Rechten

In 2014 werd in Nederland het adolescentenstrafrecht ingevoerd. Daarmee is een flexibele toepassing van het jeugd- en volwassenenstrafrecht bij jeugdigen in de leeft­ijd van 16 tot 23 jaar mogelijk. Minderjarigen die van zeer ernstige delicten worden verdacht, kunnen conform de wetgeving volgens het volwassenenstrafrecht worden berecht. Andersom kan bij jongvolwassenen in bepaalde gevallen ook het jeugdstrafrecht worden toegepast.

Het WODC onderzocht op basis van welke overwegingen in de praktijk wordt gekozen voor het één of het ander en heeft daarover advies uitgebracht. In het onderzoeksrapport beveelt men aan om te bekijken of een pedagogische aanpak vaker mogelijk is bij minderjarige verdachten die conform het volwassenenstrafrecht worden berecht.

Pedagogische aanpak

Die pedagogische aanpak vormt de kern van het jeugdstrafrecht. Er wordt relatief mild gestraft, omdat er gezien de leeftijd van de verdachte nog veel aanknopingspunten voor heropvoeding en ontwikkeling zijn. Pedagogiek is hier dikwijls de meest effectieve aanpak die zowel in het belang van de verdachte als van de maatschappij is.

Wordt een minderjarige verdachte echter verdacht van een zeer ernstig misdrijf, dan kan het zijn dat er onvoldoende mogelijkheden voor de pedagogische aanpak worden gezien. Een minderjarige wordt dan mogelijk alsnog gestraft conform het volwassenenstrafrecht. Verdachten in de leeftijdscategorie tot 23 jaar worden sowieso in de regel conform het volwassenenstrafrecht berecht.

Het WODC pleit er nu voor dat er ook in gevallen waarbij op jeugdigen – al dan niet minderjarig – het volwassenenstrafrecht wordt toegepast, alsnog ruimte wordt gezocht voor een pedagogische aanpak.

Ontwikkeling

De onderzoekers komen tot deze conclusie op basis van het inzicht dat “de ontwikkeling van jeugdigen nog kan doorlopen tot halverwege de twintig”. Een pedagogische aanpak achterwege laten zou dan een gemiste kans op succesvolle rehabilitatie vormen, zo onderbouwt men.

“Vanwege hun continuerende ontwikkeling kunnen zij nog steeds baat hebben bij een behandeling,” zo stelt het WODC over jeugdige verdachten. “Dit sluit ook aan bij internationale kinderrechten die behandeling en resocialisatie van minderjarige veroordeelden waarborgen.”

Onderzoek

Voor de totstandkoming van het rapport onderzocht het WODC zaken waarbij het adolescentenstrafrecht werd toegepast. Er is gekeken naar het type misdrijven, de straffen die werden opgelegd en eventuele verschillen in strafoplegging tussen leeftijdsgenoten. De inhoudelijke overwegingen van rechters, officieren van justitie en deskundigen om al dan niet het jeugdstrafrecht toe te passen zijn ook onderzocht.

De kernpunten uit het rapport zijn schematisch samengevat in deze infographic.

Het bericht WODC: bekijk of pedagogische aanpak jeugdige verdachten vaker mogelijk is verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

Earlier today, the European Parliament voted in favour of the Directive on common rules promoting the repair of goods. With this Directive, the EU aims to increase the level of consumer and environmental protection by encouraging consumers to repair defective products instead of replacing them. To that end, the proposal takes a number of important steps which include prohibiting contractual and technological practices that prevent the repair of goods and facilitating the access of professional repairers to technical documentation and spare parts. Unfortunately, the Directive fails to address one of the key obstructions to repairs, especially in modern products: Copyright restrictions.

As we have highlighted in a previous blog post, copyright claims are already being used to fully prevent any third-party repair attempts. Failing to address this issue in the Directive creates a serious backdoor for bad-faith actors who are free to continue to prevent repairs under the guise of copyright.

Shortly after the adoption of the Parliament’s proposal at committee level, the file’s rapporteur René Repasi admitted in a video-message that intellectual property rights are still an unresolved issue in the context of the right to repair. He reiterated that sentiment during yesterday’s plenary debate. While it is encouraging to see this level of awareness, it remains to be seen whether this will be addressed during the next mandate.

As it stands, it seems that European consumers have to continue to wait for a rigid, reliable and meaningful right to repair.

The post After the vote: Do we now have a meaningful right to repair? appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

In de publicatie van NRC komen verschillende medewerkers van het OM aan het woord over de problematiek. Zij vertellen steeds vaker geen e-mails te kunnen ontvangen, versturen of inzien. Ook zijn digitale dossiers in toenemende mate onbeschikbaar.

Daarover vertelt een officier van justitie: “Op strafzittingen staan we als officieren van justitie te improviseren omdat we tijdens de behandeling van de strafzaak vaak onze eigen stukken niet kunnen consulteren.” Een collega-officier vult aan dat communiceren met advocaten soms ‘erg lastig’ is. “Want je kunt niet openen wat ze sturen.”

Digitalisering

De publicatie van NRC komt na een periode waarin de Rechtspraak juist bekend maakte dat er voortaan bij meer rechtbanken en in meer soorten zaken digitaal geprocedeerd kan worden. Stapsgewijs is het de bedoeling dat in de toekomst in alle civielrechtelijke zaken gebruik kan worden gemaakt van digitaal procederen.

Oplossing

Een concrete oplossing voor de huidige problematiek lijkt evenwel nog niet in zicht. Een woordvoerder van het OM geeft aan dat er met man en macht aan vernieuwing en vervanging van software en hardware wordt gewerkt. “Maar,” zo voegt de woordvoerder direct toe, “dit is complex.”

Het bericht Dagelijks werk Openbaar Ministerie ernstig bemoeilijkt door ICT-problemen verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

If you buy something—a refrigerator, a car, a tractor, a wheelchair, or a phone—but you can't have the information or parts to fix or modify it, is it really yours? The right to repair movement is based on the belief that you should have the right to use and fix your stuff as you see fit, a philosophy that resonates especially in economically trying times, when people can’t afford to just throw away and replace things.

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(You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive and on YouTube.)

 Companies for decades have been tightening their stranglehold on the information and the parts that let owners or independent repair shops fix things, but the pendulum is starting to swing back: New York, Minnesota, California, Colorado, and Oregon are among states that have passed right to repair laws, and it’s on the legislative agenda in dozens of other states. Gay Gordon-Byrne is executive director of The Repair Association, one of the major forces pushing for more and stronger state laws, and for federal reforms as well. She joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss this pivotal moment in the fight for consumers to have the right to products that are repairable and reusable.  

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• Why our “planned obsolescence” throwaway culture doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a technology status quo. 
• The harm done by “parts pairing:” software barriers used by manufacturers to keep people from installing replacement parts. 
• Why one major manufacturer put out a user manual in France, but not in other countries including the United States. 
• How expanded right to repair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste. 
• The power of uniting disparate voices—farmers, drivers, consumers, hackers, and tinkerers—into a single chorus that can’t be ignored. 

Gay Gordon-Byrne has been executive director of The Repair Association—formerly known as The Digital Right to Repair Coalition—since its founding in 2013, helping lead the fight for the right to repair in Congress and state legislatures. Their credo: If you bought it, you should own it and have the right to use it, modify it, and repair it whenever, wherever, and however you want. Earlier, she had a 40-year career as a vendor, lessor, and used equipment dealer for large commercial IT users; she is the author of "Buying, Supporting and Maintaining Software and Equipment - an IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle” (2014), and a Colgate University alumna. 

Resources:

• Gay Gordon-Byrne's TED Talk: “You deserve the right to repair your stuff"(August 2021)
• iFixit, the world’s largest online repair community, offering free step-by-step repair guides for thousands of products
• The Verge: “Right-to-repair is now the law in California” (Oct. 10, 2023)
• The Verge: "Maine’s right-to-repair law for cars wins with 84 percent of the vote" (Nov. 7, 2023)
• Ars Technica: "Oregon governor signs nation’s first right-to-repair bill that bans parts pairing" (Mar. 27,2024)
• National Conference of State Legislatures: Right to Repair 2023 Legislation
• How to Fix the Internet: “Making Hope, with Dan Savage" (Apr. 12, 2022) 

What do you think of “How to Fix the Internet?” Share your feedback here. 

Transcript

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
A friend of mine from Boston had his elderly father in a condo in Florida, not uncommon. And when the father went into assisted living, the refrigerator broke and it was out of warranty. So my friend went to Florida, figured out what was wrong, said, ‘Oh, I need a new thermostat,’ ordered the thermostat, stuck around till the thermostat arrived, put it in and it didn't work.

And so he called GE because he bought the part from GE and he says, ‘you didn't provide me, there's a password. I need a password.’ And GE says, ‘Oh, you can't have the password. You have to have a GE authorized tech come in to insert the password.’ And that to me is the ultimate in stupid.

CINDY COHN
That’s Gay Gordon-Byrne with an example of how companies often prevent people from fixing things that they own in ways that are as infuriating as they are absurd.

I’m Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

JASON KELLEY
And I’m Jason Kelley, EFF’s Activism Director. This is our podcast series How to Fix the Internet.  

Our guest today, Gay Gordon-Byrne, is the executive director of The Repair Association, where she has been advocating for years for legislation that will give consumers the right to buy products that are repairable and reusable – rather than things that need to be replaced outright every few years, or as soon as they break. 

CINDY COHN
The Right to Repair is something we fight for a lot at EFF, and a topic that has come up frequently on this podcast. In season three, we spoke to Adam Savage about it.

ADAM SAVAGE
I was trying to fix one of my bathroom faucets a couple of weeks ago, and I called up a Grohee service video of how to repair this faucet. And we all love YouTube for that, right, because anything you want to fix whether it’s your video camera, or this thing, someone has taken it apart. Whether they’re in Micronesia or Australia, it doesn’t matter. But the moment someone figures out that they can make a bunch of dough from that, I’m sure we’d see companies start to say, ‘no, you can’t put up those repair videos, you can only put up these repair videos’ and we all lose when that happens.

JASON KELLEY
In an era where both the cost of living and environmental concerns are top of mind, the right to repair is more important than ever. It addresses both sustainability and affordability concerns.

CINDY COHN
We’re especially excited to talk to Gay right now because Right to Repair is a movement that is on its way up and we have been seeing progress in recent months and years. We started off by asking her where things stand right now in the United States.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
We've had four states actually pass statutes for Right to Repair, covering a variety of different equipment, and there's 45 states that have introduced right to repair over the past few years, so we expect there will be more bills finishing. Getting them started is easy, getting them over the finish line is hard.

CINDY COHN
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We just passed a right to repair bill here in California where EFF is based. Can you tell us a little bit about that and do you see it as a harbinger, or just another step along the way?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Well, honestly, I see it as another step along the way, because three states actually had already passed laws, in California, Apple decided that they weren't going to object any further to right to repair laws, but they did have some conditions that are kind of unique to California because Apple is so influential in California. But it is a very strong bill for consumer products. It just doesn't extend to non-consumer products.

