With numerous available devices and applications, coordinating one's personal computer security can be a daunting task. To simplify procedures a few firms have partnered their task-specific programs.

However, the latest version of security software from Zero-Knowledge Systems incorporates a firewall, parental control, ad manager, form filler, and cookie manager into one package: Freedom Security & Privacy Suite 3.1.

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Unfortunately, there is no provision for adding a program that does not try to access the Internet after Freedom personal firewall is running. For example, programs like Sympatico Access Manager set themselves up as servers. We know because firewalls like Zone Alarm tell us so, by allowing ALL programs to be blocked, allowed to pass, or prompted.

CNET NEWS.COM - Kazaa plans raise privacy alarm. A stealth P2P network won't violate user privacy, Kazaa says. Should you be worried? A collection of articles at this publication

MS-NBC - Advertisers taking over browsers. Internet messages may be placed on toolbars soon

Beware, Web surfers. Soon not even that dull, gray toolbar at the top of your Internet browser will be safe from advertisers.

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A New York online ad technology firm, United Virtualities, is preparing to introduce a product that will allow advertisers to automatically change the appearance of Web browsers, usurping some of the functions built into popular browsers designed by Microsoft Corp. and Netscape Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.

Weather.com, a unit of Atlanta-based Weather Channel Enterprises, is considering using the new technology on its Web site within the next month, said Paul Iaffaldano, chief revenue officer. The Web site is testing the new product but hasn't yet committed to using it, he added.

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Even the toolbar options would change. The "home" icon on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, for instance, would become a "Weather Channel" icon, steering users back to Weather.com's main page when they click on it. Sponsored links to other Web sites would replace Internet Explorer tools like "edit" and a link to RealNetworks Inc.'s Real.com Web site. Users don't have to download any software to set the process in motion.

The commandeering of the Web browser would be the latest in a series of intrusive tactics employed by online advertisers in the last year, often to the annoyance of Web surfers. From pop-up ads to pop-under ads, advertisers have gotten bolder in their quests for attention. United Virtualities' new product would be one of the boldest attempts yet to expand advertising beyond the browser content window.

While advertisers might drool over the prospect of displaying their brands on a browser toolbar, Internet users might not be so receptive.

"I think it steps over the line of what's permissible," said Jakob Nielsen, a Web usability expert and principal with the Nielsen Norman Group, a Fremont, Calif., consulting firm. He hasn't seen the new technology but it was described to him by a reporter. "Changing software is not permissible. The software is mine."

Slashdot | Browser Becomes Billboard.

UV says a lot of sweet things about being able to turn it off and allowing the web sites to customize the degree of intrusion (from reverting to normal form when leaving to retaining the rebrand even after leaving), but does anyone think advertisers will restrain themselves? Not I

Slashdot | Sony Intentionally Crashes Customers' Computers.

Yahoo News - Dion's new CD crashing party for some users .

Epic/Sony released "A New Day Has Come" embedded with Key2Audio copy protection in Germany and several other European countries. According to a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, it is clearly stated on the front of the booklet and on the back of the jewel box that the CD "will not play on a PC or a Mac" in the language of the country in which it is sold. Besides those notices, which the spokeswoman said were readable before purchase, the disc itself bears the same warning.

Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh (news - web sites), the computer likely will crash.

Some fans believe that the CD is more damaging than that, however. On the German discussion boards at MacFixit, Mac users claim that the CD will not eject using normal methods and that the intentional corruption of the disc's session data could unpredictably affect the drive's firmware. (Firmware is a combination of hardware and software instructions that are permanently embedded in the hardware's controlling chips, such as with a computer's CD-ROM, and altering it could cause permanent damage.)

Sony denied these allegations. "The CD will probably cause a system to crash, but it will not alter anything," the spokeswoman said. "And it won't eject properly, but that's just because the computer has crashed."

Yahoo! News - AOL victorious in porn-spam case. The article has very few details and just seem to talk mostly about what is SPAM.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - AOL Wins One Over The Spammers.

PCWorld.com - Digital Copyright Law Under Scrutiny. Will the DMCA hold up in its first cases, challenges, and ongoing refinements?

When Dmitry Sklyarov arrived at the Def Con hacker show in Las Vegas last July he had no idea the conference would end with his highly publicized arrest. Nor did the then-26-year-old Russian programmer glean that his incarceration would stir the maelstrom of debate surrounding U.S. copyright law.

But that's just what happened.

For trafficking his company's software, which removes restrictions for files in Adobe EBooks format so that they can be moved to other platforms, Sklyarov and his employer, Moscow-based ElcomSoft, were charged with violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Later, the Justice Department dropped charges against Sklyarov in exchange for his testimony against his employer.

WashTech.com part of the Washington Post - Court Asked To Crack Secrecy Over National ID Plans.

A privacy rights group is turning to a federal court in hopes of forcing the U.S. Office of Homeland Security to divulge information behind proposals for a national identification system.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said it planned to file a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court today after receiving no response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act for background information on national ID plans.

