Welcome to BarelyAdequate.info!
Computers are marvelous machines. They have revolutionized the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we live. But that same technology is also disruptive: it threatens to radically change or make obsolete whole methods of commerce; makes it infinitely harder for members of governments to hide their excesses and misdeeds from the citizens they allegedly serve; makes it easier for citizens to secure their activities, records and communications from surveillance by government, law enforcement and corporate interests who have grown used to spying on us unasked; and gives those same government and corporate interests powerful new tools to search for and aggregate data about us.
The focus of this page is to provide commentary on news events that concern the intersection of technology, law, politics and the freedoms granted to citizens by the US Constitution; and illuminate attacks upon these freedoms by bureaucrats, law-enforcement officials, Congresscritters, government agencies domestic and foreign, and numerous moneyed interests. Many of the articles commented on here will also deal with what, for lack of a better term, I call "fairness in the digital age." And because I am a techie, I'll also comment on cool technological happenings in my industry, and uncool ones as well!
Some of those in positions of power — particularly in government, law enforcement and certain key industries — feel that if they are to preserve their power over society and/or protect their profits as we move into the digital age, the law needs to be changed to the detriment of our freedoms! Every time I learn about one of these issues, you will read about it here!
Once again, welcome to BarelyAdequate.info! Enjoy your stay and come back often!
As of the latest update I just posted, I'm "only" three and a half months behind! And now that I'm finally working again, I'll have more time to spend on catching up!
So please bear with me as I attack the backlog!
Click here to see what the Bushies and their fellow travellers have been doing lately to trample on our rights!
July 1st, 2007
Hot Story of the Quarter:
The tales of illegal government surveillance of citizens continue to surface, but challenges increase:
With Congress doing nothing to stop Bush administration spying on its citizens, the citizens themselves have begun to bring lawsuits against the government. But in case after case, the government has asserted that prosecuting such cases would violate state secrets, and some judges are actually buying the argument!
When the ACLU asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to release an opinion on the government’s spying program, the government’s response was to tell the court their only job was to issue wiretap orders, and to discuss government spying programs would endanger national security!
Meanwhile, the government and AT&T attempted toblock the EFF lawsuit against AT&T, claiming that releasing knowledge of their surveillance program would "embolden the terrorists!"
A Department of Justice plan to use customers’ cell phone location data to track them without first providing probable cause was nixed by a federal judge. The Feds were hoping to be able to use cell phones as real-time tracking devices!
Media Wars!
Efforts backed by Big Media shill the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to give broadcasters and cable operators powerful new rights over the content they broadcast stalled in diplomatic meetings.
This is a good thing: according to a policy paper posted by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT):
The U.S. system of intellectual property rewards the production of original works, not the dissemination of works created by others. Offering broadcasters IP-like rights would represent a major shift in direction for US intellectual property law. Despite this, a US delegation from the Patent and Trademark Office and the Copyright Office has been participating actively in the discussions, apparently on the assumption that the United States would likely join the eventual treaty.
The Copyright Royalty Board A rejected an appeal made by National Public Radio and other web broadcasters to reconsider a ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay exorbitant royalties. Under the old rules, Internet broadcasters — the majority of whom are nonprofit groups, small organizations, or individual efforts — paid an annual fee plus 12 percent of their profits to the music industry royalty clearing house SoundExchange. Under the new ruling, which was essentially written by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lobbyists, commercial Internet broadcasters will have to pay royalties on a per-play basis, regardless of profitability, based on a steadily increasing rate from $.0011 per performance this year, to $.0019 per performance in 2010. Noncommercial broadcasters who have 159,140 Aggregate Tuning Hours or fewer per month will have to pay $500 per channel (an Aggregate Tuning Hour is one listener listening for one hour). Noncommercial webcasters who exceed the ATH level will pay at the commercial rate for all listening in excess of that limit. In other words, it won’t pay for them to be very popular!
In a rare example of bipartisan effort, Reps. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) introduced H.R.2060, Internet Radio Equality Act; and Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KA) introduced the companion S 1353, Internet Radio Equality Act to reverse this damaging decision.
