vigilant.tv

freedom and technology

archive : 2002-03

salon: U.S. prepares to invade your hard drive
Excerpt: Paul Boutin delivers an analysis of the CBDTBA bill for Salon, outlining the political motivations behind the draft. CBDTPA's goal is to force a powerful sector of U.S. industry --...

reuters: Calif. video bootlegger pleads guilty in rare case
Excerpt: A California man has pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges after being accused of duplicating video cassettes in his living room. It is only the second DMCA conviction - the...

nytimes: Terror's Confounding Online Trail
Excerpt: The NY Times reports on encryption, steganography, anonymizers and how terrorists aren't using them. Some of those services have taken measures to prevent their technology from being...

vunet: 1024-bit encryption is compromised
Excerpt: Vunet picks up the story of Bernstein's factoring optimisation, reporting recommendations from the Financial Cryptography conference that 1024-bit RSA keys should be considered...

wired: Another Punch for Copy Protection
Excerpt: Another US legislator has introduced a copy protection bill similar to the Senate CBDTPA bill, this time into the house. Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, California, said in an...

reuters: Judge Orders Details Released on Sept.11 Detainees
Excerpt: A US judge has ruled the Justice Department must release the names of people detained in two counties as part of the September 11 terrorism investigation. The government has sofar refused...

cnet: FBI to divulge more Carnivore details
Excerpt: A US federal judge has ordered the FBI to hand over additional documentation about its Carnivore internet wiretapping system to EPIC under the Freedom of Information Act. A federal...

salon: Pretty geeky privacy
Excerpt: Salon follows up the commercial demise of Network Associate's PGP with a look at GPG . [Werner] Koch, who oversees GnuPG development from Germany, said the number of visitors to...

ft: Abe Lincoln and the internet pirates
Excerpt: Disney CEO Michael Eisner calls Abraham Lincoln his "internet guru", clearly showing in which century his vision lies. Also, copying is theft, and some stuff about railway guages, so...

infowarrior: Operation Enduring Valenti
Excerpt: A strong piece by Richard Forno on the progression of the CBDTPA bill. According to Hollings, the lack of 'ubiquitous protections' has led to a 'lack of [high-quality] digital...

salon: Web radio's last stand
Excerpt: Salon interviews internet radio station SomaFM about the effects of the CARP ruling on DMCA royalty rates. Via Doc Searls . The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, a body...

bbc: Supermodel wins privacy case
Excerpt: In a somewhat confusing ruling, a British High Court judge has ordered The Mirror newspaper to pay damages for publishing pictures of Naomi Campbell leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting -...

koreatimes: Wiretapping Requests Rise Sharply in 2001
Excerpt: According to Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication, the number of police and prosecution requests for wiretaps is rising, while the number of warrants approved by the courts...

oneworld: Anti-Terror War Worries Press Watchdog
Excerpt: The Committee to Protect Journalists has released a report saying governments worldwide are using anti-terrorism politics as a pretext for restricting independent reporting. Via The War...

thestar: Child porn challenger wins artistic argument
Excerpt: A Canadian man has been found not guilty by the BC Supreme Court of child pornography charges over fictional written material, though he was found guilty of other charges for the posession...

dcita: Family friendly approach to Internet content filtering
Excerpt: Australia's minister for communications, IT and the arts, Richard Alston, has announced a new branding initiative, identifying ISPs that comply with internet censorship requirements. The...

dcita: New secure communications system for government agencies
Excerpt: The Australian government has announced a new internet-based system for encrypted communications between commonwealth agencies. The encrypted communications service, Fedlink, is now...

cnn: Librarians testify in Internet porn court battle
Excerpt: The CIPA library filtering court challenge by the ACLU has raised questions over the definition of pornography, with librarians saying the law requires them to block access to web sites...

afp: Turkish radio station suspended for propagating Christianity
Excerpt: The Turkish government has suspended a private radio station for "propogating Christianity" and making "separatist broadcasts". RTUK recently shut down a local television station for...

timesofindia: Poto passed amidst PM-Sonia showdown
Excerpt: The Indian parliament has passed the controversial POTO anti-terrorism bill in a rare joint session. Last week the opposition party walked out of the lower house after the bill was...

