Friday, February 3, 2006

House Prepares to Extend Patriot Act Another 5 Weeks. House Prepares to Extend Patriot Act Another 5 Weeks. The extension would give House and Senate negotiators another five weeks to resolve their dispute over the antiterrorism law. By DAVID STOUT. [NYT > Home Page] 10:05:00 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Schools grapple with policing students' online journals. Schools grapple with policing students' online journals. They find limits hard to draw, and proponents stress the positive uses of blogs. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 10:03:32 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Panel Rebuffed on Documents on U.S. Spying. Panel Rebuffed on Documents on U.S. Spying. The Justice Department's stance could provoke another clash between Congress and the executive branch. By ERIC LICHTBLAU. [NYT > Home Page] 10:01:42 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police. Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police. N.Y.P.D. officers are charging that the police procedures at their demonstrations violated their First Amendment rights. By JIM DWYER. [NYT > Home Page] 9:59:10 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

AOL to Charge Senders for Incoming Email. AOL to Charge Senders for Incoming Email. pdclarry writes "AOL announced on January 30 that it will phase out its Enhanced Whitelist service in June in favour of Goodmail CertifiedEmail, which carries an as yet unspecified per-message fee. Until now, a mailing list gets on the AOL whitelist by following good e-mail practices, such as cleaning up dead addresses, making it easy for people to leave mailing lists, and of course not sending any spam. This is all going to be thrown out the window and replaced with the payment of hard currency to Goodmail. People who can afford to pay this fee will have the privilege of reaching AOL subscribers, others will end up in junk folders. Yahoo is expected to follow down the same path." [Slashdot] 9:41:54 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

The End of the Internet? (The Nation) The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online. white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out. Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received. [...] But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to "meter individual subscriber usage by application," as individuals' online travels are "tracked" and "integrated with billing systems." Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know "the identity and profile of the individual subscriber," "what the subscriber is doing" and "where the subscriber resides." Will Google, Amazon and the other companies successfully fight the plans of the Bells and cable companies? Ultimately, they are likely to cut a deal because they, too, are interested in monetizing our online activities. After all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network providers will need to "cooperate with each other to leverage their value proposition." They will be drawn by the ability of cable and phone companies to track "content usage...by subscriber," and where their online services can be "protected from piracy, metered, and appropriately valued." 9:26:15 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Pay-to Play and the Tiered Internet. Pay-to Play and the Tiered Internet. Crash24 writes "According to an article at The Nation, "industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received." " Tiered internet service may be inevitable folks. Brace yourself. [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 9:24:10 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer. RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer.   boarder8925 writes  "Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life, was sued by the RIAA in Brooklyn federal court for using an 'online distribution system' to 'download, distribute, and/or make available for distribution' plaintiff's music files. She has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act."  [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 9:20:56 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

New York Daily News - 'King Tut's tomb of scandal' opens up as Paris' secret diaries, tapes go on sale Paris Hilton is bracing for her biggest scandal since that 2003 sex tape - all because of an unpaid storage-locker bill. Tabloid media from Britain and the United States are lining up to buy secret diaries, hours of videotape, computers and hundreds of photographs that the hotel heiress left in a Los Angeles warehouse. David Hans Schmidt, the Phoenix-based agent brokering the sale, called the locker's contents "a King Tut's tomb of scandal. I've never seen anything like this." According to Schmidt, the storage facility gained title to the trove after Hilton failed to pay rent on her locker. Schmidt said an unnamed individual bought the contents for $2,775 at a public auction in December. 9:15:58 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Kama Sutra worm File-Trashing Virus Set to Strike. File-Trashing Virus Set to Strike. Kama Sutra worm scheduled to delete data today, but experts say the damage forecast is low. [PCWorld.com - Latest News Stories] 9:11:38 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Acxiom pitched feds on large-scale Web-surveillance project. Acxiom pitched feds on large-scale Web-surveillance project. In 2001, Acxiom Corp. made a proposal to the Justice Department to conduct an Internetwide surveillance of "extremist" Web sites, according to documents released Thursday. [Computerworld Data Mining News] 9:09:44 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

EFF - Government Should Come Clean About Data-Mining Programs. Government Should Come Clean About Data-Mining Programs. Earlier this week, we sued AT&T over its collaboration in the government domestic spying program, subjecting the communications of millions of ordinary Americans to government surveillance. The domestic spying program alleged in our complaint is larger than that admitted to by the government, and numerous news reports have also described a far wider program. Instead of coming clean about the extent of its domestic surveillance, the government continued its cagey defense at today's Senate hearing. Since the domestic spying program was revealed to the public, the government has carefully limited its protestations of a focused surveillance program to "the NSA activities described by the President." The New York Times reports that the government today refused to foreclose the possibility that there are more activities than described by the President: In one pointed exchange, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat, asked Mr. Negroponte whether there were any other intelligence programs that had not been revealed to the full intelligence committees. The intelligence chief hesitated, then replied, "Senator, I don't know if I can answer that in open session." A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress. Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring. "Senator," General Hayden said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." (Senate Intelligence Cmte. Hearing on World-Wide Threat video available at C-Span) As you can see, when the government defends spying on Americans by claiming a limited program, that's not even close to the whole story. If the NSA is not data-mining and the domestic spying program is truly limited, AT&T and the government need to explain what they are doing with the call data of million of ordinary Americans. [EFF: Deep Links] 9:08:25 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Democrats and Bush Aides Spar in Senate Over U.S. Spying - New York Times WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 -- Senate Democrats today angrily accused the Bush administration of conducting a public relations campaign to defend the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program while refusing to brief Congressional oversight committees about the secret eavesdropping. An annual hearing on national security threats, led for the first time by John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, was overtaken by partisan debate about the program. In response to the Democrats' complaints, Republicans and the administration's top intelligence officials said the real problem was leaks about N.S.A. eavesdropping and other classified matters. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, compared the administration's public disclosures of information about the N.S.A. program in the six weeks since it was initially reported to what he described as a similarly misleading use of intelligence prior to the war in Iraq. "I am deeply troubled by what I see as the administration's continued effort to selectively release intelligence information that supports its policy or political agenda while withholding equally pertinent information that does not do that," Mr. Rockefeller said. [...] In one pointed exchange, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat, asked Mr. Negroponte whether there were any other intelligence programs that had not been revealed to the full intelligence committees. The intelligence chief hesitated, then replied, "Senator, I don't know if I can answer that in open session." A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress. Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring. "Senator," General Hayden said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." 9:03:58 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

HNS - Computer Security Today: A Report From The Infosecurity Europe 2006 Press Conference Infosecurity Europe 2006 is just around the corner. Taking place at the Olympia in London 25-27 April 2006, it is the most important gathering of security professionals in Europe. [...] The themes announced for this year's show are the ones you have been reading about in the news for the most part in the past few months: e-crime, identity theft, phishing, spyware, intrusion detection and prevention, wireless security, remote working, VoIP security, risk management and outsourcing. 9:00:14 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []