The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is protecting your rights online again, this time with a tool called Switzerland. Switzerland lets you check your ISPs compliance with net neutrality, making sure they're not trying to shut down specific kinds of traffic, like BitTorrent and VOIP. Naturally, Switzerland is Open Source.

It's also a command-line tool, and still in alpha, so it's not necessarily for everyone. If you're comfortable with this kind of app, and you're concerned about your ISP's behavior, definitely give it a go. How exactly does it know whether your ISP is fiddling around with your bandwidth? The EFF says, "It will spot IP packets which are forged or modified between clients, inform you, and give you copies of the modified packets." It recognizes packets injected or modified by some of the most popular tools ISPs have been using to mess with p2p traffic, including SandVine and AudibleMagic.

Small business people don't travel without laptops. On July 24, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that US Customs and Border Patrol Officers had the right to search and seize a person's laptop computer, computer discs and other electronic media (iPods and more). Personal and proprietary data is at risk, as is your notebook itself (some are not returned). The EFF has recently filed a suit demanding that Homeland Security disclose information on why it chooses to inspect some laptops and other electronic devices at the borders. On the government side is the argument that these search and seizures are aimed at and are helping prevent child pornography.

Most astounding to laptop owners is that the number of searches is increasing but intelligible reasons for the searches remains almost nil. If your machine is searched, expect no justification or details on what they were looking for or what they downloaded. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different than looking through a suitcase.

According to ComputerWorld, border agents need no evidence to seize your notebook computer, can search anything and can keep your machine for days or weeks or more. How can a small business owner who likely keeps a lifetime of work on a notebook travel safely anymore?

If you ever needed proof that big media and big government are a big crock of... well, let's just say look no further than the SPY Act. The U.S. House of Representatives already sold you down the river but, the bill is currently making it's slimy way through the Senate. The EFF has an action alert on how you can tell your Senator exactly what you think of making it legal for the recording industry to install spyware on your box.

The EFF's alert puts it succinctly, "The SPY Act is supposed to help stop spyware, deceptive adware, and other malicious software, but it is unlikely to do any good and could actually make things worse. If enacted, it would block lawsuits similar to the one EFF brought against Sony-BMG for infecting customers' computers with privacy-invasive copy protection."

The EFF did PC users a serious solid by slapping Sony for invading your machine through trojaned music CDs. This bill would essentially give the media industry carte-blanche to install what they wish any time you insert a disc you've paid for.

[via Boing Boing]

If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple's latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened.

As the story goes, many users and industry pundits have announced their disappointment with the discovery that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks contain the owner's name and email address embedded in the file. Even Cory Doctorow and his merry band of EFF compatriots have added their ubiquitous $.0.02 to the mix, calling this an a privacy blunder on Apple's part. A key example cited for how bad this perceived breach of privacy can get is the theft of an iPod: if someone steals your DMP (iPod or otherwise, if you consider the fact that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks will play on any AAC-enabled device, including the Zune now), they could easily check through your files to scrape out your name and email address from any of the new DRM-less tracks. Fortunately, Geeks R Us nails the problem with this line of thinking in this So What post: "Apple embedded your personal information in content that only you should have is no different than them saving your email address in a Mail application preferences." If a thief stole a typical computer user's notebook - Mac, Windows or otherwise - they would easily have full access to quite a bit more information than the owner's name and email address. So why haven't Cory and his fellow perpetual protesters spoken out against this egregious privacy flaw in the wider scope of computing?

The fault with these complaints against Apple's latest non-DRM move runs more than skin deep, however, as this embedding of personal information didn't merely begin last week. Since the first day it was opened over four years ago, the iTunes Store has embedded an owner's email address in purchased files. You can easily verify this by importing a non-EMI iTunes Store track from a friend - iTunes will immediately notify you that your machine must be authorized to play the track, prompting you with a dialog requesting a password and the email address of the file's owner already filled in.

Watch out Cory - all your email addresses are belong to anyone who steals your iTunes Store files; just as they have been for the last four years.

The moral of the story is the same as ever, only a few of the details change this time around: While Apple certainly isn't the first to offer a DRM-free commercial digital download service (In the mainstream that title probably goes to eMusic), they are the first of the major services to take the leap of faith and offer a premium music catalog completely free of DRM. In all likelihood, if you aren't sharing your personally identifiable files over P2P networks, you don't have anything to worry about, and an email address is the last thing you have to fret over if someone steals your iPod. The thief is after your DMP because they want your gadget, not because they want to email you a great offer on viagra.

There is no more of a privacy issue with iTunes Store files (non-DRM or otherwise) than there is with the theft of your computer or mobile phone. Files bought from the store are supposed to remain just as private as the personal information embedded in them. Now, can we all go back to buying high quality, DRM free tracks - and not vindicating the RIAA by sharing them - so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we've been asking for?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is dropping its lawsuit against Viacom. The EFF had sued Viacom over a takedown notice the media company sent regarding a Stephen Colbert parody clip posted to YouTube.

The EFF had filed its lawsuit on behalf of MoveOn.org, Civic Action, and Brave New Films. The video, called "Stop the Falsiness," was created using clips from The Colbert Report, but it was a parody of both Colbert's right-wing schtick and MoveOn.org.

At first Viacom denied sending a takedown notice over the video, but later the company admitted that it had sent the notice and that it had been a mistake to do so.

Viacom has agreed to set up a website and email address for users to contact the company to complain about improper takedown notices. Viacom also promises to respond to those complaints within one day.

[via Wired]

Okay, so let's see if we can keep this straight. First Viacom asks YouTube to remove 100,000 videos. Then after Google takes down as many videos as it can, Viacom sues the company for $1 billion, saying Google is profiting from Viacom content including clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Now, about a week later, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has turned around and sued Viacom, claiming that one of the videos in question was actually a parody of The Colbert Report, and protected under fair use. The video, produced by MoveOn parodies both Stephen Colbert's schtick, and MoveOn's strategy of using online petitions to effect social change.

We'd embed the video, but as we've pointed out, it's no longer up on YouTube. You can, however, still check it out at Falsiness.org.

Google Desktop 3, which was released last Wednesday, has a feature that's raising they eyebrows of security-types. The Search Across Computers feature lets users of Google Desktop 3 simultaneously search files stored on multiple computers, but the EFF is warning that Google will copy the files to its servers, and that "the government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn't even be notified in time to challenge it." Search Across Computers is not enabled by default, but you might want to think twice about turning it on.

[Via Street Tech]