There’s more to CCleaner than clicking a single button. This popular application for wiping temporary files and clearing private data hides a variety of features, from fine-grained options for tweaking the cleaning process to full drive-wiping tools.
CCleaner is easy for beginners to use – just launch it and click the Run Cleaner button. But there’s a lot more you can do with it.
Consider What You Delete
CCleaner clears a lot of stuff by default. You might want to reconsider clearing the browser caches (Temporary Internet Files for Internet Explorer). Browsers store these files on your system to speed up browsing in the future. When you revisit a site, the site will load faster if images and other files are cached on your system. Clearing these will free up some space and increase your browsing privacy, if you’re worried about that, but frequent cache cleanings can slow down your web browsing.
Erasing the thumbnail cache (under Windows Explorer) can also slow things down – if you open up a folder with a lot of image files, it will take some time to recreate the cache. Clearing it does free up space, but at the cost of recreating the cache later.
Many other options clear most-recently-used lists (MRUs) in Windows and other programs. These lists don’t take up much space, but can be privacy concerns – if there’s a most-recently-used list you rely on, be sure to uncheck it.
Whitelist Important Cookies
CCleaner clears all cookies by default, but you might want to keep some. If you find yourself always logging into your favorite websites after running CCleaner, open the Cookies pane in the Options section.
CCleaner can help you with this whitelisting – right-click in the Cookies pane and select Intelligent Scan. CCleaner will automatically add Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail cookies to your whitelist.
You’ll probably want to add other cookies to the whitelist, too. For example, locate the howtogeek.com cookie in the list and click the right arrow button to add it to your whitelist. CCleaner will leave your How-To Geek cookie alone, so you don’t have to log back into How-To Geek after clearing your cookies.
Beware the Registry Cleaner
While CCleaner does include a registry cleaner, I’d recommend against running it. The Windows registry contains hundreds of thousands of entries; removing a few hundred (at most) won’t give you an increase in performance. Registry cleaners can accidentally remove important registry values, however, so there’s risk with little reward.
That said, if you’re dead set on running a registry cleaner, CCleaner is one of the safer ones. If you do run the registry cleaner, ensure you back up any changes you make. You can restore the deleted registry entries from the backup file if you encounter any problems.
Manage Startup Programs
The Startup panel in the Tools section allows you to disable programs that automatically run when your computer starts. To avoid losing an autostart entry that may be important, use the Disable option instead of the Delete option. You can easily re-enable a disabled autostart entry later.
Wipe Drives
When Windows or another operating system deletes a file, it doesn’t actually wipe the file from your hard disk. Instead, the pointers to the files are deleted and the operating system marks the file’s location as free space. File recovery programs can scan your hard disk for these files, and, if the operating system hasn’t written over the area, can recover the data. CCleaner can help protect against this by wiping the free space with its Drive Wiper tool.
While some people believe that multiple passes are necessary to irrecoverably delete files, one pass should probably be fine. If you’re disposing of a hard drive, you can also perform a full erase of all the data on the drive with this tool.
You can also have CCleaner wipe free space every time you run it by enabling the Wipe Free Space checkbox under Advanced in the Cleaner section. Enabling this option will make CCleaner take much longer to clean up your system – CCleaner recommends leaving it disabled.
Securely Delete Files
You can have CCleaner delete files securely, effectively using the Drive Cleaner tool on each file it deletes. Bear in mind that this is slower than deleting the files normally – that’s why operating systems don’t securely delete files by default. If you’re concerned about privacy, enable this option from the Settings tab in the Options section.
Include Custom Files
If you use a program that isn’t included in CCleaner’s list of applications, or you have a temporary file directory you want cleared regularly, you can specify custom folders and files in CCleaner. CCleaner will delete these files and empty these folders when you run it.
To add a custom folder or file, open the Options section and use the options on the Include tab. Be careful when adding folders or files; you could accidentally add important files or folders and lose them.
The custom files you specify here are only cleaned if the Custom Files and Folders checkbox under Advanced is enabled.
Exclude Files
Likewise, if CCleaner keeps clearing something you don’t want it to clear, you can add an exclusion in the Options section. You can exclude an entire drive, folder, file, or registry key. You can also restrict the exclusion to specific file extensions.
Manage Installed Programs
CCleaner’s tools include the Uninstall panel, which lists your installed programs. This panel includes a few more features than the default Windows one – you can rename or delete the entries here and any changes you make will also appear in the Windows Control Panel.
