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archive : 2003-01

Verizon appeals RIAA subpoena
Excerpt: Verizon has announced that it will appeal the recent DMCA ruling ordering them to hand over the name of a subscriber accused of illegal copying. In what is widely viewed as a test case...

China softens on rural dissent?
Excerpt: The Age says that the Chinese government is tolerating increasing levels of local dissent, particularly in rural areas, as a new generation of Communist Party leaders seeks to distinguish...

Ethiopian government seeks to regulate newspapers
Excerpt: The Washington Times reports on a push by the Ethiopian government to regulate the country's 93 independent newspapers. Many of the papers print wildly inaccurate articles, but the proposed laws...

Times obtains Operation Ore child porn subscriber list
Excerpt: The UK Sunday Times has obtained the list of child pornography subscribers from Operation Ore (the Times site is by paid subscription only, so I'm quoting here from The Register). The...

UK wiretapping figures misleading?
Excerpt: According to Statewatch, official UK figures on wiretap warrants are grossly understating a significant increase in surveillance activity. Figures published by the Interception of...

White House announces another terrorism database
Excerpt: The White House has announced a new project, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which appears to be a TIA -like data mining and information sharing effort between domestic and...

TIA already functioning?
Excerpt: Salon hints that the Pentagon's TIA domestic spying project has been progressing rapidly, despite the recent Senate vote to halt the project pending further investigation. But while Congress...

Hong Kong backs down on sedition law?
Excerpt: The Hong Kong government appears to be backing down on its planned sedition and subversion laws - at least according to statements at a press conference. The concessions aren't in writing yet....

MPEG-4 DRM opened for review
Excerpt: The Internet Streaming Media Alliance appears to have settled on a DRM standard for the forthcoming MPEG-4 video compression standard, thus dooming it to inevitable obscurity. First, the ISMA...

French ban flag insults
Excerpt: The French parliament has passed a new law that prohibits insulting the flag or national anthem. The legislation, which was passed on Thursday, allows for a maximum sentence of six months...

US pushes for Australian copyright law changes
Excerpt: Australian trade negotiators will reportedly consider a change to copyright laws that would hold ISPs liable for material copied by their customers. The plan apparently has the support of the...

Copyright verdict against internet cafe
Excerpt:British internet cafe chain Easyinternet has been found guilty of copyright infringement for CD copying performed by its customers. They plan to appeal. The British Phonographic Industry...

MPs push for UK surveillance reform
Excerpt: A group of British MPs are lobbying for communications data retention laws and other surveillance laws to be changed. Legislation that requires net data to be stored for the use of law...

Bill removes SSNs from licenses
Excerpt: A new US bill aimed at tackling "identity theft" might actually go some way towards reducing it, by removing social security numbers from government-issued documentation. The legislation seeks...

The Alliance for Digital Progress
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh reports on the Alliance for Digital Progress , a tech industry lobby group formed to oppose the CBDTPA copy-protection bill. The group includes some unlikely alliances between...

DNS problems highlight flawed assumptions
Excerpt: Two unrelated articles provide a timely reminder that the centralization of a key service like DNS leads to unnecessary vulnerabilities. First, on the mechanics of the DNS system: researchers at...

Investigators view journalist's phone logs
Excerpt: Israeli investigators probing the source of a document leaked to a Ha'aretz reporter have been given access to logs of his incoming and outgoing phone calls. The journalist, Barach Kra, will not...

ISPs express concern over DMCA subpoena risk
Excerpt: Privacy reps for several large ISPs and telcos have expressed concern over the recent court ruling that found Verizon must comply with a subpoena demanding the identity of one of its users who...

napster.no fined for copyright infringement
Excerpt: The operator of napster.no has been fined about $US15,000 by a Norwegian court for copyright infringement. Reuters says the site provided "links" to songs - it's not clear whether it provided...

China seeks further internet cafe regulation
Excerpt: A new Chinese plan to cut down on software piracy will likely result in even tighter regulation of internet cafes, according to Reuters. In the last year the Chinese government has shut down...

US Senate votes to limit TIA
Excerpt: The US Senate has voted unanimously for major restrictions on the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project. The bill will withdraw funding unless a detailed report is provided to Congress,...

