EFF, Public Knowledge sue feds over secret IP pact

IDG News Service - Two digital rights advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret international treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge filed the lawsuit Wednesday after the USTR ignored their repeated requests to turn over information about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

ACTA could include an agreement for the U.S., Canada, the European Commission and other nations that are part of the talks to enforce one another's intellectual property laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to an alleged ACTA discussion paper posted on Wikileaks.org in May.

That paper also talks about increasing border searches in an effort to find counterfeit goods, encouraging Internet service providers to remove online material that infringes on copyrights, and boosting cooperation in destroying infringing goods and the equipment used to make them. The full text of the ACTA has not been released, despite requests by EFF and Public Knowledge, as well as Canadian groups. Wikileaks is a site that posts anonymous submissions of sensitive documents.

"ACTA raises serious concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights," EFF international policy director Gwen Hinze said in a statement. "This treaty could potentially change the way your computer is searched at the border or spark new invasive monitoring from your ISP. People need to see the full text of ACTA now, so that they can evaluate its impact on their lives and express that opinion to their political leaders. Instead, the USTR is keeping us in the dark while talks go on behind closed doors."

A USTR spokesman said the office is "working hard to keep the public informed" about all of its efforts to fight counterfeiting and piracy, including the trade agreement. USTR will host a public meeting on ACTA on Monday, and the office has made its officials available to brief groups interested in the trade pact, said spokesman Scott Elmore.

"We will continue to engage with stakeholders as we work with our trading partners to fight the scourge of counterfeiting and piracy," Elmore said.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Public Knowledge and EFF said the trade agreement's documents are subject to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. FOIA requires U.S. agencies to turn over most documents, with some exceptions, when a U.S. resident requests them.

The two groups filed an FOIA request in June, then clarified the request two weeks later. The USTR did not respond after that, and in August, a lawyer for the two groups tried to reach a USTR official dealing with the FOIA request, but a voice message was not returned.