Category Archives: Law & Disorder

Etsy, irish, Law & Disorder, Ministry of Innovation, overseas, tax

Despite transparency claims, Etsy ups secrecy and shifts profits overseas

Turns out that messing around with legal (but questionable) Irish tax laws isn’t just for the big corporate types anymore: it even applies to hand-crafted, crunchy-granola online retailers like Etsy.

In a little-noticed change to the company’s Terms of Use that took effect last month, the online craft retailer has now restructured itself such that it now has an Irish subsidiary, Etsy Ireland, an unlimited liability corporation. The move allows Etsy to now take advantage of a tool that has become all-too-common among major tech companies, including Apple, Google, IBM, and others, as a way to both conceal financial disclosures and drastically reduce global tax obligations. (Bloomberg was the first to report on this change.)

Etsy’s move is particularly eyebrow-raising given that it has a “B Lab certification,” under which it agrees to use business “as a force for good,” and “be the change we seek in the world.” That designation means while Etsy remains a for-profit company as organized under Delaware state law, it is supposed to adhere to certain self-imposed ethical principles.

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exploits, Law & Disorder, malvertising, malware, Risk Assessment, Technology Lab, vulnerabilities

My browser visited Weather.com and all I got was this lousy malware (Updated)

Millions of people visiting weather.com, drudgereport.com, wunderground.com, and other popular websites were exposed to attacks that can surreptitiously hijack their computers, thanks to maliciously manipulated ads that exploit vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and other browsing software, researchers said.

The malvertising campaign worked by inserting malicious code into ads distributed by AdSpirit.de, a network that delivers ads to Drudge, Wunderground, and other third-party websites, according to a post published Thursday by researchers from security firm Malwarebytes. The ads, in turn, exploited security vulnerabilities in widely used browsers and browser plugins that install malware on end-user computers. The criminals behind the campaign previously carried out a similar attack on Yahoo’s ad network, exposing millions more people to the same drive-by attacks.

Update: A few hours after Ars published this article, Malwarebytes updated the blog post to say the campaign had moved to yet another ad network, which happens to be associated with AOL. Visitors to eBay were among those who were exposed to the malicious ads distributed through the newly discovered network.

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europe, Law & Disorder, leaks, secrecy, ttip, USA

Politicians can only view secret trade pact in special viewing room

The fact that most people have still never heard of the world’s biggest trade deal—the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and Europe—even after two years of negotiations, might suggest that whatever its problems, maintaining secrecy is not one of them. But the European Commission begs to differ: since the end of July, instead of sending up-to-the-minute summaries of its talks with the US to EU politicians, the Commission now requires that national politicians travel all the way to Brussels to a special reading room where the texts can be viewed under tight security. MEPs must also use this same system.

The EC made this rather drastic move in response to confidential TTIP documents appearing on the non-profit investigative news site Correct!v. News of this secret reading room was revealed in a confidential report of an EU meeting that took place on 24 July… which rather embarrassingly was then also leaked to the same site.

The new system is pretty insulting for top politicians, who are not used to being treated likely naughty schoolchildren that require constant adult supervision. Furthermore, considering the wide-ranging implications of TTIP, you’d think that the EC would want to make it easier for European politicians to read the latest documents, so that they know what is being negotiated in their name.

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Facebook, Law & Disorder

By “liking” ex-girlfriend’s Facebook pics, man may have violated protective order

Justin Bellanco

Earlier this week, a Pennsylvania county court arraigned a man on charges of contempt of court: he clicked a “like” button in possible breach of a restraining order that had been filed against him by his ex-girlfriend.

The case involves April Holland of Pittston, Pennsylvania, who filed a protection from abuse (PFA) order against her ex-boyfriend Justin Bellanco in July 2015. The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader reported that according to her PFA application, Bellanco “threatened to shoot her knee cap to watch her suffer.”

Earlier this month the application was granted, forbidding Bellanco from having any contact with Holland for a year.

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