August 4th, 2008

Misuse of Computer Crime Law Could Turn Millions of Americans into Federal Criminals

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of academics and public policy groups are urging a judge to dismiss computer crime charges in a case with dangerous ramifications for millions of people who use the Internet.

The defendant in the case, Lori Drew, is charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by using a fictitious name and age on a MySpace account and using that account to make hurtful comments to a teenage girl. Tragically, the girl later took her own life. Federal prosecutors claim Drew broke federal law by violating MySpace's terms of service and that the MySpace communications were responsible for the girl's death. In an amicus brief filed Friday, EFF argues that criminal charges for a terms of service violation is a dramatic misapplication of the CFAA with far-ranging consequences for American computer users.

"This is a novel and unprecedented response to what everyone recognizes as a tragic situation," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "The CFAA is aimed at penalizing computer trespassers, but under the government's theory, the millions of people who disregard — or don't read — the terms of service on every website they visit could face computer crime charges. That's a big blank check to give federal prosecutors."

For example, this interpretation of the law would attach criminal penalties to anyone under the age of 18 who uses the Google search engine, because Google's terms of service specify all users must propecia daily dosage be of legal age to enter into a contract.

"Websites' terms of service are notoriously frivolous and overreaching, often hard to find, and routinely written in legalese bound to confuse a non-lawyer. Many courts have found them unenforceable in civil cases. They certainly should not be the basis for a criminal prosecution," said Granick

EFF's amicus brief was also signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, Public Citizen, and 14 individual faculty members of law schools across the country.

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/US_v_Drew/Drew_Amicus.pdf

Contact:

Jennifer Stisa Granick
Civil Liberties Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jennifer@eff.org

August 1st, 2008

Empowers Internet Users on Eve of FCC Comcast Action

San Francisco – Hours before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to take action against Comcast for violating the FCC's net neutrality principles, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is releasing "Switzerland," a software tool for customers to test the integrity of their Internet communications.

The FCC action, expected later today, is a response to formal complaints regarding efforts by Comcast to interfere with its subscribers' use of BitTorrent to share files over the Internet. These interference efforts were first documented and disclosed in October 2007 by EFF, the Associated Press, and a concerned Internet user, Robb Topolski. EFF subsequently urged the FCC to declare Comcast's efforts inconsistent with the Commission's 2005 "Internet Policy Statement," which sets a benchmark for neutral treatment of Internet traffic.

"The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney. "It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

"Until now, there hasn't been a reliable way to tell if somebody — a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall, or the Great Firewall of China — is modifying your Internet traffic en route," said Peter Eckersley, EFF Staff Technologist and designer of Switzerland. "The few tests available have been for narrow and specific kinds of interference, or have required tremendous amounts propecia coupons of advanced forensic labor. Switzerland is designed to make general-purpose ISP testing faster and easier."

Part of EFF's "Test your ISP" project, Switzerland is an open source, command-line software tool designed to detect the modification or injection of packets of data by ISPs. Switzerland detects changes made by software tools believed to be in use by ISPs such as Sandvine and AudibleMagic, advertising systems like FairEagle, and various censorship systems. Although currently intended for use by technically sophisticated Internet users, development plans aim to make the tool increasingly easy to use.

For more information and to download the Switzerland software:
http://www.eff.org/testyourisp/switzerland

For more about EFF's "Test Your ISP" Project:
http://www.eff.org/testyourisp

August 5th, 2008

Email and Cell Phone Privacy Threatened in Two Separate Court Cases

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in two key propecia contraindications electronic privacy cases that threaten to expand the government's spying authority.

In the first case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), EFF filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that federal wiretapping law protects emails from unauthorized interception while they are temporarily stored on the email servers that transmit them. This case was brought against the MPAA by the owners and operators of TorrentSpy, a search engine that let Internet users locate files on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. After a business dispute, one of TorrentSpy's independent contractors hacked into the company email server and configured it to copy and forward all incoming and outgoing email to his personal account and then sold the information to the MPAA. However, the federal district court ruled that because the emails were stored on the mail server for several milliseconds during transmission, they were not technically "intercepted" under the federal Wiretap Act. In its amicus brief filed Friday, EFF argues that this dangerous ruling is incorrect as a matter of law and must be overturned in order to prevent the government from engaging in similar surveillance without a court order.

"The district court's decision, if upheld, would have dangerous repercussions far beyond this single case," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "That court opinion — holding that the secret and unauthorized copying and forwarding of emails while they pass through an email server is not an illegal interception of those emails — threatens to wholly eviscerate federal privacy protections against Internet wiretapping and to authorize the government to conduct similar email surveillance without getting a wiretapping order from a judge."

The second case concerns a request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to a federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania for authorization to obtain cell phone location tracking information from a mobile phone provider without probable cause. The magistrate instead demanded that the DOJ obtain a search warrant based on probable cause, and the DOJ appealed that decision to the federal district court in the Western District of Pennsylvania. In an amicus brief filed Thursday, EFF urged the district court to uphold the magistrate's ruling and protect cell phone users' location privacy.