CINDY COHN
Yeah. That's great. And do you know what made Apple change their mind? Because they had, they had been staunch opponents, right? And EFF has battled with them in various different areas around Section 1201 and other things and, and then it seemed like they changed their minds and I wondered if you had some insights about that.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
I take full responsibility.

CINDY COHN
Yay! Hey, getting a big company to change their position like that is no small feat and it doesn't happen overnight.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Oh, it doesn't happen overnight. And what's interesting is that New York actually passed a bill that Apple tried to negotiate and kind of really didn't get to do it in New York, that starts in January. So there was a pressure point already in place. New York is not an insignificant size state.

And then Minnesota passed a much stronger bill. That also takes effect, I think, I might be wrong on this, I think also in January. And so the wheels were already turning, I think the idea of inevitability had occurred to Apple that they'd be on the wrong side of all their environmental claims if they didn't at least make a little bit more of a sincere effort to make things repairable.

CINDY COHN
Yeah. I mean, they have been horrible about this from the very beginning with, you know with custom kinds of dongles, and difficulty in repairing. And again, we fought them around section 1201, which is the ability to do circumvention so that you can see how something works and build. tools that will let you fix them.

It's just no small feat from where we set to get, to get the winds to change such that even Apple puts their finger up and says, I think the winds are changing. We better get on the right side of history.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Yeah, that's what we've been trying to do for the past, when did we get started? I got started in 2010, the organization got started in 2013. So we've been at it a full 10 years as an actual organization, but the problems with Apple and other manufacturers existed long before. So the 1201 problem still exists, and that's the problem that we're trying to move in federally, but oh my God. I thought moving legislation in states was hard and long.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, the federal system is different, and I think that one of the things that we've experienced, though, is when the states start leading, eventually the feds begin to follow. Now, often they follow with the idea that they're going to water down what the states do. That's why, you know, EFF and, and I think a lot of organizations rally around this thing called preemption, which doesn't really sound like a thing you want to rally around, but it ends up being the way in which you make sure that the feds aren't putting the brakes on the states in terms of doing the right things and that you create space for states to be more bold.

It's sometimes not the best thing for a company that has to sell in a bunch of different markets, but it's certainly better than  letting the federal processes come in and essentially damp down what the states are doing.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
You're totally right. One of our biggest fears is that someone will... We'll actually get a bill moving for Right to Repair, and it's obviously going to be highly lobbied, and we will probably not have the same quality of results as we have in states. So we would like to see more states pass more bills so that it's harder and harder for the federal government to preempt the states.

In the meantime, we're also making sure that the states don't preempt the federal government, which is another source of friction.

CINDY COHN
Oh my gosh.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Yeah, preemption is a big problem.

CINDY COHN
It goes both ways. In our, in our Section 1201 fights, we're fighting the Green case, uh, Green vs. Department of Justice, and the big issue there is that while we can get exemptions under 1201 for actual circumvention, the tools that you need  in order to circumvent, you can't get an exception for, and so you have this kind of strange situation in which you technically have the right to repair your device, but nobody can help you do that and nobody can give you the tools to do it. 

So it's this weird, I often, sometimes I call it the, you know, it's legal to be in Arizona, but it's illegal to go to Arizona kind of law. No offense, Arizona.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
That's very much the case.

JASON KELLEY
You mentioned, Gay, that you've been doing this work while probably you've been doing the work a lot longer than the time you've been with the coalition and the Repair Association. We'll get to the brighter future that we want to look towards here in a second, but before we get to the, the way we want to fix things and how it'll look when we do, can you just take us back a little bit and tell us more about how we got to a place where you actually have to fight for your right to repair the things that you buy. You know, 50 years ago, I think most people would just assume that appliances and, and I don't know if you'd call them devices, but things that you purchased you could fix or you could bring to a repair shop. And now we have to force companies to let us fix things.

I know there's a lot of history there, but is there a short version of how we ended up in this place where we have to fight for this right to repair?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Yeah, there is a short version. It's called about 20 years ago, right after Y2K, it became possible, because of the improvements in the internet, for manufacturers to basically host a repair manual or a user guide. online and expect their customers to be able to retrieve that information for free.

Otherwise, they have to print, they have to ship. It's a cost. So it started out as a cost reduction strategy on the part of manufacturers. And at first it seemed really cool because it really solved a problem. I used to have manuals that came in like, huge desktop sets that were four feet of paper. And every month we'd get pages that we had to replace because the manual had been updated. So it was a huge savings for manufacturers, a big convenience for consumers and for businesses.

And then, no aspersions on lawyers. But my opinion is that some lawyer decided they wanted to know, they should know. For reasons we have no idea because they, they still don't make sense, that they should know who's accessing their website. So then they started requiring a login and a password, things like that.

And then another bright light, possibly a lawyer, but most likely a CFO said, we should charge people to get access to the website. And that slippery slope got really slippery or really fast. So it became obvious that you could save a lot of money by not providing manuals, not providing diagnostics and then not selling parts.

I mean, if you didn't want to sell parts, you didn't have to. There was no law that said you have to sell parts, or tools, or diagnostics. And that's where we've been for 20 years. And everybody that gets away with it has encouraged everybody else to do it. To the point where, um, I don't think Cindy would disagree with me.

I mean, I took a look, um, as did Nathan Proctor of US PIRG when we were getting ready to go before the FTC. And we said, you know, I wonder how many companies are actually selling parts and tools and manuals, and Nathan came up with a similar statistic. Roughly 90 percent of the companies don't.

JASON KELLEY
Wow.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
So we're, face it, we have now gone from a situation where everybody could fix anything if they were really interested, to 90 percent of stuff not being fixable, and that number is going, getting worse, not better. So yeah, that's the short story, it’s been a bad 20 years.

CINDY COHN
It's funny because I think it's really, it's such a testament to people's desire to want to fix their own things that despite this, you can go on YouTube if something breaks and you can find some nice person who will walk you through how to fix, you know, lots and lots of devices that you have. And to me, that's a testament to the human desire to want to fix things and the human desire to want to teach other people how to fix things, that despite all these obstacles, there is this thriving world, YouTube's not the only place, but it's kind of the central place where you can find nice people who will help tell you how to fix your things, despite it being so hard and getting harder to have that knowledge and the information you need to do it.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
I would also add to that there's a huge business of repair that, we're not strictly fighting for people's rights to be able to do it yourself. In fact, most people, again, you know, back to some kind of general statistics, most people, somewhere around 85 percent of them, really don't want to fix their own stuff.

They may fix some stuff, but they don't want to fix all stuff. But the options of having somebody help them have also gone. Gone just downhill, downhill, downhill massively in the last 20 years and really bad in the past 10 years. 

So the industry that current employment used to be about 3 million people in the repair, in the industry of repair and that kind of spanned auto repair and a bunch of other things. But those people don't have jobs if people can't fix their stuff because the only way they can be in business is to know that they can buy a part. To know that they can buy the tool, to know that they can get a hold of the schematic and the diagnostics. So these are the things that have thwarted business as well as, do it yourself. And I think most people, most people, especially the people I know, really expect to be able to fix their things. I think we've been told that we don't, and the reality is we do.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, I think that's right. And one of the, kind of, stories that people have been told is that, you know, if there's a silicon chip in it, you know, you just can't fix it. That that's just, um, places things beyond repair and I think that that's been a myth and I think a lot of people have always known It's a myth, you know, certainly in EFF's community.

We have a lot of hardware hackers, we even have lots of software hackers that know that the fact that there's a chip involved doesn't mean that it's a disposable item. But I wondered you know from your perspective. Have you seen that as well?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Oh, absolutely. People are told that these things are too sophisticated, that they're too complex, they're too small. All of these things that are not true, and you know, you got 20 years of a drumbeat of just massive marketing against repair. The budgets for people that are saying you can't fix your stuff are far greater than the budgets of the people that say you can.

So, thank you, Tim Cook and Apple, because you've made this an actual point of advocacy. Every time Apple does something dastardly, and they do it pretty often, every new release there's something dastardly in it, we get to get more people behind the, ‘hey, I want to fix my phone, goddamnit!’

CINDY COHN
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's one of the wonderful things about the Right to Repair movement is that you're, you're surfing people's natural tendencies. The idea that you have to throw something away as soon as it breaks is just so profoundly …I think it's actually an international human, you know, desire to be able to fix these kinds of things and be able to make something that you own work for you.

So it's always been profoundly strange to have companies kind of building this throwaway culture. It reminds me a little of the privacy fights where we've had also 20 years of companies trying to convince us that your privacy doesn't matter and you don't care about it, and that the world's better if you don't have any privacy. And on a one level that has certainly succeeded in building surveillance business models. But on the other hand, I think it's profoundly against human tendencies, so those of us on the side of privacy and repair, the benefit of us is we're kind of riding with how people want to be in the kind of world they want to live in, against, you know, kind of very powerful, well funded forces who are trying to convince us we're different than we are.

JASON KELLEY
Let’s take a quick moment to say thank you to our sponsor. “How to Fix the Internet” is supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Enriching people’s lives through a keener appreciation of our increasingly technological world and portraying the complex humanity of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.

And now back to our conversation with Gay Gordon-Byrne.

At the top of the episode, Gay told us a story about a refrigerator that couldn’t be fixed unless a licensed technician – for a fee, obviously – was brought in to ENTER A PASSWORD. INTO A FRIDGE. Even though the person who owned the fridge had sourced the new part and installed it.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
And that illustrates to me the damage that's being done by this concept of parts pairing, which is where only the manufacturer can make the part work. So even if you can find a part. Even if you could put it in, you can't make it work without calling the manufacturer again, which kind of violates the whole idea that you bought it and you own it, and they shouldn't have anything to do with it after that. 

So these things are pervasive. We see it in all sorts of stuff. The refrigerator one really infuriates me.

CINDY COHN
Yeah, we've seen it with printer cartridges. We've seen it with garage door openers, for sure. I recently had an espresso machine that broke and couldn't get it fixed because the company that made it doesn't make parts available for, for people and that. You know, that's a hard lesson. It's one of the things when you're buying something is to try to figure out, like, is, is this actually repairable or not?

You know, making that information available is something that our friends at Consumer Reports have done and other people have done, but it's still a little hard to find sometimes.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Yeah, that information gap is enormous. There are some resources. They're not great. none of them are comprehensive enough to really do the job. But there's an ‘index de repairability’ in France that covers a lot of consumer tech, you know, cell phones and laptops and things along those lines.

It's not hard to find, but it's in French, so use Google Translate or something and you'll see what they have to say. Um, that's actually had a pretty good impact on a couple companies. For example, Samsung, which had never put out a manual before, had to put out a manual, um, in order to be rated in France. So they did. The same manual they didn't put out in the U. S. and England.

