Service Provider for alleged music piracy.

Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.

Although Cooper didn't host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.

More analysis at The Register.

Your personal information is for sale - Mobile phones edition

The Washington Post reports on the open sale of mobile phone (cell phone) records in the US. Excerpt:

Think your mate is cheating? For $110, Locatecell.com will provide you with the outgoing calls from his or her cell phone for the last billing cycle, up to 100 calls. All you need to supply is the name, address and the number for the phone you want to trace. Order online, and get results within hours.

Carlos F. Anderson, a licensed private investigator in Florida, offers a similar service for $165, for all major telephone carriers.

"This report provides all the calls with dates, times, and duration on the billing statement," according to Anderson's Web site, which adds, "Incoming Calls and Call Location are provided if available."

[...]

Such records could be used by criminals, such as stalkers or abusive spouses trying to find victims.

[...]

"Information security by carriers to protect customer records is practically nonexistent and is routinely defeated," said Robert Douglas, a former private investigator and now a privacy consultant who has tracked the issue for several years.

Experts say data brokers and private investigators who offer cell phone records for sale probably get them using one of three techniques.

They might have someone on the inside at the carrier who sells the data. Spokesmen for the telephone companies said strict rules prohibiting such activity make this unlikely. But Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division, said other types of data-theft investigations have shown that "finding someone on the inside to bribe is not that difficult."

Another method is "pretexting," in which the data broker or investigator pretends to be the cell phone account holder and persuades the carrier's employees to release the information. The availability of Social Security numbers makes it easier to convince a customer service agent that the caller is the account holder.

Finally, someone seeking call data can try to get access to consumer accounts online.

I've written before about similar problems in Ireland.

Your personal information is for sale - Russian edition

There's a fascinating story in the Globe and Mail about the sale of personal data in Moscow. Excerpt:

"What do you need?" he says. "We have everything."

In Moscow these days, among people who deal in stolen information, the category of everything is surprisingly broad.

This Gorbushka vendor offers a hard drive with cash transfer records from Russia's central bank for $1,500 (Canadian). The information was reportedly stolen by hackers earlier this year and purchased by companies looking for details about their competitors. Such information, the vendor admits, is fairly specialized. A more popular item is tax records, including home addresses and declared incomes. The vendor asks $215.

Russians routinely lie about their earnings to avoid taxes; nonetheless, an increasing number of criminals are relying on pirated tax information to help them choose wealthy targets.

When gunmen broke into the gated home of Mikhail Pogosyan, head of Russian aerospace giant Sukhoi, in a brazen robbery last week, the businessman immediately blamed the proliferation of his personal details on the black market.

"Before, robberies of such people happened very seldom, just by chance," says a Sukhoi spokesman, Alexei Poveschenko. "Criminals preferred not to deal with VIPs, but now it's different. On every corner you can buy a database with all kinds of information: income, telephones, cars, residence registration."

[...]

At the Gorbushka kiosk, sales are so brisk that the vendor excuses himself to help other customers while the foreigner considers his options: $43 for a mobile phone company's list of subscribers? Or $100 for a database of vehicles registered in the Moscow region?

The vehicle database proves irresistible. It appears to contain names, birthdays, passport numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, descriptions of vehicles, and vehicle identification (VIN) numbers for every driver in Moscow.

via Semantic Bits

High Court to hear application for disclosure of filesharer's identities

The application for disclosure will be held this Friday (8th July). The hearing is open to the public, so feel free to come along if you're interested in learning more about the privacy / online anonymity / data protection issues.

The case (2005 2014P EMI RECORDS IRELAND LIMITED V EIRCOM LTD) is in the Commercial List so it should be before Mr Justice Kelly in Court 9 (in the main Four Courts building) at 10.30.

From the Irish Times (subscription only):

The High Court was told yesterday that Eircom and BT are not opposing the "substantive" proceedings by four music companies aimed at securing the names of persons who have uploaded thousands of music tracks onto file-sharing networks.

The proceedings could lead to actions for damages being brought against those persons.

