JL Fandiari writes "The Internet Rights Forum, a french non-profit organization, has just opened an international discussion forum on 'Freedom of Expression in the Information Society.'(http://www.foruminternet.org/en/ for the English version). This forum is co-moderated by three professors of Law : an Amerian (Burton Caine), a Canadian (Pierre Trudel), a Belgian (Etienne Montero), a Senegalian lawyer (Mr Elhadj Mame Gning) and is coordinated by Lionel Thoumyre (the author of Juriscom.net). Their contributions are regularly translated into French or English. This amazing experiment has been initiated to prepare a symposium organized by the French national Commission for UNESCO on 15 and 16 November in Paris on the same theme. Their say the content of the discussion forum will be synthesized in a report to be presented to the participants and the speakers of the symposium. This symposium is placed within the perspective of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 in Geneva. Be sure to answer the contribution of Burton Caine, professor at the Temple University School of Law, that starts by asking 'Who are we?'"

SATN.org: Comments from Frankston, Reed, and Friends - Intel - another 432?

Intel's just announced its LaGrande Technology. The idea is to create a "vault" in the processor and the chips supporting it, so that protected content can never be touched by unauthorized code, even when it's running in "your" personal computer. It's a response to the raucous cries from Hollywood and the record companies for hardware "rights management" in our systems.

Intel's LaGrande Technology reminds me of the Intel 432. Some of us with grey hair will remember the 432, Intel's attempt to create an "object oriented" processor that would embed all the great ideas of object oriented (OO) computing in a revolutionary new architecture.

[ ... ]

Why is LaGrande's design early binding? Because we don't know, we really don't know, what sorts of protection make sense in the emerging digital, networked marketplaces. Despite 35 years of computer security research, we have not yet increased our understanding of what needs to be protected beyond a simplified, very unworkable notion of military document security. Now joined with a simplified, very unclear notion of what Hollywood might really need (as defined by its lawyers and lobbyists - not the most technically savvy designers).

iRights - Intel's LaGrange Technology - doomed?

A somewhat technical discussion on why hardware-based content protection is doomed to failure for at least several iterations, based on discussing Intel's "LaGrange" technology. This is the first I've heard of this so I don't know how this fits into the "master plan", whether they believe this is the first and final iteration or what, and how this ties to Palladium. The interesting part about this article is that it's strictly technical and discusses why this just isn't going to work for a while.

As usual some interesting comments about the article linked above - Comments from Frankston, Reed, and Friends - Intel - another 432?

The Register (UK) - PGP creator joins UK privacy watchdog.

Cyber rights luminary Phil Zimmermann has joined the advisory council of influential UK privacy watchdogs the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR).

Zimmermann, best known as the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) who earned widespread acclaim for facing downs threats from the Feds when he exported his famous encryption program, said he was joining FIPR to further trans-Atlantic co-operation on civil liberties.

"I've always felt that efforts to preserve civil liberties must be pressed on both sides of the pond to be effective," said Zimmermann.

[ ... ]

Emerging technologies such as the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) and Palladium are "creating fresh tensions between privacy and corporate interests", notes the FIPR, whose former head, Casper Bowden is now privacy and security manager at Microsoft.

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Leicester 2002 | Privacy fears over DNA database.

The inventor of DNA fingerprinting has launched an outspoken attack on the way the genetic profiles of suspects in the UK who have been cleared of any crime are still stored by the authorities.

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys said the practice was highly discriminatory and measures should be taken to safeguard against particular individuals or groups being targeted.

And he called for the creation of a national database, storing the profiles of the entire UK population, which would be managed by an independent body.

"If we're all on the database, we're all in exactly the same boat - the issue of discrimination disappears," he said.

The scientist made his comments at the British Association's science festival in Leicester.

The Register (UK) - Anti-email snooping proposals 'stupid'.

Bob Jones - the boss of email filtering and blocking outfit Equiinet - describes proposed legislation to outlaw bosses snooping on employees' email as "stupid and ill-considered".

