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We've reported a number of times on the curious failure of terrorist masterminds to encrypt their secrets. It seems the same phenomenon applies to despots, at least if this CNN article is accurate: documentation found during the capture of Saddam reportedly includes the unencrypted names of pro-Ba'athist resistance leaders.

Bush spoke to reporters hours after U.S. military officials said they had arrested several resistance leaders in Baghdad based on documents found when Saddam was captured.

Officials said that some of the documents detailed a meeting of resistance cell leaders -- and included their names.

- CNN, Bush: 'Good riddance' to Saddam: Documents found in raid lead to arrests, U.S. military says.

AP has a similar story, which says the documents were discovered in Saddam's briefcase.

Interrogations of Saddam Hussein and documents in his personal briefcase, seized with him, have led to the arrest of several prominent regime figures in Baghdad, a U.S. general told The Associated Press on Monday. [...]

But U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armored Division told AP in Baghdad that the first round of Saddam's questioning and documents in a briefcase found with him was ``connecting the dots'' in intelligence on the insurgency.

``It was reported as his personal briefcase,'' Hertling said. ``There were a lot of things that can be exploited.''

- AP, Military: Saddam's Capture Led to Others.

We usually refrain from mentioning press articles about blogs and blogging, but this one is right on target. The Spokesman-Review reports on the positive impact bloggers and "impromptu journalism" are making on the availability of information in and from Iraq.

Just being able to blog, they say, is one of the biggest changes between then and now. These days Iraqi citizens can open a conversation, unfiltered and unafraid, with the rest of the world. Some are even turning into impromptu journalists: A 24-year-old dentist named Zeyad used a digital camera sent to him by an American friend to document an anti-terror demonstration in Baghdad last week. He used an Internet café to upload his pictures and thoughts to anyone who would listen. Zeyad's observations were the first - and ultimately some of the only -- news about the march, which drew thousands of people.

- Spokesman-Review, Iraqi bloggers celebrate Saddam's capture: Online journals offer personal accounts of everyday life.

Glenn Reynolds has a similar story at MSNBC.

Last week, there were huge anti-terrorism and anti-Saddam demonstrations in Iraq.  But they hardly got any coverage in the mainstream media.  The New York Times gave them one short paragraph, buried in a story about something else.  The Washington Post didn't cover them at all.  Neither did most of the big TV networks.  (You can see Reuters' raw video feed here).  But American blogger Jeff Jarvis had sent a digital camera to Iraqi blogger Zeyad, who reported on the demonstrations and posted photos on his weblog.  [...]

But the story got out.  And in fact, it got picked up.  Amazingly -- a week after Zeyad got his digital camera, and just a few days after the protests -- The Weekly Standard gave over two pages of its front section to Zeyad's reporting. 

- MSNBC, THE DICTATORSHIP FALLS.

CNet, meanwhile, suggests the capture of Saddam Hussein demonstrates the importance of internet news services over the traditional press.

The front-page of The Washington Post's print edition carried no news of the capture. But the paper's Internet edition had a staff-written news story and video detailing Saddam's capture in a hole near an Iraqi farm house.

The New York Times' Sunday newspaper--with one of the nation's biggest circulations--also had no mention of the news. But its Internet site read "Saddam Hussein is Captured by U.S.: 'We got him' Bremer says in Baghdad."

On the West Coast, the San Francisco Chronicle that landed on this journalist's driveway at 8:04 a.m. PST--long after the news was announced--did not mention Hussein's capture, either. Its Web site carried an Associated Press dispatch with the headline "Saddam Captured."

- CNet, Net delivers early news of Hussein's capture.

The Canadian Copyright board has issued new levies on recordable media, with royalties on portable MP3 devices extending up to $25 per unit. A levy on blank CDs has been paid to the recording industry since 2000. Copryight holders had requested new taxes on all storage media, including removable memory cards commonly used in digital cameras. The same lobby group is pushing for an internet tax.

Today's decision freezes all existing private copying levies at their current levels. As a result, the current levies of 29¢ on audio cassette tapes of 40 minutes or longer (no levy applies to tapes of shorter length), 21¢ on CD-Rs and CD-RWs and 77¢ on CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDiscs will remain in effect until the end of 2004.