Dutch journalist seeks computer game ban
Excerpt: A Dutch newspaper editor has asked the government to ban a computer game in which players can shoot various human targets including homosexuals. Henk Krol, who is also editor of the leading...

Doubts over UK ID cards
Excerpt:UK Home Office Minister Lord Falconer has expressed doubts as to whether plans for a national ID scheme will continue. The Home Office says submissions from the public about the scheme have been...

Cryptanalysis of physical locks, and security through obscurity
Excerpt: Cryptographer Matt Blaze has released a paper describing an algorithm for creating a master key for a physical lock using an ordinary key. The interesting part: the technique has been known for...

ADL describes e-gold as "terrorist tool"
Excerpt: Via Politech , the Anti Defamation League has issued a press release describing e-gold as a "possible terrorist tool". The potential abuse by terrorists of e-gold, an Internet currency...

EU to end bank account privacy
Excerpt: The EU has announced a deal with Switzerland that will phase out bank privacy. Secret accounts in Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria will be taxed at an increasing rate until anonymous...

US to consider violent video game ban
Excerpt: The US government will consider a new law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The new law is probably modeled on a St. Louis ban , though this one might include provisions for...

Australia to consider tax on blank CDs
Excerpt: APRA, an Australian copyright holders group, is lobbying the government to enact a tax on blank CDs. A similar tax on blank tapes was previously thrown out by the High Court. They're attempting...

Afghanistan bans cable television on religious grounds
Excerpt: The Afghanistan Supreme Court has temporarily banned cable television after complaints by religious leaders that broadcasts were offensive to Islam. It's not clear when services might resume....

Malaysian government says freedom of speech only applies to "good" people
Excerpt: The Malaysian government has defended its decision to raid the offices of the Malaysiakini news web site , saying earlier promises not to censor the internet only apply to people who are "good"....

Schroeder sues another newspaper
Excerpt: The Guardian reports on another court case by German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder against a newspaper. Just a few days ago the UK Mail on Sunday defied a German court order by republishing a...

ACCL supports ban on obscene speech
Excerpt: An Australian man has been found guilty of "exhibiting an obscene publication" for wearing a t-shirt with the word "cunt" printed on the front. The Australian Council for Civil Liberties says it...

Verizon ordered to comply with RIAA subpoena
Excerpt:A US district court has ruled that Verizon must comply with an RIAA subpoena demanding the name of a Verizon customer who is a user of the Kazaa network. The RIAA used an obscure clause in the...

Malaysian police raid news web site
Excerpt:Malaysian police have raided the offices of the news web site Malaysiakini , seizing desktop computers and servers over a letter published on their web site. The authorities, who moved in at...

Prosecutors appeal DeCSS acquittal
Excerpt: As expected, Norwegian prosecutors have announced an appeal against the acquittal of Jon Johansen on charges of cracking DeCSS, the DVD encryption system. Rune Floisbonn, a prosecutor...

Banks buy in to risk reporting agencies
Excerpt:The Toronto Star reports on an interesting phenomenon in the finance industry. As banks are increasingly held liable for the actions of their customers, they are investing in companies that...

Judge says Aghajari death sentence 'incorrect'
Excerpt: One of the three Iranian judges reviewing Hashem Aghajari's appeal indicates he thinks his death sentence was incorrect. Aghajari was sentenced to be hanged for criticizing Iran's religious...

Mugabe tortures opposition
Excerpt: The Guardian says Zimbabwe's President Mugabe is stepping up violence and toture in an attempt to try to dampen protests at next month's cricket World Cup. In the past week police arrested and...

UK newspaper defies Schroeder injunction
Excerpt: UK newspaper the Mail on Sunday has defied a German court injunction by republishing an article about German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. This is not the only time Schroeder has sued to halt...

Pakistani police burn 'obscene' tapes, CDs
Excerpt: Religious police in a Pakistani province reportedly destroyed CDs, audio and video tapes for violating Islamic Sharia law. Police claim substantial local support, but cinema operators say...

