Senate approves more wiretapping powers

NYT: The Senate voted on July 9 to approve expanded surveillance powers to the government. Moreover, the bill includes legal immunity for phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program after 9/11.

The Times called the bill the “biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years.” FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will be significantly changed.

Google must turn over YouTube search data

LA Times: A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over search data for YouTube to Viacom for use in its $1 billion copyright infringement case against Google. Viacom said that it will not use the personal information in any way that would identify individual users: ”Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain — which will not include personally identifiable information — will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google, will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”

Privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that even without identifiable information such as IP numbers and user names, search histories can be used to identify a person as was done when AOL released search engine data in 2006.

Editorial: Shouldn’t YouTube be in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if it responds to notices of infringement by taking down the allegedly infringing content? Viacom says it needs the records to demonstrate routine posting and watching of copyrighted works. Why should this matter if YouTube appropriately responds to each notification?

Image from TechShout.

Voluntary code for European bloggers?

New Europe: A report from the European Parliament’s Culture Committee calls for a voluntary code for bloggers to identify the authors’ interests, clarify their legal status and provide an ombudsman, to allay fears of bloggers’ potential malice or misinformation. The author of the report, an Estonian Socialist, said, “We do not see the bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace.” Get the draft of the report here.

Editorial: The report is not long (8 pages, 6 if you take off the title page and table of contents), and it doesn’t contain much to get too hyped up about, with one exception. In among all the “whereases” is a small section: “It [European Parliament] recommends clarification of the legal status of different categories of weblog authors and publishers as well as disclosure of interests and voluntary labelling of weblogs.” It’s one thing if it’s voluntary — another if mandated. And what kinds of categories did the Parliament or the author have in mind? Cooking vs. sewing, or more like liberal vs. conservative?

Would a non-voluntary categorizing scheme for bloggers fly in the U.S.? I doubt it.