The Board also sets for the first time a levy on non-removable memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders (such as MP3 players) at $2 for each recorder with a memory capacity of up to 1 Gigabyte (Gb), $15 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 1 Gb and up to 10 Gbs, and $25 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 10 GBs.

The Board denied the Canadian Private Copying Collective's (CPCC) request to establish a levy on blank DVDs, removable memory cards and removable micro hard drives. It finds that the evidence available at this time does not clearly demonstrate that these recording media are ordinarily used by individuals for the purpose of copying music.

- Copyright Board of Canada, Copyright Board Freezes Private Copying Levies for 2003 and 2004.

See also the fact sheet, additional links.

CNet tries to spin the decision as legalizing P2P downloads, but music industry reps say they still consider downloading illegal. Seems they want to declare copying illegal and get paid for it.

A lawyer for the Canadian record industry's trade association said the group still believed downloading was illegal, despite the decision.

"Our position is that under Canadian law, downloading is also prohibited," said Richard Pfohl, general counsel for the Canadian Recording Industry Association. "This is the opinion of the Copyright Board, but Canadian courts will decide this issue."

In its decision Friday, the Copyright Board said uploading or distributing copyrighted works online appeared to be prohibited under current Canadian law.

- CNet, Canada deems P2P downloading legal.

There are no shortage of roundups of the news of Saddam Hussein's capture, and there's little value duplicating these. But there are a few details of the methods and technology used to find the deposed dictator, and some reactions to his capture, that might be of interest to our regular readers.

WaPo says the intelligence that led to his discovery was uncovered during the interrogation of a prisoner. There are also some details of the team and equpment used in the raid.

"We tried to work through family and tribal ties that might have been close to Saddam Hussein," Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. "As we continued to conduct raids and capture people, we got more and more information on the families that were somewhat close to Saddam Hussein. Over the last 10 days or so we brought in about five to 10 members of these families who then were able to give us even more information. And finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."

[...]

The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to the capture or death of Hussein. But because the breakthrough came as the result of interrogations, not a voluntary tip, one senior official said "we saved the taxpayer $25 million." A similar reward is outstanding for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader.

[...]

Called Task Force 121, it is an interagency team of CIA paramilitaries and "black," or unacknowledged, Special Operations forces. Two officials, one of them a Congressional intelligence source who was briefed on the operation on Sunday, said Task Force 121 took part in Saturday's raid. The "shooters" and "door kickers" in the task force are said to number fewer than 40, but they typically operate with support from a much larger combat team.

[...]

It was not clear Sunday what led soldiers to take a closer look. One military officer, whose account could not be confirmed, said ground-penetrating radar assisted the search. Two officials said raider teams had previously come upon similar hiding places and were attuned to the likelihood of another.

- Washington Post, When Focus Shifted Beyond Inner Circle, U.S. Got a Vital Clue.

AAP backs the claim that the source was a member of a family close to Saddam.

update: DPA is now quoting "well-informed Lebanese sources" as saying Saddam's wife supplied some information as to his location.

Samira Shahbandar, who lives with the ousted Iraqi leader's only surviving son Ali, "is believed to have given the Americans and their allies some information about the area where Saddam was hiding in," the sources said.

- DPA, Saddam's wife helped locate him.

CSM points out that the information source was quite different to the capture of Uday and Qusay, who were given up for a reward.

Pentagon officials were heartened not just by [the capture of Qusay and Uday Hussein] but also by the manner in which it came about: The owner of the house where the pair were hiding had grabbed $15 million in reward money and turned them in. Even as the Iraqi insurgency intensified, US officials thought it was only a matter of time before they located Hussein.

- Christian Science Monitor, Anatomy of Hussein's capture.

AP has an uncertain report that a DNA test was used to confirm Saddam's identity. There's no mention of what sample might have been used as a match.

The Associated Press was shown documentary evidence that the person captured was Saddam Hussein.

[...]

One senior US official said scientific testing, possibly including DNA, was being done early this morning to document Saddam's identity.

- AP, 'Proof' it is Saddam.

[later] AP has some more speculation on the DNA test, and a quote from a Governing Council member confirming the match.

Details about a DNA test on Saddam were not entirely clear. Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, said such a test confirmed Saddam's identity.

- AP, Saddam's DNA Test a Fast Job.

