vigilant.tv

freedom and technology

archive : 2003-12

Neo-Nazi band convicted of sedition, organised crime
Excerpt:Three members of a German Neo-Nazi band have been imprisoned on sedition and organised crime charges, for publishing CDs with racist and anti-Semitic lyrics. The court described the band as...

DVD Jon not guitly, again
Excerpt: Norwegian prosecutors have lost their appeal against 'DVD' Jon Johansen 's acquittal on copyright violation charges. No word yet on whether prosecutors will again appeal to a higher court....

Indonesian police arrest flag flyers
Excerpt: An Indonesian human rights group says police in the provice of Papua have improperly arrested 13 people for flying a separatist flag. "The 13, all civic leaders of Wamena, were taken without...

Parisians protest religious symbol ban
Excerpt:Reuters reports on protests in Paris against a planned bill, pushed by President Jacques Chirac, that would ban wearing religious symbols in schools, including headscarves, kippas and crosses....

Streisand loses SLAPP suit against aerial photographer
Excerpt:Barbara Streisand has lost an attempt to sue an aerial photographer for publishing images of her Malibu waterfront property . The photographs were taken with a telephoto lens from public...

Miami police: arbitrary arrests, searches during protests
Excerpt:Salon reports on arbitrary arrests, questioning, improper searches, seizures and beatings by Miami police during recent protests. Journalists, senior citizens, legal observers and bystanders were...

China arrests another web writer
Excerpt: The Chinese government has arrested yet another web writer for publishing pro-democracy articles. Separately, a dissident sentenced last month for similar crimes has been refused an appeal....

Sudan police shut down Al Jazeera, seize equipment, arrest staff
Excerpt:Sudanese police have reportedly shut down the Khartoum office of Al Jazeera, seizing equipment and arresting a senior staff member. Officials accuse the broadcaster of biased reporting. Al...

Zimbabwe police defy court, shut down newspaper
Excerpt: As predicted, Zimbabwe police have again shut down the Daily News, defying a court order issued just hours before. The staff of The Daily News had been preparing an eight-page edition...

Verizon wins RIAA appeal
Excerpt:Victory for Verizon: A US appeals court has ruled that the RIAA does not have the right to subpoena ISPs to obtain the identity of the users of file sharing networks. Overturning a series of...

Zimbabwe Daily News permitted to reopen
Excerpt:A Zimbabwean court has overturned the closure of the Daily News, the country's only independent newspaper. It's not clear how effective the ruling will be, since the last time a court ruled in...

Dutch Supreme Court throws out Kazaa suit
Excerpt:A very brief Reuters report says a Dutch court has thrown out the copyright industry lawsuit against Kazaa. The Dutch supreme court on Friday threw out a challenge by Dutch copyright...

DoJ: detainees were abused, conversations recorded
Excerpt:A US Justice Department report concludes that conversations were improperly recorded between September 11 detainees and their lawyers, at a detention center in Brooklyn. In some instances...

vigilant.tv's 3rd birthday passes unnoticed; film at 11
Excerpt: Vigilant TV turned 3 years old on December 3rd. We didn't notice, and since nobody reminded us we've taken our time in mentioning it. On previous birthdays we've assembled a selection of the...

Haitian police smash, shut down radio station
Excerpt: Haitian police have shut down a pro-opposition radio station, says CNN. Broadcast equipment was smashed during the raid, ostensibly a search for weapons. One government minister, the owner of a...

EU, US agree on air passenger data
Excerpt:The EU has finally settled on terms for providing airline passenger data to the US. Data will be retained by the US for 3.5 years, without following EU privacy rules. According to Frits...

Guantanamo detainees to get lawyers; Padilla release ordered
Excerpt:A US federal appeals court has ordered the US government to provide lawyers to Guantanamo detainees, according to this AP article. The San Francisco appeals court, ruling Thursday on a petition...

Secret Service tries to un-publish aerial photographs
Excerpt: SecurityFocus says mapping company EarthData International has been altering its photographs of Washington DC, at the request of the Secret Service, to remove details of government buildings. A...

