http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Networking+and+Internet&articleId=9128663&taxonomyId=16
Over the past week there’s been good news for freedom and privacy on the internet. First-off, the FCC is threatening to sue corporations that do not meet adequate standards of securing against pretexting. (That’s where a company will pretend to be law enforcement and ask for private data on customers from an ISP or voip-provider.) Though perhaps negligible, this is move in the right direction against both security breeches (ie: poorly secured databases that give script kiddies access to credit card numbers, etc.) and in the fight against the MPAA, et. al by making it harder for them to obtain information on those they often frivolously claim use p2p to infringe on copyright.
http://www.itworld.com/government/63666/us-lawmakers-take-another-shot-patent-reform
Also within the last week was the return to congress of last year’s failed patent reform plans. Though far from what we ultimately (desperately!) need (ie: ending software patents and liberalizing pharmaceutical ones), this bill would greatly reduce the ridiculous sums of money one can be charged with for violating a patent troll’s patent. (Though the actions of 1-clicking Amazon.com and Linux-FUDing Microsoft are equally as parasitic to innovation as are patent trolls).
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/study-questions-whether-cameras-cut-crime/?hp
More good news: a recent an NYU study puts doubts on claim that CCTVs surveillance cameras) reduce crime. That’s not to say that this study claims that CCTVs are definitively not affective at reducing crime; we can, however, confidently state that there is no significant evidence to prove CCTVs are affective uses of public money. No longer will privacy advocates, have to start their arguments about CCTVs with a concession statement (“yes, surveillance may reduce crimes but … “).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/17/met_cctv/
Now for the bad news in the past week. (well some of these stories may be 2 or 3 weeks old, so I’m using “week” liberally) Police in Airtrip 1 (ie: London) want to install CCTV cameras in private pubs. Well, they tried to at least, and though they failed at doing it, its still disturbing that it was even attempted by the police. There’s no denying that at current Orwellianization (registered trademark of Volt4ire) rates this will soon be considered normal.
http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/277460/skype_calls_immunity_police_phone_tapping_threatened
As for my neighbors across the channel from our neighbors across the pond, there’s bad news for you as well. The EU has announced their intentions to “crackdown” on Skype’s supposed technical immunity to wiretaps. As proprietary software, though, it’s important to remember that this inability might be a bluff, as there defiantly could have been back-doors in it to give “criminals” (and dissidents, anonymous sources, and other do-gooders that are often ignored in discussions on wiretaps) a false sense of security. This has happened before with other proprietary encryptions services. (I don’t remember their name off-hand but Simon Singh’s The Code Book discusses some software from around 1994 they mention the US gov. decrypting a criminal rings’ files because they were given a back-door by the software producers).
