Ransom: Customer Data
Privacy from Companies
10/10/2000; 9:57:37 AM

'Jules Neuringer never intended to become a martyr. But that was before Motorola tried to co-opt his customers. Now, the man who spent 30 years minding his own business selling two-way radios in Brooklyn, N.Y., finds himself the unofficial spokesman for a small but growing band of independent dealers in a catch-22 nightmare they say was crafted by one of the communications industry's biggest players.

Cybervandal 'Edits' Orange County Register's Web Site
Content Integrity
10/10/2000; 9:56:39 AM

'Visitors to the Orange County Register's Web site were rewarded with an incredible scoop Sept. 29. Bill Gates, the geek who coded Microsoft (MSFT) from the ground up and became a multibillionaire in the process, had been arrested for hacking into "hundreds, maybe thousands" of computers, including those of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., and Stanford University....

Privacy Digest:
Misc.
10/9/2000; 3:07:12 PM

Privacy Digest has a good link to an article in Security Focus about an international treaty on cybercrime, including highlights from the author of the article.

This is important stuff. It's basically inevitable that we will see international treaties drawing lines; this one is terrifying and I hope it goes down in flames. The article points out that some aspects would violate the US Constitution.

'Following months of criticism from industry, security and privacy experts, the Council of Europe released a new draft of its international treaty on Cybercrime last week. Unfortunately, they don't appear to have been listening to anyone.

'The new draft fills in a few gaps on issues such as wiretapping and jurisdiction, but most of the controversial provisions on issues such as security tools and access to encrypted data are unchanged, or are even worse than before.'

Warner attempts to out-hack DVD hackers DVD & DeCSS10/9/2000; 3:00:24 PM

'Time Warner's home video division has changed DVD's region coding scheme to make it even harder to play movies sold in one territory in another.... 'According to a leaked internal Warner Home Video document posted on Web site DVD Debate, the company began shipping discs with an "enhanced" region code at the start of this month. '"This program is a response to the unauthorised practice of altering DVD video hardware players so that they bypass the region code requirements for DVD," the document states. "This is happening on a more frequent basis in many territories, and retailers are openly marketing these non-complying players with names such as 'region-free' and 'multi-zone'."'

Net privacy laws will have to wait
Privacy from Companies
10/9/2000; 2:50:51 PM

'After handing the high-tech industry important legislative victories on trade with China and visas for foreign workers, the U.S. Congress is set to adjourn this week without settling the debate over one critical issue: how to protect consumer privacy online.'

I have mixed feelings on this; while I would have liked to have seen privacy protection addressed in Congress, I'm not convinced they have enough understanding to make good law right now.

Web-based email services offer employees little privacy
Privacy from Companies
10/9/2000; 2:48:16 PM 'Everyone knows the boss can read all of the email you send and receive through your corporate account.

'Unfortunately, security experts say many employees would be surprised to know that Web-based email services also offer little privacy. Messages sent via a Yahoo or Hotmail account, or through instant messaging products, such as ICQ or America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM), are just as accessible to nosy employers.'

Publius: Speech without Accountability
Free Speech
10/9/2000; 2:35:18 PM

'Consider Publius, a censor-resistant Web publishing system described in mid-August at a computer security conference in Denver. Engineers at the conference greeted the invention warmly, presenting to its creators--Marc E. Waldman, a Ph.D. student at New York University, and Aviel D. Rubin and Lorrie F. Cranor of AT&T Labs-Research--the award for best paper. Publius is indeed an impressive technical achievement: a tiny little program that, once widely installed, allows almost any computer user to publish a document on the Web in such a way that for all practical purposes it cannot be altered or removed without the author’s consent, even by an incensed government. In fact, authors can post files to Publius that even they themselves cannot delete. Yet it is quite simple for any Web surfer anywhere to view files published this way....

The Mojo solution
Technology & Sociology
10/9/2000; 2:22:46 PM

'Still, Mojo Nation looks more a like a libertarian dream come true than anything else that's out there. It is nothing short of the first-ever encryption-protected, user-run, open-source, file-sharing marketplace. It essentially takes the decentralized model of other Napster alternatives like Freenet and Gnutella and adds on a layer of laissez-faire experimentation.

'Home-brewed currency, or "Mojo," lies at the core of this new world. Users cannot simply take and give as they do with Napster and every other file-sharing service. Rather, those who download the free, open-source new release in November must use Mojo to buy and sell content for prices that they themselves determine.'

Why the Internet won't be metered
Technology & Sociology
10/6/2000; 11:00:53 AM

'One of the reasons that the Internet has become so popular so fast in the U.S. is that nearly all users pay flat rates regardless of their usage. But many experts, especially pundit Bob Metcalfe, have argued that Internet access should be metered so that light users don't have to subsidize flat rates for heavier users.

'In a fascinating paper, AT&T mathematician Andrew Odlyzko looks at the history of the economics of communication -- from the English Post Office in the 1840s to the telegraph, telephone, television, and the Internet -- and offers some surprising but well-argued conclusions (see Resources). He says that metering would fly in the face of hundreds of years of history and that the economics of the Internet will not be driven by multimedia content as is often claimed.'

In Defense of the Delete Key
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
10/6/2000; 10:29:42 AM

Wherein a judge suggests that perhaps the delete key should actually delete things, rather then hiding them from the user (and allowing them to be found by later parties), and, failing a technical solution, that the law should recognize that deleted material should not be considered in a court of law (within reason).

I think it's an excellent idea. As the judge says, none of us are so perfect that our every thought and casual comment could withstand scrutiny.