An online site titled Rescue Internet Radio, hosted by online media reform advocacy group Free Press, is calling on citizens to sign an online petition to challenge their Congresscritters to support the two bills. Please log on and support this effort.
Will television broadcasting continue to move to the Internet? Given the money being spent on it by major powers as diverse as Microsoft, AT&T, and Google, one has to wonder. Of course, those wondering the most are cable operators, who have until very recently had a lock on video distribution. The problem is, the old model was a top-down distribution system, i.e.: “you’ll see what we give you when we give it to you and like it!”, whereas the new distribution model is bottom-up, on-demand programming, where users choose what they want to see and when they want to see it. As anyone who has on-demand service now will tell you (and I do, through Comcast), cable vendors’ implementation so far leaves much to be desired:
- It’s slow. My connection can take about half a minute in peak periods just to bring up the menu, and On Demand is some times “sorry, not available at this time!”
- Content is limited: By trying to support a wide range of genres to please everyone, the movies and other content offered at any time rarely offers enough titles that I’m interested in. And they don’t rotate additional titles in very often, so once you’ve seen the few movies you’re interested in, you’re stuck waiting until new ones are posted!
- TV content is incomplete. For instance, Comcast currently offers only CBS shows, and then only seven or eight titles at that. Content from NBC, ABC and the other broadcast networks is missing, and the cable-only networks like TNT TBS, A&E, etc. that are available only offer a few of these channel’s many offerings.
In a Gripe Line article titled Comcast Silently Terminates Broadband Customers, tech consumer rights guru Ed Foster reports that Comcast (who I also happen to have my Internet access through) has been selectively cutting off subscribers who use too much bandwidth. However, the cable giant has so far refused to state what their limits are, and what behavior will get you cut off! Worse, they apparently tolerate behavior in some locales that it penalizes in others!
ZDNet Technical Director George Ou, in a article titled A rational debate on Net Neutrality, suggests that we can have Net Neutrality as long as we maintain the "settlement-free connectivity and settlement-free prioritization arrangements where users get to access anywhere on the free and open Internet" that are already in place. In other words, there is nothing wrong with ISPs giving video packets, for instance, priority as long as they give everyone’s video packets the same priority, regardless of source or destination. I agree. It looks like Mr. Ou has staked out a good middle ground in the Net Neutrality argument. Please read this article.
In a policy post to the FCC (PDF) the CDT pushed for an open Internet with, saying,
CDT strongly believes that the Internet’s extraordinary success in facilitating independent innovation and speech is directly linked to the fact that any Internet user can provide content and services to any other willing Internet user, without getting permission from any "gatekeeper." There is currently an active debate about whether and to what extent there is a risk that network operators could engage in behaviors that would undermine this characteristic openness.
Current practices in the marketplace, however, may provide limited evidence one way or another as to the extent of this risk. The present legal framework is still only recently settled, and merger conditions and the political environment serve as significant but potentially temporary constraints on behavior. Meanwhile, the market for broadband is concentrated; there is evidence that network operators can sometimes be tempted to seek to exert more control over their users’ activities than the Internet has typically afforded; and unraveling the effects of discriminatory deals on a purely after-the-fact basis could prove extremely difficult.
CDT believes it may be useful, therefore, to consider a range of possible behaviors and attempt to determine whether there are some that seem worth focusing on as likely sources of concern. The Appendix to these Comments sets forth CDT’s effort to outline possible categories of behavior without expressing any judgments about them.
A recent Future of Music Newsletter reports that terrestrial radio behemoth Clear Channel is attempting to avoid paying performance royalties to independent artists by requiring them to agree to a contract that includes the following clause before its stations will play their music:
You grant to Clear Channel the royalty-free non-exclusive right and license, in perpetuity (unless terminated earlier by You or Clear Channel as set forth below), to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display and distribute any sound recordings, compositions, pictures, videos, song lyrics, still images, Your name, picture, portrait, photograph, band information data, graphics, trademarks, text, information, screen names, profiles, newsletters, gig listings, playlists, podcasts, blogs, broadcasts, messages, software, XML, RSS and links and/or other content (collectively, the "Content") submitted by You to us on this website (the "Site") . . .In other words, unless Big Media is backing you, you have to give up all rights to your music and likeness before Clear Channel will even think about playing your tunes! That’s right! They want to own your music whether they play it or not!
Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Lee Terry (R-NE) introduced HR 2802, Local Community Radio Act of 2007, which would clear the way for the creation of low power FM radio stations. Expansion of free low-power FM has been aggressively blocked by the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group representing television and terrestrial radio broadcasters, who claim they are trying to avoid interference with their constituents’ commercial broadcast stations’ signals. What’s really going on though, is that commercial broadcasters, already beset by declining listener counts due to competition from Internet radio and satellite radio, see low-power FM as yet another competitor to draw away listeners.
In a Truthdog article titled Right Move, Wrong Reasons: Inside the EMI/Apple Deal, Aram Sinnreich suggests that marketing strategy, rather than a concern for users’ Fair Use rights, is behind the Apple/EMI move to DRM-free MP3 music files: apparently, Apple needs to maximum interoperability to ensure the success of its new iPhone! Regardless of their motives, Apple has made itself the trend-maker in the digital music industry, and if they are digging the first shovelfuls of what will eventually be DRM’s grave, I for one don’t care why!
H.R. 964, the Spy Act made its way through the House, and into the Senate. The bill was purportedly to stop spyware. But Ed Foster, in an InfoWorld article titled Spy Act Only Protects Vendors and Their DRM questions why the law is necessary given that we already have many laws on the books to prosecute spyware distributors under, then answers his own question:
A clue can be found in the Limitations section of the Act, which features this rather broad exception:
Exception Relating to Security- Nothing in this Act shall apply to--
(1) any monitoring of, or interaction with, a subscriber's Internet or other network connection or service, or a protected computer, by a telecommunications carrier, cable operator, computer hardware or software provider, or provider of information service or interactive computer service, to the extent that such monitoring or interaction is for network or computer security purposes, diagnostics, technical support, or repair, or for the detection or prevention of fraudulent activities; or
(2) a discrete interaction with a protected computer by a provider of computer software solely to determine whether the user of the computer is authorized to use such software, that occurs upon -- (A) initialization of the software; or (B) an affirmative request by the owner or authorized user for an update of, addition to, or technical service for, the software.
In other words, it's perfectly OK for basically any vendor you do business with, or maybe thinks you do business with them for that matter, to use any of the deceptive practices the bill prohibits to load spyware on your computer. The company doesn't have to give you notice and it can collect whatever information it thinks necessary to make sure there's no funny business going on. And by the way, another exception provision specifically protects computer manufacturers from any liability for spyware they load on your computer before they send it to you. Of course, the exception for software companies checking to make sure you're an authorized user is the strongest evidence of what this bill is all about. After all, in terms of function, there's not much difference between spyware and DRM. Too bad for Sony this bill wasn't already the law when its rootkit-infected CDs came to light.
Another disturbing aspect of the bill is its enforcement provisions. The bill very specifically pre-empts all state laws that regulate "unfair or deceptive conduct" similar to that covered by the Spy Act. Now, the state spyware laws are pretty useless anyway, so that may not seem like a big problem. But the bill vests all enforcement power in the FTC and says that "no person other than the Attorney General of a State may bring a civil action" under the law. Private rights of action under state consumer protection laws are eliminated. So if you're victimized by a spyware-like deception and want to sue the perpetrator, you've got to talk the FTC or your state attorney general into taking up your case.
In a ZDNet article titled Why DRM won't ever work, Google software developer Jeremy Allison says that DRM software is only intended "to obfuscate and hide the fact that the consumer possesses all the information needed to decrypt the file they've just been given," and notes,
Claiming that this process can ever be made secure from the people you've just given all this information to is like believing you can create a secure bank vault by drawing chalk lines on the pavement, piling the money inside and asking customers to "respect these boundaries". The media industries are trying to sell what they consider to be valuable data without any means of prohibiting access to it. This is not a business model that is ever going to work.
