Tag Archives: metadata

Supreme Court makes some rulings that will have far reaching effects

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This week is the end of the Supreme Court session. Three big rulings have happened in relationship to technology that are vitally important. The first ruling known as Alice which is a key decision in changing how people look at software patents. Second, was a ruling on Aereo, a company that provided a streaming service for over the air way signals. Third, a case about if cops do not need a warrant to search your cell phone.

Alice, has really reinforced the non-obvious clause for patent cases. In fact, it was reinforced in a way that will likely make it difficult for determining non-obviousness. Especially because it strengths the argument that an algorithm is a natural extension of a mathematical truth. Secondly, it requires something novel to be done with a piece of hardware. This means that you can’t simply just take “on a computer” into the patent and have it be valid. I think this will have some really positive implications on the patent trolls out there. Since, it’s required to do something novel, such as using RFID to do the work, you can’t simply say automation through a computer any more. I think this is a great step forward. I’m sure it will cause a lot of heartburn and many more extremely prominent cases to gain some greater level of clarity.

Aereo is officially dead. It’s been decided that Aereo was infringing on copyright in a massive way. They were found to have been completely violating copyright in every sense of the word. This is pretty scary in my opinion. It means that a company that wants to provide an otherwise free service through streaming is violating a copyright holder. This means anyone that acts as a sort of repeater is violating copyright. It certainly means anyone that is transmitting copyrighted material in any medium is violating copyright. This I think is devastating. Furthermore, I don’t believe that this ruling even required specific instances of copyright violation. This puts both Google and Twitch in a precarious position, because they are streaming potentially copyrighted material all the time. It also means that any company that streams other free content is violating copyright. I’m afraid that this is going to scare a lot of other companies out of these spaces. There’s a clear need for this service and the Supreme Court killed that innovation.

Cops need warrants to search your cell phone. This is a huge ruling. This means that if you have a lock on your cell phone that they cannot access the contents without getting a court order. This is pretty big. So I suggest making sure that you lock your phone and think about encrypting it. It truly provides a great deal more protection than in the past. Furthermore, if they violate this and do not get a court order, then the evidence is inadmissible. I am hoping that this lays the legal framework for an overturn of the collection of NSA Metadata. Based on the wording in the ruling, it seems that it would lend a great deal of weight to an argument claiming that the Metadata is part of the phone. If the police cannot access your call history through your phone without a warrant, then logically you’d need a warrant to get the information from a third party – that you HAVE to rely on.

I think that these cases will have a great deal of long term impact on the direction of technology and law in the next few years. I would not be surprised if there were more legal challenges based upon these rulings within the next few months. Expect the EFF to look to expand the logic of the cell phone warrant requirement. Look for companies that are getting hit by patent trolls to push back harder like New Egg has and really beat them down. I’m really concerned about the long term impact of Aereo though. Who knows the implications of that.

Risk of downloading apps

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The NSA has been collecting information through our emails, our “metadata”, our cell phone calls, and now we can add to the list “Leaky Apps.” In a recently released article on The Guardian, it’s been revealed that the NSA was using Angry Birds, on both iOS and Android, to collect information directly from the cell phone of a user. This completely changes the type of information the NSA knows about you. It’s not just who you recently talked to (in the past five years) but for many smart phones it could be significantly longer than that. For example, if the App is leaky enough to allow access to other applications on the phone, then it’s possible for the NSA to access the full all of their email, my Gmail account has emails from 2005 or earlier on it still. I archive things – probably going to go delete all of these emails.

According to the NSA, access to the full collection of social networks is even more valuable than access to phone records. With apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/Vine, Google+ and SnapChat, we are uploading and sending real time pictures and video of our lives. For a group of people interested in knowing everything about everyone, seeing real pictures is really valuable – especially since those same pictures will likely be associated with a GPS signal and at least one or two cell towers. In the case of an ongoing criminal investigation that will be invaluable.

This is infinitely more intrusive than only collecting the bulk information that we knew of before. In cases of snapchat and Vine it’s likely that the government is capturing our very private, personal, and nude images. There’s no reason the NSA needs to be capturing this data on everyone that has downloaded Angry Birds. The App has been downloaded approximately 1.7billion times – that’s a lot of phones and tablets that are effectively compromised. If the NSA figured out that these apps are leaky, it’s likely someone else did too.

NSA and Edward Snowden

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Today saw the unveiling of the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, a highschool dropout that worked his way through sheer capabilities as a programmer. To me this guy is pretty amazing. He cares about the people that he could have put in harms way, he made sure that he did not release any information that would put anyone in harms way, even though he had the capabilities. He learned from Bradley Manning and worked to ensure there would be no risks of physical injury. He felt that these actions violated the constitution and decided to expose these deeds to the public even though he knew his life was over. He believes he’s likely to be targeted by the US government or an agent, such as a member of the Triad gang (he’s in Hong Kong), to be executed.

Not only he is clearly concerned, but the media seems to think that this is also true. My roommate was watching ABC news with Diane Sawyer and during one segue she mentioned that he may have left because he feared for his life and was likely in danger. Think about it. It’s publicly acknowledged by our press, that it’s likely a whistleblower might be killed by the US government. This is a US citizen that has a family history of serving (father a member of the coast guard and mother a legal clerk) the US government. He is afraid for his life because he believes that the US government would murder him. If he dies and his body is found the blame will automatically fall upon the government. Edward will not be able to answer phone calls, call anyone, and is essentially on his own to make it to a country that has no extradition treaty with the US. This is a travesty – the fact that many people believe this man is going to die within the next few weeks – killed by his own government without his right to a trial.

Why does what he said matter? A lot of people are talking about it being only Metadata – here’s an excellent article explaining what would have happened if the British had meta data during the revolutionary war. It would have ID’d Paul Revere as a likely revolutionary based on his association. Knowing nothing else about him other than a few clubs he and 254 other people in Boston were members of it was possible to deduce the entire social network and who was at the center of the networks.

As I mentioned in my last blog post this network analysis would have caused the changes in my Facebook network to raise some red flags. I suddenly move to Europe (I didn’t list Eindhoven has my city of residence it would have been inferred from my friends), some of my first connects in Europe on Facebook were 2 Colombians, 2 Pakistanis, an Iranian, and a Turk. These changes represented a major shift in my circle of friends. I had few non-americans as friends and no Iranians or Pakistanis in my network. Using the full history of my data they wouldn’t have found much except that I liked to drink and wrote drunk posts on Facebook while in college. However, it’s likely I would have remained someone to keep an eye on, and since then I’ve written numerous posts about Anonymous, LulzSec and other controversial topics.

Anyway, it’s important to keep this in mind when selecting the companies you decide to store your information with, even if it’s “only” metadata. Where you go, who you talk to, and what you do online are all representations of you and a lot of information can be gleaned from that.

What can we do? Vote all the bums out of office next go around for one. Start companies that only hand over encrypted data that the end users are the only ones that can decrypt it. Educate your friends, family, co-workers, and anyone politically minded you know. We need to drive change otherwise this will continue and will only get worse. At what point do we need to start worrying that the NSA/US Government will start killing your friends because of who they talk to and what they believe?