Obama Protecting Patent, Copyright Thieves

Is this really the "change" you were hoping for, Obamamaniacs? Barack "Spare Change" Obama is perpetuating many of the Bush Administration policies that you - Mister and Mizz Obama Voter - hated so much. For example, this June 17 press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (emphasis added): Washington, D.C. - The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). EFF and PK had been seeking important documents about the secret intellectual property enforcement treaty that has broad implications for global privacy and innovation. It should be noted here that EFF is hardly a right-wing group. They are staunch defenders of free speech, especially as pertains to the Internet. They describe themselves as "the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world." Indeed, EFF stands up to everyone from government at all levels (regardless of who is in power) to corporations such as Google. More from that June 17 press release (emphasis added): Federal judges have very little discretion to overrule Executive Branch decisions to classify information on "national security" grounds, and the Obama Administration has recently informed the court that it intends to defend the classification claims originally made by the Bush Administration. Look, sometimes there are legitimate reasons to classify something. Why the Bush Administration protected violators of intellectual property, however, is incomprehensible. Even less comprehensible, however, is why Barack Obama and his henchmen are perpetuating that policy. Change! Hope! Sure, okay. RELATED: EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent ACTA draft leaks: nonprofit P2P faces criminal penalties (ArsTechnica) Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (video; RussiaToday.com) Digital Strip Search (video; TheRealWeeklyNews) Search Google for news about "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" See Comments... Visit Our Online Store Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Hey! ChiNewsBench is on Twitter

Bush Secrecy Is Now Obama Secrecy

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Secrecy is secrecy, regardless of who abuses it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) used to fight the secrecy practices of the Bush Administration. Now they're battling that of the Obama Administration. (Change? Riiii-ght.) An email blast from EFF alerted us to this: For years, the state secrets privilege was a favorite tool of the Bush Administration. They used it to avoid accountability for both the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program and the CIA's "special rendition" program. The Justice Department has used the privilege to get lawsuits thrown out of court before they have even begun, based merely on the claim that letting courts judge the legality of those programs would endanger national security. Yes indeed, and Democrats, liberals, and even many Republicans and consevatives were very unhappy about the Bush practices. Now that Obama is guilty of the same sneaky things, will the Democrats and liberals cry out about it? Recently, the Obama Administration has begun to use the same tactic -- most notably, to attempt to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's ongoing lawsuit against the NSA for warrantless wiretapping. Yet, even President Obama himself recently admitted that the state secrets privilege is "overbroad" and a "blunt instrument" that needs to be reformed. Read more at EFF's web site in the article "Fight Government Secrecy and Reform the State Secrets Privilege"... More from EFF: Government Still Blocking Information on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty - Broken Promises from the Obama Administration Keep Americans in the Dark About ACTA Massive FBI Data-Mining Project Needs Congressional Oversight - EFF Calls on Congress to Examine the Investigative Data Warehouse CommieBama Hats and More Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Follow ChiNewsBench on Twitter