australianit: Net filters don't work: CSIRO
Excerpt: A report by the CSIRO for the ABA failed to find an internet filtering package worth recommending. The ABA enforces Australia's internet censorship legislation, which includes issuing...

fas: Fifty year old intel records pulled from archives
Excerpt: According to the Federation of American Scientists, a historian has discovered the disappearance of declassified intelligence documents from the US National Archives. Via Politech ....

siliconvalley: Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand
Excerpt: Dan Gillmor delivers an ultimatum to the RIAA over copy protection and DMCA thuggery. Note that while he still suggests pressuring Congress over recording industry, he seems to understand...

siliconvalley: Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand
Excerpt: Dan Gillmor delivers an ultimatum to the RIAA over copy protection and DMCA thuggery. Note that while he still suggests pressuring Congress over recording industry, he seems to understand...

bbc: Sharia court frees Nigerian woman
Excerpt: A Nigerian woman found guilty of adultery has had her sentence of death by stoning overturned by an appeals court. The court ruled the original sentence was invalid because the act was...

wired: Cuba Bans PC Sales to Public
Excerpt: The Cuban government has issued a resolution banning the sale of computers and printing equipment to the public, except when authorised by the Ministry of Internal Commerce. Government...

ananova: Appeals court tells Napster to remain offline
Excerpt: A US appeals court has upheld the injunction prohibiting Napster from resuming its service until it can remove all unauthorized music from its network. Judge Patel issued the shutdown...

latimes: Bill Would Boost Md. Wiretaps
Excerpt: Legislators debating a new anti-terrorism bill in Maryland are reportedly leaning towards the side of security rather than liberty. Each time that conflict surfaced last week, as...

independent: US property scheme makes plea for freedom
Excerpt: A British woman sentenced to 24 years in prison over an "informercial" investment scheme plans to appeal. The sentence was so high despite the fact that those who lost money were given a...

bbc: Judge calls for fake gun ban
Excerpt: A British judge has called for a ban on cigarette lighters that look like guns, after one was used in a carjacking case. In related news, a British musician was sentenced to 18 months jail...

iht: War captives could be held if acquitted
Excerpt: Guidelines for the tribunals of "unlawful combatants" captured by the US leave open the possibility that the detainees might not be released even if they are aquitted. Calling the...

newtimesla: Pooh Hits the Fan
Excerpt: Background from New Times LA on the forthcoming lawsuit over Winnie the Pooh royalties. Via Booknotes . For the past 11 years, the Disney Co. has been locked in a legal slugfest...

debian: Cryptographic software in main archive
Excerpt: Debian Linux has finally included (some) cryptographic software in its main distribution archive. Via The Nose Who Knows , who also has some background on the decision. The deal...

latimes: TV Tape of Army Raid Stuns Israelis
Excerpt: An Israeli TV station has defied an order from the military by broadcasting footage showing the death of a Palestinian woman as Israeli soldiers stormed her home. The broadcast has...

cnet: Is hardware key to piracy crackdown?
Excerpt: CNet reports on the newly introduced CBDTPA copy protection bill. Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer for network protection firm Counterpane Internet Security, said the bill...

cnn: FBI limiting access to secrets
Excerpt: The FBI is subjecting itself to increased secrecy and scrutiny, according to CNN. Over the last six months, the FBI has reduced by hundreds the number of employees who have access to...

cnn: Saudi-owned paper said censored after criticism
Excerpt: Several Saudi newspapers have criticised government censorship after a journalist was jailed over a poem critical of Islamic judges. In another statement Saturday questioning press...

independent: DNA codes may be protected as 'music'
Excerpt: A US copyright lawyer is investigating whether DNA sequences could be translated into musical phrases for copyright purposes, in order to bypass limits on DNA patents. The scheme seems...

independent: Prisoners can talk to media, says judge
Excerpt: A UK judge has ruled prisoners cannot be prevented from speaking to the media. Prison authorities will still be allowed to censor interviews. Mr Justice Elias at a High Court sitting...

guardian: Witch-hunt as Mugabe strikes back with new terror
Excerpt: The Guardian reports allegations that Robert Mugabe's newly re-elected government is leading a campagin of violence against opposition party supporters in Zimbabwe. Last week several...