Yet another example of the futility of DRM: the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Authority, which sells the AACS decrypt keys for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, is fighting a losing battlewith hackers who have been regularly decrypting and posting the keys online!
With Sony shipping its PlayStation 3 game consoles with it’s Blu-ray disc drives, Toshiba announced plans to follow suit and equip all its laptops with HD-DVD drives.
Eastman Kodak's image sensor solutions group is showing off a new technology that increases light sensitivity of digital camera image sensors by a factor of two to four. This could allow faster “shutter” speeds, and reduce “noisy” picture artifacts.
Apple gave the iPod crowd another device to lust over when it released its iPhone, a “smart” cell phone with a fully integrated music & video player and a neat “drag and drop” visual interface.
While gadget freaks love the iPhone, the music industry has mixed feelings about the device. On the one hand, it gives them another, potentially powerful avenue to sell legal digital content. On the other hand, however, they are concerned that all it does is give Apple even more power over digital content distribution, which they feel the company already has too much control over.
Free Speech Watch
The Supreme Court struck down a Vermont campaign spending law, saying it violated campaigners’ free speech rights. This ruling is likely to require similar campaign fnancing laws nationwide.
The only reference I intend to make concerning the racist comments made by talk radio/TV personality Don Imus, which denigrated the Rutgers University women's basketball team, will be the following thoughts on the issue made most eloquently by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX):
Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, "Congress shall make NO law."
Let’s be perfectly clear: the federal government has no business regulating speech in any way. Furthermore, government as an institution is particularly ill suited to combating bigotry in our society. Bigotry at its essence is a sin of the heart, and we can’t change people’s hearts by passing more laws and regulations.
In fact it is the federal government more than anything else that divides us along race, class, religion, and gender lines. Government, through its taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, racial set-asides, and welfare programs, plays far too large a role in determining who succeeds and who fails in our society. This government "benevolence" crowds out genuine goodwill between men by institutionalizing group thinking, thus making each group suspicious that others are receiving more of the government loot. This leads to resentment and hostility between us.
The political left argues that stringent federal laws are needed to combat racism, even as they advocate incredibly divisive collectivist policies.
Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.
The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.
For over 30 years, the FCC had allowed "fleeting expletives" on broadcast television — you know, when someone is startled and yells "oh shit!" or some such! — without penalizing anyone. But when the Bush administration stacked the FCC with is political friends, they began pandering to the complaints of a very small but vocal group of radical religious right zealots, and suddenly started penalizing every utterance anyone complained about! Enter the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who ruled (PDF) that the FCC did not adequately explain its decision to reverse their long-standing policy. The court also suggested that, as communications technologies converge and tools become available to allow users to "publish" their own content online, the FCC is becoming less relevant.
In an example of free speech being threatened by an obsessive concern for intellectual property rights, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is getting heat for ejecting a newspaper reporter from a college baseball game because he was blogging in real time about the game while it was in progress. The intent was to protect the broadcast rights of the game. But the result was blocking the blogger’s ability to comment on the game as it evolved. The journalist’s newspaper is considering a First Amendment lawsuit.
In a Fox News article titled Straight Talk: Videotaping Police, Radley Balko, senior editor for Reason magazine, warns of a troubling trend emerging: police are arresting citizens who use video cameras or cell phones to record their actions. Mr. Balko calls the trend a "disturbing development," and said:
. . . police are public servants, paid with taxpayer dollars. Not only that, but they're given extraordinary power and authority we don't give to other public servants: They're armed; they can make arrests; they're allowed to break the very laws they're paid to enforce; they can use lethal force for reasons other than self-defense; and, of course, the police are permitted to videotape us without our consent.
It's critical that we retain the right to record, videotape or photograph the police while they're on duty. Not only for symbolic reasons (when agents of the state can confiscate evidence of their own wrongdoing, you're treading on seriously perilous ground), but as an important check on police excesses. In the age of YouTube, video of police misconduct captured by private citizens can have an enormous impact.