You can also save the list of installed programs to a text file – an easy way to keep a list of your installed programs in case you need to remember and reinstall them from scratch.
Once you’ve got CCleaner set up, you can run it automatically each night or create a shortcut or hotkey to run it silently.
What TrueCaller is
TrueCaller offers a worldwide name and number lookup functionality for your Android for free! It enables you to match phone numbers to names, addresses, social networks, and even pictures!
This looks pretty cool, a worldwide caller id/social networking/phonebook for your Android device. You can find people worldwide or use the call blocker to get rid of those annoying solicitor calls. It ties directly in with Facebook and LinkedIn to display the most relevant information about the person calling you. Automatic address book updates if your friend changes their information and a good looking interface make this a viable solution for Android users. With over 3million users worldwide the service looks to expand further with the addition of the Android platform.
If you use it, let us know how it works in the comment section below.
Check out the press release below for more information.
TrueCaller Brings More Available, Relevant and Accurate Caller ID to Android
STOCKHOLM (8 May 2012) TrueCaller, the new global social phone book, announced today that TrueCaller for smartphones is now available on mobile devices with the Android operating system.
Owners of Android devices can now benefit from the TrueCaller caller ID application that connects phone number directories from all over the world into one easy-to-use app, for free. TrueCaller protects users from spam calls and enables them to search half a billion phone numbers worldwide.
Recently TrueCaller reached three million users, becoming one of the most popular caller ID smartphone applications.
The main features of TrueCaller for Android are:
- Global Number Lookup service enables users to search and find people from around the world.
- Caller ID functionality instantly shows the identity of unknown callers from abroad, anywhere in the world a call is received.
- Call Filter protects and warns users of fraud, spam and unwanted calls. If a call is received from any of the fraud, spam or unwanted numbers that TrueCaller has listed, a notification will appear to warn of the potentially unwanted call. Users can then choose to answer or block the call.
About TrueCaller
TrueCaller aims to provide relevant information about the people users are communicating with by connecting them to the sources they trust. Three million users have discovered the easy way to see who the caller is. TrueCaller is the most used Caller ID application on the market with social media integrations and intelligent call blocking functionality against spam calls.
True Software Scandinavia AB was founded in July 2009 and launched the service TrueCaller shortly thereafter. TrueCaller has grown rapidly and today serves users in countries from all around the world. With millions of submissions received and ever expanding, the TrueCaller Crowd-Sourced Addressbook offers the most complete coverage of phone numbers available today.
True Software Scandinavia AB is a privately held company located in Stockholm, Sweden. For further information please visit: http://www.truecaller.com.
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal appeals court to block an attempt by disgruntled businesses to make an end-run around the federal law that protects Yelp and other online forums from liability for their users' reviews. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Friday, EFF argues that the strong protections for hosts of forums in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) must be upheld to foster free speech online.
CDA 230 protects online service providers from liability and lawsuits over user-generated content, except in very narrow circumstances where the providers created or developed content themselves. In this case, several businesses filed suit against Yelp, claiming without factual support that the popular review site manipulated and manufactured reviews in order to coerce businesses to advertise on the website. A lower court already found that mere speculation of interference with public reviews was insufficient to evade the broad protection Congress created for online forums, and granted Yelp's motion to dismiss the case. In its amicus brief, EFF argued that lowering the standards for when a forum like Yelp has to be dragged through litigation would effectively chill online speech.
"The broad protections provided by CDA 230 are one of the main reasons we have so much speech online," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "If online service providers like Yelp could be held liable for material posted by any one of their millions of users merely upon thin claims of 'manipulation,' providers would feel pressured to censor or eliminate forums altogether. The result is fewer places for people to participate online and a loss all of us who rely on user reviews and other user-generated material."
"The goal of Congress in enacting CDA 230 was clear: to ensure the Internet is a robust platform for users' free speech," said Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Users post millions of reviews on Yelp each year, but sites like this wouldn't exist without CDA 230's protections. We're asking the appeals court to make sure that sites like Yelp continue to thrive and remain vigorous forums for Internet users to share opinions and recommendations."
For the full amicus brief in Levitt v. Yelp:
https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-7
Contacts:
Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org
Marcia Hofmann
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
marcia@eff.org
 If dragging and dropping is just a bit to slow for sending files to your cloud syncing service of choice, this little Windows trick will put it one click away.
