China seems to have found a reliable legal tool for suppressing dissent. A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, has been arrested after a meeting in a private home to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the killings at Tiananmen Square. The charge? “Illegal access to the personal information of citizens,” a crime punishable by
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European Court of Justice Google Decision: Broader Implications
Since the European Court of Justice (ECJ) startled the Internet sector and world at large last week by its finding in the Google v. AEPD case that there is a “right to be forgotten” under the EU Data Protection Directive, there has been extensive speculation what the decision will mean for Google and other search…
Is Snowden a Spy?
That’s the possibility raised by Edward Jay Epstein in a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal op-ed. Epstein offers some new evidence for his theory. In particular he says that NSA investigators now know that Snowden’s tactics included breaking into two dozen compartments using forged or stolen passwords. Once there, Snowden loosed an automated “spider” with…
Retain Locally, Comply Globally
We used to talk about the “borderless” environment of the Internet. These days, that view is looking increasingly outmoded and utopian, in large part because of the intersection of law enforcement and privacy concerns. Steady increases in regulation (and enforcement of existing regulation) in these areas is increasingly prompting two types of responses by global…
European Court Invalidates Data Retention Directive, Time to Rethink
Depending on the new Commission’s level of ambition when it takes office in the Autumn, this week’s European Court of Justice preliminary ruling (Cases C-293/12 and C-594/12), which found a 2006 Directive invalid, could prove an opportunity to re-think the EU approach to privacy and protecting personal data.
When we think about the EU and…
Debating Snowden
For some reason, debates about Snowden are thick on the ground these days, and I’ve joined a couple of them. The most fun was the Oxford Union, which has been preparing future Parliamentarians (and Prime Ministers) all around the British Commonwealth since 1823. The Oxford Union debate was “This House would call Edward Snowden a…
Tightening the Screws on Chinese Investment
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, reviews foreign investments for national security risks. It is now beyond doubt that Chinese investment is getting much closer scrutiny from CFIUS. A total of ten transactions failed to survive review in 2012, according to a just-released Treasury report. That may not sound…
New Controls on Surveillance and Hacking Tools?
The old Cold War export control alliance, now known as the Wassenaar Arrangement, hasn’t exactly been a hotbed of new controls since Russia joined the club. But according to the Financial Times, the 41-nation group is preparing a broad new set of controls on complex surveillance and hacking software and cryptography. I suspect that the…
Hackback Backers’ Comeback?
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has issued its annual report. It reminds us that, while press and privacy campaigners have been hyperventilating over US intelligence programs, there are, you know, actual authoritarian governments at work in the United States — breaking into the networks of activists whom they dislike, newspapers whose sources…
When Separation of Powers is a Matter of Life and Death
The Leahy-Sensenbrenner USA FREEDOM Act puts the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FIS) court in charge of shaping, overseeing, and enforcing minimization guidelines in connection with section 215, pen/trap orders, and section 702, largely taking the Attorney General out of the process of writing minimization guidelines.
I’m appalled, because the FIS court has taken control of minimization…