CNN is reporting that Saddam will likely face a trial in Iraq's newly created war crimes tribunal. Governing Council members say he will be provided with an attorney and given a fair trial. It has not yet been decided whether the tribunal will have the power to impose the death sentence.

The court sessions will be "open to the public, with the press, so that people in Iraq can see the nature of crimes committed with Saddam at the helm," said [Iraqi Governing Council] member Dara Noor Aldin, a judge who helped draft the statute creating the war crimes tribunal.

[...]

Asked about thousands killed and dumped in mass graves, Saddam dismissed his victims saying, "They were thieves," said one council member.

[...]

The Iraqi tribunal will address genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed from July 14, 1968 -- when Saddam's Baath Party came to power -- until May 1, 2003 -- when President Bush declared major hostilities over, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, current president of the interim government, told The Associated Press.

- CNN, Saddam to face war crimes tribunal.

The Guardian rounds up reactions from the Arab world.

As often, when faced with inexplicable situations in the Middle East, some resorted to conspiracy theories. One idea gaining popularity in Jordan was that Saddam must have been secretly "medicated not to resist" before the American forces closed in on him.

Others saw no need for such fantasies. "It's obvious that Saddam was not the type to resist by himself rather than by giving orders," said a Jordanian journalist, Samer abu-Libdeh. "You could tell that by the way he drove his cars and smoked his cigars."

[...]

Only in Kuwait, invaded by Saddam Hussein's forces in 1990, was there elation. In the first official reaction, the prime minister, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, welcomed Saddam's capture as godly justice, saying his country had now been vindicated.

- Guardian, Disbelief turns to quiet satisfaction.

Reuters, meanwhile, says Palestinians are mourning the loss of their financier.

The former Iraqi ruler was a hero to many Palestinians for his stand against Israel and its U.S. ally, as well as for giving financial aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and others who died in a three-year-old uprising.

[...]

``It's a black day in history,'' said Sadiq Husam, 33, a taxi driver in Ramallah, West Bank seat of the Palestinian Authority.

``I am saying so not because Saddam is an Arab, but because he is the only man who said 'no' to American injustice in the Middle East,'' he said.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his government made no comment. But Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior leader of the militant Hamas group, said the United States would ``pay a very high price for the mistake'' of capturing Saddam.

- Reuters, Palestinians Mark 'Black Day' of Saddam Capture.

Bali bomber Muklas says "honoured terrorists" will avenge his arrest.

"The capture of thousands of Saddams is no problem (to Muslims)," a wild-eyed Muklas shouted after facing court for the trial of another alleged supporter of Jemaah Islamiah, the group accused of being behind the Bali blasts.

"The following day will result in more violence and more victims for America.

"God willing, in a short time, victory will be given to the honoured terrorists."

- AAP, 'More violence' from Saddam capture.

Reports of the reaction elsewhere are largely jubilant. The Age reports celebrations amongst Australian Iraqi refugees.

Mrs Sakina al-Amein, who lives in Shepparton after coming to Australia from Iraq 14 months ago, last night cheered the capture of Saddam Hussein.

"We are very, very happy. I hope they strip the meat from his body and cut into small, small pieces," Mrs al-Amein said.

[...]

"My brother and husband were both killed by or on behalf of Saddam, as were up to 15 members of my family in total.

"We will be very happy to see him put on trial."

- The Age, From Shepparton to Baghdad, joy.

Jeff Jarvis quotes reactions from Iraqi bloggers over at BuzzMachine, while HipperCritical quotes anti-war bloggers, as does Considerettes. Truth Laid Bear, meanwhile, covers warblogger reactions.

Reuters reports the reactions of Iraqi journalists, many of whom were imprisoned and tortured by the Ba'ath regime, on hearing of Saddam Hussein's capture.

"When I saw Saddam's long beard, how he looked like a defeated man, it reminded me of the two years I spent in jail, how his agents tortured me in every way you could imagine," [journalist Fatah al-Sheikh] said.

[...]

"Saddam put me in prison just because I was publishing an Islamic newspaper without official permission. I was in jail in 1989 and again in 1999. In the end I had to pay them off to get released," said Sheikh.

[...]

Some reporters screamed "death to Saddam." Others thanked the 600 U.S. soldiers who tracked down the once-feared leader who was hiding in a hole near his home town of Tikrit.

