vigilant.tv

freedom and technology

archive : 2002-09

sfgate: No-fly blacklist snares political activists
Excerpt: The SF Gate reports on problems with a US "no-fly" blacklist, that has led to the temporary detention by airport security of several anti-war activists. A number of agencies acknowledge...

csmonitor: Academia becomes target for new security laws
Excerpt: The CS Monitor reports on attempts by the US government to restrict the availability of certain kinds of research and learning to foreign students and academics. One observer points to...

washingtonpost: IMF Protests Met With Police Presence
Excerpt: The Washingon Post reports on arrests at Friday's World Bank and International Monetary Fund protests in Washington. More arrests were made than at the 1999 Seattle WTO riots, despite Friday's...

nytimes: As Security Cameras Sprout, Someone's Always Watching
Excerpt:The NY Times reports on opposition to CCTV cameras located on private property. There's certainly good reason to be wary of centralised, government-monitored surveillance cameras; but, with public...

reuters: Record Labels Seek OK for Online Music Sabotage
Excerpt:A US House of Reps committee has heard arguments from the RIAA in favour of Berman and Coble's "Hollywood hacking bill" , which would allow copyright holders to use denial-of-service tactics...

co-freedom: Denver Spy Files Target Libertarian Party
Excerpt:This is several weeks old, but worth mentioning: the Denver police spy files listed the Libertarian Party as a militia group. The article includes a scan of the dossier, with portions blacked...

Courtois and Pieprzyk's AES attack infeasible
Excerpt: Via slashdot , two analyses suggest the recent proposed attack on AES is flawed, as suspected. The first came from Don Coppersmith on the NIST AES list: They overcount the number of...

distributed.net: RC5-64 has been solved!
Excerpt: The distributed.net project has finally completed the RSA-64 challenge, discovering the key after brute-forcing 88% of the 64-bit keyspace. The winning key was found in July, but was not...

forbes: Will E-Mail Kill Wall Street?
Excerpt: Forbes suggest US corporations are becoming increasingly burdened with SEC regulations requiring the retention of electronic communications, as the rules on retention are extended to include a...

ap: Press Groups Blast Venezuela President
Excerpt: Two media associations have accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez of enouraging threats and violent attacks against journalists by government supporters. The government says journalists are...

nytimes: California's Governor Signs Series of Anti-Gun Measures
Excerpt: California governer Gray Davis has signed a bill that will allow courts to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the actions of criminals. California, which was one of the first states to...

jpost: PA arrests 18 alleged collaborators
Excerpt: The PA has arrested 18 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel. The arrests follow the execution without trial of Akram Zatmeh on charges of assisting the IDF. More on the PA's...

jpost: 'Yasser Arafat' held for organizing protests
Excerpt: Israeli police have arrested several Palestinian activists on suspicion of planning protests over the IDF seige of the PA compound in Ramallah. The sources said Arafat is the third Fatah...

ap: NYPD wants to spy on political groups
Excerpt: The New York Police Department has asked a court to reduce the powers of a panel that currently regulates the department's surveillance of political groups. NYPD deputy commissioner for...

theage: Cyber stalkers to be jailed for up to 10 years
Excerpt: Some more information on the forthcoming Victorian cyber-stalking law . The law will differ from existing stalking laws in that there is no requirement for harm or even "apprehension of fear" -...

raisethefist: RTF Webmaster to be Convicted
Excerpt: RaiseTheFist webmaster Sherman Austin has pleaded guilty to charges of distribution of explosives information. Austin made headlines in February when an FBI raid took his web site offline ....

wired: Kazaa Taunts Record Biz: Catch Us
Excerpt:Regulatory arbitrage, nation hopping, tax havens, cross jurisdictional business deals - Kazaa Inc. sounds like cypherpunks without the crypto. Sharman Networks has shifted its operations from...

theregister: Stelios protests at threat of music biz CD burning gag
Excerpt:Employees of the British internet cafe chain EasyInternetCafe say they plan to protest an injunction that would prevent them from discussing a court battle with the music industry. The BPI has...

infoworld: Universities tapped to build secure Net
Excerpt:The US National Science Foundation has announced it will fund MIT's IRIS distributed hash table project. The joint project, dubbed Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems (IRIS), aims...

cbsnewyork: New York City Mulls Cellphone Ban
Excerpt:A proposed New York law would prohibit the use of mobile phones during public performances. There's no mention of exemptions for medical workers, emergency workers etc; nor is there any...