CINDY COHN  
Oh my God, it’s amazing.

Music break.

CINDY COHN
So let's flip this around a little bit. What does the world look like if we get it right? What does a repairable world look like? How is it when you live in it, Gay? Give me a day in the life of somebody who's living in the fixed version of the world.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Well, you will be able to buy things that you can fix, or have somebody fix them for you. And one of the consequences is that you will see more repair shops back in your town.

It will be possible for some enterprising person, that'll open up. Again, the kinds of shops we used to have when we were kids.

You'll see a TV repair shop, an appliance repair shop, an electronics repair shop. In fact, it might be one repair shop, because some of these things are all being fixed in the same way. 

So  you'll see more economic activity in the area of repair. You'll also see, and this is a hope, that manufacturers, if they're going to make their products more repairable, in order to look better, you know, it's more of a, more of a PR and a marketing thing.

If they're going to compete on the basis of repairability, they're going to have to start making their products. more repairable from the get go. They're probably gonna have to stop gluing everything together. Europe has been pretty big on making sure that things are made with fasteners instead of glue.

I think we're gonna see more activity along those lines, and more use of replaceable batteries. Why should a battery be glued in? That seems like a pretty stupid thing to do. So I think we'll see some improvements along the line of sustainability in the sense that we'll be able to keep our things longer and use them until we're done with them, not to when the manufacturer decides they want to sell you a new one, which is really the cycle that we have today.

CINDY COHN
Yeah. Planned obsolescence I think is what the marketers call it. I love a vision of the world, you know, when I grew up, I grew up in a small town in Iowa and we had the, the people called the gearheads, right? They were the ones who were always tinkering with cars. And of course you could take your appliances to them and other kinds of things because, you know, people who know how to take things apart and figure out how they work tend to know that about multiple things.

So I'd love a future of the world where the kind of gearheads rise again and are around to help us keep our stuff longer and keep our stuff again.  I really appreciate what you say, like when we're done with them. I mean, I love innovation. I love new toys.

I think that's really great. But the idea that when I'm done with something, you know, it goes into a trash heap. Um, or, you know, into someplace where you have to have fancy, uh, help to make sure that you're not endangering the planet. Like, that's not a very good world.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Well, look at your example of your espresso machine. You weren't done with it. It quit. It quit. You can't fix it. You can't make another cup of espresso with it.

That's not what you planned. That's not what you wanted.

CINDY COHN
Yep.

JASON KELLEY
I think we all have stories like the espresso machine and that's part of why this is such a tangible topic for everyone. Maybe I'm not alone in this, but I love, you know, thrift stores and places like that where I can get something that maybe someone else was, was tired of. I was walking. Hmm. I passed a house a few years ago and someone had put, uh, a laptop that the screen had been damaged just next to the trash.

And I thought, that looks like a pretty nice laptop. And I grabbed it. It was a pretty new, like, one year old Microsoft Surface. Tablet, laptop, um, anyway, I took it to a repair shop and they were able to repair it for like way less than the cost of buying a new one and I had a new laptop essentially, um, and I don't think they gave me extra service because I worked at EFF but they were certainly happy to help because I worked at EFF, um, but then, you know, these things do eventually Sort of give up, right?

That laptop lasted me about three years and then had so many issues that I just kind of had to get rid of it Where do you think in the in the better future? We should put the things that are sort of Unfixable. You know, do we, do we bring them to a repair shop and they pull out the pieces that work like a junkyard that they can reuse?

Is there a better system for, uh, disposing of the different pieces or the different devices that we can't repair? How do you think about that more sustainable future once everything is better in the first place in terms of being able to repair things?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Excellent question. We have a number of members that are what we call charitable recyclers. And I think that's a model for more, rather than less. They don't even have to be gently used. They just have to be potentially useful. And they'll take them in. They will fix them. They will train people, often people that have some employment challenges, especially coming out of the criminal justice system.  And they'll train them to make repairs and they both get a skill, a marketable skill for future employment. And they also, they also turn around and then resell those devices to make money to keep the whole system going.

But in the commercial recycling business, there's a lot of value in the things that have been discarded if they can have their batteries removed before, before they are, quote, recycled, because recycling is a very messy business and it requires physical contact with the device to the point that it's shredded or crushed. And if we can intercept some of that material before it goes to the crusher, we can reuse more of that material. And I think a lot of it can be reused very effectively in downstream markets, but we don't have those markets because we can't fix the products that are broken.

CINDY COHN
Yep. There's a whole chain of good that starts happening if we can begin to start fixing things, right? It's not just the individuals get to fix the things that they get, but it sets off kind of a cycle of things, a happy cycle of things that get better all along the way.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Yep, and that can be, that can happen right now, well, I should say as soon as these laws start taking effect, because a lot of the information parts and tools that are required under the laws are immediately useful.

CINDY COHN
Right. So tell me, how do these laws work? What do they, what, the good ones anyway, what are, what are they doing? How are things changing with the current flock of laws that are just now coming online?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Well, they're all pretty much the same. They require manufacturers of things that they already repair, so there's some limitations right there, to make available on fair and reasonable terms the same parts, tools, diagnostics, and firmware that they already provide to their quote authorized or their subcontract repair providers because our original intent was to restore competition. So the bills are really a pro competition law as opposed to an e-waste law.

CINDY COHN  
Mm hmm.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
Because these don't cover everything. They cover a lot of stuff, but not everything. California is a little bit different in that they already had a statute that required things of be, under $50 or under $100 to be covered for three years. They have some dates in there that expand the effectiveness of the bill into products that don't even have repair options today.

But the bills that we've been promoting are a little softer, because the intent is competition, because we want to see what competition can do, when we unlock competition, what that does for consumers.

CINDY COHN  
Yeah, and I think that that dovetails nicely into something EFF has been working on quite a while now, which is interoperability, right? One of the things that unlocks competition is, you know, requiring people to build their tools and services in a way that are interoperable with others, that helps both with repair and with kind of follow on innovation that, you know, you can switch up how your Facebook feed shows up based on what you want to see rather than, you know, based upon what Facebook's algorithm wants you to see or other kinds of changes like that. And how do you see interoperability fitting into all of this?

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
I think there will be more. It's not specific to the law, but I think it will simply happen as people try to comply with the law. 

Music break

CINDY COHN  
You founded the Repair Association, so tell us a little bit about how that got started and how you decided to dedicate your life to this. I think it's really important for us to think about, like, the people that are needed to build a better world, as well as the, you know, kind of technologies and ideas.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
I was always in the computer industry. I grew up with my father who was a computer architect in the 50s and 60s. So I never knew a world that didn't involve computers. It was what dad did. And then when I needed a job out of college, and having bounced around a little bit and found not a great deal of success, my father encouraged me to take a job selling computers, because that was the one thing he had never done and thought that it was missing from his resume.

And I took to it like, uh, I don't know, fish to water? I loved it. I had a wonderful time and a wonderful career. But by the mid 2000s, I was done. I mean, I was like, I can't stand this job anymore. So I decided to retire. I didn't like being retired. I started doing other things and eventually, I started doing some work with a group of companies that repair large mainframes.

I've known them. I mean, my former boss was the president. It was kind of a natural. And they started having trouble with some of the manufacturers and I said, that's wrong. I mean, I had this sense of indignation that what Oracle had done when they bought Sun was just flatly wrong and it was illegal. And I volunteered to join a committee. And that's when, haha, that's when I got involved and it was basically, I tell people I over-volunteered.

CINDY COHN
Yeah.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
And what happened is that because I was the only person in that organization that didn't already have relationships with manufacturers, that they couldn't, they couldn't bite the hand that fed them, I was elected chief snowball thrower. AKA Executive Director. 

So it was a passion project that I could afford to do because otherwise I was going to stay home and knit. So this is way better than knitting or quilting these days, way more fun, way more gratifying. I've had a truly wonderful experience, met so many fabulous people, have a great sense of impact that I would never have had with quilting.

CINDY COHN
I just love the story of somebody who kind of put a toe in and then realized, Oh my God, this is so important. And ‘I found this thing where I can make the world better.’ And then you just get, you know, kind of, you get sucked in and, um, but it's, it's fun. And what I really appreciate about the Repair Association and the Right to Repair people is that while, you know, they're working with very serious things, they also, you know, there's a lot of fun in making the world a better place.

And it's kind of fun to be involved in the Right to Repair right now because after a long time kind of shouting in the darkness, there's some traction starting to happen. So then the fun gets even more fun.

GAY GORDON-BYRNE
I can tell you it's ... We're so surprised. I mean, it took, we've had over, well, well over 100 bills filed and, you know, every year we get a little further. We get past this committee and this hurdle and this hurdle and this hurdle. We get almost to the end and then something would happen. And to finally get to the end where the bill becomes law? It's like the dog that chases the car, and you go, we caught the car, now what?

CINDY COHN
Yeah. Now you get to fix it! The car!

JASON KELLEY
Yeah, now you can repair the car.

MUSIC TRANSITION

JASON KELLEY
That was such a wonderful, optimistic conversation and not the first one we've had this season. But this one is interesting because we're actually already getting where we want to be. We're already building the future that we want to live in and it's just really, really pleasing to be able to talk to someone who's in the middle of that and, and making sure that that work happens.

CINDY COHN
I mean, one of the things that really struck me is how much of the better future that we're building together is really about creating new jobs and new opportunities for people to work. I think there's a lot of fear right now in our community that the future isn't going to have work, and that without a social safety net or other kinds of things, you know, it's really going to hurt people.

And I so appreciated hearing about how, you know, Main Street's going to have more jobs. There's going to be people in your local community who can fix your things locally because devices, those are things where having a local repair community and businesses is really. helpful to people.

And so I also kind of, the flip side of that is this interesting observation that one of the things that's happened as a result of shutting off the Right to Repair is an increasing centralization, um, that the jobs that are happening in this thing are not happening locally and that by unlocking the right to repair, we're going to unlock some local opportunities for economic things.

I mean, You know, EFF thinks about this both in terms of empowering users, but also in terms of competition. And the thing about Right to Repair is it really does unlock kind of hyper local competition.

JASON KELLEY
I hadn't really thought about how specifically local it is to have a repair shop that you can just bring your device to. And right now it feels like the options are if you live near an Apple store, for example, maybe you can bring your phone there and then they send it somewhere. I'd much rather go to someone, you know, in my town that I can talk to, and who can tell me about what needs to be done. That's such a benefit of this movement that a lot of people aren't even really putting on the forefront, but it really is something that will help people actually get work and, and, and help the people who need the work and the people who need the job done.

CINDY COHN
Another thing that I really appreciate about the Right to Repair movement s how universal it is. Everyone experiences some version of this, you know, from the refrigerator story to my espresso machine, to any of any number of other stories to the farmers, like everyone has some version of how.