"Location information collected by cell phone companies can provide an extraordinarily invasive glimpse into the private lives of cell phone users. Courts have the right under statute — and the duty under the Fourth Amendment — to demand that the government obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before seizing such sensitive information," said Bankston. "This is only the latest of many cases where EFF has been invited to brief judges considering secret surveillance requests that aren't supported by probable cause. We hope this court recognizes the serious Fourth Amendment questions that are raised by warrantless access to cell phone location information and affirms the magistrate's denial of the government's surveillance request."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU-Foundation of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) also joined EFF's brief.

For the full amicus brief in Bunnell v. MPAA:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Bunnell_v_MPAA/BunnellAmicus.pdf

For the full amicus brief in the cell phone records case:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/celltracking/LenihanAmicus.pdf

For more on cell phone tracking:
http://www.eff.org/issues/cell-tracking

July 29th, 2008

When you're snapping photos, sharpness is everything. Whether it's digital or film photography, the absence of focus can ruin a Kodak moment. But, if you follow the easy tips below, you'll be on your way to capturing some great pictures. Let's get started!

Avoid Camera Shake

This is the first thing you need to take care of. Most times, camera shakes lead to blurred images and not the other way around. The best way to avoid camera shaking is to always use a tripod. In cases when you don’t have one, place your camera on any solid surface you can find. You can also use the self-timer function to lessen your chances of shaking.

Check Your Images

You should get in the habit of checking the photos you take with the LCD display and by zooming in a little bit. What you see on your LCD screen might look good, but when you zoom in, that’s how you'll know if the picture is properly focused or blurred. For example, if you're photographing a person, zoom in on their eyes to make sure they’re as sharp as possible. For everything else, try to look at the subject more than the foreground or background. That is, unless you want to keep all three (subject, foreground and background) in focus. Once you zoom in, if you see that the image isn’t properly focused, you have time to shoot again for better results.

Get Your Physics Right

Whether it's film or digital photography, one thing hasn’t changed a bit: the optics of lenses. When it comes to your camera's lens, there's one key component you should be aware of: hyper focal distance. When the lens is focused on the hyper focal distance, the depth of field extends from half the hyper focal distance to infinity. If you're using a shorter focal length lens, you need to focus one-third of the way into your photo with a smaller aperture setting. If you do that, you'll end up achieving maximum depth of field. If you're using a focal length lens (a telephoto lens, for example), you can apply the same rule.

Make a Calculated Move

There are precise ways to calculate hyper focal distance whether you use a point-and-shoot camera or an SLR. The best way to get an idea of what the hyper focal distance is for your camera at different settings is to make use of a depth of field calculator. If you’re interested in researching this, I recommend applying the following mathematical equation to tell exactly how far you need to go for a sharp focus. Hyper focal focusing is valuable in several situations, including photojournalism, street shooting or even when you’re shooting moving objects and you don’t have time to refocus.

The hyper focal distance formula goes like this:

H=F square divided by NC + F where
H is hyper focal distance
F is focal length
N is f-number
C is the circle of confusion limit

If you don’t want to do any calculating, just shoot between f/8 and f/11. Those tend to be the sharpest points for a lot of lenses and they cover a depth of field deep enough to put most of your picture in focus. If you’re shooting in lower light and you open your aperture to decrease the shutter time, you're also decreasing your depth of field and increasing your chances of more blur than you want.

Know Your Sweet Spot

Certain lenses, especially zooms, have "sweet spots" that will give you total sharpness. With most cameras, you can get pin-sharp images at f/8, but much less so at f/4 or f/22.

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Image Stabilization

The secret to razor-sharp images is to turn off any image stabilization. Why? Well, because the tripod will take care of stabilizing the camera. That's all there is to that!

Aperture Settings

Set your aperture further than one or two stops away from the limits. For example, if your lens goes to f/22, don’t go any further than f/16. Similarly, if your lens goes to f/2.8, don’t go any wider than f/4.

Zoom Lens

If you’re using a zoom lens, don’t take it all the way out. If followed throughout, that could make a big difference in the quality of your photographs.

Shutter Speed

Make sure you use a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action. As a rule of thumb, standing subjects can stay still for about 1/30 to 1/60sec. On the other hand, walking requires 1/120 and running 1/250 to 1/500. Of course, it all depends on your distance from the subject, so feel free to experiment.

Minimal Focusing Distance

If you're not able to take sharp close up shots, one reason could be that you're using your lens under the minimal focusing distance. The solution is to back away a bit from the subject until the lens is back to focusing at its best.

And Finally…

The more sharpness you demand and the bigger prints you need, the shorter the depth of focus actually becomes. Therefore, be moderate in your calculations and don’t go to extremes. Have fun!