The CDT have issued a new report calling for privacy laws to be strengthened, since developing technologies have made surveillance so much easier.
On the same subject, John Dean has been explaining why the warrantless wiretapping approved by President Bush, should be of concern to US citizens. He's bothered about the widely overlooked problem with data mining of false positives - targetting the wrong people as suspects; and also the potential for hackers to tap into the vast databases of personal information and wreak havoc. He has an unnecessary dig at "young people" for being unconcerned about privacy and concluded by saying his generation will fight for the right to "prevent the zeal of good intention in fighting terror, from letting the terrorists win by permitting the government to take those rights."
He's right about false positives being a big problem. Of equal concern is the false negatives, where those who are plotting dangerous criminal attacks are labelled with a clean bill of anti-terror health. Likewise the external hacker attacks are an issue especially if the system security is poor but of potentially greater concern is the potential for ill-intentioned insiders to also compromise the system. With these big systems you have to look at how they fail - how they fail naturally and how they can be made to fail by someone with malign intent both on the inside and the outside.
Neither, in the wake of reports from Human Rights First, the UK parliament's Human Rights committee, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, is President Bush the sole target of those concerned with civil rights. This morning Andreas Whittam Smith and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent are both having a go at Tony Blair. They're particularly annoyed at the prime minister's attempts to sidestep questions on Guantanamo Bay and US rendition through the UK of US terrorist suspects for torture in other parts of the world. Mr BLair said Guantanamo Bay was an anomaly and that people should spend more time focussing on the terrorist threat to the UK and the US than on the possibility that the UK and the US might be facilitating torture. Alibhai-Brown:
"So, Guantanamo Bay is an "anomaly" is it Mr Blair? Caging, manacling, beating, isolating, threatening, terrorising, torturing 500 - fathers, brothers, husbands, sons - seems to you just an oddity, an eccentricity, a peculiarity then? How could you not choke on your own words and splutter with shame even as you uttered them?"
Whittam Smith:
"If I could know that cruel treatment of terrorist suspects would reduce the risk of being blown up on the London Underground which I use every day, would I say "go ahead"? Mr Blair would say "yes" in case he is blamed for my death. I say "no". I would rather risk my life more than I already do than be part of a society that uses torture or its results for any reason whatsoever."
Monday, February 27, 2006
Sunday, February 26, 2006
The Blackberry saga
John's column in the Observer this morning nicely sums up the story of the Blackberry patents dispute between RIM and NTP.
"...in major terrorist incidents, mobile phone networks rapidly become overloaded and unusable for voice and SMS communications. But the BlackBerry PIN message still gets through (which is why UK government agencies are increasingly enamoured of the technology)...
...the US Patent Office...has now issued non-final rejections on all five of the patents at the centre of the legal tussle. But bizarrely, this is expected to have little impact on the judge's verdict...
...NTP makes nothing, delivers no service, makes no contribution to society other than by paying its taxes. RIM has created a service that apparently offers fantastic benefits to consumers - and may enhance governments' ability to communicate in crisis situations. Yet it's RIM which may go under."
I suspect there are too many crackberry adicts in Washington DC for RIM to go under and therein is the potential solution the intellectual property expansionist problem. The more senators, congress persons and DC staff that get hooked into IP and drm strangling technology, the more they will finally get the restrictions being visited upon the possibilties offered by that technology in the interests of protecting a small number of outdated business models. That's when we'll start heading back towards a more balanced IP landscape.
"...in major terrorist incidents, mobile phone networks rapidly become overloaded and unusable for voice and SMS communications. But the BlackBerry PIN message still gets through (which is why UK government agencies are increasingly enamoured of the technology)...
...the US Patent Office...has now issued non-final rejections on all five of the patents at the centre of the legal tussle. But bizarrely, this is expected to have little impact on the judge's verdict...
...NTP makes nothing, delivers no service, makes no contribution to society other than by paying its taxes. RIM has created a service that apparently offers fantastic benefits to consumers - and may enhance governments' ability to communicate in crisis situations. Yet it's RIM which may go under."
