State Secrets… really?

(11:30AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

State Secrets.  Vital to the National Security of America.  No, this isn’t about torture, but, about a trade agreement.

The Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), part of President Barack Obama’s office, has denied a company’s request for information about a secretive anticounterfeiting trade agreement being negotiated, citing national security concerns.

The USTR this week denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Knowledge Ecology International, an intellectual-property research and advocacy group, even though Obama, in one of his first presidential memos, directed that agencies be more forthcoming with information requested by the public.

The USTR under Obama seems to be taking the same position about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as it did under former President George Bush, that the treaty documents are not open to the public. One of Obama’s campaign promises was to make government more open and responsive to the public.

The USTR, in a letter to Knowledge Ecology International’s director James Love, said information in ACTA, an anticounterfeiting and antipiracy pact being negotiated among the U.S. and several other nations, is “properly classified in the interest of national security.”

I highlighted the “and antipiracy” for a reason…

Why would a Trade Agreement whose content has been handed out to corporations, lobbyists, and other nations be considered a “State Secret”?  Do these corporations and their lobbyists hold national security clearances?  Of course they don’t.  

When I first heard about this story, I immediately linked the antipiracy as the leading issue requiring it be a “state secret”.  My thesis was; in order to track, worldwide, over the internet, every persons downloads to see what was pirated material, the government would have to use resources on par with the NSA’s illegal wiretapping program.  It is that latter fact, I believe, where we see how the words “state secret” and “national security” were born.  

The logistics would have to go something like this;  The NSA would either, a) run the program setting up a separate division, b) help another agency set up an NSA style program.  Once the facility is set up, how do you know who is downloading copyrighted material?  Here is where the logistics get tricky.  There are plenty of internet sites where you can download material.  But, you can’t just go seize computers without a warrant stating probable cause that this company/person was involved in distributing copyrighted material.  

Well, the French are the first to review a Bill that deals with antipiracy and they are not very pleased with it:

‘State surveillance‘

The Creation and Internet bill set up a new state agency – the Higher Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (Hadopi).

The agency would first send illegal file-sharers a warning e-mail, then a letter, and finally cut off their connection for a year if they were caught a third time.

But some consumer groups had warned that the wrong people might be punished, should hackers hijack their computers’ identity, and that the scheme amounted to state surveillance.

John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, which represents the global music industry, had described the legislation as “an effective and proportionate way of tackling online copyright infringement and migrating users to the wide variety of legal music services in France”

The French article doesn’t state just “how” the government will “know” who the violator’s are, or, what methods would be used to make that determination.  

Because of “states secrets” and “national security”, one must simply assume for now that all communications are monitored, packets inspected during downloading, and IP addresses placed into a database.

So, we know have telecommunication companies working in conjunction with the NSA to datamine all communications.  Now, we get the government, or new agency working with the government to datamine all webtraffic for copyright infringement.

Guess who makes billions off this?