- Reuters, Iraqi Journalist Cries for Joy at Saddam's Capture.

The source code to Cryptophone, a Windows-based encrypted voice app, has been released. The license prohibits modification or redistribution, but the source is freely available for security evaluation and auditing.

GSMK CryptoPhone for Windows (TM)

• the Free software for landines
• works on any modern desktop or notebook computer running under Microsoft Windows(TM)
• enables easy and secure communication to and from GSMK CryptoPhone 100 as well as to other GSMK CryptoPhone for Windows users
• requires modem on POTS or ISDN landline

- Cryptophone, Downloads.

See also the FAQ.

The owner of a Lebanese television station was detained and questioned by the Defense Ministry for allegedly maintaining contact with Israel, according to this Medialine story. The same station was temporarily shut down a year ago over a planned broadcast about the Saudi-US relationship.

[Tahsin Khayyat] was arrested at his home in Beirut on Saturday by national security officials and then interrogated at the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. He was questioned on "stupid" issues, mostly about his dealings in Qatar and Libya, according to the Lebanese daily L'Orient Le Jour.

Khayyat made contact with Israel through New-TV's office in Qatar, according to news reports.

[,,,]

New-TV issued a statement on Saturday declaring that the arrest was linked to the station's investigation into a high-profile bank scandal, according to reports.

- Medialine, LEBANESE TV OWNER RELEASED.

Via Mostly Africa.

The New Zealand government has banned the Playstation 2 game Manhunt, the first video game to be banned outright in the country.

Chief censor Bill Hastings told NZPA today while computer games appeared to be getting more "edgy", Manhunt went further than any game previously referred to his office.

[...]

"When you go for the 'hot' kill you actually see the snuff film... you see the person being killed in close-up. With the plastic bag, for example, you see the victim's mouth gasping for air inside the bag."

- NZPA, Computer game banned for repetitive extreme violence.

Australian IT reports on a new push from Senator Harradine for stricter internet censorship in Australia. Harradine was the primary force behind Australia's inefficient and largely ineffective internet censorship regime, a complaints-based mechanism implemented in January 2000. The Senator has presumably recognised the failure of the scheme, and wants to try again.

Senator Harradine said ISPs were "responsible for sending this material" over the internet, and should take responsibility for stopping it.

"The ISPs make money out of porn, and need to accept responsibility," he said.

Additional research into filters needed to cover technical issues such as latency and making filtering more efficient.

Senator Harradine has been firing questions at the Government with increasing frequency in recent months, raising research indicating children sometimes act out pornographic scenes they have seen online.

- Australian IT, Tighter porn law pressure.

Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan reports that the Google cache has been irregularly blocked by state censors, presumably as it provides an easy way around simple web blacklists.

- Apparently, Iranian Telecommunication Company, the main Internet Provider in Iran, has completely filtered Google's Cached version of web pages.

- Minister of Communication, Mr. Ahmad Motamedi, has recently said that a blacklist of Iranian weblogs and news websites exists and all major Iranian ISPs, who are actually the Internet access wholesalers, must only block those websites and nothing else. (The list hasn't officially published yet. So how can we know which ones are being blocked "illegally" and which ones "more illegaly".) He has also mentioned that he personally doesn't like the censorship, but added that a committe outside the ministery is deciding about the list. He has talked about new softwares that the ministery have recently bought to make the censorship more effective and precise.

- Editor: Myself, Help Iranians fight Net censorship during the Geneva Summit.

The Google Cache is reportedly available once again, but it's not clear whether it will remain in that state. Hossein has started a new weblog, Stop Censoring Us, in response.

The Daily Summit has some more links.

Our Crack Team of Reporters are currently riding the rails, begging for food and bandwidth. Amongst the stories they've almost covered:

The Economist quotes Larry Lessig calling for the abolition of anonymity on the internet, in favour of traceable, 'pseudonymous' communications. Lessig's use of the word pseudonymous is a little misleading here, since he's talking about communications that can be traced by a third party, i.e. 'identity escrow'. Politech notes plenty of disagreement and counter-arguments, from flat out debunking to the warm and fuzzy third way. Our take? IP addresses and ISP customer records currently act as a defacto identity escrow mechanism - and the RIAA has already shown us where that road leads. But, as the continued success of spammers at evading the authorities demonstrates, nothing short of absolute power will succeed at stamping out anonymity. Even if it were possible, traceability doesn't prevent crime - it just makes it easier to identify the bodies afterwards.

