A government report that urges the U.S. Postal Service to create "smart stamps" to track the identity of people who send mail is eliciting concern from privacy advocates. The report, released last month by the President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service, issued numerous recommendations aimed at reforming the debt-laden agency. One recommendation is that the USPS "aggressively pursue" the development of a so-called intelligent mail system.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Trade Commission cannot require lawyers to send privacy disclosure notices to clients, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in striking down the agency's effort to regulate the ethical conduct of attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B Walton said the FTC overstepped its authority when it tried to extend to legal services a federal law that requires banks and other financial institutions to send notices to customers outlining their privacy policies.

The American Bar Association, the nation's largest lawyers organization, and the New York State Bar Association sued the FTC over the requirement last year, arguing that 1999 law - the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act - does not cover the privacy of information that clients share with lawyers.

"Clearly, Congress was concerned about the personal financial information that credit reporting agencies possess regarding customers and the potential unauthorized dissemination of their information to nonaffiliated financial institutions," Walton wrote in a 60-page opinion. "This concern, however, cannot be said to exist for the clients of attorneys."

Walton said there is no indication Congress intended the law to apply to attorneys, whose ethical conduct is already covered by state laws. He also said he would give "no weight" to the FTC directive, saying it was made "without any degree of deliberation, thoughtful consideration or comments from the public."

The Bush administration is appealing to the Supreme Court a Pennsylvania appeals court March ruling barring the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act ("COPA"), the controversial 1998 law intended to make it a crime to place sexually explicit material on the Internet where minors could view it.

The law requires commercial Web site operators to use credit cards or other adult access systems to prevent minors from viewing the material. COPA imposes criminal and civil penalties of up to $50,000 per day for violations. COPA has not been enforced since the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit opposing it.

The Philadelphia court. has twice ruled that COPA unconstitutionally restricts free speech. When the first COPA rejection was issued, the Supreme Court reviewed the decision and ruled the appeals court could not bar enforcement of the law on the basis that it relies on community standards to identify harmful material and the Internet inherently is a non-geographical medium.

I used the CTX 5500 to keep bombs off your plane. I also go elbows deep in your underwear.

[ ... ]

So far I had seen the machines flag plenty of deodorant sticks, toothpaste tubes, and shoe heels, which showed up on the screen outlined in red. I had handled sex toys, machetes, and pistols (legal in checked bags). But the closest thing I had seen to a bomb were manufactured images on the screen created by the Threat Image Projection System, a software package developed by the government to make sure we were paying attention. Every once in a while, I learned, police let drug dogs find contraband so they don't grow discouraged. I didn't much care for the implied comparison.

[ ... ]

The problem is that the CTX flags a whole lot of other things with the same volume and density as some explosives. These include peanut butter, toothpaste, chocolate, golf balls, shoe heels, Blow Pops, and, believe it or not, live crabs. The device also alerts screeners to any item it can't see through: laptop computers, camera equipment, cell phones, oxygen tanks, golf club heads, and physics textbooks.

How flawed is the CTX? It stops 18 to 35 percent of all bags, depending on who's giving the numbers. False positives waste a lot of money; the machines cost millions, and more hand-searches mean more wage-earning workers, raising the total cost of airport security to $5 to $7 per passenger. More important, false positives undermine the efficacy of hand searches. A few alarms a day and screeners investigate every one thoroughly. A few dozen and they become inured to the routine.

wumarkus420 writes "In response to recent lawsuits filed by DirecTV against purchasers of smartcard equipment, the EFF and Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have announced a new site devoted to the legal fight against DirecTV's aggressions. Hopefully, this new site will provide innocent consumers that have been threatened under the veil of the DMCA with professional legal advice and information."

Insurance cheats will be subject to lie-detector tests in a pilot project being introduced by a Edinburgh bank.

City-based HBoS will launch a three-month scheme starting in September analysing phone calls to its insurance hotlines using the sophisticated technology.

[ ... ]

Using voice stress analysis techniques to detect changes in speech patterns caused by stress, the machines will be able to make an initial assessment as to whether the caller may be lying.

A special series of questions has also been devised to try and catch out fraudsters.

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He said honest policyholders had nothing to fear from the new system as it will not be used in "isolation", but only as a starting point for further investigations.

[ ... ]

Callers selected to be part of the trial will be read a short script outlining responsibilities under the Data Protection Act before they give details of their claim. And Mr Hemingway said there will be measures in place to make sure only fraudsters are trapped, rather than those who naturally find making such phone calls difficult.

He said: "The system will be used with a whole host of other ways such as the sharing of information which the insurance industry does as routine.

[ ... ]

But rival insurers, who will be sure to watch whether the system is a success, have already cast doubts on whether the lie-detectors are reliable.

A spokeswoman for Britain's biggest insurer, Norwich Union, said: "We have looked at voice stress systems and we don't believe they are tested, or are effective enough."

And civil liberties groups have also expressed strong reservations about the use of the technology and are seeking assurances about how the data will be used.

Mark Littlewood, campaigns director for Liberty, said: "The first critical thing is that customers are made aware they are under this sort of surveillance. Covert surveillance is very worrying.

"I'm also not persuaded this works, and that it doesn't discriminate against those who are just very distressed."

Albanach writes "HBOS, one of the largest UK banks is to introduce random lie detector analysis of insurance claims according to this article from the Edinburgh Evening News. The three month trial will see calls from its 1.5 million policy holders randomly subjected to voice stress analysis. Those flagged up will then receive a set of questions designed to expose 'potential fraudsters'."