RIAA wants royalty tax on bandwidth
Excerpt: The RIAA has proposed taxing ISPs for royalties it says is lost to illegal file sharing. Here's a suggestion to ISPs: encourage your customers to encrypt their traffic. If you can't see their...

Microsoft announces new CD copy protection bluff
Excerpt:Microsoft has announced a new "CD copy protection" system. It sounds similar to schemes which have been around for a while : regular CD players read normal audio data, and Windows PCs read...

Molecular biologists ponder ethics of censorship
Excerpt: New Scientist reports on a debate over the ethics of publishing scientific papers that could include information useful in developing weapons. Some biologists, and to some extent governments, are...

Jordan arrests journalists over sex article
Excerpt: Jordan's government has arrested three journalists and closed a newspaper over a newspaper article discussing Muhammad's sex life, according to this brief AP article. The government closed the...

DoJ understates detainee numbers?
Excerpt: The Washington Post says the US Justice Department is understating the number of detainees still held in the September 11 investigation. THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT started off the year with what it...

Swiss bank hands over charity records to terrorism investigators
Excerpt: The Swiss government has handed over to the US bank records relating to Benevolence International , a Chicago-based charity accused of funding al-Qaeda. There's apparently still no news of any...

Syria arrests journalist over war report
Excerpt: Syrian secret police have arrested a well-respected journalist after he published a story about possible war plans. He is possibly being held without access to a lawyer, and will be tried in a...

EULA benchmark restrictions ruled invalid
Excerpt: A New York court has prohibited Network Associates from using End-User License Agreements to ban users from publishing reviews or benchmarks of its software. The lawsuit begain almost a year ago...

FBI seized records from 545 libraries
Excerpt: Wired reports some statistics on the FBI's use of the USA Patriot Act to demand information on library patrons. Note that the survey figures are probably low, because the Act explicitly...

Zimbabwe seizes more farms, halts food production
Excerpt: Via Tim Blair , Zimbabwe's government appears to be expanding its program of seizing farmland and halting the production of food. Emphasis mine: ABOUT 45 new commercial farms have been given...

Malaysia wants to censor radio broadcasts
Excerpt: The Malaysian government has proposed ordering radio stations to submit scripts of all programmes - including improvised live broadcasts - for preapproval by the Information Ministry. Via Serial...

German government bans, raids Islamic group
Excerpt: The German government has outlawed the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir under anti-terrorism laws that prohibit groups that advocate violence. Police have raided homes and seized computers,...

Italian political libel lawsuits
Excerpt: The Guardian reports on political libel lawsuits in Italy, where a number of book publishers and magazines reportedly face bankruptcy due to damages awarded to government ministers and their...

Irving barred from Australia again
Excerpt: The Australian government has again denied an entry visa to holocaust revisionist David Irving. Irving plans to fight the ruling, but the government says he has no avenue for appeal. The...

Bill to propose TIA suspension
Excerpt: The Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program looks set to encounter some resistance in the US Senate. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a bill on Thursday to halt the...

ACLU says regulation is solution to Big Brother
Excerpt:The ACLU has released a report on privacy and surveillance, that points to the availability of surveillance technology as enabling widespread invasions of privacy. It's been out a day or two, and...

German journalist jailed in Indonesia
Excerpt: A German freelance journalist has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for videotaping Muslim-Christian conflicts in Indonesia, in violation of the terms of his tourist visa. Two western...

US man charged with illegal exports to China
Excerpt: The president of a US electronics firm has been indicted for exporting microwave amplifiers to China. The amplifiers are used in commercial applications, according to the article, but have...

French crime law likely to pass
Excerpt: The French government is debating new legislation that will create a new collection of crimes including swearing at government officials, loitering in stairwells and dressing like a prostitute....

RIAA, BSA deal on DRM
Excerpt:This is a few days old; I held off on reporting it until I could research it a little better. The RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have reached an agreement that will supposedly forgo...

Eldred loses copyright extension challenge
Excerpt: The US Supreme Court has upheld that Congress has the power to indefinitely extend copyright terms, ruling against the Eldred challenge . The decision means US copyright terms will remain at 95...

