U.S.-China Surveillance

Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports made available online by Steven Aftergood and Secrecy News blog of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy:
“The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review: An Overview,” January 24, 2007.
“Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act, as Passed by the House of Representatives,” updated [...]

In case you missed it elsewhere, there are interesting new revelations about the Internet surveillance methods of US national security institutions, in particular just how much data is collected about American citizens outside the target. Read Declan McCullagh’s FBI turns to broad new wiretap method at CNET or follow the Slashdot discussion thread.

From last Thursday’s (1/25/07) San Francisco Chronicle:
Telephone companies and the Bush administration, which are defending themselves against lawsuits accusing them of colluding in illegal surveillance of Americans, scored a tactical victory when a federal judge refused to allow California courts to consider claims that the companies violated state privacy laws.
Worth reading the whole [...]

Political advisors to Beijing’s municipal government are quoted in today’s People’s Daily voicing concerns over the use of surveillance cameras in public areas. The article points to the ease with which digital images can be manipulated and cites privacy concerns. Beijing will be establishing a city wide regulation on the use of cameras as of [...]

In the days following Maine’s non-binding joint resolution (SP113) against the federal REAL ID statute, commentators have pointed to bills and resolutions in the works in a number of other U.S. states. Interested in learning more, I started to search for information about the specific states. The information was harder to uncover than I [...]

From the AFP article today at China Daily (first two paragraphs):
The United States and China host nearly two-thirds of spam, viruses and other computer security threats delivered around the world in 2006.
Computer security firm Sophos said 34.2 percent of the so-called malware last year originated from the United States, with 31 percent from [...]

Read these four key paragraphs from the recently published IFPI: 07 Digital Music Report, explaining the international recording industry’s continuing quest for IP rights and its position on Internet policing in China (any added emphasis is mine):
As an industry, we enforce our rights
decisively, and this will continue. In 2006,
we had significant legal victories, led [...]

There have been a number of days now to sort through U.S. Attorney General Gonzales’s letter to the Judiciary Committee announcing that the Bush administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program would not be reauthorized, and that instead, approval for warrants would be sought through the secret Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) court.
A quick reading of the headlines [...]

Information is still too thin, but it’s important to note that leading online privacy NGOs and technology companies, according to a Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) press release yesterday, are working on a framework for corporate behavior that would help to protect “free expression and privacy.”
The release states that the guidelines should be ready by [...]

Here are a couple excerpts from a press release yesterday from China’s mInfo corporation, “What were China’s 450 million mobile users ‘Searching’ for in 2006?” (Xinhua-PRNewswire):
Data published by mInfo are based on actual usage information over the last year across its SMS, WAP, kJava and IM mobile search systems. mInfo is the only provider in [...]