[ ... ]

But Jones reckons any move to protect personal privacy would be a "recipe for litigation".

"This is going too far by giving license to the few who would abuse the privilege of private use of email at the expense of exposing employers to litigation. If this bill became law, the employers' only course would be to ban all personal email at work."

BW Online | September 12, 2002 | Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music. Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy

On July 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an unprecedented request of Verizon Communications (VZ ). The music industry's trade association served the telecom with a subpoena, seeking the identity of a Verizon subscriber who had allegedly illegally traded digital songs by artists including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and "boy band" N'Sync. The RIAA didn't specify why it wanted to know who the user was or what it would do with the information.

Perhaps Verizon's "John Doe" should be charged with bad taste in music -- but not with anything else. Verizon refused to comply with the subpoena, asking instead that the RIAA let a judge decide if there was enough proof of illicit activity to warrant handing over the subscriber's personal information.

The RIAA, in turn, claimed that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the very fact that it had suspicion of illegal activity should be enough to have the subscriber's identity unmasked. In August, it filed a motion to compel Verizon to comply with its subpoena. This week, legal wrangling moved into high gear as both sides filed court briefs. The oral arguments could be heard later this month.

What does this have to do with your privacy? After all, you're a law-abiding citizen, right? The answer is everything. At the heart of the battle between the RIAA and Verizon is the right to be anonymous online. If the RIAA wins this legal skirmish, as it has so many others over the last three years, the Net will fundamentally change. It will be less free, less innovative, and less private.

The good news is that, unlike past legal battles, the RIAA is picking on someone its own size. The defendant isn't some underfunded, inexperienced dot-com but a telecommunications giant. And the outcome will affect all ISPs, from AOL (AOL ) and EarthLink (ELNK ) to SBC (SBC ) and AT&T (T ). That means sharp lawyers will be fighting hard to ensure that copyright holders -- or anyone else -- aren't given access to identifying information without a judge's approval.

Technically, the ISPs appear to have a strong case. Most copyrighted songs are traded over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which means that files are swapped directly from one user's hard drive to another's. This is important because the infringing material is not located on the ISP's network but on the user's PC. The ISPs claim that it's not their job -- or their place -- to police what files customers have on their private hard drives.

[ ... ]

The case also has a constitutional dimension. The RIAA claims that federal law requires ISPs to answer subpoenas based on its allegations of copyright infringement. But why should an Internet user's anonymity be unmasked without any proof of misconduct? In defamation and trademark-infringement cases, a judge is asked to weigh the evidence of illegal activity against the constitutionally protected right to anonymous speech.

"The RIAA alleging copyright infringement and evidence of copyright infringement are two different things," says Megan Gray, a Washington (D.C.) privacy attorney who filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of an alliance of privacy advocate groups. "We just want to make sure that somebody other than the RIAA makes decisions about a constitutional right to anonymous speech."

[ ... ]

Copyright violators shouldn't be protected. Nor should music thieves hide behind the right to anonymous speech to protect their illegal activity. But the RIAA and all other copyright holders cannot be allowed to make an end run around the constitutionally protected right to free and open speech. If the recording industry has a valid claim, it should have no fear of going before a judge to make its case. That would protect everyone's privacy.

New York Times - free registration required The Big Picture on Digital TV: It's Still Fuzzy.

Digital television sets may also affect the ability of consumers to record programs. The opportunity to copy digital signals with no loss of quality worries Hollywood studios, who argue that piracy will increase if such copying is allowed. While antipiracy technology standards have not been set, many of the newest digital televisions come with two types of plugs that can be used to restrict or prevent recording.

Using connectors called DVI and IEEE 1394 (or FireWire), consumers could, at the discretion of the program's licenser, be prevented from making any copies of a digital television program, or permitted to make only a limited number -- or keep them just for a specified time.

MP3 News from Wired News - Digital Rights Outlook: Squishy.

Media companies are singing a new song that could be called "Get Squishy With It."