HRW releases annual report, ignores Zimbabwe
Excerpt: Human Rights Watch has released its 2003 annual report. Quoting here from the opening paragraphs of the press release: Global support for the war on terrorism is diminishing partly because...

Child porn crusader Mike Echols is dead
Excerpt:Author and anti-child-pornography crusader Mike Echols is dead. Authorities say Mike Echols was found dead late Friday in the jail's isolation cell. The 58-year-old Echols had health...

German on trial for praising terrorist attacks
Excerpt: The BBC reports on the trial of German Neo-Nazi Horst Mahler, on charges of "condoning an illegal act" for comments he made in a television interview praising the September 11 terrorist attacks....

Privacy implications of RFID tags
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh reports on the surveillance potential of RFID tags, tiny microchips that sport a unique ID code that can be read from several meters away. Retailers plan to use them to tag...

Another P2P pollution scheme: Overpeer
Excerpt: Wired reports on Overpeer, an anti-copying company that pollutes file sharing networks with damaged copies of music files on behalf of copyright holders. Record labels are understandably wary of...

Chavez threatens TV, radio stations
Excerpt:Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has threatened to shut down television and radio stations for broadcasting opposition commercials. He has pulled them off the air at least once before....

Iraq turns off internet in response to US propaganda spam
Excerpt: The SF Gate is reporting that the Iraqi government has responded to a US military spam campaign by cutting off internet access to the entire country. Although no official explanation was...

Virginia Beach: another failure for face recognition cameras
Excerpt:Reuters reports that the $US200,000 face recognition cameras at Virginia Beach have not produced a single arrest since they went live in September. Similar results were found in a six-month trial...

The DMCA's unintended consequences
Excerpt: The EFF released an update to it's 2002 document on the effects of the DMCA on free speech and free trade. Section 1201 Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research. Experience with...

Australian govt warns radio stations against free speech
Excerpt: The Australian government has warned community radio stations not to use their freedom of speech to incite violence or hatred. The warning draws a distinction between free speech and incitement,...

Lawyer fights messages charge on free speech grounds
Excerpt: Lynne Stewart, one of the lawyers arrested last year for relaying messages to and from her client, convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, is fighting the charges on free speech grounds....

Iran shuts newspaper over historical cartoon
Excerpt: The Iranian government has arrested three journalists and indefinitely shut down a newspaper for publishing a 66-year-old political cartoon. Via Tim Blair . A torrent of outrage from...

Zimbabwe to charge 21 over illegal meeting
Excerpt: Harare's opposition Mayor and 20 others will be charged with holding a public meeting without police authority, under Zimbabwe's security laws. Mudzuri's lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, said she...

Magazine ordered to pay damages over wine review
Excerpt: A French court has ruled that a magazine must pay more than a quarter of a million euro in damages for a review that described a beaujolais as "crap". The magazine plans to appeal, saying that...

Kashmiri journalist to be released
Excerpt: Indian authorities have announced they will release Kashmiri journalist Iftikar Geelani, who was detained last June under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for allegedly possessing forbidden...

Fiji considers sedition charges against former PM
Excerpt: The Fijian government has called for sedition charges against Mahendra Chaudhry for comments he made at a conference in New Delhi. [Assistant Information Minister Simione Kaitani] said the...

Kazaa to be sued in California
Excerpt: A US federal judge has ruled that the owners of the Kazaa file sharing software can be sued in California, despite being based in Vanuatu and Australia. The decision mirrors the Gutnick ruling ,...

Google responds to SearchKing ranking lawsuit
Excerpt:Google has responded to SearchKing's lawsuit , which claims they illegally manipulated search results. Search King had claimed that Google devalued its PageRank score, bumping it and its ad...

Indonesia frees Joy Sadler
Excerpt: Indonesia has released American academic Joy Sadler from an Aceh prison. She was jailed last year with Briton Leslie McCullogh for possessing maps and providing medical help in a South Aceh...

Australia prohibits import/export of suicide documentation
Excerpt:Strange legislation of the day: Philip Nitschke's suicide machine was confiscated by Australian Federal Police as he was about to leave Sydney airport for a conference in the US, under a law that...

