Chinese webmaster tried for subversion Country Watch- China 'A Chinese website creator accused of posting subversive articles on the internet has been tried in secret in China.' 'Mr Huang published the website, www.6-4tianwang.com. It contained articles about pro-democracy activism in China, the banned spiritual group Falun Gong and the independence movement in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.'

So. Africa Weighs Police Spy Law Misc. 'South Africa is about to approve a wiretapping law that bans private citizens from eavesdropping but hands police broad surveillance powers.' 'Last month, South Africa's cabinet quietly agreed to the Interception and Monitoring Bill, which orders Internet providers and telephone companies to create "monitoring centers" for police, and forwarded it to the parliament for ratification.' 'The legislation, which has prompted an outcry among the country's Internet users, also restricts privacy-protecting encryption products, bans anonymous Internet access, and allows law enforcement to conduct surveillance with minimal oversight.

Web sites fail global privacy standards--US study Privacy from Companies 'A survey of 75 corporate Web sites released Thursday found that none measured up to a set of international standards for ensuring the privacy of customers' personal information. While many of the Web sites surveyed were found to provide adequate data privacy in one or two areas, the Andersen Consulting study found that none met all six privacy guidelines developed between the United States and the European Union last year.

Technology Review - Taming the Web Technology & Sociology 'Nonetheless, the claim that the Internet is ungovernable by its nature is more of a hope than a fact. It rests on three widely accepted beliefs, each of which has become dogma to webheads. First, the Net is said to be too international to oversee: there will always be some place where people can set up a server and distribute whatever they want.

SDMI Code-Breaker Speaks Freely DMCA 'On Wednesday evening, Felten took the stage in front of a crowded auditorium in the lower level of the J.W. Marriott hotel, took a deep breath, and launched into a discussion of his co-authored paper, "Reading Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge."' TechNet 'cast, including PDF of the paper.

DMCA Factsheet DMCA I made a DMCA factsheet, based on the stories posted to the DMCA department, that you may also find useful.

Monitoring of Judiciary Computers Is Backed Misc. 'A special committee of federal judges has recommended the wide-scale monitoring of all the computers used in the judicial branch, over the objections of judges who regard the practice as a privacy violation.' An update on a previous story.

Web bug swarm grows 500 percent Privacy from Companies 'In the last three years, Web bug use has grown nearly 500 percent, according to Cyveillance, an Internet technology and analysis company. The flood can be traced to the number of secondary pages carrying the tags, including personal Web pages linked to large community sites and Internet service providers, the report found.' 'The research highlights a growing conflict between policies and practices at many Web businesses, a potential cause for consumer backlash.

Software Double Bind DMCA 'The law of which Mr. Sklyarov ran afoul makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute a device designed to bypass technology that protects copyright material. His offense was to develop software that can disable the safeguards that are supposed to prevent electronic books from being distributed en masse over the Internet.' 'The law also makes it illegal for individuals to use such a program -- even to make a back-up copy of a book or movie or song for themselves, the type of copies traditionally allowed under copyright law.

A Warhol Worm: An Internet plague in 15 minutes! Misc. '...by simply changing the infection pattern, it is possible for a malicious programmer to build a "Warhol Worm", able to attack all vulnerable machines, worldwide, in 15 minutes. A reactive, human defense would fail before such an onslaught. It is an important exercise to realize just how vulnerable we are.' Believable. Very believable.