BBC News | SCI/TECH | Net filters fail the children.

A report casting doubt on the effectiveness of filtering software has been released on the first day of a US court case challenging a federal law requiring libraries to restrict access to some net content.

The report, commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Authority, found that many filtering programs have serious shortcomings.

It is only the latest in a series of studies that have raised questions about the abilities of such programs to shield children from all potentially harmful material on the internet.

Experts say the filtering software should never be used in isolation to control how children use the web.

Salon.com Technology | Pretty geeky privacy. More and more people want powerful, easy-to-use encryption software, but the commercial world isn't providing it. Can open source deliver?

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But online security, just like everything else, is subject to the ebb and flow of capitalism -- and the relentless releases of new software products with which one must be compatible. Updated operating systems from Microsoft and Apple require updated versions of PGP, but Network Associates is currently not making the necessary improvements. Koh and tens of thousands of other PGP users have been forced to seek alternatives.

Increasingly, they're finding haven in a small corner of the open-source software world, bringing both opportunity and new users to an oddly named and heretofore little-known programming effort fueled by volunteers: GnuPG.

CNET NEWS.COM - FBI to divulge more Carnivore details. Privacy advocates have won another round in their fight to gain access to more information about the FBI's Carnivore e-mail surveillance system.

A federal judge this week ordered the FBI to expand its search for records about Carnivore, also known as DCS1000, technology that is installed at Internet service providers to monitor e-mail from criminal suspects. The court denied a motion for summary judgment and ordered the FBI to produce within 60 days "a further search" of its records pertaining to Carnivore as well as a device called EtherPeek, which manages network traffic.

The FBI has defended Carnivore by assuring the public that it only captures e-mail and other online information authorized for seizure in a court order, but the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has voiced concerns over potential abuse. EPIC sued the FBI, the investigative arm of the Justice Department, in July 2000 under the Freedom of Information Act so it could examine Carnivore-related documents.

EPIC "has raised a 'positive indication' that the FBI may have overlooked documents in other FBI divisions, most notably the offices of the General Counsel and Congressional and Public Affairs," U.S. District Judge James Robertson wrote in his order.

infoSync : Look into the mobile phone, please.

In the future, perps could face even quicker identification by police than they do now; Motorola, Visionics and Wirehound have teamed up to do facial recognition on mobile phones.

Law enforcement officials may one day use their mobile phones to help identify criminals, thanks to an application being demonstrated by Motorola, Visionics and Wirehound. The companies unveiled facial recognition capabilities on Java technology-enabled phones from Motorola on March 26th during the 2002 JavaOne Developer Conference in San Francisco's Moscone Center.

The application, developed specifically for a law enforcement agency, uses Visionics' FaceIt ARGUS as the delivery platform for facial recognition capabilities and Wirehound's Birddog software on the Motorola i95cl, a Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) technology-enabled mobile phone with a color display.

The FaceIt ARGUS system automatically finds faces in a field of view and searches them against a mug shot database. Upon finding a match, the Birddog component generates a wireless alert to the phones used by mobile law enforcement officials, who are then able to verify the identity of the subject. The phones can store multiple images and are alerted when a new image arrives. Non-matched images are automatically discarded from system.

Slashdot | Face Recognition On Mobile Phones.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Is Online Privacy Getting Better?

Computerworld - Nigeria launches Web site to target e-mail scams.

Slashdot | Dateline: Abuja; Nigeria Fights Email Scam. I figure I've received over at least 200 of these offers . You can also report them (forward the E-mail with full headers to 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov ) Make life easier for them and let them know up front that you have NOT lost any funds. This way the can just update their collection of information (Names and phone numbers) without having to try and track you down to schedule and interview. Remember this e-mail address is only for this particular scam and NOT for SPAM in general.

