Applied Digital Solutions Unveils Digital Angel[trademark] Technology In New York City

Company demonstrates first-ever operational combination of advanced sensor technology and Web-enabled wireless telecommunications linked to GPS location-tracking systems--U.S. Secretary of Commerce Norman Y. Mineta is among participants

CBC News: Wireless tracking device unveiled. The prototype, revealed Monday, is about the size of a quarter. It's being billed by its developers as, among other things, a useful medical device. This is the only post presentation article I can find and it has no new information or details from the presentation.

Its 11 AM (or so) eastern and I still can't find anything useful about the presentation that was done on Digital Angel yesterday. Does anyone have any details?? Did any of my readers get to go?? Have you seen any articles?? Any assistance would be appreciated.

USA TODAY - 2000/10/30 'Digital Angel' watches over felons, the sick.

The Register (UK) - 27/10/2000 - Human chip implants not going skin deep. Bolton said the chip would not, after all, be placed under the skin. Although this was part of the original patent, ADS abandoned the idea after it found it would probably take years to get approval for the idea from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).

Publish: Today's News - Applied Digital Solutions Unleashes Wearble Computer. While a number of other tracking and monitoring technologies have been patented and marketed in the past, they are all unsuitable for the widespread tracking, recovery and identification of people due to a variety of limitations, including unwieldy size, maintenance requirements, insufficient or inconvenient power-supply and activation difficulties.

MS-NBC - Big Brother is watching. London hackers' quest to stop government snooping

Only moments after stepping into the Webshack Internet café in London's Soho neighborhood, "Mark" asked me what I thought of George W. Bush and Al Gore. "I wouldn't want Bush running things," he said. "Because he can't run his Web site." Then he showed me a variety of ways to hack Bush's Web sites. That was just the beginning of a far-reaching chat during which the group nearly convinced me Big Brother is in fact here in London.

Mark, who has consulted on government security systems and claims special knowledge, then goes on to describe an elaborate network of government camera lenses that blanket all of London. They register car license plates as vehicles enter the financial district, sending off warnings if the cars don't exit after 20 minutes -- designed to foil would-be car bombers. They film faces of protestors who show up at any rally. In fact, Mark asserts, police can now demand that anyone in London remove facial masks, under penalty of two year's jail time -- all so there's no way to foil the cameras.

ZDNet: Interactive Week: Who Knows?. How Government Helps Compromise Privacy

The flyer that Ed and Carol Conner received from a local bank back in January looked little different from the junk mail that floods every household mailbox. In this case, it was from a local bank asking them to open a savings account for their fourth-grader. Similar letters had gone to parents of all the elementary school children in their Ohio school district, based on information required by the schools and later turned over to the bank.

Businesses have long built better businesses by knowing their customers and building databases of their habits. And governments have long required all sorts of information from the public in exchange for government largesse of various stripes. But the tag team of government collecting information for one purpose and then turning it over to corporate America for another has privacy advocates manning the ramparts.

"We are long past the stage when a lot of records that are public are held by a clerk in a file cabinet," says Barry Steinhardt, associate director at the American Civil Liberties Union. "That information is now appearing everywhere, and we need to re-examine what purposes that information can be accessed for. I don't know anybody who has the answer at the moment."

The article mentions the selling of drivers license data (including photos), the banking KYC (Know Your Customer) program, and bankruptcy records.

ZDNet: Interactive Week: Safe Harbor, Stormy Waters.

Venice, Italy - It was one of the first big clashes between e-commerce and conflicting international privacy standards. And this month begins the test of whether a fragile and hard-fought pact between the U.S. and Europe can avert a threatened shutdown of crucial trans-Atlantic data flows.

At issue is the European Union's Data Privacy Directive, which bans the transfer of personal information about European citizens to third-party countries that do not have "adequate" privacy protections. The U.S. does not have a broad privacy law, and the Clinton administration and U.S. companies have spent the past two years trying to negotiate a way to avoid having to implement sweeping changes.

The compromise that was finally reached earlier this year takes effect Nov. 1, exempting American companies from European sanctions if they agree to join a "safe harbor" self-regulatory program that promises European consumers basic information about and control over how their personal data is used.

But it's not clear how many companies will hop on board. And with some European officials already wary that American companies got off too easy, some predict the already tenuous agreement will fold fast.

"It'll fall to pieces within a year because of a lack of take-up," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International in London.

The protections contained in the pact are weaker than what would be required under European law, but companies are still hesitant to join the program. Many worry that complying with those voluntarily standards will be too costly, and that if they sign on they could be pressured to also extend those protections to their U.S. customers. (ed. emphasis added)

New York Times - free registration required Court Backs I.R.S. on Credit Card Data. A federal judge ruled today that the Internal Revenue Service might force an American Express unit and MasterCard International to release information on their American customers who have accounts in three Caribbean countries.

New York Times - free registration required White House Is Divided Over Measure to Tighten Security on Government Information.

Representatives from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN have urged Mr. Clinton to veto the bill. The American Society of Newspaper Editors is planning to send a letter to the White House on Tuesday urging President Clinton to veto the bill, and the Newspaper Association of America, a publishers' trade group, is urging its members to contact the White House.

In Congress, conservatives and liberals have expressed concern about the bill.

Last week, Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois and one of the more conservative members of Congress, and Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and one of the more liberal members, wrote the chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee, Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, asking that a provision to delay the antileak measure be included in one of his committee's bills.

Laura Handman, a First Amendment lawyer in Washington, said several things about the law concerned her.

The law punishes the official who leaks the information and not the media outlet that publishes it, but Ms. Handman said journalists would face more subpoenas as prosecutors sought to identify the leakers.

More troubling, she said, the law "broadens the scope of what would be punishable and, given the casual manner that things are classified, that's a very broad scope."

Culture News from Wired News - Human Rights 2.0. The Digital Freedom Network provides a voice for people who have been attacked for their beliefs. Bobson Wong, DFN's executive director, talks to the NetSlaves about advocating human rights.

The Web is chock-full of dissident opinions, from guerilla homepages to Usenet rants. Problem is, though, that anyone who wants to get reliable information on human rights violations or other issues too controversial for the mainstream media is often left wondering whom to trust -- and what to do.

Enter the Digital Freedom Network, a two-year-old site that collects stories from news agencies, human rights organizations, and frightened activists around the world, and allows visitors to take action through non-violent, electronic means.

Happy Holloween

CNET.com - The CueCat: When Free Isn't Worth the Price.

Slashdot | CNET Says CueCat Restrictions Are Bogus.

Political News from Wired News - Myanmar's Tangled Web. The repressive military in Myanmar, formerly Burma, has been successful in keeping the country isolated from the rest of the world. But the Net is beginning to poke holes in the system.