PGP and GPG plugin for Mozilla
Excerpt: Enigmail adds PGP and GPG encrypted email support to Mozilla and (soon) Netscape 6. Source is available under the GPL or MPL, and "pre-alpha" binary versions are available for Windows and...

zdnet: Scientologists force closure of ISP's Internet connection
Excerpt: According to ZDnet, the battle between the Church of Scientology and xenu.net has escalated, with a Dutch ISP losing its upstream connection after legal threats from the...

zdnet: Scientologists force closure of ISP's Internet connection
Excerpt: According to ZDnet, the battle between the Church of Scientology and xenu.net has escalated, with a Dutch ISP losing its upstream connection after legal threats from the Scientologists...

theregister: Encryption patent firm stakes claim on industry
Excerpt: According to The Register, a Canadian company has been granted a US patent on data encryption, which would appear broad enough to cover almost any use of encryption. The patent...

wired: Anti-Copy Bill Slams Coders
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh notes some problems with the CBDTPA bill, one of which is that the restrictions apply to software as well as hardware. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would require...

politech: Google bows to Scientology's DMCA request
Excerpt: Google has apparently honoured a DMCA request by the Religious Technology Center by removing xenu.net and clambake.org - two anti-Scientologist web sites - from their search database....

wired: Anti-Copy Bill Hits D.C.
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh reports on the CBDTPA, which - like its predecessor the SSSCA - would require government-mandated copy protection in all digital devices. The full text of the...

news2houston: Houston 'Candyman' Suspect Becomes National Fugitive
Excerpt: According to News2Houston, US prosecutors have admitted that those arrested in the Operation Candyman raids may have been signed up to a child pornography mailing list by someone else....

zdnet: Scientologists force Google to cut links
Excerpt: ZDNet reports on yesterday's news that Google has removed xenu.net and clambake.org URLs from its database after a DMCA notification from the Church of Scientology. Search...

reuters: U.S. pulls 'sensitive' info off the Web
Excerpt: A White House memo proposes reexamining all public government documents for possible withdrawl or reclassification. The US government has been steadily removing formerly public...

bbc: India anti-terror bill rejected
Excerpt: As expected , India's upper house has rejected the proposed Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance . If passed, the bill would allow the detention of suspects for 30 days without court...

aap: Police consider child porn database
Excerpt: Australian police are considering establishing a database of child pornography to help identify victims, and make it easier for corrupt police to trade their collections. A review...

reuters: Treason charge under fire
Excerpt: The US State Department has condemned the arrest of Zimbabwe opposition party members on treason charges , saying the charges are political reprisals. "This is . . . the latest...

aap: Williams says ASIO bill won't satisfy everyone
Excerpt: Australian Attorney General Daryl Williams has proposed a new version of his ASIO anti-terrorism legislation. In a radio interview, he said the latest draft would allow witnesses to be...

politech: Google bows to Scientology's DMCA request
Excerpt: Google has apparently honoured a DMCA request by the Religious Technology Center by removing xenu.net and clambake.org - two anti-Scientologist web sites - from their search database....

nwfusion: CommWorks adds wiretap features to 3G wares
Excerpt: 3com subsidiary CommWorks has announced its 3G wireless products now comply with CALEA wiretapping requirements. Via Privacy Digest . The specifications, called the Communications...

washingtonpost: Defense Analyst Pleads Guilty as Spy
Excerpt: The US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst charged with spying for Cuba has pleaded guilty. As reported last September, Ana Montes used shortwave numbers stations to receive encrypted...

bbc: 'Elite' paedophile ring uncovered
Excerpt: A BBC article on the arrest of members of an internet pedophile ring says the group used "advanced encryption". Police are concerned the use of crypto might hamper their ability to...

independent: Virgin fined 75,000 pounds for 'offensive' show
Excerpt: A British radio station has been fined for breaking broadcasting rules, over a game in which callers used "obscene phrases". The announcer has since been sacked by the station. Just...