Yahoo! Internet Life / By Roger Ebert - Don't Confuse Fans With Pirates. This year, Universal's music division plans to use a new copy-protection scheme that excludes its discs from being played at all on "Macs, DVD players, and CD-compatible video game consoles." This according to Peter Cohen of MacCentral, who also reports that the plan will block discs from being copied to other CDs or being saved to the hard drives of most PCs in the MP3 format. The first disc to get this treatment is More Fast and Furious: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture, a title that will live in infamy.

San Jose Mercury News - Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand.

Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information.

If you're not infuriated by these related trends, you should at least be worried. If you're neither, stop reading this column. You're a sheep, content to be herded wherever these giants wish.

But if you want to retain some fundamental rights over the information you use and create, please take a stand. Do it soon, because a great deal is at stake.

The offenses against the public interest have been piling up, one after the other, but we've been acting like the proverbial frog that just sits there in a pot of water slowly brought to a boil. The frog gets cooked because it doesn't realize what's happening until too late.

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I'm not a thief. I'm a customer. When you treat me like a thief, I won't be your customer.

Enough is enough.

Declan McCullagh's "politechbot.com" - CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs.

Apple - Developer - Mac OS Security and Cryptography.

Mac OS provides a number of system-level security, authentication, and cryptographic services that can be used by developers to build security into their applications. In addition, some of Mac OS's built-in systems such as AppleShare can be extended by developers to provide custom security features.

Links on this page provide access to information, sample code and pointers to security-related sites that can facilitate the development of secure Mac OS code.

The Secure Trusted Operating System Consortium - SE-Darwin.

SE-Darwin is a project to give the BSD based operating system, Darwin. The features and capabilities of a trusted operating system. SE-Darwin draws from the TrustedBSD, SE-Linux, Distributed Trusted Mach, Distributed Trusted Operating System, and Flask efforts.

Why a "trusted operating system?"

A trusted operating system breaks down a operating system in to compartments. Each of these compartments of the operating system is prevented from talking to the other with out permission. Unfortunately , no mainstream operating system today has the ability to enforce this separation. As a result, a single application is vulnerable to tampering, and bypass, that can cause a total failure of the system security, and not just the application.

The Secure Trusted Operating System Consortium.

Think Secret - A look at the efforts to create a trusted Darwin OS.

Over the course of the past few months, several readers and sources have pointed out an interesting project, one that has been in existance for over a year.

The Secure Trusted Operating System (STOS) Consortium is creating a high-volume secure, trusted version of Mac OS X's core, Darwin. The group's goal is to develop SE-Darwin, a security-enhanced OS that can be used by government and defense contractors.

Slashdot | Canadian CD-R Tariff Proposal Explained.

Slashdot | Senate Judiciary Committee Copyright Page.

Salon.com Technology | Web radio's last stand.

A new ruling involving the D"igital Millennium Copyright Act" is set to wipe out independent online music stations.

Political News from Wired News - Porn-Filter Trial Gets Raunchy.

A federal trial over filtering software veers into depictions of explicit sex that government attorneys called unsuitable for display on library computers.

Business News from Wired News - Experts Lambaste Smut Filters.

Software designed to screen objectionable material is flawed and often worthless, computer experts contend on the second day of a trial to determine if the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment.

BestWire/BestDay - Paid subscription required - "Proposed HIPAA Medical Privacy Changes Aren't Enough for Insurers" . The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed changing rules on patients' privacy, but insurers still are seeking more clarity.

Reuters via Capitol Hill Blue - Visit the monuments and big brother will be watching .

The U.S. National Park Service plans to install round-the-clock video surveillance systems at major monuments on the Washington Mall in a move to tighten security, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Closed-circuit television cameras will be installed by October to monitor public areas in and around the Washington Monument, the Lincoln, Jefferson and Vietnam Veterans memorials and other sites in the U.S. capital that draw millions of visitors each year, the report said.

The Mall surveillance plan, put on the fast-track after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, was disclosed in testimony that a Park Service official submitted for delivery to a congressional panel on Friday, the newspaper said.

The Post reported that John Parsons, an associate regional director for the Park Service, said in the testimony that the U.S. Park Police would use cameras "only in public areas where there is no expectation of privacy" and "only for valid law enforcement purposes."