reuters: Canada's Cyber-Snooping Plans Raise Ire
Excerpt:Reuters follows up the recent Canadian proposal for ISP data retention and wiretapping requirements. A key part of the amendments would require all wireless and Internet service providers...

ap: China Continues Web Crackdown
Excerpt:The Chinese government has arrested the author of a number of online essays and articles, detaining him on subversion charges. Chen Shaowen was detained in August in Lianyuan, a city in the...

cnet: University bans controversial links
Excerpt:The University of California has ordered a student group to remove a link from its web site , citing the USA Patriot Act. The university says that linking to the FARC web site could constitute...

ap: Reports of banned books down, say libraries
Excerpt:The number of challenged and banned books is on the decline, according to the American Library Association. The number of times a book was removed from school reading lists or libraries...

bbc: Zimbabwe's MDC plans open defiance
Excerpt: Morgan Tsvangirai , the leader of Zimbabwe's opposition MDC party, has pledged to defy President Mugabe's security laws , which prohibit unauthorized public meetings and political rallies....

telegraph: Spies Sex Scandal
Excerpt:The Sydney Daily Telegraph says it has obtained a six-page report detailing corruption, nepotism and sex scandals within the Defence Signals Directorate - Australia's equivalent of the NSA. Most...

aap: Call for protest website shut down
Excerpt: The NSW Police Minister has asked the Australian federal government to consider banning a web site that is allegedly encouraging violent protest at the upcoming "N14" WTO protest in Sydney....

upi: Panel advises light hand on media control
Excerpt: A Singapore government review panel has recommended a reduction of media regulations, and the gradual lifting of internet content restrictions. The recommendations were part of a report...

mlive: Truth hurts for potential juror
Excerpt: Michigan Live reports on a Grand Rapids woman who was sentenced to community service after telling a judge about her misgivings towards police during jury selection. Michigan law allows...

capitalismmag: The War on Art Historians
Excerpt: Capitalism Magazine reports on an art historian detained by New York police after he attempted to photograph a public statue. Even after police determined he was not a terrorist threat, he was...

cnet: Net archive silences Scientology critic
Excerpt: The Wayback Machine has removed its archive of xenu.net after threats from Church of Scientology lawyers. This is just another battle in a long war between Scientologists and xenu.net....

australian: Cybercrime code ready
Excerpt: Australia's Internet Industry Association has released a draft of its Cybercrime Code of Practice. The Code sets out standards for data retention and surveillance access for law enforcement,...

ap: China: Falun Gong Disrupts TV Signal
Excerpt: Falun Gong supporters have hijacked another Chinese satellite TV broadcast. Just last week 15 people were sentenced to up to 20 years over similar hijackings earlier this year . "Why do...

bbc: Reprieve for Greek gamers
Excerpt:The Greek government has backed down over its ban on computer games , issuing a clarification that the law is only intended to cover gambling. This comes just days after a series of raids on...

bbc: Officer faces child porn charges
Excerpt: Another British police officer has been charged with posession of child pornography. Earlier this month two officers were arrested on unusual charges involving the distribution of...

bbc: HK unveils anti-subversion law plan
Excerpt:The Hong Kong government has released a draft of its proposed sedition and subversion law , which was announced last week. The draft will be completed following a 3-month public consultation...

usdoj: New guidelines to share information between federal law enforcement and US intelligence
Excerpt: The US Attorney General has announced new guidelines that implement information sharing between US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, now permitted under the PATRIOT Act. The new...

bbc: The cost of China's web censors
Excerpt: The BBC outlines the scale of China's internet censorship regime. Of 2,400 [internet cafes], only 30 have reopened so far, and prices are at least four times higher. The cafe closures...

cringely: How BayTSP is Enforcing the Digital Millennium
Excerpt:This slipped by unnoticed last week: Robert Cringely interviews the operator of BayTSP, a company that scours the web and peer-to-peer networks for illegal content, and issuing subpoenas to ISPs on...

jpost: Tirawi victim tells of torture
Excerpt: An escapee from a Palestinian Authority prison describes the PA's treatment of those accused of collaborating with Israel. See also this August story , which suggests confessions are routinely...

latimes: Chilling 'Chatter' of Jihad
Excerpt: A lengthy LA Times piece details the extent of wiretapping and surveillance capabilities used to investigate a suspected al Qaeda cell in Milan. Perhaps most interesting is that the suspects...

wired: Online Gaming Illegal (Wink Wink)
Excerpt: Wired reports on the limited success by the US Justice Department in prohibiting online gambling. As proof, they cite a federal court decision in Louisiana that could de-fang the Justice...