The group said it is seeking records the security office might have "on technical and legislative proposals for identification systems" in the belief that legislation has already been drafted calling for state driver's license records to be linked to federal agency databases.

Political News from Wired News - The Law Is Going After Spam. Law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada launch a joint effort to crack down on junk e-mail and Internet fraud.

Political News from Wired News - Full Assault on Filter Software.

One librarian says being forced to install filtering software borders on evil authoritarian tactics as the challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act continues in court.

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"It smacks of authoritarianism," said Lipow, a library consultant in Berkeley, California, recalling that the former Soviet Union required patrons to acquire signatures from a local official before they could obtain certain materials.

That's a not-so-oblique reference to the Children's Internet Protection Act, which is being challenged in court in a trial that began here last week. The law allows librarians to permit access to blocked websites -- but only after they review it and judge whether an adult patron has a "bona fide research" purpose.

The filters cannot be overriden for anyone under 18 years old.

The ACLU and the American Library Association claim that blocking software is problematic for a number of reasons: It doesn't do a good job of preventing access to porn, it bans many legitimate websites, and the list over verboten sites is compiled in secret by commercial vendors.

ZDNet |UK| - US privacy advocates sue over national IDs.

The US government is urged to be more open about its measures to prevent domestic terrorism

A privacy group said Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against the US' federal Office of Homeland Security in an attempt to gain access to information about a proposed national identification system.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said it filed its suit with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking the expedited processing and the release of records by the Office of Homeland Security.

Headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, the federal office was created as a part of the executive branch in response to the 11 September attacks. It seeks to develop a national strategy for protecting the United States against terrorist threats or attacks.

According to the lawsuit, the Office of Homeland Security is "drafting legislation, and planning and designing security systems, that could implicate the privacy rights of American citizens." The lawsuit said proposals include requiring that driver's licenses issued to noncitizens be tied to visas, developing biometric identification systems, and establishing a so-called trusted-flier program that would create federally issued identity cards.

EFF - Consensus at Lawyerpoint. Being a true account of the undertakings of the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (Not affiliated with the Copy Protection Technology Working Group's Broadcast Protection Discussion Group)

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Consensus At Lawyerpoint.

Slashdot | Public CD Copying Machine in Australia.

FOXNews.com - Feds Target Online Scammers, Spammers.

Professional hucksters and online snake oil salesmen best beware of the federal government, which is eyeing the Internet for scammers and spammers and has already started a series of crackdowns on con artists bilking millions from innocent consumers.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday that is has created a nationwide task force that has already brought 63 law enforcement actions against Web-based scams ranging from auction frauds to bogus cancer-curing sites.

Slashdot | Feds Cracking the Whip on Spammers.

New York Times - free registration required In Free Music Software, a Hidden Fee-Based Service.

Users of Kazaa, a popular Internet network that lets people freely exchange music files online, have unknowingly received software that could make them participants in a second pay network.

New York Times - free registration required F.C.C. Rules on Ownership Under Review.

The consolidation of television station ownership that has swept through big cities in recent years may soon extend to many smaller cities and towns.

A federal court in Washington ordered the Federal Communications Commission yesterday to reconsider its rule that, in practice, prevents a single company from owning more than one television station in a small or medium-size market. Over the last year, the same court has struck down or asked the F.C.C. to reconsider a series of media ownership rules, leaving the door open for the current chairman, Michael K. Powell, to lead the commission in scaling back regulations put in place under his predecessors.

Mr. Powell, a Republican commissioner who was made the agency's chairman last year by President Bush, has often spoken out against rules that curbed consolidation in the media and telecommunications industries, at times calling them outdated and potentially inefficient. Few regulatory experts expect the station ownership rule to survive in its current form.

"To a very significant extent, the rules are going to go away," said Blair Levin, a former chief of staff at the commission who is now a regulatory analyst in Washington for Legg Mason , the investment bank. "The F.C.C. clearly will end up liberalizing the rule. The only question is how far and how many markets it affects."

ZDNet Australia: Security: EFA: anti-terror laws weaken e-mail privacy.

Australian police will be able to exploit legal ambiguities in Federal anti-terror legislation that could weaken e-mail privacy protection, according to Electronic Frontiers Australia.

Civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) said that "confusing" wording in proposed changes to telecommunications interception laws, which are included in the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002, leaves the legal status of e-mails stored at ISPs in doubt.

Under laws proposed by the anti-terror Bill, communications recognised by the legislation as delayed access message services or stored messages are protected. Police can only apply for a warrant to access them to investigate criminal activity carrying a minimum sentence of seven years.

However, EFA believes the status of stored e-mails is unclear and wants the status of stored e-mail to be placed on a par with telephone voice messages services unequivocally.

People Management Online(UK) - How to secure workers' privacy.

Compliance with the new code will demand some rethinking of recruitment practices by employers, warns Olga Aikin