I suspect there are too many crackberry adicts in Washington DC for RIM to go under and therein is the potential solution the intellectual property expansionist problem. The more senators, congress persons and DC staff that get hooked into IP and drm strangling technology, the more they will finally get the restrictions being visited upon the possibilties offered by that technology in the interests of protecting a small number of outdated business models. That's when we'll start heading back towards a more balanced IP landscape.
Friday, February 24, 2006
iTunes Unfair Contract Terms
From Lars Grøndal, BEUC (a European consumers organisation), Brussels, Belgium, "In every day life consumers are frequently accepting standardised contractual and technological terms that they have little or no understanding of. Some of these terms are generally unfair and do not stand up to legal scrutiny. In this article iTunes Music Store’s Terms of Service is used as an example of a standard contract containing unfair terms...
Both DRMs and standard terms are seldom open to individual negotiation – either the consumer accepts them or the consumer will have to take its business elsewhere. If consumers had a wide variety of easily comparable terms this would not be a problem. But as the situation is today, with opaque and often standardised conditions, consumers are facing insurmountable difficulties in obtaining fair terms. Even the legally trained consumer will have trouble getting a proper understanding of all the terms you meet in every day life."
He does a nice job of dissecting parts of the iTunes licence but it's worth remembering that these terms are by no means unique to iTunes. I'd really like to see some of these ridiculous EULAs challenged under unfair contract terms legislation, though arguably, as Lars Grøndal says, "the current legal regime does not fully take into account the unique characteristics of digital products."
Both DRMs and standard terms are seldom open to individual negotiation – either the consumer accepts them or the consumer will have to take its business elsewhere. If consumers had a wide variety of easily comparable terms this would not be a problem. But as the situation is today, with opaque and often standardised conditions, consumers are facing insurmountable difficulties in obtaining fair terms. Even the legally trained consumer will have trouble getting a proper understanding of all the terms you meet in every day life."
He does a nice job of dissecting parts of the iTunes licence but it's worth remembering that these terms are by no means unique to iTunes. I'd really like to see some of these ridiculous EULAs challenged under unfair contract terms legislation, though arguably, as Lars Grøndal says, "the current legal regime does not fully take into account the unique characteristics of digital products."
Home Secretary and the DNA database
Spy Blog asks: "Why not put Home Secretary Charles Clarke's DNA on the National DNA Database?"
"Home Office Minister Andy Burnham has made a Written Ministerial Statement on the National DNA Database
Unconvincingly, he claims that
"Inclusion on the NDNAD does not signify a criminal record and there is no personal cost or material disadvantage to the individual simply by being on it"
If Home Secretary Charles Clarke, or the other Home Office Ministers like Andy Burnhan are so sure that this is the case, then why not lead by example, and voluntarily place their own human tissue samples and "DNA fingerprints" on this NDNAD, to be retained forever, and potentially re-analysed and data shared, without their consent, in the future ?
Why not do the same to all of the NuLabour politicians as well, considering how dangerous these people are to our security and liberty ?
What is a "criminal record" , for practical purposes these days ? If you have any entry on the Police National Computer (PNC), the Police Local Cross-Check, (PLX), or the Information Management, Prioritisation, Analysis, Co-ordination and Tasking (IMPACT) systems for "soft intelligence" being slowly brought in by after the Bichard Inquiry, then you have, in effect got a "police record", which, in practice, is going to be virtually indistinguishable from a "criminal record"m especially when the details are passed on to other systems such as Criminal Records Bureau checks or to foreign governments for "terrorism suspect lists".
These latter systems will usually not be privy to the details of why you are "known to the police" computer systems, e.g. a voluntary DNA sample, and innocent people will be put under suspicion as a result."