cnet: WorldCom blocks access to child porn
Excerpt:WorldCom has reluctantly complied with an order from the Pennsylvania Attorney General to block access to a number of web sites accused of hosting child pornography . The block will affect users...

theregister: 'Free' Costello CD seeds DRM, MS Media Player 9
Excerpt:The Register describes the labyrinthine incarnations required to listen to DRM-protected tracks on a recent promotional sampler CD distributed with the UK Sunday Times. With this many barriers to...

infoanarchy: Danish Police Shuts Down eDonkey Servers
Excerpt: According to InfoAnarchy, Danish police have shut down a number of servers on the eDonky2000 peer-to-peer network. The servers they've targetted don't host files, but provide index and search...

libertyforum: Libertarians Speak and Nannies Freak
Excerpt:A press release from LibertyForum , a libertarian discussion web site, claims it has been added to SurfControl's blacklist as a hate speech site. SurfControl's test page says...

guardian: Why my film is under fire
Excerpt:The Guardian prints an opinion piece by John Pilger, who claims his recent documentary "Palestine is Still the Issue" has faced unprecedented criticism and censorship. Er, except it hasn't been...

newscientist: Transparent token is cryptographic key
Excerpt: New Scientist reports MIT researchers have developed a method of creating physical objects that cannot be duplicated. The article talks about cryptographic applications; however, a lengthy...

jpost: Outlawing Islamic Movement not an effective solution
Excerpt: A piece in the Jerusalem Post points out that banning groups that espouse radical anti-Israel views is futile, and ultimately self-defeating. It's a counterpoint piece accompanying calls from...

bbc: Greek net cafes face ruin
Excerpt: The BBC reports on new raids and arrests in Greece, following the reinstatement of the government's ban on computer games "The police are acting like the Taleban, closing down...

latimes: At Least 70,000 Terrorist Suspects on Watch List
Excerpt: The LA Times reports on the scale of terrorist watch lists kept by the US State Department: 80,000 names sofar, and the threshold for making the list is low. The reports, based on recently...

nytimes: A Nation of Informers
Excerpt: The NY Times discusses the problems of false alarms and deliberate false reporting, following the chase and search of three Muslim medical students based on a report of suspicious behaviour....

theage: More phone taps lead to record prosecutions
Excerpt: More wiretapping figures from The Age in a followup to last week's story about disproportionately high use of communications interception in Australia. Figures released by the federal...

slate: Wartime censorship is alive and well and living on campus
Excerpt:Dahlia Lithwick discusses the uneven application of censorship seen recently at US universities - violence defended as "speech", and speech denounced as "violence". This is a familiar theme:...

theregister: Greek gaming tragedy turns to farce
Excerpt:A brief article from The Register suggests that the Greek government has appealed last week's ruling that its poorly considered ban on computer games is unconstitutional . Last week...

zdnet: UK Government suffers data retention blow
Excerpt:ZDNet suggests pressure from EU privacy commissioners may impact UK plans to require retention of customer data by ISPs and telecommunications companies. The article doesn't mention that the...

wired: A Gathering of Big Crypto Brains
Excerpt: Wired reports on this year's COSAC conference in Ireland. For nine years, the low-profile, high-caliber event has drawn the cream of the crypto crowd, people like Sun engineer and public...

cnet: Open-source group gets Sun security gift
Excerpt: Sun has contributed its ECC implementation to the OpenSSL project. Sun's "elliptic curve" technology is involved in the process of using keys to encrypt and decrypt information for...

theage: Victoria set to make cyber stalking a crime
Excerpt: The Victorian state government has asked for comment on a proposed internet stalking law. The law institute claims online stalking is not currently illegal; but existing stalking laws...

nytimes: Front Companies Said to Keep Financing Terrorists
Excerpt: A UN report on terrorist financing claims a huge global "shadow network" of front companies provides funding and support for al Qaeda. The implication is that financial investigations should be...

cnn: 'Date rape' drug sweep nets 115 arrests
Excerpt: THe US DEA has announced the arrest of 115 people involved in what it calls an internet drug-trafficking ring, that sold GHB from Canadian web sites. Stay tuned for the next generation of...

bbc: Germany bans 'militant' groups
Excerpt:The German government has banned 16 organisations it says are linked to the Caliph of Cologne. Assets have been frozen, but no arrests have been made. There's no explanation as to what kind...

aap: Terror laws 'threaten media'
Excerpt: Australia's Labor opposition has warned the government's proposed ASIO legislation could be used to intimidate journalists. Amendments to the legislation are being discussed in the House of...