Yahoo's announcement of a crypto-based anti-spam mechanism has made some headlines. The mainstream coverage is a little confused, but it seems that the proposal involves associating domain names with a public key, and ensuring each outgoing message from that domain includes a signed token. Recipients can then ensure that the From address hasn't been forged. We've not yet had the opportunity to examine the proposal in detail, but it sounds like a step in the right direction. There's some lively discussion on the Cryptography list, and some (perhaps undeserved) criticism at IP.

RSF reports some disturbing developments from China: webmaster Huang Qi was shifted to solitary confinement after RSF reps tried to visit; and a biology professor has been sentenced to two years in prison for publishing essays on the internet. Thus ends the short-lived notion that China's position on free speech might be softening.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation recently described knowledge of how to manufacture shampoo as "terrorism". We'll let that one speak for itself.

And finally, the UN is making more noise about governing the internet. Declan does the issue justice, while over at IP some see UN control as a necessary step in rescuing the net from American greed. We'll take greed over governance by the world's most repressive regimes any day of the week.

Australian media groups are urging the government not to pass new ASIO laws, which they say will limit free speech.

Fairfax, News Limited, SBS, the ABC, Australian Press Council and Commercial Radio Australia urged the Senate in a letter to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock not to pass the bill until several issues were resolved.

"Under the proposed amendments, individuals could face five-year jail terms for reporting the details of warrants issued for the investigation of terrorism," the letter said.

[...]

The media groups said the broad definition of operational information posed a grave threat to Australian democracy by gagging the media and its ability to report on national security issues involving ASIO.

All discussion of ASIO's activities in relation to terrorism would be removed from public scrutiny, they said.

- AAP, Claims ASIO bill will gag the press.

The editor of a sports magazine is amongst nine people sentenced to death for treason by a Burmese court.

A special court held inside Insein prison, on the outskirts of the capital Yangon, issued the sentences last Friday, said the [legal community] sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. Myanmar exile media groups also reported the sentences.

The government did not reply to questions about the trial Wednesday. Shortly after the arrests in July, the government said the suspects were accused of plotting to overthrow Myanmar's military junta through bombings and assassinations.

[The government] has denied the arrests concerned the journalism of Zaw Thet Htwe, 37, editor of the magazine ``First Eleven.''

- AP, Myanmar Court Sentences Nine to Death.

The RIAA has launched 41 new lawsuits against the users of file sharing networks. The new action comes despite an onoing challenge to the Association's use of subpoenas to obtain users' identities from their ISPs.

This is the RIAA's third batch of suits against computer users since early September, bringing the total number of people sued to 382. The group also said it had sent out an additional 90 new letters to alleged file traders, notifying them that they would be next to be sued if they didn't reach a settlement agreement first.

"This is an ongoing strategy, and the way to let people know that there is a risk of consequences is to continue the program," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "You don't set up a speed trap for one day and stop enforcement thereafter. It has to be consistent."

- CNet, RIAA launches new file-swapping suits.

David E. Bernstein has an opinion piece at NRO that describes the progression of Canadian political correctness laws, from initially minor restrictions to a major curtailment of free speech.

Indeed, it has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian opposition to homosexual sex. For example, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ordered the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and Hugh Owens to each pay $1,500 to each of three gay activists as damages for publication of an advertisement, placed by Owens, which conveyed the message that the Bible condemns homosexual acts.

In another incident, after Toronto print-shop owner Scott Brockie refused on religious grounds to print letterhead for a gay-activist group, the local human-rights commission ordered him to pay the group $5,000, print the requested material, and apologize to the group's leaders. Brockie, who always accepted print jobs from individual gay customers, and even did pro-bono work for a local AIDS group, is fighting the decision on religious-freedom grounds.

Any gains the gay-rights movement has received from the crackdown on speech in Canada have been pyrrhic because as part of the Canadian government's suppression of obscene material, Canadian customs frequently target books with homosexual content. Police raids searching for obscene materials have disproportionately targeted gay organizations and bookstores.

- NRO, "You Can't Say That": Canadian thought police on the march..