This actually works for any folder or app, and we've featured how to do it before—but it's sometimes hard to see when the Send To menu is actually useful. This is one of those cases. To add Dropbox to your Send To menu, just open up Windows Explorer and type this in the navigation bar:
%APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo
Press Enter, and then open up another Explorer window. Create a shortcut of your Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, or other cloud syncing folder and drag it to the SendTo folder you just opened up. That's it! Now, whenever you right-click on a file or folder, you can just click Send To > Dropbox and it'll appear in your Dropbox folder. Be sure to check out previously mentioned DropPub, too, for an easy way to send them to your public folder and get a shareable link. Quickly Send Files to Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive from Windows 7 | NirmalTV.com
Google has launched its free online storage service, yes Google Drive is here now. With Google Drive, get free 5GB space on cloud server. The storage files can be sync with mobile devices, computer and online. You need a Google account to use this service.
In Google Drive you can access your Google Docs, and it is also integrated with Google+, you can share your stuff from drive to Google+ easily. It is very much like Dropbox but also integrated with Google's other services and more free online space.
Google Drive is available for Android, PC, soon it will also be available for iPhone and iPad. Everything on your Drive get sync with all your devices which makes you to access your data anywhere.
The other main competitor with Google Drive are Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive which are already doing good, but Google Drive is going to eat a lot of share of them.
GooglePlusBlog 
Last year universal password browser extension Last Pass was the target of an alleged hacking attempt and ended up having to ask users to… change their passwords. While Lastpass relies on a browser plug-in to do its work, it competes with Roboform which uses software and a USB key. Now a new company aims to take these guys on, but without any hardware or software installation and no browser plug-ins needed (which will become a problem since IE10 within Windows 8 (Metro) will not support plug-ins).
my1login can sign users into their sites with one click, without the need for any 3rd party site integration. iPhone, iPad and Android apps are also in the pipeline. It’s now raised $1 million in funding for the service which launched at the beginning of last month, based out of a former autopsy room within the University of Glasgow.
When they set up their account, users create a secure phrase that encrypts all their logins within their browser before being sent over the Internet and stored, and since their secure phrase is not stored, even my1login is unable to read these details.
Users can create complex unique passwords for each site (my1login does the hard work of remembering them) and don’t have to type passwords to log into sites, bypassing rogue key-loggers.
my1login also provides users with a dashboard view of information and messages from email and social networking sites.
The startup hopes to go viral by allowing users that refer the service to get an upgrade to the ‘pro’ version of the product.
Launch Date:
September 2007
Funding:
$1M
my1login is a FREE solution that resolves the problem of remembering multiple logins, passwords and PINS by providing a safe way of accessing them via a highly secure personal portal.
There’s no need to install software and the users personal portal can be accessed from any web device, signing them into sites with one click.
When they set up their account, users create a secure phrase that encrypts all their logins within their browser before being sent over the internet and...
Learn more
Rep. Rogers is adamant that CISPA, the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is cybersecurity legislation intended to help protect critical infrastructure intrusions and private and government information. But as we've written in the past, CISPA is a bill that allows for companies to spy on users, pass along the information to government agencies like the NSA, and potentially filter or block Internet traffic, which could serve as justification for action against sites like Wikileaks. That's why we're calling on users to contact Congress to speak out against this bill.
One of the scariest parts of CISPA is that the bill goes above and beyond information sharing. Its definitions allow for countermeasures to be taken by private entities, and we think these provisions are ripe for abuse. Indeed, the bill defines "cybersecurity purpose" as any threat related to safeguarding or protecting a network. As long as companies act in "good faith" to combat such a cybersecurity threat, they have leeway to protect against “efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy [a] system or network.” This opens the door for ISPs and other companies to perform aggressive countermeasures like dropping or altering packets, so long as this is used as part of a scheme to identify cybersecurity threats. These countermeasures could put free speech in peril, and jeopardize the ordinary functioning of the Internet. This could also mean blocking websites, or disrupting privacy-enhancing technologies such as Tor. These countermeasures could even serve as a back door to enact policies unrelated to cybersecurity, such as disrupting p2p traffic.
The Cato Institute warned that one could imagine: "a sysadmin with a vigilante streak reading ['cybersecurity systems'] to include aggressive countermeasures, like spyware targeting suspected attackers." Their analysis continued, "After all, 'notwithstanding any other provision of law' includes provisions of (say) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that would place such tactics out of bounds." We think that a rogue sysadmin is not the only concern—no matter what the intention of the bill is now, as political realities change this language can be used to justify the sort of aggressive countermeasures that we've described, or more. This could happen not just in unusual circumstances, but as a matter of policy.