"Home Office Minister Andy Burnham has made a Written Ministerial Statement on the National DNA Database
Unconvincingly, he claims that
"Inclusion on the NDNAD does not signify a criminal record and there is no personal cost or material disadvantage to the individual simply by being on it"
If Home Secretary Charles Clarke, or the other Home Office Ministers like Andy Burnhan are so sure that this is the case, then why not lead by example, and voluntarily place their own human tissue samples and "DNA fingerprints" on this NDNAD, to be retained forever, and potentially re-analysed and data shared, without their consent, in the future ?
Why not do the same to all of the NuLabour politicians as well, considering how dangerous these people are to our security and liberty ?
What is a "criminal record" , for practical purposes these days ? If you have any entry on the Police National Computer (PNC), the Police Local Cross-Check, (PLX), or the Information Management, Prioritisation, Analysis, Co-ordination and Tasking (IMPACT) systems for "soft intelligence" being slowly brought in by after the Bichard Inquiry, then you have, in effect got a "police record", which, in practice, is going to be virtually indistinguishable from a "criminal record"m especially when the details are passed on to other systems such as Criminal Records Bureau checks or to foreign governments for "terrorism suspect lists".
These latter systems will usually not be privy to the details of why you are "known to the police" computer systems, e.g. a voluntary DNA sample, and innocent people will be put under suspicion as a result."
WIPO Broadcast treaty debate
A couple of days ago the National Academy of Sciences hosted a debate on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. Unfortunately there was only a small audience.
"First up was Jen Urban of the USC law school, who gave a terrific presentation detailing her concerns with the treaty and how it would not provide for the exemptions and exclusions under copyright law. She also talked about how, since webcasting was not necessarily limited to video, that data could be protected under the treaty, in contravention of this country’s law banning the protection of facts. Jen was followed by an equally excellent presentation by Mike Nelson of IBM, speaking for the Internet Society, who gave a primer on how the Internet and distributed computing work. Mike also talked about how extending broadcaster rights to webcasters would raise a myriad of problems, such as the fact that anybody who sends streaming video over the Internet would be considered a webcaster under treaty. His thesis was that broadcasting and webcasting are different, and regardless of the substance of the treaty, should not be treated the same. Wrapping up was the International uber-advocate Jamie Love of the Consumer Project on Technology, who reiterated the lack of need for the treaty and that it was not accomplishing its intended purpose – signal theft protection. He also chided WIPO for always defaulting to increasing protection, even where it has not been shown to benefit creators or the public, particularly in third world countries. He argued that WIPO has other more pressing matters before it, including the development agenda, which seeks to develop IP policies that help, rather than hinder developing countries."
"First up was Jen Urban of the USC law school, who gave a terrific presentation detailing her concerns with the treaty and how it would not provide for the exemptions and exclusions under copyright law. She also talked about how, since webcasting was not necessarily limited to video, that data could be protected under the treaty, in contravention of this country’s law banning the protection of facts. Jen was followed by an equally excellent presentation by Mike Nelson of IBM, speaking for the Internet Society, who gave a primer on how the Internet and distributed computing work. Mike also talked about how extending broadcaster rights to webcasters would raise a myriad of problems, such as the fact that anybody who sends streaming video over the Internet would be considered a webcaster under treaty. His thesis was that broadcasting and webcasting are different, and regardless of the substance of the treaty, should not be treated the same. Wrapping up was the International uber-advocate Jamie Love of the Consumer Project on Technology, who reiterated the lack of need for the treaty and that it was not accomplishing its intended purpose – signal theft protection. He also chided WIPO for always defaulting to increasing protection, even where it has not been shown to benefit creators or the public, particularly in third world countries. He argued that WIPO has other more pressing matters before it, including the development agenda, which seeks to develop IP policies that help, rather than hinder developing countries."
Biopiracy by copyright
Descriptions of new species are protected by copyright. This can have the effect of making those descriptions inaccessible, beyond the means of many developing (and biodiverse) countries.
