Wikipedia sues NSA spies; Facebook faces class action; HP loses four patents

The Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has sued the US National Security Agency (NSA), claiming that mass surveillance harms its users.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charity that operates a variety of wikis, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary.

The company explained its NSA lawsuit in an editorial in The New York Times, written by Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia board member Jimmy Wales and the organisation’s executive director, Lila Tretikov.

“Our lawsuit says that the NSA’s mass surveillance of internet traffic on American soil - often called ‘upstream’ surveillance - violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008,” Wales and Tretikov wrote.

They argued that the volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia should be able to do so without fear of the US government monitoring what they read and write.

“Unfortunately, their anonymity is far from certain because, using upstream surveillance, the NSA intercepts and searches virtually all of the international text-based traffic that flows across the internet “backbone” inside the United States,” they wrote.

Wales and Tretikov said Wikipedia was a target of NSA surveillance, and that this surveillance caused harm to Wikimedia and “the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites”.

In the legal action Wikimedia is asking the court “to order an end to the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of internet traffic”, the pair wrote.

Wales reportedly believes that the lawsuit will end up in the US Supreme Court because either side is likely to appeal any ruling against it.

Wikimedia launched the legal action with eight other groups.

Facebook to face refund class action

Facebook must face a class action lawsuit that seeks to force the company to provide refunds when children spend their parents’ money on Facebook without the parents’ permission, a US federal judge has ruled.

The lawsuit, filed in 2012, said that Facebook allowed children to use their parents’ credit and debit cards to buy virtual currency on Facebook, and that the company broke the law by refusing to refund the parents.

Last week, US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in California said that the plaintiffs may press their claim that Facebook should change how it handles online transactions undertaken by minors, Reuters reported.

However, the judge said that the plaintiffs could not pursue refunds as a group under US Supreme Court precedent, because refunds could be different depending on the details of each case. Instead, she said that plaintiffs could pursue individual refunds.

Facebook had argued that the plaintiffs claims were too disparate and an injunction would not address them, according to Reuters.

Freeman reportedly said, however, that state law protects parents and their children when the children lack judgement and buy things they shouldn’t.

“Though some minors undoubtedly may wish to continue making purchases through credit or debit cards they do not have permission to use, such a desire cannot prevent the named plaintiffs from bringing suit to demand that Facebook’s policies comply with the law,” Reuters quoted Freeman as writing.

California law considers that minors may not exercise proper judgement when entering into contracts, and these contracts can be voided if they involve personal property that the child doesn’t own, PCWorld explained.

Freeman reportedly said that because Facebook cites California law in its own policies, minors can invoke the law regardless of where they live.

CNET quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying: “The court correctly found that it would be inappropriate to permit plaintiffs to seek refunds on behalf of the proposed class. We believe the remaining claims about our policy are without merit and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

A trial date has been set for 19 October.

HP loses four patents

A US federal judge has struck down four HP patents at the centre of the company’s lawsuit against ITSM vendor ServiceNow, saying the patents were too abstract.

HP last year accused ServiceNow of infringing eight patents, according to Reuters.

Now, US District Judge Beth Freeman has ruled that four of those eight patents were too abstract to be protected by law.

This judgement follows a 2014 US Supreme Court decision that “merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention”.

HP reportedly said it will continue with its lawsuit against ServiceNow, focusing on the remaining four patents that Freeman did not invalidate.

“We are disappointed in the court’s ruling and are considering next steps as this is a rapidly evolving area of the law,” Reuters quoted the company as saying.

Image courtesy Mike Mozart under CC