Among the Obama administration’s most hotly debated IP initiatives is its push to secure backing from the European Union, Japan, and other countries for a broad new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The pact, expected to be completed by year-end, has attracted intense criticism from digital rights and privacy groups who claim that some of the measures reportedly being discussed would open the door to widespread government surveillance of citizens’ online activities.
For now, it’s nearly impossible to assess that criticism, since most of the specific changes under consideration, as well as the ongoing negotiations themselves, have been kept under wraps by both the Bush and Obama administrations—so much so that in early 2009 the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative fended off a Freedom of Information Act request that it release portions of the negotiating text by labeling the relevant documents a “state secret.”