Cultural environmentalism
James Boyle has been writing insightfully again about cultural environmentalism in the Financial Times.
iTunes TV shows and iCraveTV
Jonathan Zittrain, who nowadays is spending half his time in the US and half in the UK, is a happy Slingbox user and he's been buying TV shows from iTunes. But he wonders how come iTunes are not falling foul of the iCrave TV ruling.
"I'm in the UK much of the year, and have found the Slingbox to be a great way of watching my home TiVo from anywhere. Additionally, just recently the iTunes store started offering a limited number of TV shows for download. $1.99 for an episode of The Office or Battlestar Galactica works well -- high quality, no commercials, and can be watched without the broadband connection required by Sling.
I tried a few episodes that way, liked it, and then was bemused when I couldn't find the TV shows anywhere on the iTunes Music Store site that's viewed within iTunes. It was as if the project had been quietly canceled -- no link anywhere to the shows I knew had been there a few days before. I finally figured it out: the Store was doing an IP address geolocation, and finding me in the UK, offered me the UK store -- which has no TV. I presume that that's because Apple hasn't cleared the rights for worldwide distribution of these shows -- only US distribution. (I'd be interested if anyone knew for sure.)
I saw a very small dropdown box at the bottom of the UK store that let me select US, and a new page appeared, with the TV shows on the menu again. (In fact, the dropdown box then disappeared, so choosing the US view of the iTunes store is a bit like staying at the Hotel California.)
I was then able to download the shows here in the UK. I'm delighted at this, of course -- but I'm curious how Apple gets around the problem suffered by iCraveTV when it wanted to rebroadcast over-the-air TV onto the Internet -- an activity illegal in the US and, they were prepared to argue, legal in Canada, where the site was hosted. They first used user-provided area codes to determine whether someone was in the US, denying access to those who provided US codes. They then attempted other means to filter -- though an expert for the plaintiffs concluded that a "substantial" number of hits were still coming from within the US. Certainly whatever efforts they made were did not dissaude the federal judge hearing the request by broadcasters from issuing a restraining order shutting down iCraveTV. In any case, Apple is (happily for me) allowing people outside the US to access the US music store by simply finding that dropdown box.
So is Apple in better stead than iCraveTV because (1) the broadcasters aren't upset about leakage outside the US, and in fact still profit from it since "leaked" shows are still paid for; (2) Apple actually has the overseas rights but doesn't offer the shows on its non-US versions of the store for other reasons; (3) Apple has a US credit card on file for me (which doesn't actually seem relevant to the legal analysis if indeed Apple doesn't have the right to ship the content overseas); (4) ... ?"
"I'm in the UK much of the year, and have found the Slingbox to be a great way of watching my home TiVo from anywhere. Additionally, just recently the iTunes store started offering a limited number of TV shows for download. $1.99 for an episode of The Office or Battlestar Galactica works well -- high quality, no commercials, and can be watched without the broadband connection required by Sling.
I tried a few episodes that way, liked it, and then was bemused when I couldn't find the TV shows anywhere on the iTunes Music Store site that's viewed within iTunes. It was as if the project had been quietly canceled -- no link anywhere to the shows I knew had been there a few days before. I finally figured it out: the Store was doing an IP address geolocation, and finding me in the UK, offered me the UK store -- which has no TV. I presume that that's because Apple hasn't cleared the rights for worldwide distribution of these shows -- only US distribution. (I'd be interested if anyone knew for sure.)
I saw a very small dropdown box at the bottom of the UK store that let me select US, and a new page appeared, with the TV shows on the menu again. (In fact, the dropdown box then disappeared, so choosing the US view of the iTunes store is a bit like staying at the Hotel California.)
I was then able to download the shows here in the UK. I'm delighted at this, of course -- but I'm curious how Apple gets around the problem suffered by iCraveTV when it wanted to rebroadcast over-the-air TV onto the Internet -- an activity illegal in the US and, they were prepared to argue, legal in Canada, where the site was hosted. They first used user-provided area codes to determine whether someone was in the US, denying access to those who provided US codes. They then attempted other means to filter -- though an expert for the plaintiffs concluded that a "substantial" number of hits were still coming from within the US. Certainly whatever efforts they made were did not dissaude the federal judge hearing the request by broadcasters from issuing a restraining order shutting down iCraveTV. In any case, Apple is (happily for me) allowing people outside the US to access the US music store by simply finding that dropdown box.
