United Kingdom Spy Agency Intercepted Yahoo Webcam Images

The Guardian reports:

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. 

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not. 

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

The BBC's coverage of this story is available here. Yahoo denies knowledge of this program. The agency limited its collection to selected images from webcam chats rather than collecting entire webcam videos. It is not entirely clear why GCHQ sought to collect these images, although the images may have been used to establish a facial identification database.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the story is that GCHQ ended up collecting a large number of explicit images through this program. This unpleasant fact is made all the more upsetting by the agency's apparent surprise at collecting these images:

Sexually explicit webcam material proved to be a particular problem forGCHQ, as one document delicately put it: "Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person. Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography." 

The document estimates that between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity".

The Optic Nerve program seems notably bad because it is so invasive and because the purpose of the program is so unclear. Perhaps the images collected in this program could be cross-referenced to a series of mugshots of known criminals or terrorists and combined with the image metadata to determine a location for that individual. But this program seems so invasive and prone to abuse that these benefits are almost certainly outweighed by the program's costs.

UK Court: Greek Yogurt Needs to be From Greece

The BBC reports:

Chobani, a US-based yoghurt manufacturer, cannot label its UK products Greek as they're made in the US, according to a UK court ruling. 

A three-person panel upheld a lower court's ruling that the "Greek yogurt" label misled customers. 

Chobani's yoghurt is strained a number of times to give it a thicker texture, which the firm has said is typical of a style found in Greece.

Dairyreporter.com has additional coverage of the case, including several quotes from the ruling itself.

I have not heard of any similar lawsuits in the United States, although Alison Keeley's post at American University's Intellectual property brief clued me in on this firm's attempt to possibly put together some sort of lawsuit based on the "Greek" label. There has been at least one lawsuit against Chobani after Keeley's post, but that suit seemed more focused on Chobani's claim to use all-natural ingredients and whether Chobani's labeling adequately reflected the yogurt's ingredients.

Would this type of lawsuit succeed in the United States? My understanding, at least based on what I know about the Lanham Act, is that plaintiffs would need to prove that using the term "Greek" in labeling yogurt would tend to mislead customers into thinking that the yogurt is actually from Greek, rather than simply being "Greek-style" yogurt. (See 15 U.S.C. 1125(a)(1)(A), and for a good primer on the Lanham Act, see here).

Whether the "Greek" label misleads customers into thinking the yogurt is actually from Greece would be a question of fact that plaintiffs would need to prove. Personally, I always take "Greek yogurt" to mean the Greek-style of strained yogurt rather than yogurt that is actually from Greece. But maybe plaintiffs could show that many consumers do indeed think that the yogurt is from Greece.

Gangs' Use of Social Media and Privacy Expectations

Jamie Bartlett at the Telegraph writes about the increasing use of social media by gangs and gang members, and how police investigators are increasingly using information from social media websites to investigate and prosecute gang members.  Bartlett comments on whether the information that authorities are able to access is private information:

Of course, it’s all open and public – otherwise rivals wouldn’t see it and you’d get no kudos. Criminals want to boast and show off as much as, probably more than, the rest of us. But they aren’t the only ones watching. At Scotland Yard, YouTube has become an incredibly valuable resource to allow specialists to piece together gang networks, monitor activity, and collect incriminating evidence. Evidence from social media led to the downfall of all our narcissistic crooks showcased above. As far back as 2009, Strathclyde Police launched Operation Access, which used social networking sites such as Facebook to uncover criminal activity by identifying weapons carriers.

The article goes on to discuss the legal implications of police officers' monitoring of social media websites.  While Bartlett is writing from a British perspective, the concerns about balancing privacy concerns against law enforcement interests is a familiar tension in American law as well.

In the social media / gang context that Bartlett discusses, I think that privacy concerns carry less weight than they do in other instances of government surveillance over internet activity.  For instance, police monitoring of one's emails to and from other people seems to be a greater intrusion on privacy expectations than police monitoring of what one broadcasts on social media to one's "friends" or to the entire world.  I would see no problem with police obtaining evidence from movies posted to YouTube, since these movies could be viewed by anybody in the world.