Yesterday, while not opposing the action, John Gordon SC for BT Communications Ireland Limited said he wanted to make submissions as to how the court should exercise its discretion regarding the form of order in the case. It is believed those submissions will relate to how the rights of the music companies should be balanced against consumers.

[...]

Mr Gordon said he proposed to file an affidavit by tomorrow for the purposes of assisting the court as to how its should exercise its discretion in the matter.

His client was not opposing the proceedings, but believed the submissions would assist the court in exercising its discretion in the correct manner in relation to how consumers were affected.

Edited to add: ENN reports on this story also.

Digital search and seizure

There's a grey area around police powers to compel intermediaries such as ISPs to hand over digital evidence. In both Ireland and the UK, though, the issue seldom arises because most ISPs seem to be happy to give voluntary cooperation, avoiding the need for the police to rely on their compulsory powers. However, this strategy falls down when an intermediary decides not to play ball, and the seizure of Bristol Indymedia servers illustrates the problems that result.

An Indymedia press release gives the background:

On Mon 20th June, Bristol Indymedia (IMC Bristol) received an email from the police asking to contact them with reference to a posting on the IMC Bristol newswire. IMC Bristol volunteers appointed a solicitor and started briefing them to contact the police on their behalf. On Tue 21st June, the police contacted an IMC Bristol volunteer asking for IP logs. The subject of the police enquiry was a posting claiming that damage had been done to either some cars on a train transport, the transport itself, or the railway line.

Bristol Indymedia volunteers hid the post (originally posted late in the evening of 17th June) from their main newswire within 24 hours of it being posted - as it violated IMC Bristol editorial policy - and well before the police made initial contact.

When the solicitor contacted CID on the 21st to inform them that they could not have the server, or access to it, the police said that they could go through data protection and legal moves to get the logs or get a search warrant, and that they may arrest somebody for obstructing the course of justice.

At this point, an IMC Bristol volunteer informed IMC UK about the events. IMC Bristol then contacted Liberty, whose legal advisor contacted the police to press them on the issue that this server was considered an item of journalistic equipment and so subject to special provision under the law. The police have yet to confirm this. NUJ and Privacy International have also been contacted.

As of 24th June 2005, IMC Bristol remain in possession of their server. Communications with the police, and between various legal and civil rights organisations continue while technical and legal issues surrounding the case are clarified. Bristol Indymedia is an independent news service. As part of our policy, we will not make non-public information we hold publicly available. We do not permanently store IP addresses. We do not intend to voluntarily hand over information to the police as they have requested, and have informed them of this.

The police response came shortly afterwards and on June 27th the server was seized. From the Register:

Police seized a server used by Indymedia, the independent newsgathering collective, from the Bristol home of a member of the group after issuing a search warrant on Monday. The raid is the second time within the last year that an Indymedia server has been seized in the UK.

Officers also took the unnamed Bristol collective member in for questioning, and seized a PC, in an incident that has already provoked a huge row. The action happened despite the intervention on Indymedia's behalf by justice group Liberty whose lawyers advised police that the server was "considered an item of journalistic equipment and so subject to special provision under the law".

Despite this reference to a person being "taken in for questioning" later reports indicate that the owner of the server has in fact been charged with incitement to criminal damage. Analysis and insightful comment at Spy Blog which points out that:

It is not unheard of for malicious people to post something illegal or controversial to an open discussion forum and then to complain to the authorities that the administrators of the discussion forum are doing something illegal [...] For the British Transport Police or any other UK Police force to ignore the National High Tech Crime Unit's guidlines on "minimal disruption" to multi-user networked computers during legal evidence gathering or investigations, is a disproportionate abuse of power [...] There is no justification for the "collateral damage" caused by the seizure of an onlime server in order to attempt to identify the IP address of a single poster.