cnn: Taipei police raid magazine
Excerpt: Taipei police have seized copies of a magazine which published copies of documents linking former president Lee Teng to a slush fund. Police raided the publisher's offices as well as...

bbc: Mugabe rival charged with treason
Excerpt: Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, has been formally charged with treason over an alleged assassination conspiracy. He has been released on bail after...

digitalfreedom: Media bill signed into law
Excerpt: Zimbabwe's Protection of Privacy Act , which grants the government powers to jail journalists, went into effect on Friday. Media organizations in Zimbabwe have already stated that...

nzherald: 'Baise-Moi' appals MP
Excerpt: New Zealand MP Peter Brown plans to urge the Film and Literature Board of Review to overturn its classification of Baise-Moi and ban the film outright. Via Unknown News . "Having...

zdnet: Judge: DMCA covers AOL in e-book case
Excerpt: A US district court judge has ruled AOL is not responsible for copyright violations by users of its usenet news servers. AOL was sued by Harlan Ellison for allowing scanned copies of his...

cnn: India mulls 'draconian' anti-terror bill
Excerpt: India's opposition party walked out of the lower house of parliament after a draconian new anti-terrorism bill was passed. The bill is unlikely to be passed by the upper house, where the...

latimes: 89 Charged in Online Child Porn Network
Excerpt: US Attorney General John Ashcroft has again warned of the dangers of anonymity and internet technology, this time in the fight against child pornography. "It is clear that a new...

findlaw: Pa. Law: ISPs Must Block Child Porn
Excerpt: A new law due to begin next month will require Pennsylvania ISPs to block their customers' access to child pornography. Failure to comply with orders to block material can result in fines...

cellular-news: SMS service shut down to prevent Indian ethic unrest
Excerpt: SMS services were shut down by Mumbai police during demonstrations on Friday, according to Cellular News. A recent Times of India article quoted the Intelligence Bureau as calling for...

counterpane: Bernstein's Factoring Breakthrough?
Excerpt: Bruce Schneier responds to the hype surrounding Dan Bernstein's optimisation of the Number Field Sieve , suggesting the results are unlikely to be significant in practice. Last fall,...

fsf: Free Software Foundation Offers Resources to the Digital Speech Project
Excerpt: The Free Software Foundation has announced the Digital Speech Project , which encompasses both free software and free speech issues. Bradley M. Kuhn, vice president of the FSF,...

gulf-news: ID numbers for nationals, residents soon
Excerpt: The UAE will shortly introduce a new national identity number for citizens and residents, to be recorded on ID papers and used in a wide range of activities. Via Unknown News . "The...

theage: Indonesia defends journalist ban
Excerpt: The Indonesian Foreign Ministry has defended its decision to refuse to renew the work visa of an Australian journalist, but refused to state a reason. Journalists in Indonesia and...

indiatimes: IB can't figure out SMS, wants it shut down
Excerpt: India's Intelligence Bureau want cellphone providers to withdraw their text-based SMS services until monitoring technology has been installed. An article last month revealed the extent of...

chicagotribune: U.S. using new law on secret evidence
Excerpt: The US government intends to use secret evidence in defending against a lawsuit by a charity group whose assets were frozen after unsubstantiated allegations of links to Al Qaeda. Via...

theage: Indonesia bans Age journalist
Excerpt: The Indonesian government has refused to extend the work visa of Lindsay Murdoch, an Australian journalist, because the are "unhappy" with his reporting of military abuses in Aceh and...

wsj: DigitalConsumer Takes Up the Fight Against Copyright Plans in Congress
Excerpt: The WSJ reports on DigitalConsumer , a new lobby group supporting legislative limits on copy protection technology. DigitalConsumer proposes that consumers be guaranteed certain...

nytimes: Denver Police Files Raise Rights Concerns
Excerpt: Denver Mayor Wellington Webb has confirmed police kept files on law-abiding groups and insists the policy will be reviewed, but will not put a stop to the practice. There is no mention...

