Recently, the President’s office implemented the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which is designed to allow 7 to 9 million families to refinance or modify their home loans, thus avoiding foreclosure. Reuters reports that one in eight American households are late on payments or in foreclosure, so this aid could not come at a better time. Right on cue, though, the bailout-themed spam returned to my inbox, and I received several versions of the same email, below (sent from “President Obama,” subject line: “I have Signed the Largest Stimulus Package & there is $15 Billion available 4 u Today! see how”):

The text reads as follows:

“Do you watch Television, Read the Newspapers? If so, You would know that our Government Passed a $787 Billion Dollar “Stimulus” Plan. So, what does this mean to you right now? Probably NOTHING! That’s right, unless you are on Social Security whereby Our Government will be mailing a whopping $250 1 time check To those On Social Security, you will have to Dig Deep to see where YOU will benefit From this New Stimulus Plan!

“Now Don’t Trust Us to do your reading, do it yourself, But within the New Stimulus Plan Is an Opportunity to Get Your Hands A Piece of $2 Billion Dollars! All you have to do is know how to get your Piece of this $2 Billion Dollars That According to the Stimulus Plan WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE STARTING TODAY MARCH 4, 2009!

“So this is a First Come First Serve Type of Deal our Very Own Government Has Made!

“Our Question to you is as follows: Would You like to learn how to get a piece of this $15 Billion Dollars in as little as 1 Week? If YES, Use your common sense, you have nothing to lose only to gain by pressing below for FREE!

“Press here if You Want Guaranteed Free Money From The US Government in as little as 12 DAYS!”

Impressive, no? The random capitalization and poor grammar and punctuation really sell this gem.

Once you get into this email, you discover that it’s not actually FROM the government, despite the alleged source of President Obama (I doubt that the president uses “text talk” like “4 u” when he means “for you,” anyway). Also, you notice that the numbers are a little off… One line suggests a $2 Billion handout, another a $15 Billion stimulus. One paragraph says “as little as one week,” but the final line says “as little as 12 days.” Clearly, numbers are not the spammer’s strong suit.

You might also note that, while timed to go out during the week that the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan is in the spotlight, the email doesn’t actually address this plan at all. Rather, it refers to the stimulus package that President Obama signed into law a few weeks ago. That package, designed to provide relief to millions of Americans through a variety of tax cuts, aid for states and other initiatives, does not involve handing out cash to those who ask for it. Even those who make the request via a spam email link.

I have received this email (or some version of it) a few times a day whenever a financial plan or bill is in the news. The really shameful thing about it is that many Americans truly are hurting right now, with the economy struggling and layoffs increasing. This spam plays on the fear and despair of the American in trouble. It’s worse than playing on the insecurities of men with ED (”Click here for cheep V1@gra”) or on the greed of those who want inexpensive luxury (”Designer handbags available at knockoff prices!”). For all these reasons, it’s an easy inductee into the Marketing Hall of Shame.

Want to reduce the amount of spam, junk mail and telemarketing calls you receive? Privacy Council’s list removal service is the answer. Sign up for Privacy Council today and see fewer emails from “President Obama” or any other spammers in your inbox. You’ll also be doing the environment a favor by saving a few trees’ worth of junk mail! Click here to get your name removed from the lists.

COPA is the Child Online Protection Act, enacted in 1998 (not to be confused with COPPA, which we posted about before). According to the COPA Commission, which was the Congressional panel formed along with the law, “The purpose of the Act is to prohibit online sites from knowingly making available to minors material that is ‘harmful to minors’ (sexually explicit material meeting definitions set forth in the Act).” In essence, COPA would punish U.S. providers who post material that is “harmful to minors” online for commercial purposes without providing some sort of age verification system, such as requiring a credit card number, in order to keep children from viewing it. COPA was designed to be a narrower law than it’s predecessor, the much-derided Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, which was struck down on constitutional grounds in 1997 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If COPA were enforced, those who did not take adequate measures to keep children from viewing sexually explicit material on their websites would be subject to fines of up to $50,000 per offense, prison terms of six months, or both. But COPA is not enforced; it has been inactive almost since its inception because of challenges to its constitutionality by the ACLU and other plaintiffs. In the past, appeals courts have struck down the law for being in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has upheld the injunction on enforcement because of the likelihood that the law is unconstitutional. The case was referred back to the district court in 2006, and a ruling in 2007 once again saw the law struck down.

Now for the latest news: Despite defenses of the law from the Justice Department, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the lower court’s decision to strike down COPA as unconstitutional. It’s another blow for the government in this drawn-out battle over how to legislate online protection for minors. As the Center for Democracy and Technology put it, “Congress has spent twelve years attempting to use criminal laws to censor protected online speech on the Internet that is lawful for adults to access. That approach to protect children online has been an utter failure.” 