It's hard to understand why the owner of the server was arrested, but this comment from Spy Blog seems about right:

Initially the Bristol IMC volunteer was a potential witness, either to incitement to criminal damage (the offending item argued that damaging cars was legitamate political protest), or to the statement made by the poster that they had committed the damage. Now the volunteer is a suspect. Maybe the BTP [British Transport Police] allege that the suspect incited criminal damage by failing to delete (it was hidden from the newswire but not deleted) the offending post when it came to their attention. Or maybe the arrest was an act of spite when Bristol IMC quite reasonably told the police to go away and get a warrant.

London Freelance discusses the journalistic privilege issues:

When the police contacted them. BIM called the NUJ and civil liberties organisation Liberty, who argued that demanding information from Indymedia requires a special warrant to obtain journalistic material under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Asked about this, a British Transport Police spokesperson said "A warrant was obtained; I don't know the details. ... Website server - I don't know if you could describe it as journalistic material?" They later clarified that "We obtained a Section 8 [PACE] Warrant after discussing with the Crown Prosecution Service who said we didn't need a Section 9 / Schedule 1 [journalistic material] warrant." Section 8 warrants cover evidence-gathering except where privileged, excluded (that is, confidential or medical) or "special procedure" (that is, other journalistic) material is involved.

Two brief comments. First, there is a specific English law (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - RIPA) on point and this situation seems to fall under Part I, Chapter II of that Act (access to communications data). Objectionable though RIPA might be, it does provide some safeguards. It becomes useless, though, when the police can evade those safeguards by falling back on an ordinary search warrant. Second, it's certainly true that Indymedia is being treated less favourably than other media organisations, perhaps in an attempt to harass or shut down its operations. As commenters on the Indymedia site note:

The point is whether or not the seizure of the server is justified. I really don't think that should a letter be written to the Times about such behaviour the police would seize all copies of the Times, or their computers.

The seizure of the Indymedia Bristol server illuminated deficits in the law. Law protecting journalists were drafted with mainstream news organisations in mind, so it cannot cope with media collectives. Whilst the police might well have had good reason to investigate the claims made on Indymedia Bristol's web site, by effectively shutting down the whole operation the police have acted insensitively and have used rather extreme methods, especially when Bristol IMC have been far from uncooperative.

(Yet) Another argument against ID Cards

From the Independent:

Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash

Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.

[...]

The opening of commercial talks contradicts a promise made when the Home Office launched a public consultation on ID cards in April last year, when officials pledged that "unlike electoral registers, the National Identity Register will not be open for any general access or inspection."

[...]

In addition, firms could be charged up to £750 for technology that would allow them instantly to verify customers' identity through iris scanning or finger-printing, according to official documents.

Update: Ministers are denying that personal information will be for sale, but admit that they will establish and charge for a system giving private companies access to the ID card system. From the Telegraph:

Ministers denied a report that personal details of all 44 million adults in the country could be sold to private companies as part of Government efforts to curb the cost.

But the Home Office admitted that there would be a "mechanism" for companies to check that an ID card was genuine and that people were who they said they were.

Officials said the details of the mechanism were still being worked out. There would be a fee but it would be "nowhere near" the £750 claimed by The Independent on Sunday.

Tony McNulty, the immigration minister, said it was nonsense to suggest that the Government intended to sell information on the ID cards register and had opened talks with private companies.

"The Government has no plans whatsoever to sell individuals' details to private companies," he said. "The legislation we have introduced to set up the scheme will ensure that the ID cards database will be secure and confidential. Private companies will not have access to the information held on it and any unauthorised disclosure will be a criminal offence."

Your personal information is for sale - Indian edition

BBC News reports:

Police are investigating reports an Indian call centre worker sold the bank account details of 1,000 UK customers to an undercover reporter.

The Sun claims one of its journalists bought personal details including passwords, addresses and passport data from a Delhi IT worker for £4.25 each.

City of London Police is investigating after receiving files from the paper.

ISPs told "Hand over names if you want to license our content"

Constitutional Code (Rik Lambers) has an interesting post illustrating the incentives facing ISPs asked to disclose customer names:

During a seminar on "online piracy" in the Netherlands last week a representative of Warner Home Entertainment made it clear that Internet Service Providers won't get movie content licensed, unless they provide the identifying information of their customers on demand.