ZDNet - Privacy experts rip IE cookie cutter. Microsoft's plan to add privacy technology to its new browser is getting mixed reviews from privacy experts, who say the proposal is a good first step but still doesn't go far enough in protecting consumers from snooping companies.

[ ... ]

Rob Enderle, an analyst with Giga Information Group, wondered how long it will take for direct marketers to devise a way to get people's data despite the technology. "These are all good steps, but invariably a bunch of people who work very hard to make money off the collection of private information are going to try to get around those steps," he said.

And some privacy advocates are panning the plan outright.

Andrew Shen, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he would like to see more than just cookie management in the new IE. He said people can already change cookie settings on a site-by-site bases with alternative browsers such as Opera. "I don't think Microsoft's IE 6.0 will add anything to how consumers protect themselves online," he said.

EPIC has been highly critical of P3P technology, saying that it requires people to trade their personal information if they want to visit a site. In a report issued last year, the company called P3P "a complex and confusing protocol that will make it more difficult for Internet users to protect their privacy." The group would like to see an end to most types of personal data collection.

Fortune.com PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY - Remotely Interesting. With Xanboo's surveillance system and a steady Net link, you can keep an eye on the house even while you're away on vacation--as long as your PC behaves.

CNET NEWS.COM - Microsoft warns of hijacked certificates. Two digital certificates have been mistakenly issued in Microsoft's name that could be used by virus writers to fool people into running harmful programs, the software giant warned Thursday.

According to Microsoft, someone posing as a Microsoft employee tricked VeriSign, which hands out so-called digital signatures, into issuing the two certificates in the software giant's name on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31.

Tech News - CNET.com - Hardwiring copyrights. A fight over control of computer hardware, fanned by music trading posts such as Napster and Gnutella, is pitting free-speech advocates against some of Silicon Valley's largest companies.

Computerworld - Microsoft's IE 6.0 Web browser to include privacy controls.

As proposed online privacy standards head toward adoption this year, Microsoft Corp. today announced details on how its upcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 Web browser will incorporate the new privacy controls.

The latest version of the browser is based on specifications being finalized by the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, known as P3P. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an Internet standards body, is conducting the project...

Microsoft's plan to add privacy technology to its new browser is getting mixed reviews from privacy experts, who say the proposal is a good first step but still doesn't go far enough in protecting consumers from snooping companies.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled detailed plans for inserting Platform for Privacy Preferences, or P3P, technology into the upcoming version of Internet Explorer 6.0.

EPIC - Pretty Poor Privacy: An Assessment of P3P and Internet Privacy. Since P3P is hitting the news again here is an analysis of it from June 2000

The Register (UK) - Carnivore and Net censorship will save the children.

Because the United States possesses the most loudly self-proclaimed 'tradition' (many would say 'myth') of individual liberty, along with some of the most Draconian, anti-libertarian initiatives pending in its courts and Congress, it serves handily to illustrate the almost schizophrenic battle between two universal human instincts: our natural tendency to protect children, and our natural tendency to seek privacy and to confront un-edited information and evaluate its significance for ourselves -- along with the cynical ways that governments and 'family-values' advocates are using the former as currency to bribe us into surrendering our rights to the latter.

History will remember the Clinton Administration for Monica, certainly; but it will remember it as well for doing more damage to individual civil liberties than any administration prior to the shocking revelations of the Church Committee back in the mid-1970's. Former US Attorney General Janet Reno's wiretap-happy Department of Justice (DOJ) in particular sought relentlessly to secure ever-broader authority to monitor Internet activity.

[ ... ]

The Internet clearly makes it easier to find this garbage. As to whether more of it is actually in circulation, and whether, consequently, more children are being raped and abused, there simply is no reliable data.

But there is rhetoric, and plenty of it, urging us to make a leap of faith that easier access to evidence of pedophilia equates with increased incidence of pedo activity. And the purpose behind this rhetoric, clearly, is to justify both more convenient access by law enforcement to Net surveillance, and censorship of anything the family-values lobby should deem inappropriate.

"The battle, however complex and nuanced in its details, can ultimately be reduced to a single, fairly simple observation: a large number of influential people are desperately trying to impose values on the Internet and its users. On the other side are those who see it as essentially a research tool, a mechanism for adult communication and not a playground for children, best maintained permanently as value-neutral space. "

I am all for protecting our children but I do have a problem with giving up basic rights in the process. Just because someone uses 'the kids' as a justification for an action does not make it unquestionably good for us. I would probably have less of a problem if filteriong was limited to children's computer access, and it actually worked. Carnivore's big problem right now is its lack of accountability and any ability to track the actions taken with it.

Slashdot | Northpoint DSL Warns Customers of Shutdown.