A national "do-not-call" list intended to help consumers block unwanted telemarketing calls is moving closer to becoming reality and lawmakers say it will likely go into effect this year.

[ ... ]

Telemarketers say the registry will devastate their business, endangering millions of jobs and sending ripples through the economy. The Direct Marketing Association, an industry group, filed a lawsuit against the FTC last month on grounds the registry unlawfully restricts free speech.

Consumer groups and many lawmakers say the registry has overwhelming support from the public who are fed up with unwanted telemarketing calls.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - U.S. National Do-Not-Call Registry On the Way?

WinkyN writes "Yay! The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a measure that creates a national "do not call" list for telemarketers. Telemarketers are required to check the list every three months and can be fined up to $11,000 each time they violate the law. Now I won't have to ignore my telephone when it rings since more than 50 percent of my calls are from telemarketers." --- Congress is just getting around to passing a budget bill to run the government for fiscal year 2003 (started last October), and we're now in the time period when everything and the kitchen sink gets thrown into it just before it passes. Good to know that there's at least one useful piece of legislation.

Privacy International - The 2003 US Big Brother Awards. Official Call For Nominations

In April 2003, Privacy International (PI) will hold the fifth U.S. "Big Brother Awards" to name and shame the public and private sector individuals and organizations that have done the most to invade personal privacy in the United States in the past year.

Three distinctive "Orwell" statues of a golden boot stomping a head will be presented to the government agencies and officials, companies and initiatives that have done the most to invade personal privacy in the previous year. The "Admiral John M. Poindexter Lifetime Menace" award will also be presented to an organization that has systematically invaded privacy over a long period of time.

Google Watch - Google as Big Brother. Google deserves your nomination for Big Brother of the Year

Hmm ... some interesting statements for you consideration. I have not verified any of them.

New York Times - free registration required Report Suggests Use of Facial and Fingerprint Scanning on Foreigners.

Government scientists are recommending a combination of facial recognition and fingerprint scanning technologies as the federal standard for identity documents to be issued to foreigners starting next year.

The standards, which were Congressionally mandated as part of the "U.S.A. Patriot Act" and a border security act, would be used in all documents issued to foreigners by the "State Department" and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, including green cards, student visas and border crossing cards.

The scientists' report, which has been submitted to Congress, is the first step in instituting body-recognition technology, known as biometrics, as a governmental tool on a wide basis.

[ ... ]

Commercial facial recognition technology had about a 90 percent accuracy rate of "one to one" verification -- that is, confirming that the person being scanned is the same one who was issued the document. It had a 1 percent false positive rate. But the study found that when the photographs were of lower quality -- taken outdoors, for example, -- the technology's accuracy rate could fall to as little as 47 percent.

Facial recognition is not as good as fingerprint recognition in "one to many" searches -- that is, trying to match a single face against a huge database of faces. In experiments with 10,000 faces, the first identification was a match only about 77 percent of the time.

While its accuracy rate was above 90 percent, fingerprint recognition had its problems as well, especially with individuals whose fingertips had worn down, like farm workers, housecleaners and the elderly.

Political News from Wired News - Attempt to Block TIA Goes Forward.

Congress moved a step closer to reining in a Pentagon computer dragnet Tuesday as an amendment holding up funds for the program was tucked into the final version of a bill, the provision's author said.

Last week, the Pentagon sought to head off congressional action against its fledgling Total Information Awareness project, which would scour databases for terrorist threats. Two advisory committees have been set up to assuage concerns about the program's impact on privacy

But Sen. Ron Wyden said congressional leaders assured him that his amendment suspending funding for the program had been included in a massive government-spending bill by House and Senate negotiators, with minor modifications.

The spending package, meant to tie up the loose ends of last year's unfinished federal budget, is expected to go to the floor of both chambers by the end of this week.

"It looks to me like the Congress is getting the message loud and clear from the public, and that message is stop the trifling with the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans," Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "We've been told by the leadership that it is now expected to be in the final bill," he said of his amendment.

The Pentagon says the aim of the Total Information Awareness computer project, which it revealed last year, is to seek patterns in transactions like credit card bills and travel records to stop terrorist plots.

Surveillance & Society Homepage.

Surveillance & Society is a part of a new international initiative to bring surveillance studies to wider attention, within academia and beyond. It is online for maximum accessibility, and because we hope to encourage submissions that could not be published in conventional paper journals such as photographic and video work. All submissions will be fully peer-reviewed to the most rigorous quality standards.

algorhythm - Watching the watchers.

A promising, new peer-reviewed journal, Surveillance & Society, has launched. It’s stated goals are as follows:

• Encourage understanding of approaches to surveillance in different academic disciplines;
• publish innovative and transdisciplinary work on surveillance;
• promote understanding of surveillance in wider society;
• encourage debate and dissent.

Harvard Law School > Berkman Center > Open Education > BOLD - Internet Privacy - Introduction.

Welcome to the archived Berkman Center for Internet & Society BOLD site for "Privacy in Cyberspace" which was offered in the Spring of 2002.

• Intro
• Online Profiling
• Employees Privacy on the Net
• Governmental Collection of Data - Part I
• Governmental Collection of Data - Part II
• Cryptography and other Self-Help Mechanisms

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - ABA Withdraws Consideration of UCITA.

Cognito writes "AFFECT, Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions, is reporting that the American Bar Association has (ed. Link is a PDF file) withdrawn its consideration for endorsing a resolution to approve UCITA, the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act. This is a good thing. It's interesting to note that a recently filed law suit would have been prohibited if UCITA were endorsed and adopted as a common law."

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - House and Senate Reject E-mail Surveillance.

vena writes "The Star Tribune reports the House and Senate today agreed not to allow email surveillance of American citizens proposed by the Total Information Awareness program. Additionally, negotiators agreed to halt all future funding on the program without extensive consultation with Congress."

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - My Short Life As An Unintentional Porn Spammer.

Freerange writes "Mike Masnick wrote up his experience getting slammed by a somewhat new kind of spam attack that doesn't get much hype (yet?). A spammer spoofed his personal email address as the 'reply-to' for a batch of spam, with interesting results for Mike: "I can now answer the questions 'who replies to spam?' and (should anyone ever wonder) 'what are the hundreds of variations on bounced messages?'" From Politech."

Techdirt: My Short Life As An Unintentional Spammer.

Regular readers of Techdirt will remember that two months ago I got hit with a "spam attack" of sorts where a spammer put my personal email address as the "reply-to" in a series of porn spam emails - meaning that approximately 500 bounce messages, autoresponders, and angry replies all came directly to my inbox in approximately 36 hours. It was not a fun experience, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone - but it does appear to be happening with increasing frequency to plenty of people. Two weeks ago, a friend of mine contacted me, afraid that someone had hijacked her email when she was a victim of such an attack. All the major news articles talking about spam seem to ignore this sort of attack. I've decided that since this does appear to be a growing issue, I would simply publish the article I wrote about it here. Click "Read More" below to read the entire story about my short-life as an unintentional spammer - where I explain just what sorts of people actually do reply to spam, and what they say.