The long-running debate over how much digital rights management is too much has changed. Now it's about just how much copy protection files should include, and media companies believe they have the answer: squishy security.

"We need interoperable DRM products that allow people to never feel the walls (of security)," said Ted Cohen, vice president of new media at EMI, one of the five major music labels.

It's not a new idea, but it's starting to resonate with Congress. At a recent government hearing, Philip Bond, undersecretary of commerce for technology, opened the debate by saying that he wanted a world with "a consistent and reliable and predictable level of legitimate copyright protection."

That's a frightening turn for consumer advocates and technologists who argue that DRM fundamentally alters the way people use their computers, televisions and stereos.

It's the word "legitimate" that bugs consumer advocates because nobody is quite sure what that means. They argue that fair use rights -- which allow people to listen to a copy of a CD in their car, for example -- have eroded in the quest for security, even the squishy kind.

"Those who aren't for überprotection are being labeled as pro-piracy," said Robin Gross, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The concern has basis. Judges determine fair use case by case, but technology companies are being asked to develop DRM systems that determine ahead of time what people can and can't do with files. In many cases, there are no precedents for DRM companies to draw from.

[ ... ]

The twist: The Super MP3 will come with a tracking signature -- a digital fingerprint -- that will identify the PC that made it.

"People will pay for better MP3s," said Henry Linde, Thomson Multimedia's vice president of new media business. "If the MP3 file that Brad King encodes shows up on a system, we will know where it comes from. We call it lightweight DRM, but it won't prevent you from doing anything."

New York Times - free registration required China Toughens Obstacles to Internet Searches.

SHANGHAI, Sept. 11 -- Some Chinese Internet users seeking the popular search engine Google today instead are now instantly routed to GlobePage, which calls itself the "premier Asian search engine."

Others typed in the letters www.google.com and were seamlessly linked to www.online.sh.cn, or Shanghai Hotline. "One of China's best Internet content providers" reads a banner on its opening page. It is run by China Telecom, the dominant fixed-line phone and Internet company.

The diversions are an intensification of an effort to block access to Google that began last week, and they appear to represent an unusually strong campaign to funnel Chinese Internet traffic into sites the government deems friendly and safe.

Analysts described the reroutings as an attempt to trick Chinese users by replacing the United States-based search engine with Beijing-backed services that offer carefully filtered content -- the equivalent of ordering a Grand Cru and getting grape juice.

[ ... ]

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is immensely popular in China because it provides nearly instantaneous links to millions of Chinese Web addresses and documents. Google offers Chinese users a special page that makes it possible to search for Web content in Chinese characters. But unlike rival search engines like Yahoo, Google does not have a subsidiary based in China and does not filter content for local users to comply with Beijing's rules.

New York Times - free registration required Colombia Authorizes Warrantless Arrests, Citing Terror Fight.

New York Times - free registration required Spam Hits Some Anti-Spammers, Who Think They Have a Culprit.

Tens of thousands of readers of e-mail newsletters have recently been inundated with unsolicited overtures from pornography Web sites and get-rich-quick schemes, the newsletter publishers say, and they are blaming the company that manages and distributes the newsletters for them.

Particularly galling to some of the publishers is that the newsletters they send out are about ways to use e-mail to market responsibly and about the dangers of sending unsolicited e-mail, known as spam.

[ ... ]

Mr. Sernovitz and other customers of SparkLIST, which says it sends out 750 million e-mail messages on behalf of clients each month, say they are not sure what happened to SparkLIST's database, but they speculate that it has been broken into by hackers or that the data has been stolen by an employee.

The flood of unsolicited messages to recipients of the newsletters, which have hundreds of thousands of readers, comes at a time when the amount of unsolicited e-mail is already exploding. The Radicati Group, a market research group in Palo Alto, Calif., estimated earlier this year that 32 percent of the 7.3 billion e-mail messages sent each day were unsolicited commercial messages.

