On February 28, 2001, NIST announced that a Draft Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the AES is available for public review and comment.

Slashdot | Draft FIPS for the Advanced Encryption Standard. NIST has released a draft standard for the AES. They're inviting public comment, so if the NSA has added a backdoor to Rijndael, now would be a good time to find it....

Business News from Wired News - Sheriff Shoots to Silence Guns. In the bad parts of Los Angeles, guns go off as frequently as car alarms. One sheriff's department has installed a remote listening system to track gunplay while keeping officers safe.

Business News from Wired News - Nailing the Company Spies.

The program is a sophisticated information-gathering and analysis tool that makes traditional keyword "sniffers" obsolete. It captures all the information on a network, in any code or human language, and translates it into easily decipherable three-dimensional diagrams of network behavior.

Never heard of SilentRunner? The scores of companies and government agencies using the program to keep tabs on their agents and employees like it that way. Organizations using SilentRunner have adopted a top-secret attitude about the product to match its military-strength intelligence-gathering capabilities.

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But keeping SilentRunner under wraps has an added bonus. It allows companies using the program to avoid scrutiny from groups concerned about the erosion of privacy in the workplace.

The courts have established that so long as companies make clear to their employees what sort of communication is company property, they can legally monitor their networks with programs such as SilentRunner. The law does not require employers to give details on monitoring -- such as the technology that would be used -- in order to do so legally.

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Functioning at a binary level affords SilentRunner some extraordinary capabilities. For example, given a writing sample, the program can easily identify any other document written by the same author, so long as both are written in the same language or code.

Remember there is no expectation of privacy at work unless your employeer promised (in writing) otherwise. Keep this product in mind while you read the next article.

Business News from Wired News - Privacy at Work? Be Serious. Corporations are under increasing pressure to monitor employees, and employment experts say employees should expect a lot less privacy at work.

If you feel your privacy at work has been eroding lately, it's probably more than just your imagination. Experts say companies are under increasing pressure to monitor employees electronically, and workers should assume they are being watched.

Concerns about liability in harassment suits, skyrocketing losses from employee theft, and productivity losses from employees shopping or peeping at porn from their cubicles have led to an explosion in the number of companies conducting some form of electronic monitoring on their employees.