The defense of networks is one reason why the Heritage Foundation is backing the bills. In a letter of support (PDF), Heritage discussed how CISPA gives private entities "clear legal authority to defend their own networks." While we think private entities should be able to defend their networks, they should not be able to do without accountability in a manner that threatens free speech or disrupts the Internet.
CISPA is intended to protect against catastrophic cyberattacks and economic espionage, but the broad definitions of CISPA unfortunately allow for much more. Contrary to what Rep. Rogers says, CISPA is not "a sharing of threat information bill only." CISPA's language is so vaguely defined that it could allow private companies to take a wide range of actions in order to defend their networks. While some of these actions might be perfectly appropriate, others could have disastrous consequences for our civil liberties.
Help us beat back this legislation—send an email to Congress and participate in our week of action against CISPA.
Continuing our campaign against the cyberspying bill better known as CISPA, EFF has signed on to two coalition letters urging legislators to drop their support for the Rogers cybersecurity bill (HR 3523). One coalition is focused on the disastrous privacy implications of the bill, while the other identifies major government accountability issues it would introduce.
The coalition behind the privacy letter represents dozens of groups, including the ACLU, the American Library Association, the American Policy Center, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and many others. In the letter, the groups explain how CISPA as written would be devastating to our privacy rights:
CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity. ... CISPA’s ‘information sharing’ regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command. Once in government hands, this information can be used for any non-regulatory purpose so long as one significant purpose is for cybersecurity or to protect national security.
The second letter — sent by a coalition including OpenTheGovernment.org, Mucrock, James Madison Project, the Sunlight Foundation, and many more — took aim at the ways in which CISPA would decrease government accountability.
[T]he bill unwisely and unnecessarily cuts off all public access to cyber threat information before the public and Congress have the chance to understand the types of information that are withheld under the bill. ... Other information that may be shared could be critical for the public to ensure its safety. The public needs access to some information to be able to assess whether the government is adequately combating cybersecurity threats and, when necessary, hold officials accountable.
These letters should prove to be a valuable addition to the cybersecurity discussion taking place in Washington right now. It's not too late for your voice to be a part of that discussion, either: #CongressTMI, our social media campaign to contact your Congressional representatives is running now, and we've also made an action alert for you to e-mail Congress about your opposition. Take action today against this privacy-invasive attack on public access to governmental information.
The IPA published today by Twitter (on GitHub, no less) should ensure that Twitter can amass a defensive collection of software patents without giving its developers cause for alarm.
If you're wondering how developers feel about software patents, Andy Baio's take is instructive. Baio, a former Yahoo, helped Yahoo file several patents and has lived to regret it. "Yahoo's lawsuit against Facebook is an insult to the talented engineers who filed patents with the understanding they wouldn't be used for evil. Betraying that trust won't be forgotten, but I doubt it matters anymore. Nobody I know wants to work for a company like that."
Pragmatism Meets Idealism
As much as many developers would like to see software patents abolished altogether, it's unlikely that's going to happen. It's certainly not likely enough that a company like Twitter can ignore the possibility that it will be a target for software patent suits.
Twitter can't simply sit out the patent arms race, as much as it might like to. But what it can do is strike a policy that both protects the company and assures developers their inventions and cooperation won't be used against them. Thus, the IPA.
A defensive patent portfolio, that developers can be assured will be used only to defend against software patent assaults or with their permission, strikes the perfect balance. The company doesn't have to antagonize its employees, and it doesn't have to be left totally vulnerable to lawsuits.
As Yahoo has shown, an assurance that patents will be used defensively has to be put down in writing. Management changes, sometimes very rapidly. A company's position on software patents can flip overnight - so developers can't rely on verbal assurances that software patents won't be used offensively.
Why Every Company Should Adopt the IPA
The agreement put forth by Twitter, or something very much like it, should become industry standard for a number of reasons:
1. Companies that adopt the IPA are going to have a competitive edge over companies that do not. If a developer has the option to work on two interesting projects, with similar pay and perks, the knowledge that their work won't be used against them in the future is likely to be a persuasive tie-breaker.
2. Companies that adopt the IPA are less likely to need incentive plans to convince developers to file for patents. As Baio wrote, Yahoo helped amass its arsenal with a "patent incentive program" that awarded "sizable bonuses to everyone who took the time to apply." With an IPA in place, employers can make a much stronger case to employees that they should help with patent applications.
3. It could ultimately reduce the number of pure-play patent trolls that buy up software patents from failing and desperate companies. What's the only thing worse than a competitor with a patent portfolio? A litigation company with no products but patent suits and every incentive to file nuisance actions, with little downside for failure.
4. The IPA can act as a poison pill for the patent portfolios of companies that don't succeed. They can still sell off patents for companies that wish to have a defensive portfolio - but the patents couldn't be used offensively without the inventor's permission.
The Next Step
Twitter's IPA is a good step, but the company should go one step further. Not long ago, a group of companies that were involved in Linux development created the Open Invention Network (OIN). The idea is simple: Form a patent pool that lets any company attacked use the patents for defense, but the companies in the pool cannot sue another for patent infringement.
A larger patent pool is in order, and Twitter could get the ball rolling. Any company that offers the IPA to its employees for all current and future patents should be able to join the patent pool. Assuming Twitter gets some traction with the IPA, it could start a trend that helps curtail the systemic abuse of software patents.
Ultimately, that's good for Twitter - and for any company that looks to make its money by innovation rather than litigation. And that's good for the entire industry.
Over the past decade, and particularly in the past year, media and civil society have had success through naming and shaming companies acting as “repression’s little helper”: U.S. and E.U. companies who have helped authoritarian countries censor the Internet and surveil their citizens with sophisticated technology. Today, EFF published a whitepaper outlining our suggestions for how companies selling surveillance and filtering technologies can avoid assisting repressive regimes.
In that vein, the newly-amended Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), just passed by a House Sub-Committee, while far from perfect, is an important step toward protecting human rights and free expression online.
This is not the first time that GOFA has been proposed, nor is it even the first time the bill has been approved by the House sub-committee; a 2007 version, which literally named the countries to which filtering technology would be restricted (Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Tunisia, and Vietnam), was also approved by the House but never came to the floor for a vote.
In the past, EFF has had extreme reservations about GOFA in part because it sought to add more items to the U.S. export restrictions, which could easily mean that activists and people seeking to secure their own networks would lose out more than repressive governments. But in many respects, GOFA has come a long way, thanks in large part to the efforts of its authors in seeking feedback from the tech community and civil society. The bill still needs more definitions and clearer definitions of key terms, and we are not yet ready to support it, but we'll be watching it closely. The current version of GOFA would:
- Require government assessments of “ freedom of expression with respect to electronic information in each foreign country.”
- Require disclosure from companies about their human rights practices, to be evaluated by an independent third party.
- Limit the export of technologies that “serve the primary purpose of” facilitating government surveillance or censorship to governments in countries designated as “Internet-restricting.”
But let’s take a deeper look…
Transparency
The bill contains a number of excellent measures that would ultimately encourage more transparency amongst software and hardware companies, as well as online service providers. The companies involved have been notoriously secretive and have often refused comment to reporters when their products have been found in authoritarian regimes.
Section 103 of the bill would require that the human rights reports already written for each country by the State Department include assessments of country’s Internet freedom, including the availability of Internet access, and government attempts to filter or censor nonviolent, political, or religious expression. Section 103 would also require assessments about the extent to which authorities in a given country have sought information on an individual or group relevant to their nonviolent activities, as well as the electronic surveillance practices of a given country.
These assessments--undertaken by US diplomatic personnel--would also include the input of human rights organizations, technology and Internet companies, and other “appropriate nongovernmental organizations.” The inclusion of NGOs is an important addition, since we are concerned that the State Department process could be vulnerable to politicization. Because of this, we'd like to see the role of non-governmental organizations increase as the bill develops further. Additionally, since the most robust research on Internet censorship and surveillance has come from the academic community and independent researchers, these must be added too.
Importantly, the bill should also be extended to require transparency from all companies providing tools and services that can be used for surveillance and censorship, and not just companies providing Internet communications services. Transparency from technology vendors and providers of other services is as important as transparency from Internet service providers. In fact, the transparency sections also can and should reach a broader range of technologies and companies than the export restrictions, which should remain narrow if they are to exist at all. As a result, we recommend decoupling the transparency and export restrictions.
