Lawrence Lessig knows how to stir things up. A professor at the Stanford Law School, he is also the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. His latest book, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, published in 2001, details Lessig's view that commercial forces are threatening to close off the once-free and open Internet by attempting to control the software code and content. Such ideas have stirred up animosity among patent lawyers.

Todd Datz of Darwinmag.com spoke with Lessig about patents and the Internet earlier this year.

eWeek - Senators, Software Battle for Privacy.

It's coincidental that Anonymizer--one of the two mainstream privacy proxies in business--released a new version the same week that two senators released a statement that Americans need more privacy assurances.

The senators--Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Edwards, D-N.C., are not only concerned about Internet spying and unchecked camera surveillance, but they're also concerned that if nothing is done to protect privacy immediately in this anti-terrorism climate, citizens will never gain back some freedoms that existed just a year ago.

They're right, even though partisan politics may be at play. Things such as the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the USA Patriot Act are written vaguely enough to be subject to interpretation. Schumer and Edwards are pushing for clearer definitions.

The tech industry is also responding. Anonymizing proxy services for allowing users to untraceably surf the Web have gone largely underground. The mainstream services that remain are "Megaproxy" and Anonymizer. These two services are de-emphasizing anonymous surfing capabilities and targeting enterprise consumers with safety and security features. Both sites, for example, can be used to prevent scripts from running.

BTW if you sign-up to Anonymizer via one of the links at this site I will get a cut and you will be helping to pay my webhosting bill, but dont worry, they don't tell me anything about you.

searchCRM.com: A look inside Procter & Gamble's privacy protection crusade .

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has five billion customers in 130 countries. Making sure their personal information doesn't wind up in the wrong hands falls to Zeke Swift, P&G director of global privacy. Swift and his team also ensure that P&G complies with a variety of privacy regulations worldwide. He recently offered up an inside look at how P&G's privacy patrol operates.

ZDNet |UK| - Customer data now safe, says e-commerce site.

Update: The company behind ukshops.co.uk, which exposed personal data about its customers on the Web, has explained what it is doing to solve the problem

PBS Online NewsHour: Medical Privacy.

Gwen Ifill examines the pros and cons of the new rules governing medical records with Janlori Goldman, director of the Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University, and Alan Mertz, executive vice president of the Health Care Leadership Council.

RealAudio and RealVideo of the original segment is also available at this link.

New York Times - Editorial Letter to the Editor: free registration required Medical Privacy, Fading Fast. The Bush administration's abridgment of privacy protections for medical records (front page, Aug. 10) reflects a further compromise of societal concerns with privacy. Insurance carriers and managed-care companies are driven by fiscal concerns and shareholder demands for profitability, not by ethical standards. By contrast, health care professionals are legally and ethically bound to protect the privacy of their patients' medical and psychological lives. Databases containing personal health information are notoriously insecure. The administration's new guidelines open the door wider to deliberate snooping, allowing for invasions of privacy by people and institutions that have no legitimate interest in patients' personal histories.

Property and Casualty .com News - Alliance Supports Newly Revised HHS Medical Privacy Regs.

8/12/2002  Washington, DC -- The Department of Health and Human Services struck the right balance between privacy and practicality concerns in revising its medical privacy regulations, according to the Alliance of American Insurers.

Wall Street Journal via MS-NBC - Intel case tests e-mail as free speech. Former worker prosecuted for electronic trespassing

When Ken Hamidi was fired from Intel Corp. in 1995 after a long workers' compensation battle, he didn't go quietly. Mr. Hamidi, 55 years old, spent the next two years criticizing the company in e-mails sent to thousands of co-workers. Convinced he was a victim of age discrimination, Mr. Hamidi even publicized his campaign by dressing as a cowboy and going on horseback to distribute printed versions of his messages to employees entering Intel's Folsom, Calif., facility, where he once worked. Now, the California Supreme Court will determine whether the former employee's e-mail is a form of electronic trespassing, as Intel claims, or an expression of free speech.

Privacy News from Wired News - Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist.

A recent lawsuit filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Gilmore against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, United Airlines and several others challenges the requirement that airline flyers present government-issued identification in order to travel within the United States.

