Those of you who use FireFox are familiar with the fact that you can install add-on scripts to make the browser more useful to you in a variety of ways. For example, I use a plugin called FireBug which slices and dices the code on a page to help me track down problems with web design or make live changes to the code to see how it will effect the site before I commit it to actual data. I also use a plugin which allows me to post any video I see on the Internet to a service called VodPod, which I’ve discussed at length before.

Well, now there is another plugin which is causing quite a stir and could lead to some pretty interesting clones and spin-offs. . . as well as some interesting complaints and even possible lawsuits. Welcome to the new Pirates of the Amazon, a plugin that identifies the album you’re viewing on Amazon.com and then takes you to a link where you can download a free torrent of the same album. “Where,” you ask? Why, ThePirateBay.org, where else?

I’ve been discussing this plugin at some length with a friend of this site, MC, all afternoon.

The thing is: try as they might, no one has been able to tie The Pirate Bay down to any kind of illegal activity. Strictly speaking, there really isn’t anything illegal about file sharing in the first place, but that’s splitting hairs, for the sake of this discussion. So the question is: who made this plugin? If they’re affiliated with TPB in any way, then there’s a possibility that we’re one step closer to a TPB conviction for something. If not, then I don’t see how either party is doing anything which can be considered illegal. They claim not to be affiliated with ThePirateBay.org, but I suppose that’s still an open question for now.

And even if TPB is directly responsible for this new plugin’s creation, is there really anything more illegal or questionable about what they’ve created than what they’ve done in the past? My sense is that no, there isn’t anything really new here to prosecute, but I don’t doubt that there’s a prosecutor out there just itching to take this one on.

And forgetting the legal implications of this particular plugin aside, what other similar projects might loom just over the horizon? What about a button that sends you to Google Shopping Search to find the product you’re looking for, only cheaper elsewhere? Or an instant eBay link? Or even something sinister like a cheap online drug alternative to something you see at Rite-Aid? You could even create a plugin that disables all “Buy Now” buttons on pages where your shopaholic teenagers are always lurking.

And all of this happens on your own PC, presumably without the phishing or security implications. But there *is* a privacy concern: namely any attempt by Amazon or others to remove this sort of plugin from your system means they would be violating your privacy.

We’re only seeing the beginning of this, I can promise you that.

Those of you who read this blog know I try to post any suspicious emails I see online for the benefit of the community.  I’ve been recieving emails lately - which correspond quite well with actual purchases for the holidays - that purport to be from UPS.  The body of the email goes something like this:

Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on Oct the 28 in time because the recipient’s address is not correct. Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office Your UPS

The sender’s domain name is bostonequipment.com, which is a legit domain name, but unlikely to be the sender’s real domain.

The “invoice” in question is, of course, a zip file.  People: never, never, never open a zip file from someone you didn’t know was going to be sending you one.  This includes friends and relatives.  You never know when one of these dastardly little bastards is a virus, and what you think is an email sent by a friend may actually be virus activity your friend knows nothing about.

There were any number of issues I’d wanted to get to yesterday and didn’t.  But this was one of the big ones:

MSNBC is reporting that the days of corporate police are getting closer all the time, at least on the Internet.  A new law quietly but unanimously passed through the Congress, which goes into effect at the first of the year, begins the process of compelling your ISP to snoop through every file passed back and forth from your computer to the Internet in search of kiddie porn:

But such monitoring just became easier with a law approved unanimously by the Congress and signed on Monday by President Bush. A section of that law written by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain gives Internet service providers access to lists of child porn files, which previously had been closely held by law enforcement agencies and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Although the law says it doesn’t require any monitoring, it doesn’t forbid it either. And the law ratchets up the pressure, making it a felony for ISPs to fail to report any “actual knowledge” of child pornography.

And we all hate the idea of kids being used by letchers of the world for profit and malice, so this is the kind of provision that gets passed into law without a second thought by a lot of Congress critters.  But let’s you and I give it that second though, shall we?

First above all, since when is a corporation required to snoop on it’s customers by the government?  And where does it stop?  If your ISP or Google is forced to reveal private data of it’s customers, we should be worried that FedEx, Kinko’s or the Wegmans One Hour Photo Lab will be the next corporate entities pressed into the service of corporate policing of citizens.  Call me old fashioned, but I’d always thought of the local police department or the FBI as the sort of agencies that were better off as public services, rather than private enterprises.

Secondly, to bring the discussion back to the Internet, let us consider who is going to be affected by this law: everybody.  Well, no.  Not quite everybody.  Those of possessed of a relatively nominal level of computer sophistication will have no problem at all getting around anonymously on the Internet.  Even if that means driving around looking for unprotected WiFi hotspots to get their porn from.  Criminals, in other words, will always find a way around the system.