The RIAA makes everyone a cypherpunk
Excerpt: Clay Shirky argues that the RIAA has succeeded, where the cypherpunks failed, in bringing encryption to the masses. That's a little misleading - cypherpunks were never so much interested in...

RF jammer thwarted Musharraf assassination attempt
Excerpt:AFP says the recent assassination attempt on Pakistan's President General Musharraf was prevented by a radio frequency jammer installed in his armoured car. The jammer prevented the assassin's...

Danish Ministry withdraws Lomborg criticism, admits error
Excerpt:The Danish Science Ministry has withdrawn its denouncement of Bjorn Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist , admitting its accusations were emotional and devoid of argument or evidence....

Hicks to be charged with conspiracy to something
Excerpt: AAP is reporting that Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks will probably be charged with conspiracy. Note that conspiracy isn't illegal unless it'a a conspiracy to commit a crime; the...

Canadian Copyright Cartel to sue P2P uploaders
Excerpt: Just days after being awarded a royalty tax on MP3 devices, Canadian copyright holders are planning to launch lawsuits against the users of peer-to-peer networks. Since copyright levies...

Mirimax lawyers threaten reviewers, confuse fans
Excerpt: Wired has been following an odd case recently, in which Mirimax Film sent a C&D letter to the operator of a movie review web site who linked to an online DVD store . The letter accused the...

Bush to sign spam bill; spammers happy
Excerpt: US President Bush has signed the CAN-SPAM bill into law. CNet has an article, published yesterday, with a reminder that, contrary to its stated aims, the law is likely to increase spam. But...

Sat phone monitoring strategy led to bombing errors?
Excerpt:Slate suggests misplaced confidence in wiretapping and location monitoring of Thuraya satellite phones led to inaccurate bombing in Iraq. We've heard this story before: signals intelligence is...

Saddam located via wiretaps?
Excerpt: The Melbourne Herald Sun says Saddam Hussein's location was discovered by Mossad agents who had been intercepting phone calls to his second wife in Beirut. In a tapped phone call last Thursday...

UN summit partially approves internet regulation plans
Excerpt: The UN's World Summit on the Information Society has approved plans for a UN internet "constitution", but postponed a direct attempt to push for complete governance. As we've mentioned before,...

China arrests Christian web supporter
Excerpt: The Chinese government has reportedly arrested a man, Zhang Shengqi, for publishing web articles supporting banned Christian activities. Prison officials say they've never heard of him....

Saddam forgot to use PGP?
Excerpt: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...

Iraqi blogging, net news trump press
Excerpt: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"...

Canada levies $25 on MP3 players
Excerpt: 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...

Saddam's capture: some details
Excerpt: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...

Cryptophone source released
Excerpt: 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...

Iraqi journalists celebrate Saddam's capture
Excerpt: 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...

Lebanon detains, questions TV station owner
Excerpt: 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...

NZ bans 'snuff' video game
Excerpt: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...

Harradine pushing new net censorship
Excerpt: 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...

Iran blocks, unblocks Google cache
Excerpt: 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,...

In brief: Lessig, Yahoo, China, WIPO and the UN
Excerpt: 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...

P-C laws erode Canadian free speech
Excerpt: 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....

Australian media says ASIO bill threatens free press
Excerpt: 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...

Myanmar magazine editor sentenced to death
Excerpt: 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,...

Rwandan media execs sentenced to life for inciting genocide
Excerpt:An UN tribunal in Arusha has sentenced two Rwandan media executives to life in prison, and a third for 27 years, on charges of inciting the Tutsi genocide in 1994. The prosecutor later described...

RIAA sues more customers
Excerpt: 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'...

Japanese P2P users arrested, developer investigated
Excerpt: CNet says Japanese police have arrested to P2P users for copyright infringement, and searched the house of a software developer. The P2P network in question is Winny , an obscure Japanese...

EU plans its own airline passenger screening programme
Excerpt: Statewatch is reporting EU plans to screen, track and record data from all airline passengers. Earlier plans were limited to data useful for detecting illegal immigration, but many EU nations...

SBC challenge moved to RIAA's favorite court
Excerpt: A San Fransisco federal judge has moved the SBC lawsut to a court favourable to the RIAA. "We are pleased with the California court's decision to transfer the suit filed by SBC to the...