This, of course, is the very reason some police and prosecutors would like to prevent citizens from taping their activities! But when police officers are in uniform on the job, they work for the public, and the public should be free to record public servants’ actions when they choose to do so.
Privacy Watch
The Supreme Court ruled (PDF) that vehicle passengers may challenge the legality of police stops on their own behalf. The California State Attorney General argued that the Fourth Amendment only protects the drivers against unreasonable search and seizure. The Supreme Court disagreed, noting that traffic stops interrupt the travel of vehicle passengers as well as drivers, and that "no passenger would feel free to leave" after police detained the vehicle they were riding in.
A three-judge panel of the conservative US Sixth Circuit Court — which covers Michigcan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — struck down portions of the Stored Communications Act, that allow authorities to secretly subpoena ISPs for subscriber information and e-mail contents without a warrant, ruling in Warshak v. USA that access to users’ e-mail is protected under the Fouth Amendment, and that law enforcement must have a warrant, and allow the subject prior notice and an opportunity to challenge said access before searching e-mail archived at ISPs. The appellant, Steven Warshak, was supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and a group of Internet law professors. In the ruling, the judges noted:
. . . we conclude that Warshak has shown imminent threat of harm in the form of continued invasions of his Fourth Amendment rights. This determination is based on the past e-mail seizures,11 which violated the SCA itself as well as the Fourth Amendment, the government’s ongoing investigation of Warshak, and the government’s clear policy of seizing e-mails without a warrant or notice to the account holder. Further, the government’s contention that it would have no reason to seek future disclosures without providing notice to Warshak seems at odds with its refusal to give him any assurance that this would be the case. Although it appears that Warshak made a general request that the government stop seeking court ordered seizures of his e-mails, rather than requesting notice pursuant to the statute, the government could have simply offered to provide notification under the statute, rather than replying with a blanket rejection. It also seems that the government would have reason not to provide Warshak with advance notice of any future searches of his e-mails. Although he has been indicted, and is obviously now aware of the investigation against him, it does not appear that Warshak is in custody, and thus he could have as much opportunity and incentive to destroy evidence now as he would have at any other time. Ultimately, the government’s prior conduct renders it difficult for us to believe that Warshak’s privacy interests can simply be trusted to the government’s alleged "lack of interest" in future searches without prior notice.
In a web page devoted to the case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted:
Email users clearly expect that their inboxes are private, but the government argues the Fourth Amendment doesn't protect emails at all when they are stored with an ISP or a webmail provider like Hotmail or Gmail. EFF disagrees and argues that the Fourth Amendment applies online just as strongly as it does offline.The Supreme Court apparently agreed!
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) sent a harshly-worded letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking hard questions about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program:
This Committee has made no fewer than eight formal requests over the past 18 months - to the White House, the Attorney General, or other Department of Justice officials seeking documents and information related to this surveillance program. These requests have sought the Executive Branch legal analysis of this program and documents reflecting its authorization by the President. You have rebuffed all requests for documents and your answers to our questions have been wholly inadequate and, at times, misleading . . .
Your consistent stonewalling and misdirection have prevented this Committee from carrying out its constitutional oversight and legislative duties for far too long. We understand that much of the information we seek may currently be classified, but that can be no excuse for failing to provide relevant information to all members of this Committee and select, cleared staff. We will, of course, handle it with the greatest care and consistent with security requirements.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Center for Digital Democracy and the US Public Interest Research Group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the FTC to open an investigation into the impact on consumer privacy of the proposed acquisition of Web advertiser DoubleClick by Google.
The Justice Department released a legislative proposal (PDF) to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow the president "acting through the Attorney General," to authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches without a court order.
A very diverse group of 43 organizations advocating for consumer rights, civil liberties, civil rights, immigrant rights, and privacy, have joined forces to launch a national campaign to stop REAL ID, a so-called state drivers license conformity law that critics have called the nation's first national ID system. The groups express a wide number of concerns about REAL ID, including, counterfeiting, identity theft, unauthorized access to the document's machine readable content, increased taxpayer cost, and increased costs for obtaining a license or state issued ID card.