So that leaves everybody else.  All the people not going out of their way to hide their identities on the Internet.  All the people who are - in the end - doing nothing wrong.  They’re the ones who are left completely open to having every single email, every single Christmas purchase, every single lookup of herpes, alcoholism, battered women’s shelters, or gambling problems filtered and categorized for the benefit of. . . well, anyone with access to that data, do you suppose?

And at what point does some of the other information not related to kiddie porn also become fair game?  When does the government decide that - as long as we’ve got all this data lying around - it would be a good idea to look into possible drug use or illegal downloads or simply saying things in an IM session that someone determines is “dangerous?”

You’ve heard all these arguments about privacy and free speech in the past.  The question is: when is someong going to do something about it?

In yet another sign of the slowly eroding rights we citizens of the U.S. thought the government was there to protect, DHS has announced that it has been tracking your every border crossing for the last year.  Even more worrisome, they cite an unspecified “new technology” that they’re testing out as a reason for tracking this data.  What is this new technology and what is it’s purpose?

The Washington Post is reporting that recently disclosed Homeland Security policies lay claim to the right to indefinitely detain your laptop PC, iPod or other electronic device without probable cause and share the information stored on those devices with third-party companies.  It’s all a part of making you feel safer.  Do you feel safer, yet?

I’m sure I’m basically wasting time trying to argue logically about the policies of an organization which is neither founded upon nor governed by rational interests in security.  Nevertheless, let me point out that border security - especially airport security, for which this rule seems largely designed - is about preventing dangerous items from entering a plane or the country.  Such things include guns, knives or shoe bombs.  Or more than one lighter at a time.  Or toothpaste.

So really, there is no logical reason for needing to interpret data on a PC or iPod hard-drive, is there?  Other than an attempt to bully and intimidate travelers, I mean.

Should I even bother asking why this didn’t garner the mainstream media’s attention? McCain says he’ll support George Bush’s doctrine of Presidential War Powers trumping the Bill of Rights, and plans to continue with wiretapping Americans if he sees necessary:

McCain: I’d Spy on Americans Secretly, Too | Threat Level from Wired.com

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain’s new tack towards the Bush administration’s theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies’ cooperation with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, before he’d support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

When it comes to national security, no measures are too extreme for the Daddy Warbucks Administration. You never know who could pose a threat to the defense of the homeland: it could be a presidential candidate with the middle name Hussein or even a former Playboy Playmate with large potential smuggling compartments at her disposal:

BBC NEWS | Americas | More US passport ‘file breaches’

Other Americans whose files had been viewed since January 2007 included late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, AP reports, citing unnamed officials. AP says the review is not complete and the number of cases is not yet clear.

Silly bureaucrats! Tits are for snuggles, not smuggles!

From the house I’d thought least likely to do anything right comes what is easily the best version of the Telecom/FISA bill. Granted, it’s never going to pass through the Senate much less the president, but who gives a shit? The point is that someone at least tried to stand up for our rights, unlike the ball-less Senate.

And this runs out the clock, needing to be argued over in the Senate, putting the issue of Telecom Immunity on the front burner across the country. As it gets closer to election time, there’s a good chance that Senators from iffy districts may be less inclined to pass the Senate version. I suspect that, in the end, nothing will happen with this bill until possibly after the elections.

TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | House Passes Surveillance Bill without Retroactive Immunity

The House Dem leadership’s surveillance bill just cleared the House by a vote of 213-197 with 1 vote of present. 11 Dems crossed the aisle to vote against it.

George Bush fails to nominate members to the Congressionally-empowered Privacy and Civil Liberties Commission, just at the same time as Congress is working to approve even more powers of eavesdropping for the president.

OK, so I know impeachment would take longer than they have left in office, but what say we just stop making the situation worse?  Or is that too much to ask?

The Washington Post today reports that there are government-run websites that actually may include your Social Security number and other private data somewhere within their binary bowels. How is this happening? Well, it’s largely a question of legacy records keeping in a digital world:

A recent spot-check found the nine-digit numbers — introduced in 1936 to track employee earnings and benefits — on hundreds of land deeds, death certificates, traffic tickets, creditors’ filings and other documents related to civil and criminal court cases.

I searched around and didn’t come up with anything on myself, but you might want to look into it yourself.  And while you’re at it, it would probably be advisable to inquire whenever giving out such information how it will be used and if it will be public.  This is some scary shizzle, people.