So just what is the problem with COPA? Protecting kids from harmful material is a great idea, right? The intent may be good, but the law itself is flawed. For one thing, the standards for defining “harmful material” are far too loose and open to interpretation as COPA is written. Even mainstream movies, TV shows, artwork and other socially-valuable speech viewed via the internet could fall under the definition of “harmful materials.” The law’s critics point out that COPA infantilizes the internet and places the burden of responsibility on websites for preventing minors from seeing material directed at adults; even a news site that contains a very small amount of adult material would fall under the umbrella of COPA. The law, as the judges wrote in this latest opinion, “effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and address to one another…and thus is overbroad. These burdens would chill protected speech.”

In addition, when dealing with free speech rights, the best legal course of action is always to take the least-restrictive means, which COPA does not (filters that parents could install at home would be more effective and less restrictive than COPA). And in the end, COPA can’t stop kids from seeing harmful material that originates on websites outside of the U.S., or on non-commercial sites.

So how can we protect kids from seeing harmful content online? The responsibility lies with the parents, not with the websites. Sites like this one offer tips for parents to maintain control over their children’s internet surfing habits and offer ways to tell if your child might be viewing something they shouldn’t be. Tips include monitoring kids’ internet access, educating them on the dangers of giving out personal information, restricting the use of online chat forums, and using filtering software in order to control the flow of information that the children receive. All of this is far more reasonable and effective than a broad-spectrum, speech-limiting law like COPA. 

Just like in other forms of media, parents are required to be the ultimate gatekeepers to what the children can access. The government cannot force websites to be parents to the detriment of society’s free speech. A free exchange of information and ideas, even at the adult level, is the very definition of the freedom of speech described in the First Amendment. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did the correct thing in coming down on the side of rights, not restrictions.

Sources for this article: ABC News, The COPA Commission, Child Online Protection Act, Online Child Privacy Tips for Parents, the Center for Democracy and Technology

Most websites claim to do this in order to provide the best possible service to their customers. Not everyone likes the idea of being tracked online, though. For example, privacy concerns have been raised about cookies in the past. And in 2006, Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online admitted to giving records of their members’ internet searches to the U.S. Department of Justice when they were subpoenaed during a web filter investigation, despite the fact that more than half of internet users polled said that they are against search engines turning over data to the government (Google fought the subpoena and won a minor victory against the DOJ). Many people didn’t even know that sites collect unique identifiers such as IP addresses.

To combat online snooping, web anonymizers, or anonymous proxies, were developed. These allow the user to surf the web without leaving a personalized trail behind. The anonymizer accesses the internet on behalf of the user and relays the information in a safe, untraceable manner while hiding the user’s personal information from outside sources (acting as a sort of buffer). The need for this sort of tool becomes readily apparent when we think about anonymous whistleblowing or the discussion of taboo topics, or when people in oppressive nations wish to access websites blocked by the party in power. But anonymizers are also popular with many ordinary users who simply don’t want to be tracked. After the 2006 subpoena incident, for example, sites such as Anonymizer.com and FreeHaven.net saw a sharp spike in membership.

Do anonymizers work? Yes, but with limitations. For example, some anonymizers can’t process secure protocols like “https://” because your browser needs to access the site directly for the encryption to work (NEW INFO: anonymizer.com now handles https; thanks to Lance Cottrell for leaving the comment updating our information). Plugins might have problems, as well, and Java and JavaScript might compromise your security and allow identifying information to be accessed if you use the anonymizer as a regular proxy. Also, anonymizers mean that web sites will no longer be personalized to you when you visit them; a shopping site won’t already know what you like to buy when you go there, so you’ll have to start from scratch in filling your shopping cart.

In short, anonymizers aren’t perfect. They’re simply pieces of software that can be circumvented in some cases, and no matter how smart the software “mouse” becomes, someone will probably build a better mousetrap. Still, as long as you don’t expect anonymizers to be ironclad, they can provide a measure of protection from online tracking. Don’t let things like a firewall and anti-spyware protection slide, though; the more security you have in place, the safer you’ll be.

Sources for this article: www.eweek.com, www.searchenginejournal.com, www.anonymizer.com, www.livinginternet.com, www.securiteam.com, www.opennet.net, searchsecurity.techtarget.com

First, some background: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which went into effect in 1978, created a court that had to approve any wiretapping requested by the government. The idea was that the sort of secret wiretaps that occurred during Watergate and the Vietnam War, wiretaps that were for mostly political reasons, should not be allowed to occur. The court, it was decided, would provide the oversight that would keep the government above-board in its surveillance.