This needs to be fixed. And the other thing that I really appreciate about her gay stories about the right to repair movement is that, you know, she's somebody who comes out of computers, and was thinking about this from the context of computers and didn't really realize that farmers were having the same problem.

Of course, we all kind of know analytically that a lot of the movement in a lot of industries is towards, you know, centralizing computers and making, you know. You know, tractors are now computers with gigantic wheels. Cars are now computers with smaller wheels. That computers have become central to these kinds of things, but also realization that we have silos of users who are experiencing a version of the same problem and connecting those silent silos together, let me say that again. I think the realization that we have silos of users who are experiencing the same problem depending on what kind of tool they're using, um, and connecting those silos together so that together we stand as a much bigger voice is something that the repair, um, the Right to Repair folks have really done well and it is a, is a good lesson for the rest of us.

JASON KELLEY
Yeah, I think we talked a little bit with Adam Savage when he was on a while ago about this sort of gatekeeping and how effective it is to remove the gatekeepers from these movements and say, you know, we're all fighting the same fight. And it just goes to show you that it actually works. I mean, not only does it get everybody on the same page, but unlike a lot of movements, I think you can really see the impact that the Right to Repair movement has had. 

And we talked with Gay about this and it's just, it really, I think, should make people come away optimistic that advocacy like this works over time. You know, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, and we have actually crested a sort of hill in some ways.

There's a lot of work to be done, but it's, it's actually work that we probably will be able to get done and, and that we're seeing the benefits of today

CINDY COHN
Yeah. And as we start to see benefits, we're going to start to see more benefits. I appreciate her. We're in, you know, we're in the whole plugging period where, you know, we got something passed and we need to plug the holes. But I also think once people start feeling the power of having the Right to Repair again, I think I hope it will help snowball.

One of the things that she said that I have observed as well is that sometimes it feels like nothing's happening, nothing's happening, nothing's happening, and then all of a sudden it's all happening. And I think that that's one of the, the kind of flows of advocacy work that I've observed over time and it's fun to see the, the Right to Repair Coalition kind of getting to experience that wave, even if it can be a little overwhelming sometimes.

JASON KELLEY
Thanks for joining us for this episode of How to Fix the Internet.

If you have feedback or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you. Visit EFF. org slash podcast and click on listener feedback. While you're there, you can become a member, donate, maybe pick up some merch and just see what's happening in digital rights this week and every week.

This podcast is licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, and includes music licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported by their creators.

In this episode you heard …Come Inside by Zep Hurme featuring snowflake and Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang featuring Airtone.

You can find links to their music in our episode notes, or on our website at eff.org/podcast. 

Our theme music is by Nat Keefe of BeatMower with Reed Mathis

How to Fix the Internet is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science and technology.

I hope you’ll join us again soon. I’m Jason Kelley.

CINDY
And I’m Cindy Cohn.

Elisa Shupe werd aanvankelijk afgewezen toen ze probeerde auteursrecht te verkrijgen op een boek dat ze met hulp van ChatGPT had geschreven, las ik bij Wired. Toch is het haar gelukt, zij het niet met de argumentatie die ze liever had gehad. Het lijkt wel de jurisprudentie te bestendigen tot nu toe.

Het artikel legt uit: Het [logboek van Shupe] bevat een vergelijking naast elkaar van de onbewerkte machine-uitvoer en de definitieve versie van Shupe’s boek. Op zinsniveau paste ze vrijwel elke regel op de een of andere manier aan, van veranderingen in woordkeuze tot structuur. Een voorbeeld dat een personage in de roman beschrijft: ‘Mark keek naar haar, een complexe mix van bezorgdheid en ergernis duidelijk zichtbaar in zijn blik’ wordt ‘Mark bestudeerde haar, zijn blik weerspiegelde zowel zorgen als irritatie.’ Het US Copyright Office ziet dit als een vorm van ‘selectie, coördinatie en rangschikking van tekst gegenereerd door kunstmatige intelligentie’. Het idee van een creatieve selectie en bewerking van op zichzelf niet beschermd bronmateriaal is al lang aanvaard als een criterium voor auteursrecht. We kwamen dit in januari nog tegen: In Nederland bestaat deze constructie ook. Denk aan het creatief oppoetsen van een publiek-domeinwerk: dat geeft je ook auteursrecht op het opgepoetste resultaat (maar natuurlijk niet op het bronmateriaal). Ik zie geen reden waarom dit anders zou moeten werken als je een AI-werk ‘oppoetst’. Shupe had echter een ander argument ingebracht dat ze zelf sterker vond: [Namelijk] om een ??belangrijker pad te openen naar auteursrechterkenning voor door AI gegenereerd materiaal. “Ik probeer auteursrechten te verkrijgen op het door AI ondersteunde en door AI gegenereerde materiaal onder een ADA-vrijstelling vanwege mijn vele handicaps”, schreef ze in haar oorspronkelijke auteursrechtaanvraag. Ze is als 100 procent gehandicapt beoordeeld en heeft moeite met schrijven vanwege cognitieve stoornissen die verband houden met aandoeningen als een bipolaire stoornis, borderline-persoonlijkheidsstoornis en een misvorming van de hersenstam. Dan zie ik hoe het handig kan zijn als tools je een heel eind vooruit helpen.

Maar wat betekent het voor het auteursrecht op het resultaat? Stephen Hawking schreef bijvoorbeeld met een tool die losse woorden voorstelde, en iets dergelijks zit ook in veel telefoon-invoerapps: typ een woord en krijg een suggestie voor het volgende. Weinig mensen zullen zeggen dat de zin die je zo typt, een AI zin is. Het is mijn zin, het is gewoon logisch dat na ‘gewoon’ ‘logisch’ komt.

Als het systeem na één woord de hele zin afmaakt, of zelfs er een alinea van maakt, dan wordt dat gevoelsmatig een ander verhaal. Is dat nog een handige invulling van jouw keuze of zijn we dan al in de vrije ruimte van de tool beland?

De vergelijking die Shupe maakt, is ook een intrigerende: ze vergeleek “haar gebruik van OpenAI’s chatbot met een geamputeerde die een beenprothese gebruikt”. Oftewel: welk percentage van je lijf moet nog origineel-organisch zijn om nog ‘mens’ genoemd te worden? Daar is geen rechtszaak over gevoerd – en wat zou ook de insteek zijn, bij zo veel procent metaal bent u ruimbagage?

Arnoud

 

 

Het bericht Creatief mixen van AI output kan je auteursrecht op het resultaat geven verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.  

The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant “compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance of foreigners abroad from inside the United States. It operates, in part, through the cooperation of large telecommunications service providers: massive amounts of traffic on the Internet backbone are accessed and those communications on the government’s secret list are copied. And that’s just one part of the massive, expensive program. 

While Section 702 prohibits the NSA and FBI from intentionally targeting Americans with this mass surveillance, these agencies routinely acquire a huge amount of innocent Americans' communications “incidentally.” The government can then conduct backdoor, warrantless searches of these “incidentally collected” communications.

The government cannot even follow the very lenient rules about what it does with the massive amount of information it gathers under Section 702, repeatedly abusing this authority by searching its databases for Americans’ communications. In 2021 alone, the FBI reported conducting up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data using Americans’ identifiers. Given this history of abuse, it is difficult to understand how Congress could decide to expand the government’s power under Section 702 rather than rein it in.

One of RISAA’s most egregious expansions is its large but ill-defined increase of the range of entities that have to turn over information to the NSA and FBI. This provision allegedly “responds” to a 2023 decision by the FISC Court of Review, which rejected the government’s argument that an unknown company was subject to Section 702 for some circumstances. While the New York Times reports that the unknown company from this FISC opinion was a data center, this new provision is written so expansively that it potentially reaches any person or company with “access” to “equipment” on which electronic communications travel or are stored, regardless of whether they are a direct provider. This could potentially include landlords, maintenance people, and many others who routinely have access to your communications on the interconnected internet.

This is to say nothing of RISAA’s other substantial expansions. RISAA changes FISA’s definition of “foreign intelligence” to include “counternarcotics”: this will allow the government to use FISA to collect information relating to not only the “international production, distribution, or financing of illicit synthetic drugs, opioids, cocaine, or other drugs driving overdose deaths,” but also to any of their precursors. While surveillance under FISA has (contrary to what most Americans believe) never been limited exclusively to terrorism and counterespionage, RISAA’s expansion of FISA to ordinary crime is unacceptable.

RISAA also allows the government to use Section 702 to vet immigrants and those seeking asylum. According to a FISC opinion released in 2023, the FISC repeatedly denied government attempts to obtain some version of this authority, before finally approving it for the first time in 2023. By formally lowering Section 702’s protections for immigrants and asylum seekers, RISAA exacerbates the risk that government officials could discriminate against members of these populations on the basis of their sexuality, gender identity, religion, or political beliefs.

Faced with massive pushback from EFF and other civil liberties advocates, some members of Congress, like Senator Ron Wyden, raised the alarm. We were able to squeeze out a couple of small concessions. One was a shorter reauthorization period for Section 702, meaning that the law will be up for review in just two more years. Also, in a letter to Congress, the Department of Justice claimed it would only interpret the new provision to apply to the type of unidentified businesses at issue in the 2023 FISC opinion. But a pinky promise from the current Department of Justice is not enforceable and easily disregarded by a future administration. There is some possible hope here, because Senator Mark Warner promised to return to the provision in a later defense authorization bill, but this whole debacle just demonstrates how Congress gives the NSA and FBI nearly free rein when it comes to protecting Americans – any limitation that actually protects us (and here the FISA Court actually did some protecting) is just swept away.

RISAA’s passage is a shocking reversal—EFF and our allies had worked hard to put together a coalition aimed at enacting a warrant requirement for Americans and some other critical reforms, but the NSA, FBI and their apologists just rolled Congress with scary-sounding (and incorrect) stories that a lapse in the spying was imminent. It was a clear dereliction of Congress’s duty to oversee the intelligence community in order to protect all of the rest of us from its long history of abuse.

After over 20 years of doing it, we know that rolling back any surveillance authority, especially one as deeply entrenched as Section 702, is an uphill fight. But we aren’t going anywhere. We had more Congressional support this time than we’ve had in the past, and we’ll be working to build that over the next two years.

Too many members of Congress (and the Administrations of both parties) don’t see any downside to violating your privacy and your constitutional rights in the name of national security. That needs to change.

In de zaak, die de Staat en Stichting Hulpgoederen Alliantie (SHA) tegen Van Lienden aanspande, staat de door Van Lienden geboekte winst naar aanleiding van de mondkapjesdeal in 2020 centraal. Aan de deal, waaraan Van Lienden naar eigen zeggen in de media en tegenover betrokkenen geen winst maakte, hield hij samen met zijn compagnons naar schatting zo’n dertig miljoen euro over. Dat bedrag wil de Staat nu terug.