So is Apple in better stead than iCraveTV because (1) the broadcasters aren't upset about leakage outside the US, and in fact still profit from it since "leaked" shows are still paid for; (2) Apple actually has the overseas rights but doesn't offer the shows on its non-US versions of the store for other reasons; (3) Apple has a US credit card on file for me (which doesn't actually seem relevant to the legal analysis if indeed Apple doesn't have the right to ship the content overseas); (4) ... ?"
Gowers Review of Intellectual Property
The Gowers review of intellectual property has issued a call for evidence as part of its commitment to consult widely.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
BMJ and open access
Merrill Goozner laments the end of the British Medical Journal's open access policy.
"Among the four major medical journals, the British Medical Journal is my favorite. It has the most extensive news coverage of the fight against the infectious diseases that are ravaging the developing world, a subject in which I take a keen interest. And it consistently prints iconoclastic studies that take on the medical establishment.
And, until this year, it was entirely free on the web. That made it distinct from the other big-time journals (the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association), which charged hefty fees to view individual articles of interest if you weren’t a subscriber. But, alas, BMJ’s open access policy went the way of the dodo bird this January, leaving medical consumers locked out of all the major journals. Accessing some of BMJ’s original research articles and all of its news section now require a subscription to the journal.
It’s testimony to the poverty of the public policy debate in this country that no one in the mainstream media has yet raised this issue – access to cutting edge medical information – in response to the Bush administration’s push for “consumer-driven health care” through individual health savings accounts. How are consumers to choose wisely when and where to get health care if they are cut off from key sources of information? It’s like sending car buyers to the used-car lot while denying them access to the Kelley Blue Book.
I’m a skeptic when it comes to consumer-driven medicine anyway. Buying health care isn’t like buying a house or car or even legal services. The vast majority of expenditures occur in either emergencies or when the patient, i.e., the consumer, is under the duress of ill-health. If I find myself in that situation, I want a doctor who can quickly guide me to the most effective care and give me carefully thought-out options that hopefully are not based on some drug industry-funded study published in a second-tier medical journal and dropped off in his or her office the day before yesterday by a drug industry salesman (these reprints are a major source of medical journal publishing revenue, by the way)."
"Among the four major medical journals, the British Medical Journal is my favorite. It has the most extensive news coverage of the fight against the infectious diseases that are ravaging the developing world, a subject in which I take a keen interest. And it consistently prints iconoclastic studies that take on the medical establishment.
And, until this year, it was entirely free on the web. That made it distinct from the other big-time journals (the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association), which charged hefty fees to view individual articles of interest if you weren’t a subscriber. But, alas, BMJ’s open access policy went the way of the dodo bird this January, leaving medical consumers locked out of all the major journals. Accessing some of BMJ’s original research articles and all of its news section now require a subscription to the journal.
It’s testimony to the poverty of the public policy debate in this country that no one in the mainstream media has yet raised this issue – access to cutting edge medical information – in response to the Bush administration’s push for “consumer-driven health care” through individual health savings accounts. How are consumers to choose wisely when and where to get health care if they are cut off from key sources of information? It’s like sending car buyers to the used-car lot while denying them access to the Kelley Blue Book.
I’m a skeptic when it comes to consumer-driven medicine anyway. Buying health care isn’t like buying a house or car or even legal services. The vast majority of expenditures occur in either emergencies or when the patient, i.e., the consumer, is under the duress of ill-health. If I find myself in that situation, I want a doctor who can quickly guide me to the most effective care and give me carefully thought-out options that hopefully are not based on some drug industry-funded study published in a second-tier medical journal and dropped off in his or her office the day before yesterday by a drug industry salesman (these reprints are a major source of medical journal publishing revenue, by the way)."