Fast-forward to the new millennium. According to an article published in The New York Times in December 2005, President George Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2002 to start eavesdropping on the international phone and email communications of people in this country without a court order. The NSA was to be looking for and preventing terrorist activity after the 9/11 attacks. The monitoring went on for three years before the New York Times story broke, and once the cat was out of the bag, critics began to declare that such eavesdropping, often on up to 500 unsuspecting Americans at any given time, was both illegal and unconstitutional. The program’s defenders, on the other hand, said that the activity was a vital tool in preventing terrorist attacks, and that the lack of court approval meant that the government could move more quickly in protecting this country. They also said that Bush had been given the power to initiate the snooping based on the Congressional resolution that gave him power to wage war against Al Qaeda.

Even before the program was brought out of the shadows, senators and others who knew about the monitoring were raising concerns. Some were worried that the NSA had too much power and not enough restrictions on their behavior. In addition, of course, was the fact that FISA had been bypassed entirely with this program. The court that was put into place to protect the public against unwarranted communications monitoring had been ignored by the government, and some in the government (of the few NSA, CIA, Congressional, Cabinet and administration officials who knew about the program) questioned the legality of the eavesdropping.

With the program now made public, watchdog groups and privacy advocates were up in arms against it. Americans were being denied civil liberties, they insisted, in the name of national security. While any communications that were wholly domestic (i.e., from once place in the U.S. to another) still required a warrant to monitor, the international communications of thousands of Americans were secretly heard by NSA agents. Critics of the secrecy also pointed out that FISA is more agreeable than one might expect in granting wiretapping warrants… Few requests for such warrants were ever denied, and the permissions were frequently granted in a matter of hours if the situation called for speed. In short, the administration’s actions in circumventing the checks and balances of the government did not sit well with many Americans.

As the investigations into the wiretapping progressed, it became clear that several telecommunications companies had aided the NSA in the snooping. The NSA, after all, needed cooperation from the companies to access the data records of the people they had monitored. Americans began to file civil lawsuits against the telecoms for their part in the program, and as of this week, more than 40 such suits had been filed in U.S. District Court. The U.S. Congress has been working for the past year on legislation that would address the wiretapping issues in this country, and after a bitter struggle, they reached an rather lopsided agreement this week.

This is where the protection for the telecoms comes in this week: The bill that the Senate (and earlier, the House of Representatives) approved on Wednesday overhauls the eavesdropping program but also calls for immunity for the telecoms against the lawsuits. Americans, in short, have no legal recourse against the telecoms for their participation in the questionable wiretapping activities. In fact, the White House had threatened to veto the bill if it DIDN’T protect the telecoms. Amendments that were proposed to weaken the bill or delay the immunity were also defeated. The new bill requires the government to get permission from FISA before monitoring Americans overseas, but it also allows the government to get broad, yearlong permissions that target entire groups of people. It also gives the government the right to monitor communications without permission for a week (in an “emergency” situation) before having to apply for a court order.

Many lawmakers were against the bill, for a variety of reasons. Senator Arlen Specter, R-PA, called the bill “buying a pig in a poke.” Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., put it more bluntly: “This president broke the law.” One of the biggest complaints from the lawmakers was that the details of the snooping are still classified and kept private from many of those in Congress, meaning that the Congresspeople were being asked to vote on protecting the telecoms without actually knowing what they did in the first place. The bill dismisses the 46 lawsuits currently pending against the telecoms, but three additional lawsuits against government officials will continue for now.

The ACLU calls the bill “a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy,” but supporters of the bill call it a protection of those rights. Senator Christopher Bond, R-Mo., said, “This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters.” Whatever the motivation, the decision was reached on a deadline; current wiretapping authorizations will begin to expire in August, and without new legislation, the guidelines would revert to the old FISA rules, which would require many new orders and delays in the wiretapping efforts.

So are NSA officials listening to your phone calls or reading your emails right now? Probably not. Should you worry? Worry less about monitoring on your own lines and more about the broader ramifications of this legislation. What is security worth? The delicate balance of safety and liberty is one that has been brought into stark relief since 9/11, and as Americans move forward, the privacy of our communications will become an increasingly-hot issue. Some say that, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from monitoring. But in 1975, as Senator Frank Church, D-Idaho, investigated the NSA, he was troubled enough to say: “That [spying] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” Whether you have anything to hide or not. 

Sources for this article: www.breitbart.com, The New York Times, www.cbs11tv.com, ap.google.com