2009 Predictions Scorecard: Via Freedom to Tinker.

As usual, we’ll kick off the new year by reviewing the predictions we made for the previous year. Here now, our 2009 predictions, in italics, with hindsight in ordinary type.

(1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly.

By tradition this is our first prediction, and it has always been accurate. Guess what our first 2010 prediction will be? Verdict: right.

(2) Patent reform legislation will come closer to passage in this Congress, but will ultimately fail as policymakers wait to determine the impact of the Bilski case's apparent narrowing of business model patentability.

Everyone agrees that patent reform is needed, but no specific bill is close to passage, and everyone is waiting for the Supreme Court's Bilski decision. Verdict: right.

(3) As lawful downloading of music and movies continues to grow, consumer satisfaction with lossy formats will decline, and higher-priced options that offer higher fidelity will begin to predominate. At least one major online music service will begin to offer music in a lossless format.

People seem to accept lossy formats. Verdict: wrong.

(4) The RIAA's "graduated response" initiative will sputter and die because ISPs are unwilling to cut off users based on unrebutted accusations. Lawsuits against individual end-user infringers will quietly continue. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Appoints Former Microsoft Security Chief New Cyber Security Czar: Via Threat Level.

It took seven months but President Obama has finally found someone to take the cybersecurity czar job no one wanted.

Howard Schmidt,  a former Microsoft security executive and a one-time cybersecurity adviser to President George W. Bush, has been appointed to the position of cybersecurity coordinator, according to a White House announcement on Tuesday.

Schmidt served as vice chair, and then chair, of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and as Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security for the White House from December 2001 until May 2003, when he reportedly left the position out of frustration that the government wasn’t making cybersecurity a priority. After leaving the White House, he became chief information security officer at eBay. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned: Via Threat Level.

The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 9-2 decision offered Miranda-style guidelines to prosecutors and judges on how to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights while conducting computer searches.

Kagan, appointed solicitor general by President Barack Obama, joined several U.S. attorneys in telling the San Francisco-based court Monday that the guidelines are complicating federal prosecutions in the West. [ Read more ... ]

EPIC - The Nomination of Judge Sotomayor: Via EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center.

On May 26, 2009, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University where she also was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won the Pyne Prize, the top prize for undergraduates. She attended Yale Law School where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She joined the New York District Attorney's Office immediately upon graduating. Judge Sotomayor then entered private practice, eventually becoming a partner at Pavia & Harcourt. She specialized in intellectual property litigation, international law, and arbitration. [ Read more ... ]

Company Connected to GOP and Romney Delivers Diebold Machines to Maryland Polls - Via Threat Level:

A company, whose head is the former chairman of the Maryland Republican Party and is on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign steering committee, has won a contract from Diebold to deliver its voting machines on Election Day to precincts in 14 Maryland voting districts. I filed this story on the deal for Wired's front door.

The trucking firm, Office Movers, is owned by the family-run Kane Company, whose CEO and president is John M. Kane, chairman of the Republican Party in Maryland from 2002 until December 2006 and pictured at right with President Bush. Last November, Kane joined the steering committee for Republican presidential nominee candidate Mitt Romney, who won Tuesday's primary in Michigan. [ Read more ... ]

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, longtime Bush confidante and a key player in the Intensive Care Showdown, announced his resignation Monday.' Gonzales, whose last day will be September 16, had been under fire from the Democratic-controlled Congress since January over politicized firings of U.S. Attorneys and his role in the warrantless wiretapping controversy.'Over the last few months, Senate Democrats accused Gonzales of misleading Congress about the extent of internal battles over the legality of the Administration's secret wiretapping and data-mining, and asked Solicitor General Paul Clement to investigate if Gonzales had misled or lied to Congress. [ Read more ... ]

security.itworld.com - U.S. gov't plans changes in air passenger screening: A proposed revamp of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security air passenger screening program offers improved privacy protections, but the agency still has a ways to go, said one privacy advocate.

DHS on Thursday announced initial plans for an overhaul of its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a press conference. But the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will have direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines, Chertoff said.

"Unfortunately, as a lot of travelers know, this process sometimes leads to inconsistencies in how the list is checked and how it's maintained by the airlines, and the result of that is frustration for travelers," Chertoff said. [ Read more ... ]

An experiment in using sponsored ads for malware: "

After last month’s excitement with the sponsored ads on Google being used to steal bank passwords, a security researcher named Didier Stevens discussed an experiment he’d been running, to see how much traffic he could get using this same sort of tactic, with sort of a reverse social-engineering tactic: He set up an ad that promised to infect your computer upon clicking the link.

[ Read more ... ]

Prostitutes? In Washington? Shocking, and the Internet vibrates in anticipation: "Blog: ABC News apparently has all the phone numbers of clients of an accused call girl ring in D.C. but why are they not releasing them?" [ Read more ... ]

Melanie Ann Pustay Appointed to Director of the Office of Information and Privacy - April 2007: "Melanie Ann Pustay has been appointed to Director of the Office of Information and Privacy (OIP). Pustay is a 24-year career civil servant at OIP, starting in the Department of Justice in 1983 as an attorney advisor. She has served as Acting Director since January 2007 and replaces Daniel J. Metcalfe as Director.

Pustay manages the DOJ's responsibilities related to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which include developing policy guidance and ensuring compliance with the FOIA, responding to initial information requests made to the senior leadership offices, adjudicating all appeals from denials by any DOJ component under the FOIA, and handling FOIA litigation matters. [ Read more ... ]