Kort voor de start van de zaak kwam de deken van de Amsterdamse Orde van Advocaten, Jacqueline Schaap, in het nieuws vanwege bemiddeling tussen SHA, de stichting namens wie Van Lienden de deal in 2020 sloot, en Van Lienden zelf. Sinds het ontslag van Van Lienden bij SHA heeft de stichting beslag laten leggen op al diens tegoeden. Daardoor kan Van Lienden nu naar eigen zeggen geen advocaat meer betalen.

Bemiddeling

De deken is echter van mening dat Van Lienden niet alleen recht heeft op verdediging, maar ook op middelen om een kort geding te kunnen voeren over de rechtmatigheid van het beslag dat SHA legde op zijn middelen. Van Lienden wordt inmiddels kosteloos bijgestaan door advocaat Jaap-Willem Roozemond en heeft via de Amsterdamse Orde van Advocaten dus de beschikking gekregen over financiële middelen om een kort geding te kunnen aanspannen. Dat geding dient naar verwachting op dinsdag, heeft Roozemond laten weten.

Roozemond zal namens Van Lienden tijdens de zittingen in de rechtbank aanwezig zijn. Van Lienden heeft aangegeven de zaak zelf vanaf de publieke tribune te volgen.

Mondkapjesdeal

De start van de civiele zaken tegen Van Lienden komt exact vier jaar na de totstandkoming van de inmiddels beruchte mondkapjesdeal. Via stichting SHA oefenden Van Lienden en zijn compagnons in april 2020 “druk uit op het ministerie, gaven ze een onjuiste voorstelling van zaken en speelden ze bewust partijen tegen elkaar uit,” zo luidde de conclusie uit een onderzoeksrapport uit 2022.

Minister Conny Helder van Langdurige Zorg en Sport zei in het verlengde daarvan dat Van Lienden en zijn zakenpartners bewust verwarring zouden hebben gecreëerd bij de totstandkoming van de deal. “Er was duidelijk sprake van vermenging,” zo schreef ze in datzelfde jaar in een Kamerbrief.

Van Lienden en consorten leverden de mondkapjes uiteindelijk niet zonder winstoogmerk via hun stichting, maar mét winstoogmerk via het commerciële bedrijf Relief Goods Alliance (RGA). Volgens de Staat was het altijd de intentie van Van Lienden om verwarring te zaaien en heimelijk winst over te houden aan de deal. In september 2022 kwamen er geluidsopnames naar buiten waarop te horen was dat Van Lienden “gillend rijk” wilde worden aan de deal.

 

Het bericht Zaak tegen Sywert van Lienden van start, Amsterdamse deken bemiddelde verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

De mogelijkheden in Nederland om volledig digitaal te procederen, verschillen per rechtbank en per rechtsgebied. In Gelderland was het bijvoorbeeld al mogelijk om in civiele jeugdrechtzaken en verplichte zorgzaken van een digitaal proces gebruik te maken. Vanaf 6 mei komen daar dus weer een aantal zaaktypen bij. In Gelderland gaat het om een proef.

Dat laatste geldt niet voor de uitbreidingen bij de andere rechtbanken per 22 april. Digitaal procederen wordt daar in de genoemde zaaktypen definitief uitgerold. Bovendien wordt het per 6 mei landelijk – dus bij alle rechtbanken – mogelijk om in kort gedingen handel en familie digitaal te procederen.

Digitalisering

De uitbreidingen die de Rechtspraak momenteel test en doorvoert passen in een langer traject waarin steeds meer wordt gedigitaliseerd. In In het civiel recht zijn de mogelijkheden tot digitaal procederen momenteel het grootst, gevolgd door het bestuursrecht. Binnen het strafrecht is traditioneel procederen nog veelal de norm.

Kiezen advocaten ervoor om digitaal te procederen in civielrechtelijke zaken, dan dienen zij in Mijn Rechtspraak hun stukken in en kunnen ze er ook een nieuwe zaak starten. Wanneer dat gebeurt, worden er geen papieren stukken meer verzonden. Het gehele dossier is dan online raadpleegbaar.

Doelstelling

In 2020 sprak de Raad voor de rechtspraak in het kader van het project Digitale Toegankelijkheid (DT) nog de ambitie uit om in 2024 alle geschatte 900.000 zaken op het gebied van civiel en bestuursrecht digitaal te voeren. Dat project volgde op het mislukte digitaliseringsproject Kwaliteit en Innovatie (KEI), dat in 2018 wegens te hoog oplopende kosten werd stopgezet.

Hoewel de doelstelling uit 2020 nog niet is gehaald, ligt de Rechtspraak wel op koers om in steeds meer zaaktypen gebruik te kunnen maken van een volledig digitaal dossier. In zaken waar digitaal procederen nog niet beschikbaar is, kan al wel gebruik worden gemaakt van Veilig Mailen om processtukken uit te wisselen.

Het bericht Digitaal procederen mogelijk in steeds meer typen zaken verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

Socialemediaplatforms zoals Facebook en Instagram mogen hun gebruikers niet dwingen zich online te laten volgen in ruil voor toegang. Dat las ik bij Nu.nl. Hierachter zit een advies van de verzamelde Europese AVG-toezichthouders over „toestemmings- of beloningsmodellen” (Consent or Pay klinkt nét iets lekkerder), dat vrij hard oordeelt dat toestemming eigenlijk nooit rechtsgeldig kan zijn als het alternatief is de knip te trekken.

Enige tijd geleden oordeelde het Hof van Justitie inzake Meta dat het mogelijk moet zijn om toestemming voor tracking in te tracken, sorry trekken, zonder dat je geheel uit de dienst werd gegooid. Er moet een alternatief komen, desnoods tegen een gepaste vergoeding, waar geen tracking in zit:

Thus, those users must be free to refuse individually, in the context of the contractual process, to give their consent to particular data processing operations not necessary for the performance of the contract, without being obliged to refrain entirely from using the service offered by the online social network operator, which means that those users are to be offered, if necessary for an appropriate fee, an equivalent alternative not accompanied by such data processing operations.

Dit vatte men in Californië op als “zet een betaalde versie er naast en de trackingversie is legaal”, vandaar dat je sinds november 9 euro kunt betalen voor een reclamevrije versie. Zoals ik toen schreef: Het roept de fundamentele vraag op: hoe moet het dan wel? Als ze alleen de betaalde dienst hadden laten bestaan, was er denk ik weinig juridisch tegenin te brengen. Een netwerkdienst voor 10 euro per maand en zonder tracking, wat precies is daar mis mee. Maar het komt nu agressief over omdat we al heel lang die gratis versie hadden, en dus ons op kosten gejaagd voelen om die tracking te kunnen vermijden. De EDPB gaat terug naar die uitspraak van het Hof en zit zwaar op het “equivalent alternative”. Het is té makkelijk om naar dat bedrag te grijpen en te roepen dat het equivalent is. Een gratis variant met ongepersonaliseerde reclame had ook prima gekund, bijvoorbeeld. Want persoonsgegevens worden nu eigenlijk op één lijn met geld gesteld, en dat is zeer zeker niet de bedoeling.

Het advies (dat dan wel zo heet maar zo dicht bij een bindend document komt als kan) staat voor meer dan de helft van de 42 pagina’s stil bij wat consent is en welke factoren daar aan kleven. Met name het “in vrijheid geven” in z’n eentje is een kwart van het document. Ik ben daar op zich wel blij mee, want er is nauwelijks écht gekeken naar die factoren. Neem nou het “detriment” verhaal: weigeren of intrekken mag geen nadeel opleveren, maar wat is dat dan? Als ik terugga in waar die term “detriment” of “nadelig gevolg” vandaan kom, dan kom ik bijvoorbeeld bij WP 187 van wat nu de EPDB is. Hieruit haal ik dat iets nadelig is als het zeg maar bestraffend is, je afschrikt die optie te kiezen. Dit halen ze uit eerdere papers over consent bij medische zaken (bij weigering consent geen behandeling, WP 131) en bij het werk (WP 48, bij weigering geen promotie/nieuwe baan). Helaas komt er geen fundamenteel criterium, maar wordt “als je elke dag op Facebook moet, dan is dat een vorm van nadeel” als waarheid geponeerd: Data subjects may suffer detriment if it becomes impossible for them to use a service that is part of their daily lives and has a prominent role. Let ook op de “may”, die met z’n vriendje “might” regelmatig terugkomt in dit stuk van de analyse. Alles kan – koffie kan, thee kan – maar is dit een theoretische zijsprong of gaat dit over 90% van de gevallen?

Afijn, de kern is dus dat grote sociale netwerken een sterke macht hebben en daarvan buitengesloten worden is op hetzelfde niveau als je baan kwijt raken. Ik snap wat men wil zeggen maar ik had denk ik een diepere analyse verwacht die dit rechtvaardigt dan “het is gewoon heel erg als ze je er niet op laten”.

De volgende stap zal zijn dat de toezichthouders aan Meta gaan vragen hoe deze denkt dat toestemming rechtsgeldig is verkregen in het licht van deze opinie. Op basis van dat antwoord kan men dan de verwerking door Facebook verbieden of een bindende aanwijzing geven dat er ook een gratis trackingvrije versie moet komen.

Arnoud

Het bericht “Sociale media mogen mensen niet dwingen zich te laten volgen” verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

Advocaten kunnen bij de rechtbanken Amsterdam, Limburg, Midden-Nederland en Oost-Brabant vanaf dit moment digitaal procederen in civiele jeugdrechtzaken en in gezag- en omgangszaken. Bij de rechtbank Gelderland was dit al langer mogelijk. Via het webportaal Mijn Rechtspraak logt een advocaat in en heeft zo altijd een actueel overzicht van ingediende zaken en bijbehorende stukken.

​Toegang via webportaal Mijn Rechtspraak

Door via het beveiligde webportaal 'Mijn Rechtspraak' in te loggen, krijgen advocaten toegang tot hun digitale dossier(s) met alle bijbehorende stukken. Zij loggen in met de Advocatenpas. Advocaten kunnen in Mijn Rechtspraak zelf stukken indienen of een nieuwe zaak starten. Het op papier nasturen van stukken is niet langer nodig als advocaten indienen via Mijn Rechtspraak. Alle stukken staan direct op één plek in een overzichtelijk en volledig digitaal dossier. Digitaal procederen biedt een snelle en meer eenvoudige toegang tot de Rechtspraak en is alleen mogelijk via het webportaal Mijn Rechtspraak. 

Digitale Toegang

Digitale toegang is onderdeel van digitalisering binnen de Rechtspraak. De Rechtspraak realiseert de komende jaren eenvoudige digitale toegang voor alle rechtzoekenden en hun procesvertegenwoordigers in de rechtsgebieden civiel recht en bestuursrecht. Digitaal procederen is vooralsnog vrijwillig, maar wordt op enig moment verplicht voor juridische professionals.