US asks to prevent Padilla talking to lawyers
Excerpt:Citing security concerns, the US government has asked a court to overturn an earlier order allowing Jose Padilla to consult with a lawyer. The brief specifically mentions a concern that lawyers...

German not guilty of sarcasm
Excerpt: A few days ago a German man appeared in court over a sarcastic remark made on the Telepolis message forums . He faced up to 3 years in prison if convicted. [Holger Voss], who describes...

China continues petition arrests
Excerpt: Another Chinese democracy activist has been arrested for signing a petition for government reform. Han Lifa, a prominent figure in China's pro-democracy movement, was arrested Dec. 26 in...

UK youth board blames crime on mobile phones
Excerpt: The Youth Justice Board blames the UK's rise in violent crime on mobile phones. The Board's proposed solution is to give free holidays to potential thieves. Chairman of the Youth Justice...

SEC wants to override attorney-client privilege
Excerpt: The US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to rewrite the rules of attorney-client privilege to require lawyers to report on corporate clients' activities. The SEC, like the FTC, is one of...

Bakri appeals 'Jenin, Jenin' ban
Excerpt:Filmmaker Mohammed Bakri has appealed the Israeli censorship board's ban on his film "Jenin, Jenin". He argues that the board does not have the authority to make decisions based on the accuracy...

UK watchdog warns against ID cards
Excerpt: The British Information Commissioner has warned against function creep in the UK's entitlement ID card plan. He also warned that storing information on a card would increase the rate of...

Singapore requires web ads to uphold family values
Excerpt: Singapore's Adverdising Standards Authority is revising its code to include internet advertising. The new standards require ads to "upkeep certain family values". Via Serial Deviant . It...

Printer cartridges protected by the DMCA?
Excerpt:Printer maker Lexmark is trying to use the DMCA against a company involved in manufacturing replacement ink and toner cartridges. They say the chips made by Static Control Components to bypass...

Xbox key distributed factoring doomed
Excerpt: After a brief absence due to poorly defined "legal reasons", The NEO Project has resumed its attempt to crack the Xbox key . The key is used to sign Xbox disks, so the hardware can check...

Danish government agency denounces book as 'dishonest'
Excerpt:The Danish Research Agency, a government body , has issued a decree declarding Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist "scientifically dishonest". Except they're refusing to give...

Italian police admit fabricating evidence for Genoa G8 raid
Excerpt: The BBC reports on an inquiry into a police raid at the Genoa G8 summit protests in 2001. According to transcripts, police have admitted planting petrol bombs and staging a mock stabbing in...

Canadian recording industry wants blank CD tax expanded
Excerpt: Wired reports from Canada, where the music industry no longer needs to produce anything at all in order to make money. A tax on blank CDs is funnelled to recording companies, ostensibly as...

Arab MKs appeal Israeli campaign ban
Excerpt:The LA Times reports on the appeal by Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara against the ban on their running for reelection to the Knesset. Israel's election committee said Bishara, a political...

US court rules citizens can be detained as enemy combatants
Excerpt:A US federal judge has ruled that the courts do not have the right to interfere in the military detention of US citizens as enemy combatants. The ruling rejects Yaser Esam Hamdi 's appeal against...

Iran rejects torture bill
Excerpt: Iran's Guardian Council has vetoed a bill sumitted by parliament which would have restricted the use of torture by police and prosecutors. The bill has already been amended to appease the...

On the high cost of copyright battles
Excerpt: RIAA president Cary Sherman complains about the cost of fighting piracy in a BBC interview. Which is probably true, but the RIAA isn't bearing that cost: copyright violation is increasingly...

Indian web site struggling after corruption expose
Excerpt: The Guardian reports on tehelka.com , the Indian news site that has been hounded by the government since exposing high-level corruption. They're now heavily in debt and likely to close soon....

Massachusetts subpoenas Cryptome logs
Excerpt:According to a message posted to the cypherpunks list, the Massachusetts Attorney General has issued Cryptome with a subpoena demanding copies of their logs. You are hereby commanded to...

Johansen not guilty
Excerpt:DeCSS author Jon Johansen has been found not guilty of copyright violation charges. The Oslo court said Jon Johansen, known in Norway as "DVD Jon," had not broken the law when he helped...