Galileo positioning system to include Selective Availability?
Excerpt: The Register is reporting rumours that Galileo, the EU's answer to GPS, will include a mechanism for degrading the accuracy of positioning information to civilian receivers. One of Galileo's...

Phonecam vigilantes trigger internal police investigation
Excerpt: Via Boing Boing , Portland police have launched an internal racism investigation following an incident in which officers parked outside a hip-hop nightclub with a toy gorilla mounted on the front...

Warner sues DVD software company twice
Excerpt:The BBC says Warner UK has launched a second lawsuit against 321 Studios , the distributors of DVD copying software. The new suit appears to have been triggered by new copyright legislation....

Port Moresby police assault photojournalist
Excerpt: AAP says Port Moresby police assaulted a photojournalist after he took pictures of police firing tear gas into a market crowd. The National newspaper said photographer Ekar Keapu took photos of...

Liu Di released
Excerpt: Reuters is reporting that Liu Di has been released, after being detained without charge for more than a year by Chinese authorities. Liu Di, 23, a former psychology major at Beijing Normal...

IDF delivers sensitive messages over unencrypted pager network
Excerpt: Ha'aretz says the IDF is delivering classified military messages via unencrypted civilian pager networks. Such messages can easily be interecepted. According to the [Channel 10 news] report,...

The anti-terrorism squad ate my homework
Excerpt: The Australian has a story on a Melbourne schoolgirl whose year 12 homework assignments were amongst documents seized by the AFP in a raid on her home. The police were looking for evidence of...

100 Guantanamo detainees to be released
Excerpt: AP quotes anonymous sources as saying 100 Guantanamo prisoners will be released over the next two months. The first of the two new releases is scheduled for the end of December, and the other...

search

search 3565 articles:

contact

tips, lawsuits and suggestions: vigilant@vigilant.tv
pgp key: 1024D/01DA5CCD

don't send email to: vymq@qvcjblm.com hotline@nocs.insp.irs.gov g3rpyhwn3@spiced.vigilant.tv ycgwxjfz@adnzlq.com.au rztxw@wtgphln.com natomc@afp.gov.au sfic@istar.ca yusptdkh@luydbfiqt.net WAFL@phonebusters.com bfax@ukcoyqlzfisr.org er-waoc@afp.gov.au dbuzr@qwgpakuseoxd.com.au dcita.mail@dcita.gov.au dbjq@hqjfon.org e.madsen@interpol.int 419@spring39.demon.co.uk pxqhg@ozivkcsymftr.net mazdyko@jrsouglybzni.com veitcm@etjrzpuvqxhn.co.uk ngyb@bjsngqduzvp.org avnipc@cjkfatsdone.net 419@nigeriapolice.org mediarelations@saps.org.za nsocgy@jidpnmr.com.au Eco.Inspec@mineco.fgov.be minister@dcita.gov.au sdjct@aneyuhb.com.au ghcls@iwmcdhbzn.org wfad@yjcdvut.net iitf.tampa@fbi.gov jtxzm@vtqjas.net pdak@fujpqgbcoy.co.uk pszxy@xmzkravse.com vihje.internet@krp.poliisi.fi ivy@irxhvugt.co.uk 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov uce@ftc.gov

archives

• current
• Jun 2004
• May 2004
• Apr 2004
• Mar 2004
• Feb 2004
• Jan 2004
• Dec 2003
• Nov 2003
• Oct 2003
• Sep 2003
• Aug 2003
• Jul 2003
• Jun 2003
• May 2003
• Apr 2003
• Mar 2003
• Feb 2003
• Jan 2003
• Dec 2002
• Nov 2002
• Oct 2002
• Sep 2002
• Aug 2002
• Jul 2002
• Jun 2002
• May 2002
• Apr 2002
• Mar 2002
• Feb 2002
• Jan 2002
• Dec 2001
• Nov 2001
• Oct 2001
• Sep 2001
• Aug 2001
• Jul 2001
• Jun 2001
• May 2001
• Apr 2001
• Mar 2001
• Feb 2001
• Jan 2001
• Dec 2000

subscribe

rss
mailing list

privacy policy