Tijdens het uitlaten van zijn hond werd advocaat en curator  Schol (Schol & Gorter Advocaten) vlakbij zijn huis in het Duitse Gronau van dichtbij beschoten. Dat gebeurde vanuit een rijdende auto, met een semi-automatisch wapen. Een van de vijf kogels raakte zijn bovenbeen en zorgde voor een slagaderlijke bloeding. De advocaat overleefde de aanslag ternauwernood, maar zal er waarschijnlijk de rest van zijn leven pijn en last van houden.
In februari 2021 vertelde Schol in een interview met Een Vandaag over de aanslag.

Afwikkeling faillissement

Al snel ontstond het vermoeden dat de aanslag te maken had met de afwikkeling van een faillissement van een sportschool in Losser, waarbij Schol als curator betrokken was. De sportschool was een maand voor de aanslag op Schol beschoten.
Een paar maanden na de aanslag werd geld jaar voor de gouden tip uitgeloofd; na een jaar  kwamen twee verdachten uit Hengelo in beeld, Bert Jan ten V. en Maikel T.T.

‘Uitgeleende auto’

Beide mannen hebben altijd alle betrokkenheid bij de beschieting van de advocaat ontkend. Ten V. heeft verklaard dat er weliswaar vanuit zijn auto is geschoten, maar dat hij die auto had uitgeleend. Na de rechtbank Overijssel, die de mannen straffen van 23 en 18 jaar oplegde, gelooft ook het gerechtshof dat verhaal niet.
Het hof houdt de mannen verantwoordelijk voor poging tot moord (ECLI:NL:GHARL:2024:2606 en ECLI:NL:GHARL:2024:2609). De raadsheren baseren zich onder meer op het onderzoek naar de aangetroffen kogelhulzen bij de moordaanslag en bij de beschieting van de sportschool, op de gevonden schotresten in de auto en op afgeluisterde gesprekken.

Bedreiging

Ten V. heeft wel bekend op de kantine van de sportschool te hebben geschoten. Hij wordt ook hiervoor veroordeeld. Maar omdat er niemand in de afgesloten kantine aanwezig was, vindt het hof − anders dan de rechtbank − dat geen sprake was van een poging tot moord. Wel heeft de schutter zich schuldig heeft gemaakt aan bedreiging en vernieling.

Strafverzwarend

Omdat de aanslag op de advocaat te maken heeft met zijn werkzaamheden als curator, vindt het hof dat sprake is van een aantasting van de rechtsstaat, en dat is strafverzwarend. Ten V. wordt veroordeeld tot een celstraf van 17 jaar en 8 maanden, T.T. tot een celstraf van 15 jaar en 9 maanden. Daarnaast moeten de mannen de advocaat een schadevergoeding van ruim 384.000 euro betalen.

Derk Wiersum

De aanslag op Philippe Schol vond plaats twee maanden na de moord op advocaat Derk Wiersum. Eerder deze week werd bekend dat in die zaak de gevangenisstraffen definitief zijn. De Hoge Raad bevestigde de door het gerechtshof Amsterdam opgelegde straffen: beide daders zijn veroordeeld tot dertig jaar cel.

Het bericht Gerechtshof legt lagere straffen op voor aanslag op advocaat Philippe Schol verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

In the absence of strong net neutrality protections, internet service providers (ISPs) have made all sorts of plans that would allow them to capitalize on something called "network slicing." While this technology has all sorts of promise, what the ISPs have planned would subvert net neutrality—the principle that all data be treated equally by your service provider—by allowing them to recreate the kinds of “fast lanes” we've already agreed should not be allowed. If their plans succeed, then the new proposed net neutrality protections will end up doing far less for consumers than the old rules did.

The FCC released draft rules to reinstate net neutrality, with a vote on adopting the rules to come the 25th of April. Overall, the order is a great step for net neutrality. However, to be truly effective the rules must not preempt states from protecting their residents with stronger laws and clearly find the creation of “fast lanes” via positive discrimination and unpaid prioritization of specific applications or services are violations of net neutrality.

Fast Lanes and How They Could Harm Competition

Since “fast lanes” aren’t a technical term, what do we mean when we are talking about a fast lane? To understand, it is helpful to think about data traffic and internet networking infrastructure like car traffic and public road systems. As roads connect people, goods, and services across distances, so does network infrastructure allow for data traffic to flow from one place to another. And just as a road with more capacity in the way of more lanes theoretically means the road can support more traffic moving at speed1, internet infrastructure with more “lanes” (i.e. bandwidth) should mean that a network can better support applications like streaming services and online gaming.

Individual ISPs have a maximum network capacity, and speed, of internet traffic they can handle. To continue the analogy, the road leading to your neighborhood has a set number of lanes. This is why the speed of your internet may change throughout the day. At peak hours your internet service may slow down because a slowdown has occurred from too much requested traffic clogging up the lanes.

It’s not inherently a bad thing to have specific lanes for certain types of traffic, actual fast lanes on freeways can improve congestion by not making faster moving vehicles compete for space with slower moving traffic, having exit and entry lanes in freeways also allows cars to perform specialized tasks without impeding other traffic. A lane only for buses isn’t a bad thing as long as every bus gets equal access to that lane and everyone has equal access to riding those buses. Where this becomes a problem is if there is a special lane only for Google buses, or for consuming entertainment content instead of participating in video calls. In these scenarios you would be increasing the quality of certain bus rides at the expense of degraded service for everyone else on the road.

An internet “fast lane” would be the designation of part of the network with more bandwidth and/or lower latency to only be used for certain services. On a technical level, the physical network infrastructure would be split amongst several different software defined networks with different use cases using network slicing. One network might be optimized for high bandwidth applications such as video streaming, another might be optimized for applications needing low latency (e.g. a short distance between the client and the server), and another might be optimized for IoT devices. The maximum physical network capacity is split among these slices. To continue our tortured metaphor, your original six lane general road is now a four lane general road with two lanes reserved for, say, a select list of streaming services. Think dedicated high speed lanes for Disney+, HBO, and Netflix, but those services only. In a network neutral construction of the infrastructure, all internet traffic shares all lanes, and no specific app or service is unfairly sped up or slowed down. This isn’t to say that we are inherently against network management techniques like quality of service or network slicing. But it’s important that quality of service efforts be undertaken, as much as possible, in an application agnostic manner.

The fast lanes metaphor isn’t ideal. On the road having fast lanes is a good thing, it can protect more slow and cautious drivers from dangerous driving and improve the flow of traffic. Bike lanes are a good thing because they make cyclists safer and allow cars to drive more quickly and not have to navigate around them. But with traffic lanes it’s the driver, not the road, that decides which lane they belong in (with penalties for doing obviously bad faith things such as driving in the bike lane.)

Internet service providers (ISPs) are already testing their ability to create these network slices. They already have plans of creating market offerings where certain applications and services, chosen by them, are given exclusive reserved fast lanes while the rest of the internet must shoulder their way through what is left. This kind of networking slicing is a violation of net neutrality. We aren’t against network slicing as a technology, it could be useful for things like remote surgery or vehicle to vehicle communication which requires low latency connections and is in the public interest, which are separate offerings and not part of the broadband services covered in the draft order. We are against network slicing being used as a loophole to circumvent principles of net neutrality.

Fast Lanes Are a Clear Violation of Net Neutrality

Where net neutrality is the principle that all ISPs should treat all legitimate traffic coming over their networks equally, discriminating between  certain applications or types of traffic is a clear violation of that principle. When fast lanes speed up certain applications or certain classes of applications, they cannot do so without having a negative impact on other internet traffic, even if it’s just by comparison. This is throttling, plain and simple.

Further, because ISPs choose which applications or types of services get to be in the fast lane, they choose winners and losers within the internet, which has clear harms to both speech and competition. Whether your access to Disney+ is faster than your access to Indieflix because Disney+ is sped up or because Indieflix is slowed down doesn’t matter because the end result is the same: Disney+ is faster than Indieflix and so you are incentivized to use Disney+ over Indieflix.

ISPs should not be able to harm competition even by deciding to prioritize incumbent services over new ones, or that one political party’s website is faster than another’s. It is the consumer who should be in charge of what they do online. Fast lanes have no place in a network neutral internet.

• 1. Urban studies research shows that this isn’t actually the case, still it remains the popular wisdom among politicians and urban planners.

Following an urgent appeal filed to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) on behalf of blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, EFF has joined 26 free expression and human rights organizations calling for immediate action.

The appeal to the UNWGAD was initially filed in November 2023 just weeks after Alaa’s tenth birthday in prison. The British-Egyptian citizen is one of the most high-profile prisoners in Egypt and has spent much of the past decade behind bars for his pro-democracy writing and activism following Egypt’s revolution in 2011.

EFF and Media Legal Defence Initiative submitted a similar petition to the UNGWAD on behalf of Alaa in 2014. This led to the Working Group issuing an opinion that Alaa’s detention was arbitrary and called for his release. In 2016, the UNWGAD declared Alaa's detention (and the law under which he was arrested) a violation of international law, and again called for his release.

We once again urge the UN Working Group to urgently consider the recent petition and conclude that Alaa’s detention is arbitrary and contrary to international law. We also call for the Working Group to find that the appropriate remedy is a recommendation for Alaa’s immediate release.

Read our full letter to the UNWGAD and follow Free Alaa for campaign updates.

We should all have the freedom to read, share, and comment on the laws we must live by. But yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-4 to move forward the PRO Codes Act (H.R. 1631), a bill that would limit those rights in a critical area. 

TAKE ACTION

Tell Congress To Reject The Pro Codes Act

A few well-resourced private organizations have made a business of charging money for access to building and safety codes, even when those codes have been incorporated into law. 

These organizations convene volunteers to develop model standards, encourage regulators to make those standards into mandatory laws, and then sell copies of those laws to the people (and city and state governments) that have to follow and enforce them.

They’ve claimed it’s their copyrighted material. But court after court has said that you can’t use copyright in this way—no one “owns” the law. The Pro Codes Act undermines that rule and the public interest, changing the law to state that the standards organizations that write these rules “shall retain” a copyright in it, as long as the rules are made “publicly accessible” online. 

That’s not nearly good enough. These organizations already have so-called online reading rooms that aren’t searchable, aren’t accessible to print-disabled people, and condition your ability to read mandated codes on agreeing to onerous terms of use, among many other problems. That’s why the Association of Research Libraries sent a letter to Congress last week (supported by EFF, disability rights groups, and many others) explaining how the Pro Codes Act would trade away our right to truly understand and educate our communities about the law for cramped public access to it. Congress must not let well-positioned industry associations abuse copyright to control how you access, use, and share the law. Now that this bill has passed committee, we urgently need your help—tell Congress to reject the Pro Codes Act.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: No one owns the law

Het onderzoek zal worden gedaan door het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Datacentrum (WODC), zo hebben de demissionair ministers De Jonge (Binnenlandse Zaken) en Yeşilgöz (Justitie en Veiligheid) de Tweede Kamer laten weten.

