Rite Aid Corp. (RAD), the No. 3 U.S. drugstore chain, said on Tuesday it is being investigated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over its consumer privacy and advertising practices.

Even so, the retailer said it has not been accused of any wrongdoing and is fully cooperating with the FTC.

Rite Aid spokeswoman Karen Rugen said the probe is anticipated to have no material impact on the company. She said the FTC has asked the company to provide it with refill reminders it sends out to patients either by phone or by letters.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - ACLU Campaign Challenges Patriot Act.

Nept sent in a pointer to this story about the ACLU starting a media campaign challenging the PATRIOT Act. Good to hear.

PCWorld.com - Tools Vendor Readies Passport for Linux. Server component of Microsoft's single sign-on technology may be resold apart from Windows.

A small software development company this week disclosed that it will soon offer prebuilt versions of Microsoft's Passport Internet-based authentication technology for the Unix and Linux operating systems.

The news follows Microsoft's announcement Thursday that it will share some of the source code for its single sign-on service. The software giant said it would make available in November the code to the Passport Manager--software that links a Web site or a software application to Microsoft's Passport service, which allows users to log on to multiple Web-applications using a single password.

Slashdot | Passport for Linux On the Way.

mrsam writes "PCWorld reports that Microsoft comissioned Ready-to-Run Software, a small software vendor, to port the Passport server software to Solaris, Red Hat Linux, AIX, and HPUX. Oh, joy."

New York Times - free registration required Consumers Face Tricky Maze in Guarding Privacy.

Businesses, responding to lawmakers and consumers, say they are giving customers more ways than ever to control how their personal information is used and sold. But, in fact, many companies all but frustrate their customers' attempts to exercise that control.

Barbara Bechtold of Sacramento recounts the unending process of trying to keep companies from selling her e-mail address and the details of her credit card accounts, insurance policies and mortgage inquiries.

[ ... ]

At the Direct Marketing Association site (www.the-dma.org), consumers who want to remove their name from many junk mail lists find that they must sign up by mail, or spend $5 and provide a credit card number to accomplish the same task over the Internet. Putting one's name on a do-not-call list for telemarketers requires a second letter or $5 Internet payment. Louis Mastria, a spokesman for the organization, said the charge was "just to defray costs," not an attempt to deter consumers.

[ ... ]

David Medine, a lawyer in Washington and a former privacy official for the Federal Trade Commission, said that even when given a choice few consumers went to the trouble to shift their privacy options one way or another. "Where you set the default is where 95 percent of people will end up," he said. But that does not mean they are happy with the result, he added, or that their trust in the online world is not damaged.

The challenge, privacy experts say, is to find ways to give people choices that are meaningful and easy to exercise. L. Richard Fischer, a Washington lawyer who deals with privacy issues, cited an Indiana initiative as an example. Last year that state created a single system for citizens to place themselves on a do- not-call list for telemarketers by calling a toll-free number or filling out an online form. Even though the system requires the customer to ask not to be called, the state received blocking requests from 784,000 household phone lines out of 2 million in the state; by this summer 1.2 million lines were on the list. New York State offers a similar service through a site (www.nynocall.com) on the Web.

[ ... ]

CNET NEWS.COM - Beta hack rattles Microsoft.

Microsoft is investigating a security breach on a server that hosts its Windows beta community, which allows more than 20,000 Windows users a chance to test software that is still in development.

As a result of the break-in, Microsoft advised beta testers to change their passwords late last week. However, company spokesman Rick Miller downplayed the significance of the incident, saying the online trespasser didn't get access to the company's crown jewels: its source code.

"They are not grabbing code; they are grabbing product, and it's going to be buggy and it's going to have problems," he said. "This is obviously not good, but it's not terrible either."

Technology Research News - Voiceprints make crypto keys.

As we rely on computers for tasks like handling money and keeping secrets safe, it has become increasingly important to give our desktops, laptops and PDAs the means to know for sure who they are dealing with. The classic solution is to lock up the data, and give the user a cryptographic key.

The main challenge to improving this type of security is to make it more difficult to steal or reconstruct the keys, but at the same time make it easier for legitimate users to access computing resources.

Researchers from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs are tapping the individuality of the human voice to generate unique cryptographic keys for computer users. Under the researchers' scheme, a user speaks a password, and the system listens for both the correct word and the correct voice.

The method uses the random variability of people's voices to add a layer of security to even a simple password, said Fabian Monrose, a member of technical staff at Bell Labs. "The randomness of [a] key is drawn from both the pass-phrase that is spoken and the speech patterns of the user... speaking it," he said. The more randomness contained in the information the key is constructed from, the harder the key is to figure out.

Conflict News from Wired News - Wired News: ACLU Acts Against Patriot Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union has had enough of some aspects of the Bush administration's Patriot Act, and it's launching a visible, nationwide campaign against it.

[ ... ]

"The Bush administration has presented Americans with a false dichotomy that we must choose between being safe or free," said ACLU national spokeswoman Emily Whitfield. "We're saying there doesn't have to be a choice. We can stay safe and free at the same time."

The ACLU has filed 24 lawsuits for civil liberties violations since the Sept. 11 attacks, including several for airline passengers who claim they were kicked off flights or singled out for questioning because of their dark skin.

The group will air television spots featuring a close-up of a hand cutting up and re-writing the U.S. Constitution as a voiceover charges Attorney General John Ashcroft with violating the First and Fourth Amendments, which guarantee free speech and guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.