Administrivia:Sorry about the problems with the malformed XML data feeds earlier. It seems that something I did with the announcement for the Privacy Digest Discussion Area made the XML generators choke. So for now I'll just use this pointer to the main discussion page. And I'll put the forum breakdown back in at the end of the day when it won't cause problems for the daily XML files.

Administrivia:A new Discussion Board is now open for user testing. The software I am using, phpBB, was recently upgraded to 2.0 and finished Beta testing. Assuming folks find it useful and it doesn't do anything nasty I will be adding the links to the Navigation area during the next site redesign. This should happen in the next week or maybe two depending how busy things are.

Administrivia:A new Discussion Board is now open for user testing. The software I am using, phpBB, was recently upgraded to 2.0 and finished Beta testing. Assuming folks find it useful and it doesn't do anything nasty I will be adding the links to the Navigation area during the next site redesign. This should happen in the next week or maybe two depending how busy things are.

The new discussion groups forum breakdown removed due to problems it caused for the XML/RSS news feeds. The regular www page was fine so I will either modify the HTML that choked the XML/RSS feed generators(assuming I can figure out what did it) or I will reinsert the breakdown at the end of the day when the XML/RSS generators are looking at the new days data.

CNET NEWS.COM - Why hackers are a step ahead of the law.

Although law enforcement agencies are quick to trumpet their occasional victories against cybercriminals, they are rarely able to track down hackers sophisticated enough to pull off such complicated heists. Few hackers of this caliber are arrested, and fewer still spend time behind bars.

The resulting frustration for investigators, companies and consumer victims raises a question that has persisted for years: Why are hackers able to elude capture so easily? The answer, according to security analysts and fraud investigators, is that the Internet has bred an elite class of criminals who are organized, well funded and far more technologically sophisticated than most law enforcement officials.

CNET.com - News - Investor - Latest privacy threat: Monitor glow . BERKELEY, Calif.--Law enforcement and intelligence agents may have a new tool to read the data displayed on a suspect's computer monitor, even when they can't see the screen. Marcus Kuhn, an associate professor at Cambridge University in England, presented research on Monday showing how anybody with a brawny PC, a special light detector and some lab hardware could reconstruct what a user sees on the screen by catching the reflected glow from the monitor. The results surprised many security researchers gathered here at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Symposium on Security and Privacy because they had assumed that discerning such detail was impossible. "No one even thought about the optical issues" of computer information "leakage," said Fred Cohen, security practitioner in residence for the University of New Haven. "This guy didn't just publish, he blew (the assumptions) apart."

[ ... ]

Yet Kuhn, who is still completing his PhD thesis, is quick to underscore the problems with the system.

"At this point, this is a curiosity," he said. "It's not a revolution."

First off, Kuhn performed the experiments in a lab at a short distance--the screen faced a white wall 1 meter away, and the detector was a half meter behind the monitor. There have been no real-world tests where, for example, other light sources are present and the detector is 30 feet across a street.

Other light sources, including the sun, make things much more difficult if not impossible. Normal incandescent lighting, for example, has a lot of red and yellow components and tends to wipe out any reflections of red from the image on a screen.

And several countermeasures are effective, including having a room with black walls and using a flat-panel liquid crystal display. LCD monitors activate a whole horizontal line of pixels at once, making it immune to this type of attack.

Still, other researchers believe that Kuhn may be on to something.

San Jose Mercury News May 04,2002 By Dan Gillmor- Paranoia, stupidity and greed ganging up on the public.

If you are reading this column on the Web and did not go to the newspaper's home page first, stop now. Go to the home page and navigate through whatever sequence of links our page designers have created to reach this page, and don't you dare fail to look at the ads.

Ridiculous? Of course.

Tell that to the dinosaurs at some major media and entertainment companies. They insist they have the right to tell you precisely how you may use their products.

New York Times - free registration required Justices Give Reprieve to an Internet Pornography Statute.

The latest effort by Congress to shield children from pornography on the Internet barely survived an initial Supreme Court test today in a fractured decision suggesting that the court may ultimately find the law unconstitutional.

In the meantime, the court continued in effect a Federal District Court order that has blocked enforcement of the law, the Child Online Protection Act, since February 1999. The statute, which imposes prison sentences and fines of up to $100,000 for placing material that is "harmful to minors" on a Web site available to those under the age of 17, was passed in 1998 and has never taken effec

CNET NEWS.COM - Ads key to AOL set-top plans.

AOL Time Warner will not include ad-skipping features in future versions of its cable set-top boxes, a company spokesman said Monday.

Like popular personal video recorder (PVR) devices such as TiVo and ReplayTV, Time Warner Cable's upcoming set-tops will let consumers pause and play back TV programming while it's being broadcast. People will also be able to record shows automatically based on personal interests. But unlike ReplayTV, which gives viewers controls to manually jump over 30-second commercials, Time Warner Cable's unit will be designed to ensure advertisers are seen and heard, at least partially.

AOL spokesman Mark Harrad confirmed the company's ad-skipping plans and added that the cable operator is also looking at including copyright-protection technology in such devices. The technology would limit how viewers can use content delivered to their homes.

Slashdot | AOL-Time/Warner's PVR to Skip Ad-Skipping.

Political News from Wired News - Sonicblue Balks at Court Order.

Sonicblue Inc. moved on Monday to overturn a court order for it to spy on users of its digital recording devices and share detailed viewing data with major studios and television networks, saying the order would violate privacy rights.

Santa Clara-based Sonicblue called the May 2 order from Central District Court Magistrate Charles Eick "breathtaking and unprecedented" and said the directive to track what television viewers watch "violates consumers' privacy rights, including those guaranteed by the First and Fourth Amendments."

[ ... ]

Barring an outright reversal, the company asked for three modifications to the order, including:

• allowing consumers to opt in or out of the collection;
• allowing data to be collected only in aggregate and notperson-to-person, form; and
• making any surveillance narrow in scope and limited in duration.

New Zealand Herald - Technology - Memory chip implants get under privacy watchdogs' skin .

Even the supposedly voluntary nature of the Florida experiment is giving pause to advocates like Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"Who gets to decide who gets chipped?" Mr Rotenberg asked.

"Parents will decide that their kids should be implanted, or maybe their own ageing parents.

"It's an easier way to manage someone, like putting a leash on a pet."

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary - "Copyright Royalties: Where is the Right Spot On The Dial For Webcasting. ".

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on Wednesday, May 15, 2002, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building on "Copyright Royalties: Where is the Right Spot On The Dial For Webcasting."

Chairman Leahy will preside.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Senate Hearing Wednesday on Webcasting Royalties.