Indian scientist denied visa to visit US
A world renowned Indian scientist who has been to the US dozens of times previously, has been denied a visa to travel to the US, apparently because his expertise in chemistry makes him a potential terrorist.
Free Software, the Public Domain, and the People Who Don't Get It
Is Michael Froomkin being a little hard on the Trading Standards officer quoted here?
Innovation in teaching
From Cory again: "Teachers in predominantly black schools in the US have developed a program to teach fractals by using corn-row hair-styles as examples of the form"
Now that's what I call good teaching.
Now that's what I call good teaching.
Author to finish trilogy as a reader-supported web-book
Author, Diane Duane, has decided to finish a trilogy as a reader-supported web-book, after her publishers decided the market wasn't big enough to publish the book. Cory says:
"She'll publish the ten chapters or "The Big Meow" one chapter at a time, releasing a new chapter every time her donations pot crosses her minimum-to-publish threshold. At the end of the experiment, the supporters will get bound copies of the book from lulu.com. Diane's vowed to finish the book in time for the World Science Fiction Convention in LA this August 23.
The first two volumes of the Feline Wizards trilogy drew a sizable audience, but not enough to convince Diane's publisher to pay her to write book three. Over the years, an anxious audience has demanded a conclusion to the series, so back in December, Diane posted an open question to her blog: would her readers support her if she finished the trilogy without a publisher?
The answer's been a resounding yes -- one reader's even gone so far as to offer a $1,000 matching grant to Diane toward the completion of the book. "
Good luck to her. It will be interesting to see if it works.
"She'll publish the ten chapters or "The Big Meow" one chapter at a time, releasing a new chapter every time her donations pot crosses her minimum-to-publish threshold. At the end of the experiment, the supporters will get bound copies of the book from lulu.com. Diane's vowed to finish the book in time for the World Science Fiction Convention in LA this August 23.
The first two volumes of the Feline Wizards trilogy drew a sizable audience, but not enough to convince Diane's publisher to pay her to write book three. Over the years, an anxious audience has demanded a conclusion to the series, so back in December, Diane posted an open question to her blog: would her readers support her if she finished the trilogy without a publisher?
The answer's been a resounding yes -- one reader's even gone so far as to offer a $1,000 matching grant to Diane toward the completion of the book. "
Good luck to her. It will be interesting to see if it works.
Shopping carts, copyright and the limits of intuition
Derek Slater has been explaining why the "you wouldn't steal the shopping cart, so you shouldn't use the copyrighted work without permission" analogy breaks down, even though it is intuitively appealing rhetoric.
"The point of the comparison to shopping carts is to make us think that whatever intuitions apply to one case should apply to the other. So, if our intuitions say that stealing a shopping cart is wrong, using a copyrighted work without permission is also wrong - in both cases, we're taking something away from the rightful owner.
But what about libraries? Libraries provide free access to copyrighted works without any compensation to copyrighted works. Perhaps libraries should be shut down, and copyright holders should be able to license book-lending services under whatever terms they want.
In general, I bet (or, rather, I hope) that our first intuition about libraries is that they're perfectly justifiable and socially beneficial. If DeLong or others want to push us to accept their analogy to shopping carts, they should also be willing to bite the bullet and say that libraries are at best a tolerable though unfortunate historical accident and at worst unsound policy that must be eliminated as soon as possible; alternatively, he ought to have a clever way of distinguishing this case or clarifying his principle. If these principles lead to ostensibly wrong conclusions, we ought reject the intuitions pumped from the shopping cart comparison."
I fear that copyright expansionists do indeed think of libraries as an intolerable and "unfortunate historical accident" and that we are never too far away from public proclamations to the effect that taxpayer monies are being wasted and the free market is getting distorted by an unsound policies supporting libraries "that must be eliminated as soon as possible." Even in the US, though, such an argument would be still seen as a little extreme.
