Rights

Any proposal by the government to increase its own power should be treated with scepticism.

Double that scepticism when the government is vague about why it needs that extra power. Double again when those powers are in the area of law and order. And double again every time the words national security are used.

So scepticism — aggressive, hostile scepticism, bordering on kneejerk reaction — should be our default position when evaluating the long list of new security powers the Federal Government would like to deal with emerging and evolving threats — via redwolf.newsvine.com

When ACTA was formally signed by most participants in October 2011 in Tokyo, few would have anticipated that less than a year later, the treaty would face massive public protests and abandonment by leading countries. But with tens of thousands taking to the streets in Europe earlier this year, ACTA became the poster child for secretive, one-sided IP agreements that do not reflect the views and hopes of the broader public. This morning, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly against the agreement, effectively killing ACTA within the EU. The vote was 478 against, 39 in favour, with 165 abstentions  This is a remarkable development that was virtually unthinkable even a year ago. Much credit goes to the thousands of Europeans who spoke out against ACTA and to the Members of the European Parliament who withstood enormous political pressure to vote against the deal — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A US court has ordered Twitter to release old messages and details about a user arrested during an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York.

The micro-blogging firm contested the subpoena, saying the tweets were owned by users rather than the company.

But a judge said defendant Malcolm Harris’ privacy would not be violated if the material was handed over.

Earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union commended Twitter for defending free speech rights.

If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, Judge Matthew Sciarrino wrote in his decision.

Nevertheless, the judge said he would personally review the information and would only release the relevant sections to prosecution and defence lawyers — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) welcomes the decision by the Attorney-General to include consideration of the doctrine of fair use of copyright material in the final terms of reference for the Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) Review of the Copyright Act in the digital environment.

EFA was one of a number of advocacy groups that sent submissions to the Attorney-General calling for consideration of the doctrine of fair use to be included in the ALRC review — via redwolf.newsvine.com

EFA welcomes the recommendation from the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) of the Federal Parliament that Australia should not ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at this time.

EFA Secretary Kim Heitman said, The Committee is to be congratulated for its astute assessment that the ACTA treaty should not be ratified while debate rages in Europe and the US on its terms. In particular, the requirements that member countries introduce draconian provisions criminalising normal Internet users and refrain from expanding fair usage rights are contrary to the public interest and the economic interests of Australians.

EFA believes that the Committee were correct in rejecting the assertion from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that the ACTA treaty would not require changes to Australian law. While the final text was bland, in the light of the High Court decision in the iiNet case, the international interests that drive these discussions will push for Australia to introduce legislation to impose a graduated response (“three strikes”) punishment for downloaders — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Telstra has admitted to tracking the websites visited by Next G mobile customers, as part of the development of a voluntary internet filtering system.

The tracking was first picked up by members of the Australian Network Operators group, who noticed that requests made to a web server from port 80 on a Telstra mobile device, would immediately be followed by a request from an IP address in the US, hosted by Rackspace.

After inquiries on the anomaly by ZDNet Australia, Telstra today came clean and admitted that it is working on a new cybersafety tool called Smart Controls, that will block certain sites from appearing on Telstra mobiles that are signed up for the service — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Earlier this month Google developer advocate Tim Bray proposed a new HTTP Error status code aimed at shining a light on web censorship.

Bray’s new Error 451 would work somewhat like the Error 404 pages you’ve probably seen. But instead of telling you that the page could not be found, an Error 451 response would let you know that the page you were looking for had been censored.

The number is a tribute to author Ray Bradbury (commenters on a Slashdot thread independently suggested 451 as well).

As it stands, most web-blocking tools return a 403 error (which means access is forbidden) when denying access to censored pages. For instance, UK ISPs, which are now required to block The Pirate Bay, typically return a 403 error code when doing so — via redwolf.newsvine.com