But the issue takes on added significance in the case of SparkLIST because a handful of SparkLIST's clients are among the best-known publishers and consultants who preach the responsible use of e-mail for marketing. Mr. Sernovitz, for instance, started the Association of Interactive Marketing, an early anti-spam organization.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Sept. 11 (Reuters) -- The government has claimed new authority to arrest suspects without warrants and declare zones under military control, measures that President Álvaro Uribe said today were necessary to fight "terrorism."

The new powers, which also make it easier to tap phones and limit foreigners' access to conflict zones in a country torn by guerrilla war, were decreed late Tuesday under the state of emergency that Mr. Uribe enacted shortly after taking office in August.

Human rights groups said the measures needlessly restricted civil rights and were aimed at civilians rather than combatants in the 38-year-old civil war, which claims thousands of lives a year.

But Mr. Uribe, 50, who was elected by promising to get tough on leftist rebels and enjoys an approval rating of about 70 percent, said authorities needed the new powers to fight leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, who are financed by money from the cocaine trade.

"If you read them carefully," he said of the measures, "you will see that they entirely respect human rights. I welcome the controversy. The measures aren't meant to silence controversy, but to face up to terrorism."

Colombian authorities often use the word terrorism to equate their struggle with the global offensive being waged by their ally and major aid donor, the United States, which is an enthusiastic supporter of the Uribe administration.

But the director of the Colombian Jurists Commission, a nongovernmental organization, said it was outrageous that security forces would now be able to hold suspects for 24 hours without presenting them to a state prosecutor.

"They allow security agents to enter your house or office without a warrant at any time of day because they think you're suspicious," said the director, Gustavo Gallón.

[ ... ]

Earlier this week, Washington approved more aid for Colombia's military, after deciding it was doing enough to protect human rights. Senior military officers have been investigated for links to far-right paramilitaries who have massacred civilians in recent years, but President Uribe says he will crack down on far right and far left outlaws alike.

Colombia's new emergency measures are in many aspects less draconian than the powers enacted by the United States government to deal with foreign suspects, said Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch in Washington.

Human rights groups are also worried about Mr. Uribe's plans to set up a network of a million civilian informants, which they fear could allow anonymous snoops to make malicious accusations against neighbors to the security forces.

New York Times - free registration required From Symantec, a Hybrid of Firewall and Spam Buster.

It's not true. Despite that promise in the e-mail subject line, the vice president for marketing does not love you. So you won't be fooled again, Symantec has upgraded its Norton Internet Security software suite to intercept more viruses, mass mailers and worms. It also promises to eliminate bandwidth-hogging pop-up ads and reduce spam. If that sounds like a Herculean task, it is. Symantec has cataloged 61,000 threats with 10 to 15 new ones appearing daily

Norton Internet Security 2003 adds features that monitor traffic on many instant messaging networks and help make your computer less visible to hackers and more resistant to viruses and to Trojan horses, those malicious programs disguised as friendly or useful software.

Should a virus penetrate your system's defenses, the product employs heuristics, or sets of logical rules, to prevent fast-spreading worms like Nimda and script-based threats like the I Love You virus from infecting other computers to which you link through a network or by e-mail. For example, Internet Security will notify Microsoft Outlook users if a program tries to send batched e-mail messages, a technique used by spammers.

Its spam-filtering feature works with e-mail applications that work with the POP3 protocol like Outlook, Eudora and Netscape Mail. It excludes MIME-based e-mail applications like those of America Online and MSN. Other filters allow parents to place some restrictions on what children can view on the Internet.

CRC Press - Handbook of Applied Cryptography. ISBN: 0-8493-8523-7 October 1996, 816 pages Fifth Printing (August 2001)

The individual chapters are available for download as PDF documents or as postscript files.

Slashdot | Developers - Handbook of Applied Cryptography.

cconnell writes "The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is now available free (for personal use) on the Internet. This is a $100 book. Note also the companion C source code for most of the crypto algorithms, written by James Pate Williams. There is some very cool code here!"

The user comments indicate its been around on the net for a while but still good to know.