The UK is one of the worse places in the world for privacy with the internet playing a huge part in the erosion of rights, a report has found.

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"The internet is being turned into a surveillance device and eventually surveillance will be a core design component of computers," warned Simon Davies, head of Privacy International.

Privacy advocates have been shocked by the swift introduction of terror legislation following the 11 September attacks.

CNET NEWS.COM Perspectives - Who's bluffing whom on cybersecurity?

Mention the magic words national security and otherwise rational people get weak in the knees. But the struggle against al-Qaida will be over one day, and we're going to wake up to learn that we've given up rights that were dearly fought for.

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Recall, for example, that the USA Patriot Act got signed into law in October 2001--less than one month after last year's terror attacks. This catch-all provision, which among other things reduces judicial oversight of government monitoring on the Internet, sailed through Congress because few politicians were brave enough to swim against the tide.

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Maybe things will be different this time around. Let's hope so. The risk to civil liberties as real as is the danger of wasting time by doing nothing while the caveman and his henchmen regroup. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, we're being told, and this is a required sacrifice.

My personal Internet privacy--and yours--was never 100 percent secure, so I'm willing to wait and see. I'm not happy about it, but our little computing corner of the universe has obviously changed. For better or for worse--and for the foreseeable future--this is the new world order.

In the meantime, send over a good book to read, because I'm not going to be sleeping very well.

School News from Wired News - Filters, Schools Like Oil, Water.

Last fall, high school students in John Elfrank-Dana's class decided to write a research paper on terrorism. The subject was personal: Located just a quarter-mile from the World Trade Center towers, students and teachers were forced to flee their school on Sept. 11.

But the filtering software in place at Murry Bergtraum High School blocked access to websites with the word "terrorism," Elfrank-Dana said. To gain access, he had to write to the principal, who then sent the request to the IT department at the central school board, a process that can take days.

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It's situations like these that make filter critics cringe. They contend there are better ways to keep students safe without relying on an imperfect technology or inhibiting learning.

Elfrank-Dana's class ended up doing its research at home, as getting sites unblocked proved too bureaucratic.

Slashdot | MS Exec: 'Our products just aren't engineered for security'.

Various Microsoft news tidbits contributed by numerous readers: Phoebus0 notes that Microsoft's Vice-President in charge of Windows development states flat out that Microsoft products aren't engineered for security, absolutely guaranteeing he'll have tomorrow's Ditherati quote. Many readers submitted this Knowledge Base article stating that Microsoft is mystified by a wave of successful hacks on assorted versions of Windows (there's also a news report on this). Microsoft has another security bulletin out on the digital certificate spoofing bug that has caused them so many problems recently.

TechNews.com part of the Washington Post - Security Trumps Privacy in New Laws .

Governments have made it easier for authorities to plumb databases and eavesdrop on telephone and online conversations, a survey of privacy regulations released this week found. The report, from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International, shows that many countries besides the United States have adopted laws that value increased security over personal privacy.

"It's a general theme toward total identification," said Sarah Andrews, an author of the report. "When you're outside in public or when you're online, you can be identified."

That dismays privacy groups, who worry about free-speech restrictions and abuses of power. They oppose laws that loosen privacy protections, such as the ones adopted in the United States after last year's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"They haven't been backed up by evidence that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were hampered before because they didn't have these powers," Andrews said.

Direct News (industryclick) - Iowa High Court to Hear Unusual Medical Privacy Sui.

The Iowa State Court has agreed to hear an unusual medical privacy lawsuit with potential national implications.

At issue is the confidentiality of the records of pregnant women counseled at pro-life and pro-choice clinics, a gray area in both state and federal laws protecting the privacy of an individual's medical records in doctors offices, hospitals, clinics and insurance companies.

Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal doesn't think any Iowa court ruling would have any effect on existing laws.

But other observers say that how the court rules--whether to open those records to authorities or keep them sealed--would set a legal precedent which the top courts in other states could use when ruling on similar requests.

At the same time, the court's ruling, which is not expected until early next year, could lead to possible changes in both state and federal medical confidentiality laws.

CNET NEWS.COM - Senator pulls support for copyright bill.

A key Republican senator on Thursday withdrew his support for an anti-piracy bill that would make it a crime to distribute counterfeit authentication features including digital watermarks.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said he could no longer support a proposal titled Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002 because of changes that came just before a committee voted in July to send it to the Senate floor.

The bill originally targeted the kind of large-scale pirates who manufacture fake Windows holograms and enjoyed broad support from software makers such as Microsoft. But, in a little-noticed move previously reported by CNET News.com, the Senate Judiciary Committee rewrote the bill to encompass technology used in digital rights management. Following the revisions, companies that had previously backed the measure pulled their support for the bill.