vunet: Experts fear broken crypto standards
Excerpt: The tech journalists are starting to pick up on Bruce Schneier's description of a paper by Nicolas Courtois and Josef Pieprzyk that offers a possible theoretical attack on AES and Serpent....

law: Photos of Nonarrested Raise Hackles
Excerpt: Law.com follows up criticism of the recent Delaware police practice of searching and photographing innocent people. There has been no challenge yet, but the ACLU says it may launch action in...

news24: Bugging bill gets go-ahead
Excerpt: A South African government committee has approved a new internet surveillance bill, despite opposition from ISPs . Amongst other things, the bill requires telcos to cover the cost of...

zwire: Terrorists' Web Sites Hosted by City Firm
Excerpt: Via NWD , the Scranton Times Tribune hints that an unnamed US government "entity" is forcing some ISPs to continue hosting radical Islamic web sites. Contrast with the July story of a porn...

cnet: Watchdogs launch attack on filter law
Excerpt: The EFF and ACLU are continuing to protest the CIPA library censorship law, which is still partially in effect despite a federal court ruling that found it unconstitutional. Libraries have...

reuters: Judge to WorldCom: Block Kid Porn
Excerpt: WorldCom has been ordered to block its customers from accessing child pornography web sites under a recent Pennsylvania law that holds ISPs responsible for content accessed over their...

bbc: Falun Gong 'TV hackers' on trial
Excerpt: 15 Falun Gong members are on trial in China for hijacking satellite TV broadcasts earlier this year. The charges seem to relate to broadcasts made in March; a similar hijacking in August...

australian: Farmers lose time on evictions
Excerpt: The Zimbabwean government has approved a new law intended to prevent white farmers from appealing against their eviction under President Robert Mugabe's land theft program. Under the new...

bbc: Tapping into a hotline of evidence
Excerpt:The BBC provides an interesting fact about wiretapping in the UK: information gained from phone taps cannot be used as evidence in court. The article suggests this is in stark contrast with...

australian: Programmer on terror charge
Excerpt: According to this brief article, UK police have arrested a computer programmer on charges of collecting information that could be useful to terrorists. There are no details about the nature of...

theage: Writer sued for insulting Islam
Excerpt: The Age provides some more context on statements made by French author Michel Houellebecq that have led to charges against him under discrimination and racial hatred laws. The article also...

nytimes: Recipes for Death
Excerpt: NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof argues in favour of censorship. And if we want to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks using bio- or chemical weapons, we have a target closer to home than...

upi: French author on trial for Islam slurs
Excerpt:UPI follows up the case against French novelist Michel Houellebecq, who faces discrimination and hatred charges over anti-Islam comments made in an interview last year. Via NWD . "The...

politech: My house was raided by police because of Scientology
Excerpt: Politech has posted a letter from Karin Spaink, who along with her partner Zenon Panoissis is being prosecuted by the Church of Scientology for copyright infringement, describing a raid by...

nytimes: Six Suspects Charged Under Broadly Worded Act
Excerpt: The NY Times reports on doubts about the constitutionality of a US anti-terrorism laws that's being used to prosecute a number of recent cases, including the five (now six) New York men arrested...

washingtonpost: Singapore Announces Arrest of 21 Militants
Excerpt: Singapore police have arrested 21 terrorism suspects using security laws that allow indefinite detention without trial. The charges are unspecified, but seem to center on "reconnaissance of...

reuters: U.S. Court Rules Against Closed 9/11 Hearing
Excerpt: A US district judge has again ruled that the government acted unconstitutionally by holding secret detention and deportation hearings against Rabih Haddad . Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S....

computerwire: Go Daddy offers anonymous domain registration
Excerpt: Go Daddy has announced plans to offer "anonymous" domain name registration. The catch? Publish something "bad", and they'll make your details public. Details aren't final yet, but it doesn't...

guardian: Sense and censorship
Excerpt:The Guardian confirms suspicions that Chinese censors are blocking specific Google search results, despite lifting a blanket ban on access last week. [ update : A New Scientist quote from...

newsday: Of 'Special Interest'
Excerpt: A lengthy Newsday piece accuses the FBI of misusing immigration and anti-terrorism detention powers in criminal investigations. And it illustrates what some lawyers say is the Justice...

cnet: White House preps cybersecurity plan
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh reports on a draft White House cybersecurity plan, which amongst other things takes a particularly negative view of online anonymity. It's not a binding document, of course,...

australian: Racism ruling to affect internet
Excerpt:A federal court has ruled an Australian man must remove anti-Semitic material from his web site, and barred him from republishing similar material anywhere on the internet. It's not clear...