Human Rights Standards for Companies
We also commend Sec. 201, which sets up a good framework for human rights due dillgence procedures for companies operating “in any Internet-restricting country” (a designation upon which we will comment below). It requires reports that must be approved by the most senior level of a company, and independently assessed by a third party. These reports would be made either to the Securities Exchange Commission or to a multi-stakeholder initiative that conducts independent third-party audits. Unfortunately, only the SEC reports are to be made publicly available online (with an exception for classified information). This should be fixed, but otherwise, the human rights due diligence standards are similar to those in the Human Rights and Technology Sales standards EFF has published today.
All of the aforementioned reports are to be constructed on the basis of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that everyone should have the right to: hold opinions without interference, freedom of expression (including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and through the media of his/her choice).
Internet Restricting Countries
While there is much to like in GOFA, we still have extreme reservations about giving the Secretary of State sole authority to determine that a country is an "internet-restricting country." The Secretary is to determine, based on the review of evidence, whether the government of the country is “directly or indirectly” responsible for a systematic pattern of substantial restrictions on Internet freedom during any part of the preceding 1-year period. As we noted above, one way to help mediate that is to increase the role of non-governmental organizations, academic institutions and independent researchers.
More transparency should also be injected into this process. Already a description of evidence used by the Secretary of State to make the determination, as well as all unclassified portions of the report must be posted online, which is good. Unfortunately, this only applies to countries placed on the “internet-restricting countries” list. The Secretary of State should include information about countries left off the list: Politics and diplomatic pressure can cut both ways. To better ward of claims of politicization, the public should be able to see the evidence for why a country has or has not been included.
We also have concerns about the “Safe Harbor” provision of the bill, in Sec. 201(a)(3), which would allow companies to circumvent reporting requirements by joining the Global Network Initiative (GNI) or another multi-stakeholder group (defined in the bill as a group made up of civil society, human rights organizations, and companies, and committed to promoting the rule of law, free expression, and privacy). While as members of the GNI, we believe that membership in it or similar initiatives should be encouraged, companies should not be given a pass for reporting to the public or fulfilling any other requirements merely for joining such groups. The Safe Harbor could still allow the companies to avoid reporting to the SEC, but it must not allow them to avoid public reporting. Moreover, companies should have to participate in a Multi-Stakeholder group as defined in the bill under section 201(a)(3)(B), including having an independent body provide honest analysis of a company’s exports laid out in the bill. The GNI could be one such group, of course, but it shouldn't have special status.
Export Restrictions
We also continue to be concerned about the export restrictions, although the bill is now much less worrisome than it once was. The authors smartly now propose only a very limited export restriction that reaches only sales to government end users in Internet restricting countries. As an organization with a long history of fighting the overbroad application of export restrictions, we’re still concerned, but the limited scope here can at least minimize the chances that these regulations could hinder activists in foreign countries from getting, for instance, technologies that can help them monitor their own communications for security vulnerabilities and backdoors. We will need to watch this process carefully, though. At a minimum, the bill should create a very clear and simple process for those seeking to provide technologies to people overseas to challenge any agency action that oversteps this narrow category.
Waiver
We’re also concerned about the broad waiver provision. It allows the President on a case-by-case basis to certify to Congress that “it is in the national interests of the United States to” issue an exemption. We think the President should have to justify any waiver publicly, to the extent that any part of the analysis is not classified. Also, the standard should be more robust than just the recitation of “national interests.” That is too easily abused.
It’s not hard to see that much of the technology that was misused by governments during the “Arab Spring” was originally sold to countries that were “allies” of the US at the time. Yet, most of these technologies were easily and quickly used to suppress dissent of citizens. A prime example is Egypt, which likely was an ally of the U.S. when it purchased the Narus surveillance technologies used against democracy activists. Similarly, Libya bought technology from France under the guise of fighting terrorism, but used the technology to surveil activists, human rights campaigners, and journalists. Would such a waiver provision be used for Bahrain—still a staunch ally of the US—where several cases have emerged in which activists were tortured while being read transcripts of their text messages and phone calls?
Intellectual Property?
Finally, for no good reason the bill now references intellectual property: “No provision under this Act shall be construed to affect a country’s ability to adopt measures designed to combat infringement of intellectual property.” This provision appears to have no substantive impact, but instead appears to have been included to appease Congressional offices (and their content industry patrons) that seemingly require that intellectual property be mentioned in any law that also mentions the Internet. Frankly, the inclusion of this provision makes Congress look unserious. It simply has no place in a legislative proposal aimed at curbing the use of technology to aid in torture, summary execution and other deadly serious human rights abuses. It should be removed.
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