"Opening this legislation to the digital realm has caused the virtually unanimous industry support behind it to evaporate, and it has raised a host of troubling liability issues that cause substantial harm to Internet service providers," Allen, who chairs the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force, said in a statement.

CNET NEWS.COM - File-name flaw threatens PGP users.

Security-consulting firm Foundstone said Thursday that e-mail messages encrypted with the Pretty Good Privacy program can be used as digital bullets to attack and take control of a victim's computer.

Because of a flaw in the way PGP handles long file names in an encrypted archive, an attacker could "take control of the recipient's computer, elevating his or her privileges on the organization's network," Foundstone said in an advisory.

The company classified the vulnerability as a high risk "due to the trusting nature of encrypted attachments in e-mail, its relative ease of exploitation and the large amount of corporations and military and government agencies that rely on PGP encryption for secure communication."

The flaw affects PGP Corporate Edition 7.1.0 and 7.1.1. Software maker Network Associates has posted a patch on its site. The company recently sold all PGP assets to a start-up, PGP Corp., but appears to still be providing support for the program. Neither company could be reached for comment.

Times Online (UK) - Britain 'leads way' in eroding privacy.

Individual privacy is being eroded in Britain to a far greater extent than in other developed countries, according to an international study of state surveillance in the year since September 11.

Many states have rushed through restrictive anti-terrorism and security laws in response to last year's terrorist attacks, but the Blair Government is singled out for an anti-privacy "pathology" that the report claims is leading to mass surveillance of the population.

In the 400-page report, to be published tomorrow, Privacy International, a London-based campaign group, and the US Electronic Privacy Information Center, give warning of a significant loss of personal freedom. The Privacy and Human Rights survey notes that in many of the 53 countries studied, communications surveillance has grown, intrusive "personal profiling" of individuals has increased, and data protection laws have been watered down.

"In the rush to strengthen national security and to reduce the risk of future terrorist acts, governments around the world turned to legal authority and new technology to extend control over individuals," the report states. "Many of these proposals have had far-reaching consequences for the protection of privacy."

The report highlights the British Government's use of the terrorist threat to introduce new requirements for personal communications data to be stored and to launch a new debate about a national identity card. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, also sought in June to extend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to allow private e-mail and telephone records to be shared among more than 1,000 government agencies. After facing strong protests, Mr Blunkett withdrew the proposal a few weeks later and announced that he had "blundered".

TechNews.com part of the Washington Post - A Story Of Piracy And Privacy .

The recording industry and the nation's largest telephone company are crossing legal swords in what could be a test case of how far big record labels can go to track down computer users who swap music online.

The industry is seeking to force Verizon Communications Corp., which also provides customers with high-speed Internet access, to turn over the name of one of its users who the record labels claim has made copyrighted music available for download by others. The Recording Industry of America also demanded that Verizon block access to the user's music files.

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Verizon and a coalition of Internet advocacy groups argue that if the recording industry prevails, the constitutional right to privacy of millions of Internet users would be compromised.

""RIAA" proposes a dazzlingly broad subpoena power that would allow any person, without filing a complaint, to invoke the coercive power of a federal court to force disclosure of the identity of any user of the Internet, based on a mere assertion . . . that the user is engaged in infringing activity," Verizon's legal filing said.

Verizon does not defend piracy of copyrighted works, but Sarah Deutsch, Verizon's associate general counsel, said the record industry is seeking a legally "creative" way to require the Internet provider to violate its customer's privacy. She added that because the music files reside on the user's computer, not on Verizon's network, the only way to block access to them would be to terminate the user's Internet account.

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Deutsch said the industry's motives in the case are particularly suspect because Verizon offered a simple alternative: The RIAA could sue the user, naming him or her as an unknown party, and then subpoena Verizon for the user's name. Under that scenario, Deutsch said, Verizon would comply because there would be a valid legal action pending.

But the labels "would like to be able to serve millions of these types of subpoenas and collect subscriber names, and then pick out the most favorable for a lawsuit against the user community," Deutsch said.

In briefs filed last night, the RIAA said that until Verizon's refusal to honor the subpoena, many Internet service providers had given it the identities of individuals accused of copyright violations.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Million-Dollar Donation To Fight Abusive Copyrights.

WeekendKruzr writes: "There is a story on C|Net detailing how Duke University's law school received an anonymous gift of $1 million for the express purpose of funding '...advocacy and research aimed at curtailing the recent expansion of copyright law.' It's good to know that we have some well-funded idealists on our side, even if they are 'Anonymous Cowards.' ;^) This, combined with the recent rash of even large corporations running afoul of intellectual property law, could precipitate some tangible results in the next couple of years."