smh: Rampant phone tapping puts US in the shade
Excerpt:The Australian opposition has issued a report detailing the number of wiretap warrants issued in the last year; per capita, Australian law enforcement is using 20 times as many wiretaps than the...

wsj: The Internet Makes Our Fears About Codes Thing of the Past
Excerpt: In a WSJ subscriber-only article, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie debunks as "balderdash" the notion that Zacarias Moussaoui is hiding encoded messages in documents submitted to the court. A...

infoworld: Eerie possibilities
Excerpt: A Wireless World opinion piece by Ephraim Schwartz claims the Saudi Arabian government is investigating the possible use of RFID tags to monitor people during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. A...

ap: Al-Qaeda calls traced back to US
Excerpt: US federal officials say terrorists are using prepaid mobile phones and public payphones to frustrate attempts to trace calls. The officials said the process works like this: US intelligence...

ap: Rep. Wants Child Modeling Site Ban
Excerpt: AP follows the progress of the US bill that aims to prohibit non-pornographic "exploitative" images of minors. Critics warned that the bill was far too broad when it was first announced in May...

ap: Soldier Faces Charges Over Sensitive Photos
Excerpt:A US soldier has been charged after trying to sell photographs of a military facility to an unnamed Philadelphia news publication, after the publishers notified government authorities. The...

nytimes: Hong Kong Plan for Sedition Law Alarms Democracy Advocates
Excerpt: The NY Times reports on a push to implement sedition and subversion laws in Hong Kong, apparently following pressure from China. The laws would apparently explicitly allow for charges against...

ap: Stoning sentences tool in Nigeria power struggle
Excerpt: AP suggests the recent Nigerian stoning sentences are politically motivated, intended to send a message of defiance from northern Sharia states to the predominantly Christian south. Sharia...

washingtonpost: Arab Journalist Fears Al Qaeda Retaliation
Excerpt: Yosri Fouda, an al-Jazeera journalist who recently interviewed Ramzi bin al-Shibh , says he fears al-Qaeda reprisals following al-Shibh's arrest. The article refers to "internet messages"...

washingtonpost: Terror Cell Broken, U.S. Says
Excerpt:The FBI has acknowledged it has no evidence against five US citizens, originally from Yemen, who were arrested on Friday. The arrests appear to rest largely on an affidavit accusing them of...

guardian: Brutal gun-battle that crushed 9/11 terrorists
Excerpt:The Guardian's story on the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh has a few details about the satellite phone call interception that led to his discovery. Al-Shibh's trail had been picked up 15...

nytimes: China Wages Rear-Guard Battle in Effort to Rein in Press
Excerpt:The NY Times details the workings of China's newspaper censorship and propaganda efforts. Censorship is described as a losing battle, a slow government bureaucracy struggling to keep up with...

skynews: Soham Cops Remanded In Custody
Excerpt:Two British police officers detained as part of a child pornography investigation face some peculiar charges, including "inciting the distribution of indecent pseudo-photographs". There's no...

bostonglobe: Police dossiers miscast many, Denverites find
Excerpt:A followup story on the Denver spy files says police will continue to keep intelligence dossiers on citizens, despite "laughable" errors in the purged files that mischaractarized many innocent...

nytimes: Secretive Court to Give Senate Wiretap Ruling
Excerpt:The FISA Review Court has announced it will provide a copy of its ruling , on the DoJ appeal for additional wiretapping powers, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Via How Appealing ....

wired: Digital Rights Outlook: Squishy
Excerpt:Wired reports on a "new" DRM idea from Thomson, the company that owns the MP3 patent. It's not new at all, just a straightforward watermark scheme. The difference between this and proactive...

reuters: UK Scientist Calls for DNA Database of Everyone
Excerpt:The inventor of DNA fingerprinting has called for a British national DNA database at a science conference, according to Reuters. He's certainly not the first; scientists , police and...

heise: Duesseldorf arranges immediate blockage of Nazi Websites
Excerpt:The Dusseldorf government has ordered ISPs to immediately block access to several Nazi web sites. The order was initially given earlier this year , but many ISPs apparently failed to...

cnet: Court opens prison door for Web mail
Excerpt: A US district court has overturned a California ruling that prohibited prison inmates from receiving printed copies of email and web content. Prisoners do not have Internet access, but many...

washingtonpost: Italian Police Arrest Pakistani Al Qaeda Suspects
Excerpt:15 Pakistani men have been arrested and apparently charged with association with a terrorist group, after Italian authorities boarded a ship last month off the coast of Sicily. The evidence...

