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Privacy

No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance 790

Posted by kdawson from the and-you-thought-Sweden-was-bad dept.
UpnAtom writes "People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed, and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to — will be denied passports from March 26th. The Blair government has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons. Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe — more so even than Sweden. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British government to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."
Music

Submission + - Canadian Music Industry Says Its Never Sued Anyone

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Lies from the recording industry probably doesn't count as news, but this whopper from the Canadian Recording Industry Association is striking for how deluded the industry has become. More than two years after it filed suit against 29 alleged file sharers, CRIA President Graham Henderson told an industry conference that "we've never sued anyone."
Media

Submission + - Why the RIAA is Bad - In a Nutshell

Submitted by
JeremyDuffy
JeremyDuffy writes: "This is probably the best summary of who the RIAA is and what they stand for that I've ever heard:

The RIAA is like the Prohibitionists of old. In their view, the law cannot allow for something completely reasonable such as legal circumvention because it could be abused. Millions of people are thereby punished. Yet this is not how a civil society typically functions. Life is full of potentially dangerous products, services, and ideas. It's up to individuals to take responsibility for their actions, because we all know that catering to the lowest common denominator does not give birth to a free society, let alone an intelligent one. Yet the RIAA will stop at nothing to make sure that you and I never have the chance to make such decisions for ourselves.
By "legal circumvention", he refers to the the practice of circumventing Data Rights Management (DRM) for legal purposes such as making personal backup copies, educational uses, and other Fair Use practices. The RIAA is against it because they know that all it takes is one user with a DRM-free copy to post a song online for it to be shared everywhere in the world."
United States

USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon 116

Posted by Zonk from the it's-like-every-einstein's-dream-come-true dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As we've discussed several times before on Slashdot, the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents. It's nowhere near as open as Wikipedia, but there are still numerous comparisons drawn to the well-known project in this Washington Post story. Patent office officials site the huge workload their case officers must deal with in order to handle the modern cycle of product development. Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. 'The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics. Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome.'"
Google

Submission + - Google Searching

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "It appears that Google has taken steps to make smaller blogs harder to search. First, when you do a general search, it does not include a 'More results from X' (in other words, a site search) option unless the site is large enough. This is different to how it used to be because my blog used to get this function, which was great for searching for stuff within it quickly. Next, you can try to do a specific 'site search' on your blog. Then what Google does is it finds the post, but the associated link directs you back to the front page of the blog. I don't know why it would do this except to suppress the contribution from obscure voices???"
Privacy

The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You 256

Posted by Zonk from the i-think-the-shulmans-are-particularly-funny-this-week dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. 'The ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.'"
Spam

Submission + - Free Email Sercives Cashing in on Spam?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I dont't know if you noticed, but whenever the traffic on a free email account on sites like hotmail or yahoo decreases, the level of spam delivered to the inbox increases. Is there a profit-motive there? Or pure coincidence? Going from about 1 spam-mail to about 6 in am month could make you wonder.
Encryption

Submission + - Final AACS key found

Submitted by julie-h
julie-h writes: The PowerDVD AACS private key for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's have been found. This was the last key needed. What does this mean? We don't have to sniff/snoop Volume IDs anymore. We can create a program that can decrypt (or play if you will) a disc without any need for WinDVD or PowerDVD. So no sniffing/extracting of keys anymore. And more over: it can work on all platforms... In other words: we can make our own independent, user friendly player (or decrypter).
The Courts

Submission + - Take Action: Norwich, CT Julie Amero Porn Case

Submitted by aurispector
aurispector writes: Here's a link to an article about the Julie Amero porn case in Norwich, CT providing information, links and suggestions on how to help. http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070228/tc_pcworl d/129226 If you had any doubts about how wrong this is, the article includes copies of emails from a juror and a detective involved in the case. Included are the email addresses of people in government with actual power to do something about the conviction.
Censorship

Google Ads Are a Free Speech Issue 148

Posted by kdawson from the free-as-in-not-speaking dept.
WebHostingGuy writes "A US Federal Court recently ruled that ads displayed by search engines are protected as free speech. In the case at issue, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft were sued by an individual demanding under the 14th Amendment that the search engines display his advertisements concerning fraud in North Carolina. The Court flatly stated that the search engines were exercising their First Amendment right of free speech in deciding what ads they want to display."
Media

Submission + - Ars.Technica Examines BitTorrent Video Store

Submitted by Rocketship Underpant
Rocketship Underpant writes: Ars Technica has given the new DRM-based BitTorrent video store a test drive. For those who may not know, the BitTorrent name is following in the footsteps of Napster, using its name to pursue non-free media distribution. But while Napster had nothing in common with its filesharing precursor, BitTorrent does use the bit-torrent protocol for distributing videos.

So does the new BitTorrent store work? "Store" may be an exaggeration; while it was (mostly) capable of taking the reviewer's money, none of the first few videos that were downloaded would play. Unsurprisingly, DRM is the source of the problem. Windows Media Player experienced numerous problems trying to read and authenticate the videos, even though it is the only supported player. In the reviewer's opinion, the service of the BitTorrent store is unacceptable. What's more, even files that work are rendered practically useless by the restrictive BitTorrent DRM, as the video cannot be burned to DVD or played on other devices.
United States

Submission + - Digital Fair Use bill introduced to US House

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica reports that "US Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) today announced the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (FAIR USE Act). The bill's aim is to help put an end to the madness circulating around the general imbalance that has befallen copyright in recent years."
Education

Submission + - Sub. Teacher Vs. Porn Follow-up

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: This is right out of a Kafka novel. The teacher went running for help. "There's no problem". "Don't turn off the machine". "We're going to put you in jail because of the problem..."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17134607/
One jurer wanted her to throw a coat or something over the machine. Let's see, he would rather she endanger the entire school buy starting a fire (yes, old fashion CRTs are fire hazards) rather than let some kids see some naked people. Won't someone think of the kids?
Privacy

Pendulum Swinging Toward Privacy 72

Posted by kdawson from the watch-that-swing dept.
netbuzz writes "The New York Times reports this morning on a gathering movement to remove Social Security numbers from online public records. While justifiable, given the reality of and concerns about identity theft, it also doesn't take much to imagine how such concerns will be abused by public officials who are strapped for cash and/or ethically challenged."

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