Wikileaks offers $100k for text of Trans-Pacific Partnership deal

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy 2 Comments
Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Wikileaks, the activist journalism/espionage organization run by creepy weirdo Julian Assange, has offered a $100,000 bounty for text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. I checked my computer, and I don’t have the .pdf. It turns out the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are secret. Details of the 12-nation agreement—reputed to restrict the sale of generic pharmaceuticals, constrain fair use of copyrighted materials, and created an international trade court where corporations can sue national governments—are secret. None of that stuff I just listed is necessarily true. Right now, the text of the TPP is available to members of Congress, who can read the treaty in a special room but are not allowed to discuss its contents publicly. Representatives of about 600 private companies can also access the document via a secret internet portal. The general public cannot.

Continue reading

Judge issues injunction against collection of phone data

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 0 Comment
Come back to me, Edward, and sleep forever.

Come back to me, Edward, and sleep forever.

Perhaps this was massive, world-interrupting news yesterday and I slept/vomited through it, but a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against broad federal collection of cell phone data, saying that the program “surely” infringes on the Fourth Amendment. Blanket domestic surveillance from the NSA is by no means over, but it seems likely to suffer a serious blow in the next six months. DC District Court Judge Richard Leon stayed his injunction to allow the federal government time to appeal—something it almost certainly will do, so business as usual recently revealed by a dude who has to hide in Russia. But Leon also called the programs “almost Orwellian” and said James Madison would be “aghast” if he knew about it. He meant to say “a ghost.”

Continue reading

DC circuit court in process of deciding net neutrality

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment
The Internet

The Internet

Back in 2010, Congress passed the the Open Internet Order, which authorizes the FCC to prevent internet service providers from blocking particular applications—such as file sharing or telephony—and from charging content providers to make their sites load faster than others. This broad set of rules is called net neutrality, and Verizon hates it. On Monday, lawyers for Verizon and the FCC delivered oral arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in an attempt to overturn/protect the Open Internet Order, respectively. You can read a broad summary of their positions here. Probably you should read it now, because by the end of the week Ars Technica could load really slowly as your ISP encourages you to get your news from Yahoo.

Continue reading