California's mobile phones should soon be officially freed from unwanted text messages.

On Thursday, Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that would prohibit companies from spamming mobile phones and pagers with unwanted text messages. The law, sponsored by Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe City, goes into effect in January.

Davis said he endorsed the plan because he didn't want unsolicited messages on mobile phones to reach the same level of mayhem that spam e-mails have.

Slashdot | California Bans Mobile Phone Spam.

Argyle writes "News.com is reporting that California has banned the spamming of pagers and mobile phones with unwanted text messages."

theage.com.au - Bit by bit, digital freedom disappears.

Another stage in Microsoft's five-year plan to control our PCs and the Internet will kick off early next year with the launch of Advanced Micro Devices' latest chip, Opteron, aimed at business uses.

The new microprocessor, which will run both existing 32-bit applications and specially recompiled 64-bit programs, will support Palladium, a set of security and privacy features Microsoft is building into its products. Both AMD and Microsoft are members of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), a cabal of 170 product makers developing a uniform approach to security and copyright protection. AMD has been working on the "trusted client" approach with Wave Systems Corp for two years.

AMD's chips will increase the security of those accessing programs and the Internet, says company marketer Patrick Moorhead. But it will also refuse to play certain content if it is not digitally signed by Microsoft or an authorised party.

[ ... ]

It is envisaged that once the TCPA system is fully functioning, our PCs would quietly report to authorities any unauthorised content on our machines. PCs and other devices would also refuse to play content, such as a music CD, tied to another device, and may be instructed by a remote server to delete information from the owner's hard drive.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - AMD Opteron to support Palladium.

Jim Norton writes "This article is just a reminder that AMD is just as guilty as Intel in supporting TCPA / Palladium. AMD has announced that Opteron will be compatible with the Palladium Initiative and that AMD is part of the 'Trusted Computing Alliance'."

"New Scientist" - Transparent token is cryptographic key .

A transparent token the size of a postage stamp and costing just a penny to make can be used to generate an immensely powerful cryptographic key.

Current cryptographic systems use mathematics to generate the numerical "keys" that lock up the protected data. These are produced using "one-way functions", formulas that take simple secret data and generate long keys. The trick is that it is extremely hard to reverse the process and work back to the secret data when given only the key.

Now researchers at MIT Media Lab's Center for Bits and Atoms have shown it is possible to use a physical object instead of a mathematical function to generate keys. The trick here is that the object is currently impossible to duplicate.

The team created tokens containing hundreds of glass beads, each a few hundred micrometres in diameter, set in a block of epoxy one centimetre square and 2.5 mm thick. These are "read" by shining a laser beam of a particular wavelength through the token.

Newsday (LI New York) - Now They Check the Books You Read.

The Bush administration's reliance on acronyms with public-relations punch was apparent as early as last October when, still reeling from the events of Sept. 11, it proposed and Congress swiftly passed the USA Patriot Act ("The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" Act of 2001). Like Operation TIPS, the label doesn't tell the whole story.

Among the less well-known aspects of the Patriot Act are provisions permitting the Justice Department to obtain information secretly from booksellers and librarians about customers' and patrons' reading, Internet and book-buying habits, merely by alleging that the records are relevant to an anti-terrorism investigation. The act prohibits librarians and booksellers from disclosing these subpoenas, so the objects of investigation don't know and therefore cannot defend themselves and their privacy, or contest the government's actions in court.

[ ... ]

The Constitution clearly protects the right to read a book, embrace an idea or express a thought - even an unpopular or "unpatriotic" book, idea or thought. The freedom of thought and expression is so fundamental to our democracy that, as the Supreme Court recently noted, the "government may not prohibit speech because it increases the chance an unlawful act will be committed 'at some indefinite future time.'" In so holding, the court relied on the "vital distinction between words and deed, between ideas and conduct." In other words, the government is free to prohibit and punish illegal conduct, but may not criminalize ideas or punish people for their thoughts. Perversely, under the Patriot Act, reading certain books or researching certain topics - both constitutionally protected activities - now apparently provide grounds for criminal investigation.

