from the nothing-really-changes dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2018, more police were admitting that FOSTA/SESTA made it harder to catch traffickers, while UK Parliament members were looking to enact a similar law of their own. California was cooking up its disastrous privacy bill, while we looked at the censorship potential of the EU Copyright Directive’s Article 13. We also saw a pair of privacy rulings in the US, with California’s Supreme Court ruling that call records aren’t protected by the 4th Amendment, and the Georgia Court of Appeals ruling that exigency beats a warrant requirement if a phone has a passcode.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2013, the fallout from the NSA surveillance revelations continued. The DOJ was fighting to prevent any transparency about what the FISA court was up to, Brazil was considering offering asylum to Snowden after learning about how the US spied on Brazilians, and Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced an NSA oversight bill that was ruined by the way it would make it harder to challenge National Security Letters. The concept of “metadata” was thrust to the forefront, and people began explaining how it’s wrong to think metadata is harmless, while the latest leak showed that Microsoft had handed the NSA and FBI unencrypted access to Outlook, SkyDrive and Skype. The range of people harshly condemning the surveillance was expanding, and the DEF CON 21 conference un-invited the feds.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2008, before anyone knew about what the NSA was up to, the Bush administration announced that it would veto a surveillance bill if it didn’t immunize telcos. His demands were met, the bill was signed, and the ACLU sued.
There were also a couple small stories that are especially fun to look back on from today. One was an early post noting the need to pay attention to the power of intermediaries to control online speech, which of course has become a prominent and complex topic in the years since. The other is an excellent reminder that the more things change, they more they stay the same: a post about the right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories about Democratic censorship spread by one of the first Congressmen to actively use Twitter.
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