bbc: Google back online in China
Excerpt:China's Ministry of Information Industry appears to have lifted its block on access to Google from China. Users had previously been rerouted to other search engines when they tried to access...

bbc: Police can keep suspects' DNA
Excerpt: A British appeals court has ruled that police can keep DNA samples and fingerprints taken from suspects never convicted of a crime. The appeal was launched in March . One of the three...

guardian: Colombia's new powers 'aimed at civilians'
Excerpt: The Guardian has some more details about the new security powers granted yesterday to Columbian military and police. Under the measures set out in a decree issued late on Tuesday, police...

computerwire: Intel selects Verisign for mobile security
Excerpt: Verisign has signed a deal with Intel to provide digital certificate technology for Intel's forthcoming line of hardware-secured chips. Under the deal, announced at the chip vendor's developer...

ap: Internet stalker gets 8 years
Excerpt:An Ohio man has been sentenced to 8 years on "internet stalking" charges, after sending obscene email and voice mail messages. Defense lawyers say they may challenge the constitutionality of the...

bbc: Media giants want internet ruling
Excerpt: US media associations have asked a Los Angeles court to rule against file sharing networks without a trial. The ruling would find Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus responsible for copyright...

cnn: Man jailed for plane Tetris game
Excerpt:A British man has been jailed for four months for refusing to turn off his mobile phone during a flight from Egypt. The judge who delivered the sentence called for all mobile phones to be...

wired: How Changed Laws Changed U.S.
Excerpt:Wired notes the differences in opinion over the USA Patriot Act, and its effect on freedom. Polls suggest people simultaneously distrust the government, and are willing to give up some liberty...

latimes: Warrantless Arrest OKd; Military Zones Possible
Excerpt: A brief wire report says the Columbian government has authorized warrantless arrests, and plans to place parts of the country under military control in a crackdown on leftist rebels. The...

nytimes: Congress Criticizes F.B.I. and Justice Department Over Actions Before Secret Wiretap Court
Excerpt:A US Senate Judiciary Committee has accused the Justice Department of attempting to use secret FISA surveillance courts to cover up mistakes and bypass wiretapping restrictions in criminal...

washingtonpost: U.S. and China Ask U.N. to List Separatists as Terror
Excerpt: European diplomats have questioned a request by China and the US for the UN to designate a Xinjiang separatist organisation as a terrorist group. The Chinese goverment has been accused of...

bbc: Stand-off at London mosque
Excerpt: The controversial London Islamic conference on the "positive outcomes" of the September 11 attacks has gone ahead under "tense" conditions, despite calls for it to be banned. Journalists were...

aap: Calls for ban on TV food ads
Excerpt:A speaker at a NSW summit on childhood obesity has called for a ban on food advertising during children's television. Other recent proposed and actual advertising bans include cigarettes ,...

nytimes: Secret Court Weighs Wiretaps
Excerpt:The US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has met to hear a DoJ appeal against the recent FISA decision to refuse to recognise additional wiretapping powers claimed by the...

washingtonpost: 9/11 Detainee Files Lawsuit
Excerpt: An Egyptian man arrested in the US on September 12 last year has filed a lawsuit accusing the government of refusing him access to a lawyer. Much of the lawsuit centers around alleged...

bbc: Court allows Greek gamers to play on
Excerpt:A Greek court has thrown out charges against two internet cafe owners, and ruled that the new law banning computer games is unconstitutional. Legislation passed in July banned people from...

theage: Mahathir defends illegal arrests
Excerpt: A Malaysian court has ruled that the detention of five opposition activists 17 months ago was illegal. The court also ruled that sections of the controversial Internal Security Act are...

reason: How long can an emergency last?
Excerpt: Another piece from Reason's September 11 redux examines the argument that liberties must be curtailed to provide safety in wartime. There's nothing new here, but the point is neatly made that,...

reason: Facial recognition technology's troubled past - and troubling future
Excerpt:Reason Online takes a look at face recognition technology in its September 11 anniversary roundup. The failed trials at Palm Beach airport and in Tampa are mentioned, along with the...

guardian: EU threat to Swiss tax haven secrecy
Excerpt:EU nations are reportedly considering sanctions against Switzerland if it refuses to require banks to hand over information about EU citizens suspected of tax evasion. See also this July...

heraldsun: 25-year jail terms for terror
Excerpt: A proposed new Victorian law seeks to impose increased jail terms for acts of sabotage, including "cyber crime". The legislation is not yet available for review. The Government is planning...

sfgate: Surveillance Society
Excerpt: The SF Gate runs a "year since September 11" piece on video surveillance and face recognition. Business is booming, as is support for anti-terrorist video surveillance - never mind that the...