Update: Derek metions Lawrence Solum's analysis of the ecomomics of intellectual property from 2003 and it really is terrific. Required reading for anyone who genuinely wants to understand the difference between tangible and intellectual property.
"The point of the comparison to shopping carts is to make us think that whatever intuitions apply to one case should apply to the other. So, if our intuitions say that stealing a shopping cart is wrong, using a copyrighted work without permission is also wrong - in both cases, we're taking something away from the rightful owner.
But what about libraries? Libraries provide free access to copyrighted works without any compensation to copyrighted works. Perhaps libraries should be shut down, and copyright holders should be able to license book-lending services under whatever terms they want.
In general, I bet (or, rather, I hope) that our first intuition about libraries is that they're perfectly justifiable and socially beneficial. If DeLong or others want to push us to accept their analogy to shopping carts, they should also be willing to bite the bullet and say that libraries are at best a tolerable though unfortunate historical accident and at worst unsound policy that must be eliminated as soon as possible; alternatively, he ought to have a clever way of distinguishing this case or clarifying his principle. If these principles lead to ostensibly wrong conclusions, we ought reject the intuitions pumped from the shopping cart comparison."
I fear that copyright expansionists do indeed think of libraries as an intolerable and "unfortunate historical accident" and that we are never too far away from public proclamations to the effect that taxpayer monies are being wasted and the free market is getting distorted by an unsound policies supporting libraries "that must be eliminated as soon as possible." Even in the US, though, such an argument would be still seen as a little extreme.
Update: Derek metions Lawrence Solum's analysis of the ecomomics of intellectual property from 2003 and it really is terrific. Required reading for anyone who genuinely wants to understand the difference between tangible and intellectual property.
New dedicated anti piracy police unit in UK
From the BBC,
"A police unit dedicated to combating movie piracy and those responsible for the manufacture and distribution of pirated films has launched in London.
In partnership with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact), the new unit will pursue individuals and groups profiting from the sale of fake DVDs. "
"A police unit dedicated to combating movie piracy and those responsible for the manufacture and distribution of pirated films has launched in London.
In partnership with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact), the new unit will pursue individuals and groups profiting from the sale of fake DVDs. "
Nature article on GIS and Google Earth
There's a nice (if a little too upbeat) article in last weeks Nature about Google Earth and geographic information systems (GIS) software. It focusses on their potential value for scientists, particularly in relation to environmental monitoring but this is exactly where computing based networked information systems can really have an impact in education too. A picture paints a thousand words and if we start tapping into the real possibilities for explaining abtract concepts through the kind of visual representation that these kinds of tools make possible, then even the skeptics like teacher Peter Berger, may begin to realise we have not even scratched the surface of their (and our) potential.
Thanks to my colleague Dick Morris for the link.
Thanks to my colleague Dick Morris for the link.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Strict liability for data breaches?
Mark Rasch, of SecurityFocus asks if there should be Strict liability for data breaches?
The magic silicon bullet in the classroom
One teacher, Peter Berger, thinks we should be careful about getting dazzled by what computers are being used for in schools, and perhaps focus instead on what they are useful for and more importantly what they can't and shouldn't do.
"Consider, for example, data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which estimate that twenty-three percent of preschoolers have used the Internet "before they can even read." This makes preschoolers "the largest group of new users," a distinction which thrills the Department's technology overseer. She's especially pleased that "young students don't differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world."
Excuse me, but don't we want small children to recognize the difference between a picture and a real person? That used to be an important stage in cognitive development.
Sympathetic boosters like the director of one Washington, D.C., preschool center chime in that computers teach toddlers problem solving, hand eye coordination, and "the social component of working together." Come on. Does anybody seriously pretend that crowding around a computer monitor is the best or only way to teach that stuff...
At the undergraduate level a new device, the wireless clicker, is debuting in classes. With this gizmo the professor asks a question, and the students press their "yes," "no," or multiple choice answer buttons. A few minutes later their votes materialize as a bar graph on an overhead screen."