The suit claims unpublished federal regulations have created an "internal passport" for Americans in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

As it turns out, there may be no such law on the books. Instead, carefully worded rules and statements allow airlines to make it seem that way. Under current federal regulations, they're only required to ask for ID, not to make it a condition of travel.

"It creates the illusion of security without any real security," longtime civil libertarian Gilmore said of the ID requirement, which he deliberately flouted at San Francisco and Oakland, California, airports on July 4 in order to establish the case.

The details of Gilmore's complaint, filed in a U.S. District Court late last month, show that airline employees were unclear themselves on what the laws were, with different employees offering different answers.

Officials for United declined to comment on Gilmore's case, but claimed the airline follows rules set by the new Transportation Security Administration, which has sole responsibility for airline security regulations under legislation signed by President Bush last November.

Yet TSA spokesperson Greg Warren insisted there is no federal ban on flying without an ID. "TSA requires air carriers to request a valid form of identification from a government issuer," Warren said. "The actual presentation of ID by passengers is not required. Refusal to allow passengers to board or not board the aircraft is at the discretion of the airline."

[ ... ]

However, none of the officials queried then or now answered the core question underlying the issue: With ID cards so easy to forge, how does asking for one reduce the threat of on-board terror? TSA officials did not return repeated calls for explanation.

[ ... ]

"The clauses on ID in the 'conditions of carriage' incorporated by reference in the ticket and contract for both United Airlines and Southwest Airlines (the airlines named in Gilmore's filing) are identical. They don't mention a government requirement. Rather, they specify that the airline reserves the right to require ID, and reserves the right to refuse to transport those who don't produce it."

Armchair explanations for the ID requirement abound: It makes passengers feel safer and more likely to fly. It prevents flyers from reselling unused round-trip return tickets or frequent-flyer miles. It coerces passengers into being profiled by the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System (CAPPS) used by airlines and cited in TSA regulations. It's to collect information for direct marketing. Or all of the above, depending on whom you ask.

Whether or not the "secret regulations" Gilmore's suit charges do exist, it's obvious that airline and airport employees are unclear on the federal laws to which they increasingly allude.

GigaLaw.com: Are Pop-Up Advertisements on the Web Illegal?

Are pop-up ads illegal? A group of publishers suing Gator argue the company's ads violate copyright and trademark law. Like so many areas of Internet law, the answer isn't clear, but the debate has the potential to reshape online advertising.

[ ... ]

I don't know of anyone who has said with any authority that all pop-up advertising on the Web is illegal. But an impressive group of news publishers (including Dow Jones & Co., publisher of "The Wall Street Journal" Online) is using intellectual-property laws to fight some pop-up ads, arguing in a lawsuit that a third party, the Gator Corp., doesn't have the right to sell and display these advertisements while users are visiting their news sites.

On July 16, a federal district court judge in Virginia sided with the publishers when he granted their request for a preliminary injunction. His order prohibits Gator from "[c]ausing its pop-up advertisements to be displayed on any website owned by or affiliated with the Plaintiffs without the express consent of the Plaintiffs."

The lawsuit raises some intriguing legal issues about copyright and trademark law and could affect the future of online advertising.

[ ... ]

In the Gator case, if the news publishers' argument that pop-up windows violate copyright and trademark laws prevail, then what will be the future for other software that behaves similarly, such as instant-messaging applications (especially if their windows contain advertising), or ad-blocking programs? Terence Ross of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the news publishers' attorney, even told me that he thinks Internet users who configure their browsers to disable graphics (a common tactic to boost the speed of Web surfing) are committing copyright infringement (ed. emphasis added) because they are interfering with Web publishers' exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed.

Slashdot | No Pop-up Blocking in Netscape 7.0.

jsled writes "C|Net /News.com article details how the forthcoming Netscape 7.0 will not include the nifty pop-up blocking sported in Mozilla, as AOL depends on pop-up ads for annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing to their "valued" customers. The MozillaZine story and comments have a couple of extra, interesting points of detail: how to easily restore the functionality and how some sites get around the popup blocking." --- Update: 08/15 12:45 GMT by J: In related news, Doug Isenberg asks over on GigaLaw: Are Pop-Up Ads Illegal? The news publishers who say "yes" say that turning off graphics in your web browser should be illegal too.