immunitysec: unmask
Excerpt: Immunitysec.com has released Unmask, a script that claims to help identify the authors of anonymous texts, using statistical analysis to record signatures. It's released under the GPL....

jpost: Wiesenthal Center demands 9/11 radical Muslim conference be banned
Excerpt:The Simon Weisenthal Center has called for a ban on a London Islamic conference that will discuss the "positive outcomes" of the September 11 attacks. According to the report, an...

nytimes: Locked Up and Patted Down: A Year of Making U.S. Safer
Excerpt: The NY Times suggests that, a year on from the September 11 terrorist attacks, US intelligence agencies still lack the capability to analyse all the information they gather. The rest of the...

bbc: Egypt jails 51 Islamists
Excerpt:51 Islamic militants have been sentenced to prison by an Egyptian military court, despite accusations by defence lawyers of a lack of evidence. There is no avenue for appeal. In July 16...

guardian: German right tries to capitalise on arrest of bomb suspects
Excerpt: The Guardian reports on calls by German conservatives for more powers to investigate and deport terrorist suspects. Foremost is Chancellory candidate Edmund Stoiber, who we quoted earlier this...

afp: US accidentally gave Moussaoui classified information
Excerpt: The US Justice Department accidentally gave classified information about al-Qaeda to Zacarias Moussaoui , according to AFP. No word yet on whether the DoJ's mishandling of classified...

slate: 9/11 and the Law
Excerpt:Dahlia Lithwick at Slate reviews some of the US legal changes since September 11 last year, and the effect on civil liberties. This gives a more grounded counterpoint to the recent reports by...

post-gazette: Sign-carrier arrested after balking at curbs
Excerpt: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the arrest of a protester who refused to carry his sign within a fenced-off "free speech" area, during a Labor Day speech by President Bush. Comments by...

reuters: China satellite clampdown after pirate broadcasts
Excerpt: The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry has again vowed to crack down on pirate television broadcasts, a week after Falun Gong followers hijacked satellite transmissions in Baoding. The...

reuters: Internet Freedom Also Victim of Sept 11, Group Says
Excerpt: Reuters follows up on the internet freedom report by Reporters sans frontières , first noted yesterday by AP. New laws extending the time data is held by Internet service providers...

ap: Former dissident fights to save accused spy
Excerpt: Former Soviet dissident Ida Nudel is attempting to stop the execution of Akram Azzatma, accused by Palestinian authorities of collaborating with Israel. The PA has received some bad press in...

theage: State plans new crime body
Excerpt: The Age reports on a Victorian state government proposal for a new crime commission, which would be given coercive interrogation powers. The commission would accompany new laws allowing the...

zdnet: Gamers face jail in Greece
Excerpt: A new Greek law, intended to ban gambling, prohibits all forms of electronic and computer games. There are vague reports that prosecutions have already occurred, and a test case is due to...

ap: Governments, technologists battle over Internet censorship
Excerpt: AP reports on the escalating arms race between internet censors and anti-censorship services. But lately, governments in such countries as Vietnam, China and Saudi Arabia have gotten...

independent: ID cards 'will sneak in fingerprint database'
Excerpt: The UK Independent accuses the government of trying to slip a biometric database into its proposed entitlement card scheme . Police and law enforcement agencies would be allowed to...

ap: Using Terror as a Pretext
Excerpt: AP quotes from a report issued by Reporters Without Borders , on the state of internet censorship and surveillance. The report accused China, Vietnam and other countries hostile to...

ap: FBI Says Hotmail Hard to Find
Excerpt: The FBI has responded to an earlier order (also here ) to explain why it was unable to uncover information about Zacarias Moussaoui's Hotmail email account. The explanation is a little...

ap: Denver opens 3,200 'spy files'
Excerpt: The Denver police spy files have been opened to the public - after some old-fashioned black marker censorship, of course. AP doesn't say what happened to the 22 files that the federal...

ap: Journos sneak knives onto planes
Excerpt: Reporters for the New York Daily News were able to smuggle knives and pepper spray past airport security by hiding them in lead-lined bags. X-ray safe pouches, specifically designed to...

icann: Breach of VeriSign Registrar's Accreditation Agreement
Excerpt: ICANN has delivered a warning notice accusing Verisign of breaching requirements for keeping accurate 'whois' records, and threatening termination of its registrar contract if specific errors...

cnet: New 'entertainment' PCs restrict copying
Excerpt: "Analysts" are already predicting the failure of Windows XP Media Center, a new OS from Microsoft aimed at stripped-down "entertainment" PCs that comes with built-in restrictions on copying....