Gangs in particular raise additional concerns in the social media context because social media may be used as a tool for recruitment and inter-gang provocation -- not simply for the communication and expression that would be typical of a normal social media account.  While there are many legal issues of police surveillance of social media that need to be explored in the meantime, it would be interesting to see if courts would conclude that police could monitor gang members, gang websites, or gang social media accounts with fewer restrictions than if they wanted to monitor a non-gang individual or business.  Because social media may enhance the criminality of gang communications rather than simply accommodating communications, courts may give greater weight to law enforcement interests when contemplating the constitutionality of police monitoring of these communications.

Be Careful What You Tweet - It Can Be Used Against You

The BBC reports on a recent case from Norwich.  There, Emma Way was found guilty of failing to stop after an accident and failing to report an accident after she collided with a cyclist, knocking him off his bike and causing him to sustain minor injuries.

While the prosecutor described the case as a typical traffic accident, the case gained notoriety from what Way did after the accident. After she drove on, she went home and tweeted:

Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way - he doesn't even pay road tax! #Bloodycyclists."

This type of evidence would certainly be admissible in U.S. courts under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(A) because would it is Way's own statement and was offered against her.  With prosecutors and investigators increasingly using social media to solve and prosecute crimes, Way's tweet -- or writing a tweet or Facebook status update like it -- is one of the dumbest things that somebody could do after committing a crime.  Even if somebody who commits a crime plans to confess, posting the confession online, effectively making it available for police and prosecutors to find, removes most, if not all, leverage that the defendant may have in later plea negotiations.

But it looks like Way is going to get out of this situation just fine.  The BBC's report concludes:

Way refused to comment as she left court, saying she had signed an exclusive television deal.

Alireza M's Failed Hanging: A Historical Context and Potential Outcomes

The BBC reports:

Iran's justice minister says there is "no need" for a man who survived a hanging to be hanged a second time. 

Lawyers want the head of the judiciary to stop a repeat hanging after the man was found alive in a morgue. 

. . . 

The 37-year-old convicted drug smuggler, named as Alireza M, was found alive in a morgue after being hanged at a jail in the north-eastern city of Bojnord last week. 

He had been left to hang for 12 minutes after which a doctor declared him dead, reports said.

When I saw this story, I was immediately reminded of an essay I read in the Green Bag last year.  I had been trying to find things to distract me from impending finals, and reading through volumes of the original Green Bag was an excellent strategy that I recommend to anybody bent on amusing, educational procrastination.

The essay is Remarkable Resuscitations After Execution.  (Citation: 2 Green Bag 464 (1890); here is the link to HeinOnline version).  The essay recounts several stories of convicted criminals who had been sentenced to death, hanged, or otherwise executed (e.g., broken at the wheel), but had miraculously survived.  The variety of stories, as well as approaches that society and officials would take to resuscitations following executions, provide an interesting context for Iran's situation.

The 1724 case of Margaret Dickson is an example that Iran's Justice Minister should cite in arguing that Alireza M. should not be hanged again:

[Margaret Dickson] was hanged for infanticide; the body was cut down and placed in a coffin, and removed by her friends with a view to interment in the parish churchyard of Masselburgh.  The jolting of the cart and the admission of air through some injury to the coffin, appear to have combined in resuscitating the woman; for she showed evident signs of life before the cart had proceeded one third of the distance.  She was removed, revived, prayed with by a minister, and received back into the circle of her friends.  She lived creditably many years afterward, had a large family, and sold salt about the streets of Edinburgh.

The government could reply with:

In 1658 a female servant was hanged for some crime at Oxford; she was probably kept hanging a longer time than usual, probably on account of the wonderful resuscitation of Anne Green a few years before.  She was cut down, and the body allowed to fall to the ground with much violence; yet she lived.  But the severity of the law insisted upon her undergoing a second and more fatal hanging.