Channel NewsAsia (Hong Kong) - HK launches service to track workers via cell phone signals.

Hong Kong has launched what's believed to be Asia's first location-based service which enables companies to locate their employees via their mobile phones signals.

Called "Workplace", an English version started in May, but interest is expected to grow with the launch of the Chinese service on Monday.

Anthony Houlahan, director of sales and business development, The Pinpoint Company, said: "All I have to do is drag the customer's location on the map while I'm taking the information from the customer in terms of what the problem is. I can then use the location function, draw a zone around the customer's location, use the function called 'find employees' and it will display on the screen all the employees who are in that zone of the customer's location."

[ ... ]

Some employers might see the benefits of having such a service, but not all workers feel the same way.

"Workplace" has raised some privacy concerns, not just among lawmakers and human rights groups, but also among the common Hong Kongers as well.

"I think it's a bad thing because we should have some freedom of our time. I wouldn't like my boss to know where I am, whether I'm at lunch, or where," said a worker.

Service provider - The Pinpoint Company - insists there'll be no breach of privacy if it is used properly.

Slashdot | Tracking Your Employees, Children.

Mattygfunk writes "Hong Kong has launched what's believed to be Asia's first location-based service which enables companies to locate their employees via their mobile phones signals." --- And in a semi-related story, Son-of-a-Geek writes --- "The BBC is reporting on a new GPS device for kids from Wherify Wireless. With the new device parents can track junior or he can call for help by pushing a panic button. Available only in the US for one penny less than 400 dollars it is a pager as well."

Slashdot | The Day The Music Died: Windows Media and DRM.

SampleMinded writes "The Guardian reports on an early glimpse of what a DRM controlled future looks like. Imagine backing up your files, reformatting your hard drive, then copying the files back over only to find your music no longer works. It happened to this guy. Now That's what I call Xperience!"

New York Times - free registration required Justice Dept. Balks at Effort to Study Antiterror Powers.

The Justice Department has rebuffed House Judiciary Committee efforts to check up on its use of new antiterrorism powers in the latest confrontation between the Bush administration and Congress over information sought by the legislative branch.

Instead of answering committee questions, the Justice Department said in a letter that it would send replies to the House Intelligence Committee, which has not sought the information and does not plan to oversee the workings of the "U.S.A. Patriot Act".

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the panel, and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, its ranking Democrat, sent Attorney General John Ashcroft a list of 50 questions about the use of the new powers in the act, which the committee worked on before Congress approved it in October.

They asked about "roving" surveillance; lists of calls to and from telephone numbers; demands for bookstore, library and newspaper records; and subpoenas under the amended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act served on Americans or permanent residents. Some simpler questions, about Immigration and Naturalization Service employees the Canadian border, were answered.

Mr. Conyers complained that the letter was "yet another shot in this administration's ongoing war against open and accountable government." He said Mr. Ashcroft was telling Congress that "his activities are not to be oversighted."

" `Congress, butt out,' " Mr. Conyers said.

[ ... ]

The Senate Judiciary Committee has sent 27 unanswered letters to the department seeking information on topics including the Patriot Act, civil rights and corporate fraud. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the panel, said in an interview, "Since I've been here, I have never known an administration that is more difficult to get information from that the oversight committees are entitled to."

[ ... ]

Mr. Leahy said the Justice Department's letter reflected an attitude that his committee had encountered when it sought answers on the U.S.A. Patriot Act, a position of "we will tell you what we want you to know, and we won't tell you anything else."

He said that even Republicans on his panel had urged him to issue subpoenas to force replies and that he warned Mr. Ashcroft last month that subpoenas would be issued if answers were not forthcoming.

[ ... ]

The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant, denied many of the numbers the committee sought but did give some facts beyond the number of Border Patrol agents. Responding to a query about a provision to allow grand jury information to be shared with intelligence officials and others, Mr. Bryant said, "Disclosure of information obtained through grand juries convened under federal law as part of criminal investigations of matters involving foreign intelligence has been made on approximately 40 occasions."

But it added without explanation, "Some of this information sharing may have occurred prior to passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act."

When the representatives asked how promptly the department had notified courts of the disclosure of such information, which the law says must be done "within a reasonable time," Mr. Bryant said, "We do not maintain records on the time period between disclosure and notice to the court."