cnn: Egyptian arrested for alleged fake ID, suspicious papers
Excerpt: An Egyptian man has been arrested and held without bail in Pennsylvania after he was found carrying fake ID and instructions on how to deal with police questioning. It's not clear what the...

independent: TV firms were wrong to block 'shocking' images of abortion, says Court of Appeal
Excerpt: The British Court of Appeal has ruled the decision by the BBC to refuse to broadcast graphic footage of an abortion as part of a political ad was illegal. It's not entirely clear what's...

independent: TV firms were wrong to block 'shocking' images of abortion, says Court of Appeal
Excerpt: The British Court of Appeal has ruled the decision by the BBC to refuse to broadcast graphic footage of an abortion as part of a political ad was illegal. It's not entirely clear what's...

bbc: Police DNA samples 'unlawful'
Excerpt: Lawyers have argued the British police are illegally building a database of DNA samples taken from innocent people. Lawyers for a 12-year-old boy who cannot be named and Michael...

salon: Chained melodies
Excerpt: Salon extrapolates the current battle over copy protection, speculating on the future of networking and publishing. Ultimately, Touretzky and others argue, copy protection and the Net...

wired: Support for ID Cards Waning
Excerpt: A recent Gartner poll suggests US public support for a national ID card is decreasing. Given today's news that the INS accidentally issued visa approvals to two of the September 11...

cnet: Lawmaker renews anti-copying criticism
Excerpt: US Rep. Rick Boucher has issued a new statement responding to the RIAA's defence of copy protected CDs. "Copy-protection technologies will inevitably be defeated and the music on the...

cnn: New museum to lift veil on world of espionage
Excerpt: The International Spy Museum, opening in Washington in June, will feature historical US cipher machines, and a German Enigma. They include U.S. items, such as a cigarette lighter that...

aap: Minister explains spying powers
Excerpt: Defence Minister Robert Hill inists Australians won't have their phones tapped by the DSD unless they're the bad guys. The DSD's new privacy rules can be found here . "There are...

zeroknowledge: Freedom Websecure protects users' security and privacy
Excerpt: A press release from Zero Knowledge announces Freedom Websecure, an anonymizing web proxy service offered as a $US50 annual subscription. The service looks to be a watered-down replacement...

foxnews: Denver Cops Accused of Tracking Protest Groups
Excerpt: The ACLU has accused Denver police of illegally keeping files on law-abiding individuals and groups. Via New World Disorder . The ACLU's Colorado legal director, Mark Silverstein,...

cnet: AOL searches for copy-protection leader
Excerpt: AOL Time Warner has begun steps to implement a CD copy protection system. The media giant is searching for a senior project manager to lead a software initiative that the company calls...

wired: Tariff on Blank CDs? Blame Canada
Excerpt: The Canadian Copyright Board has proposed a tax on recordable media including memory cards, hard drives and recordable CDs and DVDs, to compensate musicians for losses due to copyright...

washingtonpost:Probe Spawns Unparalleled Intelligence-Sharing
Excerpt: The Washington Post reports on increasing cooperation between US intelligence and law enforcement agencies taking part in the ongoing terrorism investigation. Numerous officials...

guardian: Thailand threatens to pull plug on Weakest Link
Excerpt: The Thai government has threatened to shut down a television station for broadcasting a game show it says promotes selfishness and creates stress. Last month two journalists were expelled...

guardian: Count begins in Zimbabwe elections
Excerpt: As counting begins after Zimbabwe's election, members of the opposition party are formally charged with treason over an alleged assassination plot . Welshman Ncube, the MDC...

bbc: Farrakhan ban 'absurd'
Excerpt: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is fighting the UK government over its decision to ban him from Britain. Home Secretary David Blunkett is appealing against a High Court ruling...

bbc: Tug-of-love mother feels 'horrific'
Excerpt: A British woman has been detained in Dubai without charge or access to a lawyer, after trying to take her son back to the UK. Sarra Fotheringham was detained in Dubai on Monday as she...

theage: New law to impose life imprisonment for terror
Excerpt: The Australian federal government will consider its new anti-terrorism legislation without the controversial proposals to allow detention without charge and jailing journalists for...

