Warships will feature 802.11b wireless systems, allowing captains to command the entire ship from anywhere on board.

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The radio links are encrypted with either Triple-DES or the newer Advanced Encryption System, both stipulated by the Navy to encrypt data.

"The Navy wants to go from 300-man destroyers to 90-man destroyers," Erinle says. "The only way to do that is to take processes that are highly manual and automate them."

What about old-fashioned radio jamming?

Slashdot | War(ship) Driving For 802.11b Controlled .

Jason Straight writes "There's a story at pcworld, that describes how navy warships will be equipped with 802.11b networking to allow the captain to control the ship from anywhere on the ship. " --- The point of the article also gets into the issue of cutting manpower for the ships - going from 300 people on each to destroyer to 90, and makes the point that the only way to do is through automation.

I just hope that they use better security and encryption than the normal commercial grade devices.

EE Times - Companies test prototype wireless-sensor nets.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Self-organizing wireless-sensor networks, a realization of the Pentagon's "smart-dust" concept, have reached the prototype stage worldwide. The smart sensors, or Motes, were created by the University of California at Berkeley and Intel, and are being tested out worldwide today.

"At this stage, there are over 100 groups around the world that are using the combination of our open-source Motes with the TinyOS [operating system] and TinyDB [database]," said Berkeley professor David Culler, who is also director of Intel Research's "lablette" in Berkeley.

Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) proposed the smart-dust concept four years ago. The idea was to sprinkle thousands of tiny wireless sensors on a battlefield to monitor enemy movements without alerting the enemy to their presence. By self-organizing into a sensor network, smart dust would filter raw data for relevance before relaying only the important findings to central command.

The prototype Motes consist of an application-specific sensor array board married to a generic wireless controller board, both in a hermetically sealed enclosure. Once the design has matured, single-chip realizations will begin to downsize the wireless sensors to a volume less than a cubic millimeter. To facilitate the self-organizing of Motes into a sensor network, the researchers created TinyOS and TinyDB as well as a host of Tiny applications and a simulator.

"In a sensor net you've got many tiny devices deployed in the world, and they're connected as a network. TinyOS is the framework for building up the operating system capabilities needed for the sensor network -- the networking capabilities, localization and support for applications. TinyDB then aggregates the data at the next layer up," said Culler.

Slashdot | SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'.

DeAshcroft writes "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article."

The Register (UK) - Net snooping to cost UK taxpayers £100m+. A year.

A Home Office minister last night brushed aside a report by MPs which calls on the government to drop Net snooping plans.

Speaking at a meeting of the All Party Internet Group (APIG), Bob Ainsworth, Minister of State for the Home Office, pledged to press ahead with a new data retention regime on ISPs.

Yesterday the APIG urged the government to think again, in a report (PDF) on Communications Data - the logging information held by phone companies, mobile operators and ISPs. The MP group's preferred option is a lower impact scheme of targeted "data preservation".

Data preservation obliges service providers to retain data on specified individuals at the request of the police. This approach is used in the US, and is favoured by UK ISPs.

Data retention obliges service providers to keep data on everyone, in case it is subsequently needed for investigations into serious crime or terrorism.

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Data retained will include catalogues of Web sites visited, records of e-mail recipients, lists of telephone numbers dialled, and the geographical location of mobile phones at all times they were switched on. It does not include the contents of messages or telephone calls.

CNET NEWS.COM - EU Delays Publication of Microsoft Decision.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union data controllers decided on Wednesday to delay the publication of long-awaited data privacy guidelines for on-line authentication systems, such as Microsoft's .NET Passport, the European Commission said.

"The member states' data protection authorities... have decided not to publish their document concerning on-line authentication systems today," EU Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said in a statement, adding he hoped he could give details on Thursday or Friday.

An EU source said the French delegate had insisted the document, drafted in English, should not be published until a French translation was available.

The privacy watchdogs were expected to settle a half-year long examination by ruling that Passport and other similar systems broadly comply with EU data protection rules provided that some changes were implemented, EU sources said last week.

epxNews - Phone tapping figures 'hide the truth'.

Official figures on government phone tapping are misleading, according to a civil liberties watchdog.

Independent campaign group Statewatch also revealed on Wednesday that authorised surveillance in England, Wales and Scotland has more than doubled since Labour came to power in 1997.

Figures from the interception of communications commissioner had appeared to show a drop in the number of interception warrants issued, with figures falling from 1900 in 2000 to 1445 in 2001.

But Statewatch said legislative changes meant that while changes to warrant details had previously required a new warrant to be issued, that was no longer the case.

Taking into account the modification to warrants, the total number of warrants issued in 1996 (the last full year of the Conservative government) was 1370 while for 2001 the total was 3427

Even these figure were likely to be a "major under-estimate" said Statewatch, which also noted that no figures have ever been made available on Northern Ireland.