securityfocus: Outlook S/MIME Vulnerability
Excerpt: A new security advisory suggests Microsoft Outlook's S/MIME email encryption is vulnerable to the IE SSL certificate chain flaw uncovered last month. The flaw reportedly allows signatures...

reuters: Chirac to back "globalisation tax" talks
Excerpt:According to Reuters, French President Jacques Chirac has proposed a worldwide tax on "globalisation", whatever that means. [ed: I cannot begin to imagine the horrors of having to fill in a UN...

cnet: Report: Anti-terror efforts pinch privacy
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh reports briefly on Privacy International's annual report , released jointly with EPIC . Four trends have become apparent, according to the report: the swift erosion...

cnet: Labels loosening up on CD copy locks
Excerpt: CNet suggests US record labels are scaling back plans for copy-protected CDs, at least for the moment. "From our perspective, CD copy protection is unfortunately not as good as we'd all...

cnn: Court move for total Batasuna ban
Excerpt: The Spanish Supreme Court will consider a permanent ban on the Batasuna party, following a 3 year ban imposed last week. The lawsuit, which if successful would ban Batasuna in...

cnn: Parents look to microchip children
Excerpt: A British scientist makes some dubious claims about using implanted microchips to track children, following the recent murder of 10 year old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The technology...

ap: Government critic killed in Nigeria
Excerpt: A prominent Nigerian lawyer and government critic has been brutally killed with his wife. The attackers haven't yet been identified, but witnesses say they were government-backed vigilantes....

theage: Police DNA powers raise concern
Excerpt: The Victorian Privacy Commissioner and the Criminal Justice Coalition have criticized police plans to forcibly take DNA samples from convicted criminals. Last month the Police Association...

ap: Don't look now . . . France is debating TV's Saturday Night Porn
Excerpt: AP picks up on French moves towards a ban on television pornography. The story was first noted in July by The Guardian. As with the July story, the legislators are making unsubstantiated...

opinionjournal: No Due Process for Enemy Combatants
Excerpt: Robert F. Turner, co-founder of Virginia University's Center for National Security Law, provides some analysis of the justification for holding Jose Padilla without charge or trial. Via...

reuters: Palestinians kill teenaged girl for "collaboration"
Excerpt: Members of the Palestinian al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have killed another woman for allegedly collaborating with Israel. 18-year-old Rajah Ibrahim was the niece of Ikhlas Yassin, who was...

reuters: China Appears to Block Web Search Engine Google
Excerpt: According to Reuters, search engine Google has been added to China's internet filtering blacklist. The Real Time Filtering Test confirms that Google is inaccessible. Reuters speculates...

ap: Anti-Semite from Australia vows to defy court ban
Excerpt: Australian teacher Olga Scully says she will continue to distribute anti-Semitic leaflets denying the Holocaust, despite a court order to stop. The leaflets were found to be in breach of the...

haaretz: FBI spied on '40s Zionist leaders
Excerpt: A forthcoming book by Rafael Medoff claims the FBI spied on Zionist leaders in the US in the 1930s and 40s. In some cases, agents checked the garbage of buildings in which the Zionist...

washingtonpost: Debate Crystallizes on War, Rights
Excerpt: The Washington Post takes a retrospective look at the freedom vs. security debate over the past year. Without seeking formal approval from either Congress or the courts, the Bush...

reuters: Colombian informants could fuel vigilantism
Excerpt: Reuters reports on a Columbian plan to use a network of civilian informants to gather intelligence on Marxist guerrillas. Some locals like the idea - government-backed paramilitaries have...

guardian: 'Sickening' paedophilia books rock French literary world
Excerpt: Child protection groups have begun pressuring the publishers of two French works of fiction - Rose Bonbon, by Nicolas Jones-Gorlin, and Il Entrerait dans la Légende, by Louis Skorecki - which...

theage: Brothels lose web nudity rights
Excerpt: The Victorian government has banned brothels from displaying nudity on their web sites. This is just one of a number of recent restrictions on advertising in Australia, including a ban on...

seattlepi: Ujaama lashes out at prosecutors in public hearing
Excerpt: The Seattle PI reports on charges against James Ujaama , the webmaster of stopamerica.org accused of conspiring with al Qaeda. Most of the charges seem to describe otherwise legal acts...

asio: Employment opportunities: cryptographers, telecommunications engineers
Excerpt: ASIO is advertising for cryptographers, mathematicians, software engineers with crypto experience, and telecommunications software developers, for "developing new cryptographic...

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