aap: Murdoch company accused of piracy
Excerpt: British smartcard company NDS has been accused by a European pay TV group of cracking the smart cards used to decrypt their broadcasts and releasing the software on the web. NDS is...

cnn: U.S., Saudi Arabia join to freeze group's assets
Excerpt: US and Saudi officials have frozen the assets of an Islamic charity group accused of giving money to terrorist organisations. No charges have been laid. Before the announcement, a...

washingtonpost: U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects
Excerpt: According to the Washington Post, US authorities have been secretly arresting people and transporting them between countries without regard for legal requirements or extradition...

guardian: Australians held after Falun Gong demonstration
Excerpt: Chinese police have arrested two Australians over a protest in support of Falun Gong. The couple were seized within seconds by security police and bundled into police vans. On Friday,...

bbc: Press versus privacy
Excerpt: The British press has had some recent court victories over injunctions sought by celebrities trying to stop the papers printing articles about them. Monday's ruling by the Appeal...

bbc: Police attack stop and search plans
Excerpt: British police oppose plans by Home Secretary David Blunkett to increase the use their powers to stop and search people on the street. According to the article, around 850,000 searches are...

upi: 'Spy' cameras vs villains in Britain
Excerpt: Street crime in Britain is soaring despite the widespread use of surveillance cameras by police. See also this similar story from the BBC last month. With 1.5 million closed-circuit...

theregister: It's bloody hard to run a forum (in Sweden)
Excerpt: A Swedish newspaper has reportedly been found responsible for messages posted by users on its online discussion forums. The posts expressing pro-Nazi prejudices were made in October...

eetimes: Group to form content-protection specs for audio players
Excerpt: EE Times reports on the Digital Media Device Association, a group of consumer electronics manufacturers planning to decrease the attractiveness of their products by adding copy protection....

telegram: 'Security' arrest invalidated
Excerpt: A US district court judge has ruled that unspecified terrorism threats cannot be used as an excuse to stop and search people for evidence of a crime. Via End the War on Freedom . In...

washingtonpost: 'Smart' ID Card Worries Hong Kong
Excerpt: Hong Kong is set to roll out a new smart ID card which stores thumbprints, pictures and personal information. Then as now, the mandatory cards are largely aimed at controlling Chinese...

nytimes: Who Is a Prisoner of War? You Could Look It Up. Maybe.
Excerpt: A NY Times analysis of US Defense Department justification of the status of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners raises a new point. According to the Geneva Convention, a tribunal should decide...

latimes: Civil Liberties Take Back Seat to Safety
Excerpt: The LA Times reports on the changing face of US civil liberties since September 11. There is no such thing as absolute civil liberty. "It is not simply 'liberty,' " observed Chief...

bbc: Britons arrested in Zimbabwe
Excerpt: According to this brief BBC piece, two British and one American citizen have been arrested in Ruda, in Zimbabwe's east. Charges have not yet been confirmed. The Foreign Office said...

guardian: MI6: We now need twice as many spies
Excerpt: Britains Secret Intelligence Service wants to double its recruitment and restructure with a stronger anti-terrorist focus. These increases would be in addition to the emergency funding...

washingtonpost: 'Smart' ID Card Worries Hong Kong
Excerpt: Hong Kong is set to roll out a new mandatory smart ID card which stores thumbprints, pictures and personal information. Then as now, the mandatory cards are largely aimed at...

theregister: How we can save PGP - Zimmermann
Excerpt: Phil Zimmerman has called for help in continuing PGP development, possibly as an open source project, following last week's announcement that NAI will no longer support the product. Some...

guardian: Pakistani intelligence and Americans 'abduct' Briton
Excerpt: The Guardian reports claims that a British man working as a translator in Pakistan was kidnapped by US and Pakistani authorities and taken to Afghanistan. The family has lodged a writ...

a-g: Ministers Agree To Streamline Classification Guidelines
Excerpt: Federal and state government ministers have agreed to "streamline and simplify" the Australian film and computer game censorship rules, according to a press release from the Attorney...