NSA to spend $450 million on IT
Excerpt: A vaguely interesting data point on the NSA budget: their new IT budget involves $450 million over five years. The main beneficiary is Computer Sciences Corp (CSC). Perhaps a red herring:...

China responds to Boeing/Hughes ITAR charges
Excerpt: The Chinese government has issued a statement describing the charges against Boeing and Hughes for allegedly exporting illegal information to Beijing as "laughable". The statement hints that...

Company alleges DoJ leaked information to bin Laden
Excerpt: The Washington Times renews allegations that Osama bin Laden was able to monitor US DoJ investigations through a back door in the Promis data-mining software. To be taken with a grain of salt:...

Mugabe's soldiers beat crowds, coerce votes
Excerpt: Not content with merely outlawing insults , Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe is now sending in the military to beat up those who fail to cheer his passing limousine. No doubt it's the fault of...

Supreme court to hear banned MKs appeal
Excerpt: The Israeli Supreme Court will hear an appeal by the two Arab MKs who were banned from running in the upcoming elections by the electoral committee. The court is expected to rule by Thursday....

DARPA research for TIA
Excerpt: This op-ed piece from Declan McCullagh lists some of the research projects currently in progress by DARPA, in conjunction with the Total Information Awareness project. We've reported on most of...

British government blames music for shootings
Excerpt:Violent crime is continuing to rise in Britain (where 167 women are raped each day ), despite strict gun laws and the increased use of cctv . So, following the shooting of two teenage girls...

Yet another incompetent web site exposes customer data, passwords
Excerpt:Wired reports on a serious security problem at PR firm Carmichael Lynch: a poorly configured web publishing system, based on MS FrontPage, leaked an administrative password in a "help wanted" ad....

US court to consider national ID card FOI request
Excerpt: EPIC has won a minor victory against the US Office of Homeland Security, with a district court judge refusing to throw out their FOIA request for documentation about national ID card proposals....

Zimbabwe bans food imports
Excerpt: More on the deliberate famine in Zimbabwe: many people say they have money to buy food, but the government has outlawed imports. Looks like the plans are progressing for the government's target...

INS wants passenger arrival, departure lists
Excerpt: The US immigration department has proposed a new rule that would force airlines to provide the government with passenger and crew lists for all international arrivals and departures. Some of the...

Publishing corporation argues corporations have no free speech rights
Excerpt:Common Dreams prints an argument by Thom Hartmann about an upcoming free speech case involving Nike's challenge to a law that prohibits misleading commercial speech. Nike argues that the law...

Lebanese TV station could remain off air for a month
Excerpt: NTV, the Lebanese satellite TV station shut down by the Prime Minister two days ago, could remain closed for a month according to the Daily Star. The Bar Association has condemned the action,...

US Supreme Court drops stay on DeCSS
Excerpt: The US Supreme Court has rescinded last week's emergency stay prohibiting the distribution of DeCSS. The order was pointless, since DeCSS has been widely available for several years....

UAE charges raped French woman with adultery
Excerpt: A French woman who accused three men of raping her has been charged with adultery by Dubai police. She has been released from jail, but her passport has been confiscated while she awaits trial....

Uganda licenses journalists
Excerpt: The Ugandan government plans to implement a licensing scheme for journalists, ostensibly to restrict the profession to those with tertiary degrees. The Minister for Information warns that...

China arrests democracy activists
Excerpt:The Chinese government has arrested at least five of 192 activists who signed an open letter condemning China's treatment of political prisoners. One of the activists, Zhao Changquing, who suffers...

US music industry claims threat from EU copyright expiry
Excerpt:The NY Times reports on an interesting new threat to the US copyright industry. EU copyright protection lasts only 50 years, as opposed to 95 in the US, so music recordings from the 1950s are...

Hong Kong skips public consultation for sedition law
Excerpt:Straits Times says the Hong Kong government has failed to keep its promises of public consultation and scrutiny of its forthcoming sedition and subversion laws . What also upset opponents, who...