Voldoende aansluiting

Onderzocht wordt of de huidige regels en voorwaarden nog voldoende aansluiten bij de actuele ontwikkelingen. Bij het onderzoek worden de instanties betrokken die zich bezighouden met het mogelijk maken van demonstraties, en het veilig verloop ervan: burgemeesters, Openbaar Ministerie en politie.
Het onderzoek richt zich op twee soorten situaties: acties waarbij demonstranten de grenzen van de wet bewust opzoeken of zelfs overschrijden en demonstraties waarbij andere grondrechten of de nationale veiligheid in het geding kunnen komen.

Blokkeren snelwegen

Bepaalde groepen demonstranten overtreden bewust de wet, vaak met als doel om zoveel mogelijk aandacht te krijgen en hiermee beleid te beïnvloeden. Hierbij valt te denken aan het blokkeren van een snelweg, het bezetten van delen van vliegvelden of het veroorzaken van gevaarlijke verkeerssituaties door brandstichting op of langs snelwegen. Dergelijke demonstraties kunnen tot gevaarlijk situaties leiden en vergen veel politie-inzet.
Omdat dit soort demonstraties ook in andere landen toenemen, zullen de onderzoekers kijken hoe dergelijke demonstraties elders worden aangepakt.

Grondrechten

Ook zijn er acties waarbij demonstranten niet direct regels overtreden, maar die wel op gespannen voet kunnen staan met de grondrechten van anderen. Bijvoorbeeld als het gaat om protesten bij woningen van politici of bij een abortuskliniek. Het demonstratierecht kan dan op gespannen voet komen te staan met het recht op bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer. Het lokale gezag kan een demonstratie beperken als dat noodzakelijk is voor de verkeersveiligheid, de volksgezondheid of om wanordelijkheden te bestrijden of te voorkomen. Andere grondrechten kunnen maar beperkt worden meegewogen. Het onderzoek moet in kaart brengen hoe in andere landen met dit soort demonstraties wordt omgegaan.

Nationale veiligheid

Soms kunnen demonstraties gevolgen hebben voor de nationale veiligheid. Onlangs werd een koranverbranding verboden door de Arnhemse burgemeester Marcouch uit vrees voor wanordelijkheden. Daarbij werd tevens gewezen op de mogelijke impact op de nationale veiligheid. De onderzoekers zullen daarom ook bekijken hoe andere landen omgaan met nationale veiligheid als grond voor eventuele beperkingen van demonstraties. Bij dit onderzoek vormen de Grondwet en het Europees Verdrag voor de Rechten van de Mens het uitgangspunt.

Het bericht WODC gaat onderzoek doen naar het demonstratierecht verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

“Eén voor de knowledge, twee voor de lol, drie voor bravoure, vier pour l’amour” – MC Prak$ weet nog altijd als geen ander het yuppisme met de nodige ironie te cultiveren. Maar naast de aan het genre inherente borstklopperij is er in het nieuwe werk tevens de nodige ruimte voor zelfrelativering. “Vijf voor de passie, m’n laptoptassie. Ben ook gewoon een clown; net Bassie”, omschrijft de advocaat bij Loyens & Loeff zijn pretentieloze zelf.

Niet-meer-vrijgezel

Ziedaar het natuurlijke vervolg van zijn debuutalbum Rappende Raadsman uit 2023. In de nieuwe single ‘Bassie’ reflecteert de niet-meer-vrijgezel op intredende nesteldrang. Sinds kort woont hij samen en ontdekt steeds meer een zachte kant in zichzelf. Nog altijd “tof als een peer, scherp als een speer en zo sterk als een beer, maar liever beregezellig.” De rap van de tongriem gesneden Randstedeling omarmt alles wat vroeger dodelijk saai leek. “You get me?! Gooi die wandelschoenen at me.” Prakke wil om zes uur al aan de piepers.

Kriebel in de buik

En tóch kruipt het bloed soms waar het niet gaan kan. In de schemerfase tussen de verlengde studententijd en het burgerleven blijft de 29-jarige af en toe verlangen naar nachtelijke escapades. Op de B-kant ‘Gut Feeling’ beschrijft hij de terugkerende drang om de bloemetjes buiten te zetten. “Remmen los, stoom afblazen, paradoxen achterlaten – status quo niet hand te haven.” En zo kunnen fans hem nog altijd zomaar eens in het Amsterdamse nachtleven treffen: “Er zijn heel wat mazen in ontwikkelingen van die heute Abend want die heute Abend is nog im Frage.”

Dak eraf

Aan festiviteiten gelukkig geen gebrek. “Tijdens de Album Release Party in juni van vorig jaar werd het figuurlijke dak afgeblazen van een bomvolle Akhnaton te Amsterdam”, laat een trotse Prakke aan Mr. weten. Na een zonnige aftrap met een glaasje bubbels werd tot in de late uurtjes doorgefeest en waren er verscheidene optredens. Natuurlijk van MC Prak$ en zijn producer Robijntje zelf, maar ook van collega-rappers Jong Louis en Meester Hidde (niet in de rechten, maar aardrijkskunde op het Lumion in Amsterdam-West).

Dit najaar zal ook Prak$’ tweede plaat Rappende Raadsman II groots worden gelanceerd, zo kondigt hij alvast aan.

Het bericht De rappende raadsman is terug verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.

Een lezer vroeg me: Ik zit met het volgende. Ik heb dus een D-Link NAS waar een backdoor account in aanwezig is. Nu begrijp ik heel goed dat software en andere producten beveiligingslekken bevatten. Maar een backdoor account voeg je als fabrikant toch echt zelf toe. Kan ik een partij als D-Link (en genoeg anderen helaas) hier aansprakelijk voor houden? Het liefst wil ik gewoon mijn geld terug of een product zonder backdoor. Hier werd inderdaad recent voor gewaarschuwd: “Het betreft een command injection-kwetsbaarheid en het gebruik van hardcoded credentials, of een ‘backdoor account’ zoals D-Link het noemt. Via de kwetsbaarheden kan een aanvaller zonder authenticatie willekeurige commando’s op het NAS-systeem uitvoeren, wat kan leiden tot toegang tot gevoelige informatie, het aanpassen van de systeemconfiguratie of een denial of service.”

De hardcoded credentials ware geen bewuste feature, maar een slordigheid: hierachter zit een typische Unix-constructie die alleen niet goed is geïmplementeerd. Maar uiteindelijk doet het er niet toe of het opzet, roekeloosheid, onoplettendheid of iets anders was. Die backdoor zit er, het product is daardoor niet veilig, wat kun je daarmee als consument?

Het simpele antwoord is natuurlijk: je mag van een product verwachten dat dit aan de redelijke verwachtingen voldoet. Dat wil niet zeggen dat het altijd 100% foutloos en backdoorloos is, je moet kijken hoe het product wordt gemarket, hoe eenvoudig de fout te exploiteren is en in hoeverre D-Link dit had moeten voorzien. Niet elke fout is een conformiteitsgebrek.

Toch denk ik dat je bij een enorme impact zoals hier je wel een goed verhaal hebt dat het product niet voldoet aan de redelijke verwachting. Zó makkelijk binnendringen, dat moet niet kunnen bij zo’n belangrijk product. Maar dit wordt al snel een moeilijke technische discussie, waar je niet makkelijk uitkomt als de wederpartij betaald wordt om het met je oneens te zijn.

In de nabije toekomst zullen we met wetten als de Cyber Resilience Act dit een stuk makkelijker aan kunnen pakken. Die stellen updates en een kwalitatief proces van security verplicht. Er is dan weinig nuance meer als er dan toch een securityfout doorheen glipt.

Als laatste blijf je natuurlijk met het aloude probleem in het consumentenrecht dat de winkel (die jij moet aanspreken en die wettelijk verplicht is jou je geld terug te geven, nu herstel geen optie meer is omdat de NASsen end-of-life zijn) simpelweg weigert dat te doen met meestal een excuus zoals “er zit maar 2 jaar garantie op” of “het lampje gaat aan dus hij is niet stuk”. En daarna komt security jou eruit zetten want stemverheffing triggert Protocol Lastige Klant. Het kan dus een hele toer zijn om je recht te halen als consument, en de vraag is altijd of dat het waard is gezien de prijs van het ding.

Arnoud

Het bericht Er zit een backdoor in mijn NAS, mag ik mijn geld terug? verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

It’s been a long two years since the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Between May 2022 when the Supreme Court accidentally leaked the draft memo and the following June when the case was decided, there was a mad scramble to figure out what the impacts would be. Besides the obvious perils of stripping away half the country’s right to reproductive healthcare, digital surveillance and mass data collection caused a flurry of concerns.

Although many activists fighting for reproductive justice had been operating under assumptions of little to no legal protections for some time, the Dobbs decision was for most a sudden and scary revelation. Everyone implicated in that moment somewhat understood the stark difference between pre-Roe 1973 and post-Roe 2022; living under the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in human history presents a vastly different landscape of threats. Since 2022, some suspicions have been confirmed, new threats have emerged, and overall our risk assessment has grown smarter. Below, we cover the most pressing digital dangers facing people seeking reproductive care, and ways to combat them.

Digital Evidence in Abortion-Related Court Cases: Some Examples Social Media Message Logs

A case in Nebraska resulted in a woman, Jessica Burgess, being sentenced to two years in prison for obtaining abortion pills for her teenage daughter. Prosecutors used a Facebook Messenger chat log between Jessica and her daughter as key evidence, bolstering the concerns many had raised about using such privacy-invasive tech products for sensitive communications. At the time, Facebook Messenger did not have end-to-end encryption.

In response to criticisms about Facebook’s cooperation with law enforcement that landed a mother in prison, a Meta spokesperson issued a frustratingly laconic tweet stating that “[n]othing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion.” They followed this up with a short statement reiterating that the warrants did not mention abortion at all. The lesson is clear: although companies do sometimes push back against data warrants, we have to prepare for the likelihood that they won’t.

Google: Search History & Warrants

Well before the Dobbs decision, prosecutors had already used Google Search history to indict a woman for her pregnancy outcome. In this case, it was keyword searches for misoprostol (a safe and effective abortion medication) that clinched the prosecutor’s evidence against her. Google acquiesced, as it so often has, to the warrant request.

Related to this is the ongoing and extremely complicated territory of reverse keyword and geolocation warrants. Google has promised that it would remove from user profiles all location data history related to abortion clinic sites. Researchers tested this claim and it was shown to be false, twice. Late in 2023, Google made a bigger promise: it would soon change how it stores location data to make it much more difficult–if not impossible–for Google to provide mass location data in response to a geofence warrant, a change we’ve been asking Google to implement for years. This would be a genuinely helpful measure, but we’ve been conditioned to approach such claims with caution. We’ll believe it when we see it (and refer to external testing for proof).