U-WIRE.com - FBI task force tracks student activity, privacy concerns raised.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Some students are wondering how much privacy they still have now that Joint Terrorism Task Forces overseeing counterterrorism include collegiate police officers on a dozen campuses. Paying attention to college campuses and working with campus police to check any tips or leads is one way federal agencies have been monitoring potential terrorist threats.

The Department of Public Safety regularly works and exchanges information with the FBI on different security issues like the ban on flyovers over the University of Michigan Stadium, said DPS spokeswoman Diane Brown.

"Only if any of the law-enforcing agencies, like the FBI, received a credible tip about an issue on campus, that would be investigated," Brown said. "However the FBI could find out public information like details on the [University] directory."

However, students and faculty are weary of zealous federal agencies after the USA Patriot Act was passed in October 2001, which took away significant privacy protections from students, said Noel Saleh, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.

"The FBI could really find out anything they wanted," Saleh said. "They are interested in student activists or organizers. Like the divestment conference that happened late last year was an interest to the FBI."

Prior to the USA PATRIOT Act, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 stated that, unless the school had been mandated by court order or subpoena, an academic institution was generally barred from releasing a student's education records without a student's consent.

E-Commerce News: New AltaVista Searchware Poses Privacy Challenge.

Hoping to boost sagging revenues, search engine firm AltaVista on Tuesday will introduce a software product that it says will increase productivity by allowing companies to scour corporate networks for information -- including potentially embarrassing personal data.

A unit of CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI), the Palo Alto, California-based AltaVista said the quick-search software is based on the same technology that drives the company's Internet search engine.

The software will mine information from multiple sources of corporate data, from companies' own Web sites to employee e-mail.

The software has already drawn attention from privacy advocates, who say that such an all-inclusive search program could open a Pandora's box, leading the way to lower morale among employees and a spate of lawsuits.

"There are some private things on office computers that you really don't want to know about," Gregg Williams, a lawyer who specializes in employment law for a Silicon Valley firm, told news sources.

Controversial e-mails -- most of which have been made public by disgruntled workers -- have been in the news recently. But the AltaVista software is capable of snooping through everything in a company's system and spitting it out for anyone to read.

[ ... ]

AltaVista says it has already addressed the potential problems. According to the company, businesses can tailor the software so that certain areas of an office's computing system would be off-limits.

The company also mentioned that the number of employees able to search the master index can be restricted.

ZDNet |UK| - EU Microsoft ruling to set pace for privacy.

A decision expected today is expected to require changes to Microsoft's authentication system, affecting the way companies deal with personal data on the Internet

EU privacy watchdogs are expected on Wednesday to prescribe changes to Microsoft's customer authentication system Passport, a decision that will impact all companies conducting business on the Internet.

So-called consumer authentication systems are widely used by all manner of companies from retailers to banks that have regular customers. They store personal details on customers in a single location to streamline online transactions.

ABC News (Australia)- Face scan set to replace passport check..

A new air passenger identification system that uses automatic photo-matching technology instead of a Customs officer has been launched in Sydney.

The technology is called biometrics and uses body characteristics like fingerprints, iris patterns and face recognition to check identity.

Passengers will walk through a kiosk called Smartgate, place their passport picture on a scanner and look into a camera, which performs verification in less than 10 seconds.

It replaces the face-to-passport check normally done by a Customs official and takes into account age, ethnicity, expression and changes such as hair and glasses.

Privacy News from Wired News - 9-Digit 'Social' Overused as ID.

For many American companies and universities, it's common practice to use Social Security numbers as unique identifiers. But growing concerns over identity theft are pressuring state legislators to limit the practice.

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Faced with growing pressure from constituents concerned about the risks of identity theft, lawmakers are contemplating ways to curtail use of Social Security numbers for purposes other than taxpayer identification.

"The request for a Social Security number is now often made as if it were the most natural thing in the world, when this number is actually the passport to your identity," said California Assemblyman Joseph Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who is sponsoring a bill that limits the ways universities and employers can use Social Security numbers.

Simitian's bill, submitted to the state assembly this month, would prohibit universities from using Social Security numbers on student IDs, a practice that has provided easy pickings for identity thieves.

The bill would also prohibit any employer "from requiring an employee to use his or her Social Security number for any purpose other than taxes," and would raise criminal penalties for those who misappropriate the numbers of minors.

[ ... ]

Several states, including New York, Arizona, Wisconsin and Rhode Island already have statutes on the books that limit how schools may use Social Security data, Hoofnagle said. A number of universities have also established task forces to develop ID systems that keep Social Security numbers secure.