2002 "worst in decade" for attacks on journalists
Excerpt: RSF says 2002 was one of the worst years in the past decade for attacks on journalists and publishing freedom. Particularly troublesome is South America and the Caribbean. Colombia, Haiti,...

Interview with banned Arab Israeli MKs
Excerpt: The Christian Science Monitor reports on Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi, two Arab Israeli MKs who have been banned from running in the upcoming elections under a new law that prohibits anti-Israeli...

College student charged in trade secret access card case
Excerpt:A Chicago college student, Igor Serebryany, has been charged with stealing a trade secret over accusations he published details about DirecTV's access cards, which descramble cable TV...

DMCA hinders investigation of TSA encrypted documents
Excerpt: Declan McCullagh follows up earlier news about password-protected Word documents available for download on the Transportation Security Administration web site . Declan say he thinks he has the...

Saudis consider lifting mobile phone camera ban
Excerpt: Saudi Arabian officials are considering lifting their ban on cellphone cameras . The article doesn't say why the ban might be lifted, but describes an incident in which six women were caught...

Zimbabwe wants power to fire journalists, shut down media
Excerpt:Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is reportedly pushing for even more control of the media, with a new law that would give the government the power to shut down newspapers and fire journalists. The news...

US accused of hypocrisy on Hong Kong liberties
Excerpt:An opinion piece in the Asia Times accuses the US of hypocrisy over its criticism of Hong Kong's forthcoming sedition and subversion legislation , suggesting that the USA Patriot Act is as much a...

Egypt vetoes wiretapping powers
Excerpt: The Egyptian government has decided to amend its new telecommunications bill to remove a clause that would have given police the power to tap phones and internet links without approval or...

A look back at homeland security, wiretapping, FISA
Excerpt: Wired wraps up 2002 with a look back at some of the major surveillance and privacy stories. Ignore the goofy Lord of the Rings references, and there are some useful reminders; we covered these...

Chinese protest leaders face subversion charges
Excerpt: Two Chinese labour leaders have reportedly been charged with subversion, a capital crime, over protests in March last year. A third leader has been arrested, but his charge is not listed. The...

Lebanon shuts down TV station over political documentary
Excerpt:The Lebanese government has shut down the private satellite television station NTV over its planned broadcast of a documentary about Saudi Arabia's relationship with the US. The entire station has...

US companies accused of exporting illegal information
Excerpt: Boeing and Hughes Electronics have been accused by the US State Department of exporting illegal information to China. The companies say their actions are constitutionally protected as free...

Zimbabwean government starves political opponents
Excerpt: The WaPo reports on the deliberate starvation of political opponents by Zimbabwe's President Mugabe. The government controls all grain imports, and has stolen and redistributed farmland to party...

DoJ wins right to use secret evidence
Excerpt: A Chicago appeals court has upheld an earlier ruling that the US Justice Department can freeze the assets of Islamic charity Global Relief based on secret evidence. Defense lawyers say they are...

US formally responds to questions about missing Moussaoui email
Excerpt: The US Government has released a report describing why it was unable to recover data from Zacarias Moussaoui's email account . The report simply confirms earlier statements that the account had...

Australian terror hotline catches a hoax
Excerpt:The Australian government's new terrorism hotline has already claimed its first hoaxer, just a few days after opening for business. A Western Australian man will be charged with the laughable...

Freedom in North Korea
Excerpt: Via Tex , the UK Telegraph reports on life under North Korea's communist Leader, whose annihilation of freedom has been ruthless and complete. Everyone in North Korea must wear a badge bearing...

Dow DMCA action against The Thing, Verio
Excerpt: I decided against reporting this when the news first broke in early December, but now that it's hit Wired it's probably worth dissecting: ISP and web hosting company The Thing has been dumped by...

Criminal justice in China
Excerpt:The Washington Post reports on the difficulties faced by Chinese criminal defense lawyers. Police and prosecutors routinely withold evidence, suspects are tortured, defense lawyers face the threat...

New York bans smoking
Excerpt:Following up on its recent cellphone ban , New York City Council has passed a ban on smoking in almost all public places. The Mayor insists the ban does not restrict anyone's rights, and is...

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