findlaw: The Mouse That Ate The Public Domain
Excerpt: Findlaw provides some analysis and background to Eric Eldred's recent US supreme court challenge to copyright term extentions. Thanks to bignose for the link. The CTEA extended...

xmlhack: Encryption, Decryption reach Candidate Recommendation
Excerpt: The W3C has released candidate recommendations for XML encryption and decryption syntax. Last month a recommendation on XML signatures was released . The W3C has released XML...

ap: Groups Sue to Over Closed Hearings
Excerpt: Three newspapers are suing the US federal government for excluding them from hearings for those detained in the September 11 terrorism investigation. The papers' reporters tried to...

wired: House Rep's Rap: Unshackle the CD
Excerpt: US congressman Rick Boucher says he's considering legislating against CD copy protection mechanisms. Such legislation would not necessarily be upheld, as decisions in the 2600 magazine...

wired: Blinking Lights: The Newest Hack
Excerpt: A skeptical article from Wired on the two recent optical emanations research papers suggests the results are not a significant concern. Security experts say the discoveries were...

cnet: House approves child-friendly domains
Excerpt: A US congressional panel has approved a bill ordering the creation of the ".kids.us" domain. Web sites in that domain would be screened for "inappropriate content". The bill would...

kuhn: Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays
Excerpt: Markus Kuhn has released a paper on TEMPEST-style optical eavesdropping of CRT displays. This comes just a day after Loughry and Umphress released a paper on optical emanations from LED...

fairfax: You may be spied on - for Australia's wellbeing
Excerpt: Australian defence minister Peter Reith has introduced new rules for the Defence Signals Directorate, allowing the agency to wiretap Australians. The DSD is currently under investigation...

ap: Judge Says Amateur News Gatherers on Public Access TV Have Same Rights as Professionals
Excerpt: A US district court judge has ruled that amateur journalists have the same free speech rights as professionals. Athol/Orange Community Television, a cable TV station, had changed its rules...

theregister: PGP deep-freezed - NAI shrugs
Excerpt: NAI has halted development of PGP. The decision seems more to do with internal company politics - stemming from a decision last year to sell the PGP division - than with the viability of...

salon: Stop. Pay toll. Download.
Excerpt: Salon suggests MPEG-4 patent holders have ensured the failure of the new format by demanding licensing fees. Content companies have been working hard to avoid such a scenario and...

nytimes: Law Change Sought to Set Up DNA Databank for Captured Qaeda Fighters
Excerpt: US Attorney General John Aschcroft wants Congress to change the law to allow the FBI to record DNA profiles of the "unlawful combatants" detained in Guantanamo Bay. Note that blood samples...

nytimes: Intercepted Al Qaeda E-Mail Is Said to Hint at Regrouping
Excerpt: The US government has reportedly intercepted email from Al Qaeda members. There's no mention of encryption, and no details on how or where the email was discovered. United States...

bbc: Thai media curbs prompt outcry
Excerpt: The Thai government is facing increasing criticism over recent censorship of the news media. The row escalated on Tuesday when a local Thai multi-media group said it was halting all...

guardian: Booker-winner Arundhati Roy jailed
Excerpt: Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has been given a one day jail sentence for "shouting abusive slogans" during a protest over a dam project. Roy took part in a protest against the...

applied-math: Information Leakage from Optical Emanations
Excerpt: A new paper due for puplication later this year describes a successful attack on optical emanations from communications equipment - effectively an optical form of TEMPEST . The paper...

newsbytes: EFF Blasts Barney The Dinosaur's Copyright Claims
Excerpt: The EFF has responded to cease-and-desist letters delivered to the owner of a parody site depicting Barney the Dinosaur. This is not the first time the Lyons Partnership has sent...

cnn: Columbine family's lawsuit against video game makers dismissed
Excerpt: A US district court judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to blame movies and video games for the actions of the two students behind the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Lawyers...

guardian: Police break up Tsvangirai's briefing to ambassadors
Excerpt: President Mugabe's police continue to disrupt Zimbabwe's opposition party gatherings, halting a meeting between Morgan Tsvangirai and foreign diplomats over the weekend. About 30...