The Justice Department's recent decision to repeal the domestic terrorism surveillance guidelines unmistakably sends this signal. The guidelines were adopted in 1976 in response to revelations that, under the infamous COINTELPRO ("counterintelligence") program, civil rights and anti-war activists who were neither accused nor suspected of crimes became targets of government investigation because of their outspoken criticism of government policies. To prevent such abuses, the 1976 guidelines authorized surveillance of political, religious and other groups only if there was actual evidence of criminal activity. Without this restriction, covert surveillance of political dissidents with no known connection to criminal activity is bound to resume.

[ ... ]

The rush to enact programs with reassuring-sounding names may have been understandable a year ago. Now, however, it would be patriotic to consider whether, despite their appealing acronyms, some hastily enacted programs threaten the freedoms we value most. It is peculiar, to say the least, for our government to fight terrorists by adopting their techniques - secrecy and intimidation.

San Francisco Gate - FBI snooping has librarians stamping mad / Local woman jailed in '70s in informant flap .

When Oakland resident Zoia Horn, an 84-year-old retired librarian, learned that the FBI was monitoring America's libraries, her first thought was: Here we go again.

Thirty years ago, after an encounter with an FBI informant in a Pennsylvania college library, Horn spent nearly three weeks in jail for refusing to testify for the prosecution in the sensational trial of anti-war activists accused of a terrorist plot.

Horn was "the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession," said Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The FBI, under pressure from Congress, eventually abandoned a Cold War program of library surveillance in the mid-1980s. But a post-Sept. 11 law has brought federal agents back into the stacks, and Horn thinks it's time for some librarians to take the same step she did and say no -- even if it means jail.

[ ... ]

Unlike other search warrants, these warrants do not require the officer to show that evidence of wrongdoing is likely to be found or that the target of its investigation is involved in a crime.

A librarian who is served with a warrant must surrender records of the patron's book borrowing or Internet use and is prohibited from revealing the search to anyone -- including the patron. The Justice Department has refused to tell Congress how the law is being used, saying the information is classified.

[ ... ]

Horn is not alone. An editorial in the August issue of the American Library Association magazine, American Libraries, says that when the FBI inevitably abuses its new powers, "we will need librarians brave enough to speak out, even if it means going to jail."

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Effects of the Patriot Act on Librarians.

Quaryon writes "The Patriot Act apears to have some chilling effects with respect to libraries and booksellers. An FBI agent can get a warrant, without any evidence, in order to compel a librarian to reveal lending details on a suspect. The librarian cannot tell anyone about the search, including the target of the search, and the details of how many such searches are done are not made public. Articles at SFGate News and Common Dreams give more details." --- We had a related Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago.

CNET NEWS.COM - A cybersage speaks his mind.

For a law professor specializing in the Internet, David Sorkin takes a pretty dim view of cyberlaw.

An associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Sorkin in 1995 was one of the first academics to offer a course on cyberlaw.

But when it comes to legislating our way to Internet nirvana, Sorkin remains a skeptic. In fact, he says the law governing the offline world is equipped to handle most online disputes, and cautions that attempts to address Internet problems such as spam are only going to make matters worse.

While most legal academic careers hinge on legal publications far removed from a lay readership, Sorkin has devoted a considerable fraction of his publishing energies to the Web. His Spam Laws site is routinely cited as one of the most thorough online sources for up-to-date information on the subject. In a more subversive venture, his Don't Link to Us site has skewered what Sorkin terms "stupid linking policies" from sites as varied as Texas Instruments, Law.com and the American Cancer Society.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Sorkin laid out his views on the online legal landscape, including the future and advisability of laws regulating spam, linking, privacy and intellectual property.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - David Sorkin on Internet Law and Spam.

KC7GR writes "Cnet has published an interview with David Sorkin, associate professor at the John Marshall Law School. He's answering questions about the current state of cyberlaw, and he also has much to say about why current federal legislation being considered could make the problem of spam worse rather than curbing it."