Washington Post - IRS Seeks Cardholder Information. Visa Asked for Records On Offshore Accounts

Stepping up its campaign against Americans who move money offshore to avoid income taxes, the Internal Revenue Service went to court yesterday to try to get Visa International to turn over records of taxpayers who hold credit cards from banks in more than two dozen tax-haven countries.

The IRS, aided by the Justice Department, is seeking what are called "John Doe summonses" to obtain records of taxpayers who hold credit card accounts in places including Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

While it is not illegal to have an offshore credit card, the IRS suspects that these cards are often used in tax-evasion schemes. In such arrangements, U.S. taxpayers move assets to banks in countries with strict bank-secrecy laws and then obtain credit or debit cards to draw on their assets when they wish.

Taxpayers are required to report ownership of any offshore bank accounts, but few do. Records already obtained from MasterCard International Inc. indicate that perhaps 2 million Americans have debit and credit cards issued by offshore banks, while only 100,000 to 200,000 report having them, the IRS said.

U.S. Newswire Press Release - Online Privacy 'Sweeps' to Be Presented to FTC.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy J. Muris will offer opening remarks, and other FTC Commissioners will be in attendance, at the National Press Club Wednesday for the unveiling of the new national "Sweeps" study of on-line privacy policies. The Progress & Freedom Foundation will release the results for 2001 at 10 a.m. EST, in the Holeman Lounge.

Designed to update the report last issued by the Federal Trade Commission in 2000, the new survey -- "Privacy Online: A Report on the Internet Practices and Policies of Commercial Websites" -- measures the level of privacy protection at the most popular and a number of randomly-selected on-line destinations.

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The National Press Club event is open to the public. Those wishing to attend should contact Brooke Emmerick at 202-289-8928 or bemmerick@pff.org. Members of the media should contact David Fish at 202-289-8928 or dfish@pff.org.

Note that the Progress & Freedom Foundation is an industry-sponsored group which generally favors a non-regulated online marketplace.

Wall Street Journal ( Paid subscription required ) - Big Brother Is Watching -- Be Grateful! This link is an indirect one via Moreover.com - Paid subscription required and I don't have a subscription so I can't provide any interesting pull quotes from the article.

iRights - The CBDTPA Is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism.

"The more we debate against this bill, the more we marginalize ourselves.... The content industry raises their arguments, and progress their cause. We raise our counter-arguments, based on appeals to absurd results, and in the process, progress their cause all the further.... They can't lose!"

Interesting piece and definitely worth a read.

CNET NEWS.COM Interview - The father of modern spam speaks.

On April 12, 1994, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, two immigration lawyers from Arizona, flooded the Internet with a mass mailing promoting their law firm's advisory services.

In doing so, this unknown husband and wife team changed the Internet with one keystroke.

The "Green Card Lottery" notice they sent out reached thousands of people using Usenet newsgroups and, on one level, qualified as an unqualified success. But it also triggered a firestorm of criticism from purists outraged at a breach of the informal rules prohibiting the transmission of unsolicited junk mail and advertising over the Internet.

Slashdot | Laurence 'Green Card' Canter Has o Regrets. "the surviving lawyer who spammed Usenet with multiple "Green Card Lottery" posts in '94." And today we can get spam in 20 different languages.

MS-NBC - Who's Watching WinWhatWhere? Spyware, anti-spyware programmers in virtual battle

It sounds like a James Bond subplot (OK, a geeky James Bond subplot) but this is real life. The folks who write spy software, sometimes called snoopware, are fed up with countermeasure anti-spy software like "Who's Watching Me" that blows their cover. So the latest versions of spy software WinWhatWhere and Spectorsoft, released in the past several weeks, intentionally disable their anti-spy counterparts. And now the programmers at Who's Watching Me are throwing down the virtual developer's glove, calling for a duel. (OK, a geeky duel.)

Slashdot | Spy v. Spy.

Slashdot | Garmin Rino-GPS Show and Tell.