North Dakota has become the second state in the U.S. to ban the forced implanting of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in people.
The Sixth U. S. Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled that portions of the Stored Communications Act, that allow authorities to secretly subpoena ISPs for subscriber information and e-mail contents without a warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court ruled that an individual has a reasonable expectation that the emails he or she has stored at an ISP are private.
A data breach at TJX, who owns retailers TJ Maxx and Marshall's, exposed 45.7 million customers’ credit card numbers, and is being called the largest data breech in the US so far.
EPIC and the Stanford Constitutional Law Center filed an amicus brief in Hepting v. AT&T, which alleges that AT&T allowed the government to wiretap calls and e-mails without a search warrant or other judicial review. In response to government requests to dismiss the case, EPIC disagreed, saying, "The statutes and constitutional provisions relied upon in the complaint are designed to interpose the courts between citizens and the government when government conducts surveillance that it naturally would prefer to conduct in secret and wholly at its own discretion . . . . This litigation should thus proceed, lest the privacy claims here be made effectively unreviewable."
According to a poll conducted by United Press International and Zogby International, 53.4 percent of Americans disagreed, and 35 percent strongly disagreed, with the statement "the government could suspend privacy laws to enable the sharing of counter-terror information that could include private data on U.S. citizens." It's good to see that the citizenry out there is finally begining to get concerned about illegal government spying.
According to the CDT, the Feds have been using the push for immigration reform to back-door REAL ID into pending bills, by trying to add language requiring job applicants to show a REAL ID card before they can work! The civil rights group came out against the idea, saying:
This is precisely the sort of mission creep that we have been concerned about since the beginning of the REAL ID debate. The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed regulations to implement the REAL ID Act appropriately limit the required uses for the REAL ID card to those specifically called out in the statute: accessing federal facilities, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft, and entering nuclear power plants. Yet the immigration bill mandates a fourth use, and there are proposals being put forth to mandate additional uses for the REAL ID card such as receiving federal housing benefits (H.R. 1427).
The immigration bill promises not to "authorize, directly or indirectly, the issuance or use of national identification cards or the establishment of a national identification card." But that is the direction this bill is taking us. Without thoughtful policy restraint, the REAL ID card could eventually be required for every meaningful transaction with government and private entities. Under such a scenario, an individual would not be able to function in society without his or her REAL ID driver’s license or state identification card.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), which represents state motor vehicle departments, also came out against expansion of REAL ID, saying:
These provisions would potentially result in an overwhelming operational burden on motor vehicle agencies nationwide and could potentially threaten the personal privacy of every US citizen by requiring motor vehicle agencies to share customers’ digital images (photos) with employers.
This is an example of egregious mission creep. And it expands the "official purpose" of The REAL ID Act (P.L. 109-13) which is limited to accessing federal facilities, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft, and entering nuclear power plants.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) posted new rules (PDF) to bolster the security of Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), the information your phone company collects about your telephone calls, including the time, date, destination number and length of call for each call you make, and all the other information that appears on your telephone bill!
Representatives Brad Miller (D-NC) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) sent a letter (PDF) to the Government Accountability Office, requesting they investigate the FBI's proposal for a National Security Branch Analysis Center, warning:
The expanded and sweeping scope of the NSAC bears a striking resemblance to the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Total Information Awareness program which Congress terminated funding for in 2003 because of privacy and other concerns. Sharing critical information that can help law enforcement officer’s track down known terrorists is extraordinarily important and needs to be improved. But the NSAC proposes to do much more than simply track down known terrorist suspects. Eleven of its proposed 59 staff will constitute a Proactive Data Exploitation unit tasked with ferreting out "patterns" of suspicious behavior in the data the center collects. "The NSAC will leverage existing data mining tools to help identify relationships between individuals, locations, and events that may be indicators of terrorist or other activities of interest," according to the Justice Department budget documents.
Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of EPIC, testified (PDF) before the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Social Security, urging them introduce legislation to stop the misuse of the Social Security Number, saying:
There is little dispute that identity theft is one of the greatest problems facing consumers in the United States today. There are many factors that have contributed to this crime, but there is no doubt that the misuse of the Social Security and the failure to establish privacy safeguards are key parts of the problem. The Congress should pass strong and effective legislation that will limit the use of the SSN, that will provide effective means of oversight, that will not limit the ability of the states to develop better safeguards, and that will encourage the development of more robust systems for identification that safeguard privacy and security.
The FBI released updated guidelines for the use of National Security Letters after an internal audit found that the FBI frequently violated its own policies!
Legislation, Government & Politics
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)'s WHOIS task force submitted its Final Report on WHOIS Services to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council, which calls for an Operational Point of Contact (OPoC) process to limit public access to domain name registrants' personal information.
Court Cases
A large coalition of public interest groups and trade associations filed an amicus brief in the appeal of a lower court ruling finding that Cablevision's digital video recorder violates copyrights. The brief warns that if the decision is allowed to stand it could stifle innovation.
Cool Tech
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is shipping its "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron CPUs. The initial CPUs will run at 2.0GHz.
Intel has begun shipping a new line of chipsets, dubbed the P35, and new P35-based motherboards seem to be up to the performance standards of its older P965 and 975X chipsets.
Intel is also readying a new gamer platform dubbed the X38 to replace the 975X.
Western Digital is shipping its WD7500AAKS 750GB SATAII hard drive, as part of its Caviar SE16 desktop hard drive line. It’s selling online for about $200 online as I write this, which is only 27 cents a gigabyte! This may be the current best buy at the moment if you need mass storage.
ZDNet’s George Ou posted a nice article titled The role of 802.11n in the Enterprise that does a good job of describing the expected real-world performance of the new 802.11n high-speed Wi-Fi protocol. Please note that, even though virtually every seller of home/small office networking gear is selling so-called "Draft N" gear, it’s based on the latest draft of the protocol, and there is no guarantee that what you buy now will be compatible with other "Draft N" gear from other equipment makers, or the final standard once its published. So I recommend you stay away from "Draft N" gear until the standard is finally published, supposedly in March 2009! However, the date keeps pushing back, so don’t bet on it!
At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced plans to make its Safari Web browser available to Windows users.
Researchers at Purdue and Northwestern Universities have created flexible, transparent transistors from zinc-oxide and indium-oxide nanowires. The new transistors are faster than the opaque silicon components currently used for displays, and are easily fabricated on a flexible plastic base, and could lead to a new generation of fast, super-bright OLED displays.
MIT researchers have successfully powered a 60-watt lightbulb using a wireless power transmission system, a technique with could eventually lead to a whole range of portable electronic devices that can recharge wirelessly.
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a polymer material that can "heal" itself over and over again when it cracks. Applications include long-life plastic coatings, self-healing medical implants and self-repairing airplanes and spacecraft parts!
US Naval Research Laboratory and University of Alberta researchers have developed very small "transistors" devices that use magnets to switch light.
Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab used a new class of "metamorphic" materials to developed a new solar cell that is twice as efficient as current solar panels used in rooftop solar power installations.
Eastman Kodak has developed a new color-filter technology that more than doubles digital camera image sensor sensitivity, which will allow sharper pictures in lower light conditions.
The MIT Technology Review has posted it annual list of Top 10 Emerging Technologies. While Internet video and artificially structured metamaterials are included in the list, most of the technologies listed this year were biomedical: single-cell analysis, neuron control, nanohealing, etc. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, read on!
UnCool Tech
One of the least-loved features of a new PC, particularly a new laptop PC, is all the "crapware" the PC maker installs on it. In most cases, PC makers load up new PCs with numerous software titles of dubious utility because they are paid to do so by the software makers, who hope you will use the usually-crippled version you got for “free” well enough to pay to upgrade to the full version. The payments they receive allow the PC vendor to discount the price of their PCs, which is good for consumers generally, even if it means putting up with a few gigabytes of wasted drive space, and sometimes even compromised performance! Well, ZDNet technical editor George Ou has posted a nice article titled How to fully de-gunk a PC of Crapware that, as its name implies, does a good job of describing how to clean out the crap!
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