I would last like to include the Green Bag's summary of Helen Gillet's case.  This attempted execution took place in France in 1625.  While this case concerns the punishment of beheading, I think that its notable facts merit its inclusion in this post as well as the length of the following excerpt:

A young girl, Helen Gillet, was tried on the charge of infanticide; and although the evidence was very vague and unsatisfactory, she was condemned to death by the parliament of Dijon.  The execution was to take place on May 13th.  We are told that on the appointed morning the executioner confessed himself and received the sacrament, and that when he arrived at the scaffold he exhibited the most lively signs of mental anguish.  He wrung his hands and raised them to heaven, and falling in his knees, prayed for pardon from the culprit, and begged the blessings of the assistant priests.  He cried out that he wished he were in the place of her who was about to receive from him the mortal stroke.  At last, when the head of the miserable girl was laid upon the block, he raised the axe, but missing his blow, only wounded her left shoulder.  The headsman, horror-stricken, called aloud to the populace to kill him, and stones were thrown at him from all sides.  His wife, however, who was by his side, darted forward, and seizing Helen, placed her head once more upon the block, and the executioner struck again, but again missed his blow.  The rage of the multitude now knew no bounds, and the executioner fled for safety to a small chapel which stood near by.  His wife then seized a cord, and twisting it round the neck of the prisoner tried to strangle her, but a volley of stones flew from the crowd, and the female fiend drew out a pair of long sharp scissors with which she stabbed her victim in the face and neck and different parts of the body.  The populace, in a transport of rage, killed both her and her husband on the spot.  The lifeless, as it was supposed, body of Helen Gillet was taken charge of by a surgeon; and signs of life having been discovered by him, the application of prompt remedies restored her to consciousness.  The inhabitants of Dijon then presented a petition to the king, and prayed him to grant her his royal pardon.  The prayer was successful.

For additional, fascinating examples, I recommend that you read the entire essay, if it happens to be available to you.

Ministry of Sound, Spotify, and Copyrighting Mashups

The BBC and The Guardian report about a UK lawsuit between Ministry of Sound and Spotify.  Ministry of Sound, a company that creates compilation albums consisting of various songs in a specific order, is suing Spotify, a music streaming service that lets users create song playlists, arguing that Spotify users are creating playlists that copy Ministry of Sound compilations.  Ministry of Sound argues that this infringes on their intellectual property rights.  In an editorial on The Guardian website, Ministry of Sound's Chief Executive, Lohan Presencer, explains the basis of the lawsuit:

[Spotify users] were copying our compilations. They were posting them as their own playlists and calling them "Ministry of Sound". We assumed it was an oversight on Spotify's part and contacted the company to request it remove the offending playlists. It declined, claiming there was no infringement and it wasn't its responsibility to police its users.

Several rounds of legal letters later, this dispute will now be settled in court. We believe we have a clear cut case. After 20 years and more than 50m album sales, the value and creativity in our compilations are self evident.

Ministry of Sound argues that creating mashups requires skill and effort, noting that it has developed techniques for creating effective mashups such as avoiding repeated alternation of loud and soft songs, and ordering songs so that songs by an artist are followed by songs written by the artist.  I am no expert on intellectual property law, and I'm certainly even less of an expert on UK intellectual property law, but I am interested in seeing how this case develops.

The story also raises a question that I think is interesting: could a mashup artist claim copyright protection of his or her compilation and sue a party that copies this compilation by creating a playlist of songs that copy the order of the songs in mashup compilation?

How Not to Explain Away Parliament's Scandalous Internet Habits

The BBC reports that a recently released Freedom of Information request has revealed that "More than 300,000 attempts were made to access pornographic websites at the Houses of Parliament in the past year"

Oops, looks like I forgot to change the font on that quote.  I guess it will just have to remain bolder than the rest of the surrounding text.

This is embarrassing for the government on multiple levels, given David Cameron's campaign to make online pornography harder to access.  Cameron has announced that access to online pornography is "corroding childhood."  The BBC reports here about various efforts the administration has undertaken.  These efforts include requiring internet service providers to filter explicit content, although it is not entirely clear what this measure entails.

The kicker of this story, however, is the explanation a Parliament spokeswoman gave to the press regarding this pornography scandal:

A Commons spokeswoman said: "We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users." 

This was because there was a "variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software," she said. 

Some of the hits may have been registered by websites that generate a number of views during a single visit, or those that automatically link to other sites via pop-ups, she explained.

This is comforting to know.  Government officials are not spending their time watching a great deal of porn - their official computers are simply being commandeered by third party software so that it appears that this is what is happening.

And to think I was silly enough to suspect there was a scandal here...