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Thursday, February 1, 2007
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'Full-Pipe' FBI Internet Monitoring Questionably Legal. CNet is running a piece looking at what they refer to as a 'questionably legal' internet surveillance technique being employed by the FBI. In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible, the FBI has taken to 'full-pipe' surveillance: all activity for a bank of IPs is recorded, and then data mining is used to attempt to isolate their target. The questionable legality of this situation results from a requirement that, under federal law, the FBI is required to use 'minimization'. The article describes it this way: "Federal law says that agents must 'minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception' and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations." Full-pipe surveillance would seem to abandon that principle in favor of getting to the target faster. [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:36:41 PM 
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Why You & Yahoo Should Like This Human Rights Law.
Regular contributor Bennett Haselton has written in to say that "The Global Online Freedom Act, introduced last year during a firestorm of
controversy over American
companies cooperating with totalitarian governments in China and elsewhere,
was introduced this
month as the
Global Online
Freedom Act of 2007.
When Chris Smith (R-NJ) first introduced the law in 2006, Yahoo was under
fire for recently
turning
over information
to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of a political dissident,
Microsoft was attacked for
removing
pages from MSN Spaces China
at the behest of the government,
Google was being criticized for
removing
political sites
from search results displayed to China,
and Cisco was accused of
helping to
enable
Chinese filtering of the Web. All four corporations
testified at a February
2006 House hearing during which Representative Tom Lantos summed up the
mood of many of his colleagues
by telling the companies,
"I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." The
companies protested that they
had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were
troubled by their own actions,
and -- in a rarity for individual tech companies, much less for a chorus --
they all invited the U.S.
government to play a bigger role, while being vague about what the role
should be." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:19:17 PM
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Solving DRM in the BitTorrent Age. An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has a new article on DRM in the BitTorrent Age. They argue that the movie industry looking for "perfect DRM" should aim for the printed book model (people still buy books even though they can read them for free at Barnes & Noble). They argue that the missing element is that screenwriters are not marketed by Hollywood in the same way the book industry markets its authors." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:14:44 PM
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Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists.
BendingSpoons writes "More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change'
from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more
importantly, communications with Congress. Evidence of this sort of
political interference has been largely anecdotal to date, but is now
detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue Tuesday;
the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans,
stating that global warming is happening and greenhouse gas emissions
from human activity are largely to blame. The OGR hearings presage a
landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007
report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC
report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500
scientists, is expected to state that 'there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change' -- up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; 'The future is bleak', said scientists." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:05:52 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 3/4/07; 9:07:52 AM.
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