Other Dangers to Consider Doxxing

Sites propped up for doxxing healthcare professionals that offer abortion services are about as old as the internet itself. Doxxing comes in a variety of forms, but a quick and loose definition of it is the weaponization of open source intelligence with the intention of escalating to other harms. There’s been a massive increase in hate groups abusing public records requests and data broker collections to publish personal information about healthcare workers. Doxxing websites hosting such material are updated frequently. Doxxing has led to steadily rising material dangers (targeted harassment, gun violence, arson, just to name a few) for the past few years.

There are some piecemeal attempts at data protection for healthcare workers in more protective states like California (one which we’ve covered). Other states may offer some form of an address confidentiality program that provides people with proxy addresses. Though these can be effective, they are not comprehensive. Since doxxing campaigns are typically coordinated through a combination of open source intelligence tactics, it presents a particularly difficult threat to protect against. This is especially true for government and medical industry workers whose information may be subjected to exposure through public records requests.

Data Brokers

Recently, Senator Wyden’s office released a statement about a long investigation into Near Intelligence, a data broker company that sold geolocation data to The Veritas Society, an anti-choice think tank. The Veritas Society then used the geolocation data to target individuals who had traveled near healthcare clinics that offered abortion services and delivered pro-life advertisements to their devices.

That alone is a stark example of the dangers of commercial surveillance, but it’s still unclear what other ways this type of dataset could be abused. Near Intelligence has filed for bankruptcy, but they are far from the only, or the most pernicious, data broker company out there. This situation bolsters what we’ve been saying for years: the data broker industry is a dangerously unregulated mess of privacy threats that needs to be addressed. It not only contributes to the doxxing campaigns described above, but essentially creates a backdoor for warrantless surveillance.

Domestic Terrorist Threat Designation by Federal Agencies

Midway through 2023, The Intercept published an article about a tenfold increase in federal designation of abortion-rights activist groups as domestic terrorist threats. This projects a massive shadow of risk for organizers and activists at work in the struggle for reproductive justice. The digital surveillance capabilities of federal law enforcement are more sophisticated than that of typical anti-choice zealots. Most people in the abortion access movement may not have to worry about being labeled a domestic terrorist threat, though for some that is a reality, and strategizing against it is vital.

Looming Threats Legal Threats to Medication Abortion

Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments challenging the FDA’s approval of and regulations governing mifepristone, a widely available and safe abortion pill. If the anti-abortion advocates who brought this case succeed, access to the most common medication abortion regimen used in the U.S. would end across the country—even in those states where abortion rights are protected.

Access to abortion medication might also be threatened by a 150 year old obscenity law. Many people now recognize the long dormant Comstock Act as a potential avenue to criminalize procurement of the abortion pill.

Although the outcomes of these legal challenges are yet-to-be determined, it’s reasonable to prepare for the worst: if there is no longer a way to access medication abortion legally, there will be even more surveillance of the digital footprints prescribers and patients leave behind. 

Electronic Health Records Systems

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are digital transcripts of medical information meant to be easily stored and shared between medical facilities and providers. Since abortion restrictions are now dictated on a state-by-state basis, the sharing of these records across state lines present a serious matrix of concerns.

As some academics and privacy advocates have outlined, the interoperability of EHRs can jeopardize the safety of patients when reproductive healthcare data is shared across state lines. Although the Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a new rule to help protect sensitive EHR data, it’s currently possible that data shared between EHRs can lead to the prosecution of reproductive healthcare.

The Good Stuff: Protections You Can Take

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of what we’ve covered thus far is how much is beyond individual control. It’s completely understandable to feel powerless against these monumental threats. That said, you aren’t powerless. Much can be done to protect your digital footprint, and thus, your safety. We don’t propose reinventing the wheel when it comes to digital security and data privacy. Instead, rely on the resources that already exist and re-tool them to fit your particular needs. Here are some good places to start:

Create a Security Plan

It’s impossible, and generally unnecessary, to implement every privacy and security tactic or tool out there. What’s more important is figuring out the specific risks you face and finding the right ways to protect against them. This process takes some brainstorming around potentially scary topics, so it’s best done well before you are in any kind of crisis. Pen and paper works best. Here's a handy guide.

After you’ve answered those questions and figured out your risks, it’s time to locate the best ways to protect against them. Don’t sweat it if you’re not a highly technical person; many of the strategies we recommend can be applied in non-tech ways.

Careful Communications

Secure communication is as much a frame of mind as it is a type of tech product. When you are able to identify which aspects of your life need to be spoken about more carefully, you can then make informed decisions about who to trust with what information, and when. It’s as much about creating ground rules with others about types of communication as it is about normalizing the use of privacy technologies.

Assuming you’ve already created a security plan and identified some risks you want to protect against, begin thinking about the communication you have with others involving those things. Set some rules for how you broach those topics, where they can be discussed, and with whom. Sometimes this might look like the careful development of codewords. Sometimes it’s as easy as saying “let’s move this conversation to Signal.” Now that Signal supports usernames (so you can keep your phone number private), as well as disappearing messages, it’s an obvious tech choice for secure communication.

Compartmentalize Your Digital Activity

As mentioned above, it’s important to know when to compartmentalize sensitive communications to more secure environments. You can expand this idea to other parts of your life. For example, you can designate different web browsers for different use cases, choosing those browsers for the privacy they offer. One might offer significant convenience for day-to-day casual activities (like Chrome), whereas another is best suited for activities that require utmost privacy (like Tor).

Now apply this thought process towards what payment processors you use, what registration information you give to social media sites, what profiles you keep public versus private, how you organize your data backups, and so on. The possibilities are endless, so it’s important that you prioritize only the aspects of your life that most need protection.

Security Culture and Community Care

Both tactics mentioned above incorporate a sense of community when it comes to our privacy and security. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: privacy is a team sport. People live in communities built on trust and care for one another; your digital life is imbricated with others in the same way.

If a node on a network is compromised, it will likely implicate others on the same network. This principle of computer network security is just as applicable to social networks. Although traditional information security often builds from a paradigm of “zero trust,” we are social creatures and must work against that idea. It’s more about incorporating elements of shared trust pushing for a culture of security.

Sometimes this looks like setting standards for how information is articulated and shared within a trusted group. Sometimes it looks like choosing privacy-focused technologies to serve a community’s computing needs. The point is to normalize these types of conversations, to let others know that you’re caring for them by attending to your own digital hygiene. For example, when you ask for consent to share images that include others from a protest, you are not only pushing for a culture of security, but normalizing the process of asking for consent. This relationship of community care through data privacy hygiene is reciprocal.

Help Prevent Doxxing

As somewhat touched on above in the other dangers to consider section, doxxing can be a frustratingly difficult thing to protect against, especially when it’s public records that are being used against you. It’s worth looking into your state level voter registration records, if that information is public, and how you can request for that information to be redacted (success may vary by state).

Similarly, although business registration records are publicly available, you can appeal to websites that mirror that information (like Bizapedia) to have your personal information taken down. This is of course only a concern if you have a business registration tied to your personal address.

If you work for a business that is susceptible to public records requests revealing personal sensitive information about you, there’s little to be done to prevent it. You can, however, apply for an address confidentiality program if your state has it. You can also do the somewhat tedious work of scrubbing your personal information from other places online (since doxxing is often a combination of information resources). Consider subscribing to a service like DeleteMe (or follow a free DIY guide) for a more thorough process of minimizing your digital footprint. Collaborating with trusted allies to monitor hate forums is a smart way to unburden yourself from having to look up your own information alone. Sharing that responsibility with others makes it easier to do, as well as group planning for what to do in ways of prevention and incident response.

Take a Deep Breath

It’s natural to feel bogged down by all the thought that has to be put towards privacy and security. Again, don’t beat yourself up for feeling powerless in the face of mass surveillance. You aren’t powerless. You can protect yourself, but it’s reasonable to feel frustrated when there is no comprehensive federal data privacy legislation that would alleviate so many of these concerns.

Take a deep breath. You’re not alone in this fight. There are guides for you to learn more about stepping up your privacy and security. We've even curated a special list of them. And there is Digital Defense Fund, a digital security organization for the abortion access movement, who we are grateful and proud to boost. And though it can often feel like privacy is getting harder to protect, in many ways it’s actually improving. With all that information, as well as continuing to trust your communities, and pushing for a culture of security within them, safety is much easier to attain. With a bit of privacy, you can go back to focusing on what matters, like healthcare.

The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, H.R.4639, originally introduced in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden in 2021, has now made the important and historic step of passing the U.S. House of Representatives. In an era when it often seems like Congress cannot pass much-needed privacy protections, this is a victory for vulnerable populations, people who want to make sure their location data is private, and the hard-working activists and organizers who have pushed for the passage of this bill.

Everyday, your personal information is being harvested by your smart phone applications, sold to data brokers, and used by advertisers hoping to sell you things. But what safeguards prevent the government from shopping in that same data marketplace? Mobile data regularly bought and sold, like your geolocation, is information that law enforcement or intelligence agencies would normally have to get a warrant to acquire. But it does not require a warrant for law enforcement agencies to just buy the data. The U.S. government has been using its purchase of this information as a loophole for acquiring personal information on individuals without a warrant.

Now is the time to close that loophole.

At EFF, we’ve been talking about the need to close the databroker loophole for years. We even launched a massive investigation into the data broker industry which revealed Fog Data Science, a company that has claimed in marketing materials that it has “billions” of data points about “over 250 million” devices and that its data can be used to learn about where its subjects work, live, and their associates. We found close to 20 law enforcement agents used or were offered this tool.

It’s time for the Senate to close this incredibly dangerous and invasive loophole. If police want a person—or a whole community’s—location data, they should have to get a warrant to see it. 

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TELL congress: 702 Needs serious reforms

Het boek verschijnt op 19 april, op twee dagen na een jaar nadat Weski werd gearresteerd. Ze zat anderhalve maand vast.

Traumatische gebeurtenissen

Volgens Uitgeverij Lux gaat het 280 pagina’s tellende boek over “hoe de geheimhoudingsplicht van een advocaat werkt en welke consequenties daaraan zijn verbonden.” Weski beschrijft haar arrestatie en detentie en “de traumatische maar soms ook absurde gebeurtenissen die volgden.” Het boek gaat niet alleen over Weski’s persoonlijke ervaringen, maar is  ook een betoog over het belang van de rechtsstaat.

Geschorst

Weski werd aangehouden op verdenking van deelname aan een criminele organisatie die zich bezighoudt met internationale drugshandel en witwassen, en het schenden van geheimen. Ze zou informatie van haar cliënt Ridouan Taghi vanuit de EBI in Vught hebben gedeeld met zijn contacten in de buitenwereld. De rechtszaak hierover heeft nog niet plaatsgevonden.
Inez Weski is niet meer werkzaam als advocaat; ze werd naar aanleiding van haar arrestatie op verzoek van de Rotterdamse deken voorlopig geschorst als advocaat.

Het bericht Inez Weski schrijft boek over arrestatie, detentie én geheimhoudingsplicht verscheen eerst op Mr. Online.