bbc: Chequebook journalists 'face prison'
Excerpt: A proposed British law would ban newspapers from paying trial witnesses for their stories. High profile witnesses will presumably have to settle for book deals and movie rights instead....

theage: Probe into lost police evidence
Excerpt: Records detailing wiretaps by the Victorian drug squad have gone missing. The Police Ombudsman is investigating. "It's a bit hard to make an assessment whether (it went missing) under...

newsbytes: Commerce Dept Fines Company For Illegal Crypto Exports
Excerpt: This is a week old, but just showed up on the cryptography list: US cellphone company Neopoint Inc has been fined for exporting 128-bit encryption software to South Korea without a license....

observer: TV Joan faces jail for gay poem
Excerpt: British TV presenter Joan Bakewell faces a charge of "blasphemous libel" after reciting part of an erotic poem during a BBC broadcast. Via also not found in nature . The poem, which...

wired: House Cool to Copy Protection
Excerpt: According to Wired, the US House of Representatives is reluctant to back mandatory copy protection schemes. Meanwhile the RIAA continues to reject criticism of its CD copy protection...

washingtonpost: Press Ethics in Shadows
Excerpt: The Washington Post criticizes the New York Post for not holding back information involving "national security". On Friday, The Washington Post broke the story of the "shadow...

cnn: S.D. Senate candidates propose ban on outside ads
Excerpt: The two candidates in a US Senate election in South Dakota have proposed bans on political advertising by anyone but themselves. "We can stop the negative tone now, and we can...

bbc: Black editor backs stop and search
Excerpt: The editor of The Voice, "Britain's leading black newspaper", wants police to increase their use of stop and search powers to combat gun crime. Police had scaled back their search...

bbc: Magazine apologises to Thailand
Excerpt: A Hong Kong magazine publisher has issued a written apology over an article about Thailand's royal family. The article resulted in two journalists being deported last month. The...

newsweek: Looking Grim at the Grammys
Excerpt: Newsweek offers the Grammy Awards as evidence of the immiment death of the mainstream recording industry. The article suggests the RIAA has no one to blame but its own members. So what...

politech: European Commission considers mandatory digital rights management
Excerpt: According to Politech, the European Commission has been funding "digital rights management" studies for a decade. It looks likely the Commission will recommend a mandatory copy prevention...

guardian: Online pirates scupper music business
Excerpt: According to The Guardian, the recording industry is in crisis. The record labels are continuing to blame piracy and the Internet for lost sales, but others are suggesting that the poor...

wired: Content Spat Split on Party Lines
Excerpt: The US Senate debate over copy protection in electronic devices appears to be getting nasty. Many Democrats seem happy for the government to enforce mandatory copy protection on computers...

billboard: The Music Industry's Web Of Intrigue
Excerpt: While the record labels blame piracy for their recent slump in profits , Billboard points out that the industry has lost as much as $US 4 billion on failed digital rights management and...

wired: Morpheus' File-Trading Fiasco
Excerpt: Streamcast has shot itself in the foot with a software upgrade to its Fast Track peer-to-peer software that disabled the Morpheus file trading network. Fast Track networks were previously...

chicagotribune: Couple are charged in CD piracy
Excerpt: A Chicago couple were charged with pirating CDs after Federal Express reported them to police over the number of packages they were receiving. This is how FedEx treats its good...

lasvegassun: Hit Man Book Publisher Settles Suit
Excerpt: Paladin Press has settled out of court with a woman who sued the publisher over one of its books, a technical manual for "hit men". Bobby Joe Wilson had accused the publisher of being...

cnn: N.J. man charged with helping hijackers get IDs
Excerpt: A man has been charged with unlawfully producing an identification document after allegedly helping several of the September 11 hijackers obtain drivers licenses. This is a good example of...

bbc: Mugabe rival sues over video
Excerpt: Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has begun legal action against Australia's SBS television station over a video it broadcast purportedly showing him conspiring to assassinate...

theage: Malaysia bans magazines over terror reports
Excerpt: The Malaysian government has admitted censoring news magazines over what it calls "inaccurate and untrue reporting". Newsweek, Time and the Far Eastern Economic Review had been...

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