The gizmo apparently eases fears of giving the wrong answer.
"Consider, for example, data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which estimate that twenty-three percent of preschoolers have used the Internet "before they can even read." This makes preschoolers "the largest group of new users," a distinction which thrills the Department's technology overseer. She's especially pleased that "young students don't differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world."
Excuse me, but don't we want small children to recognize the difference between a picture and a real person? That used to be an important stage in cognitive development.
Sympathetic boosters like the director of one Washington, D.C., preschool center chime in that computers teach toddlers problem solving, hand eye coordination, and "the social component of working together." Come on. Does anybody seriously pretend that crowding around a computer monitor is the best or only way to teach that stuff...
At the undergraduate level a new device, the wireless clicker, is debuting in classes. With this gizmo the professor asks a question, and the students press their "yes," "no," or multiple choice answer buttons. A few minutes later their votes materialize as a bar graph on an overhead screen."
The gizmo apparently eases fears of giving the wrong answer.
Irish ID card plans shelved
The Irish government have apparently shelved plans for an ID card scheme.
The Memo
Jane Mayer at the New Yorker has the story of how an internal effort on the part of some Bush administration lawyers to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted. (Don't be surprised if the link dies. New Yorker story links have a limited life).
Thanks to Michael Froomkin for the link.
Thanks to Michael Froomkin for the link.
Anagram tube map nastygrammed off the Net
From Cory,
"The hilarious remixed London Tube map that substituted anagrams of the station names has been censored off the Internet by lawyers working for Transport for London. The page now reads, "Content removed at the request of Healeys Solicitors acting on behalf of Transport for London and Transport Trading Ltd."
I blogged the map last week -- it was one of the funniest and most creative re-uses of the familiar map I'd ever seen. The London Tube Map is part of the culture of London, a genius work of information design that is as familiar to a Londoner as the familiar pub designs and the black cabs. Like all culture, it's subject to being remixed by playful citizens and artists.
No one made money from the anagram map (in fact, serving a big PDF to lots of people can cost a lot of money). Instead, we Londoners shared the map on a noncommercial basis the same way you would any clever joke or song or poster about the world around you. It's shameful for Transport for London to have abused UK trademark law to engage in rank censorship. It should celebrate the creativity of its riders, not punish it."
"The hilarious remixed London Tube map that substituted anagrams of the station names has been censored off the Internet by lawyers working for Transport for London. The page now reads, "Content removed at the request of Healeys Solicitors acting on behalf of Transport for London and Transport Trading Ltd."
I blogged the map last week -- it was one of the funniest and most creative re-uses of the familiar map I'd ever seen. The London Tube Map is part of the culture of London, a genius work of information design that is as familiar to a Londoner as the familiar pub designs and the black cabs. Like all culture, it's subject to being remixed by playful citizens and artists.
No one made money from the anagram map (in fact, serving a big PDF to lots of people can cost a lot of money). Instead, we Londoners shared the map on a noncommercial basis the same way you would any clever joke or song or poster about the world around you. It's shameful for Transport for London to have abused UK trademark law to engage in rank censorship. It should celebrate the creativity of its riders, not punish it."
Recommending draconian laws for the chop
Ian Brown and Spyblog have been drawing up a partial list of laws they'd like to see repealed in the interests of liberty in the UK.
Jenkins on Bush Blair and Bin Laden
Simon Jenkins has been unkind to George W. and Tony again but at least he was being optimistic about the future this time:
"There never was a “terrorist threat” to western civilisation or democracy, only to western lives and property. The threat becomes systemic only when democracy loses its confidence and when its leaders are weak, as now. Terror attacks are for the police. For George Bush and Blair to demand a “long war” against Bin Laden and, by implication, a long suppression of civil liberty is ludicrous. Western civilisation is not some simpering weakling that cowers before a fanatic ’s might, pleading for leaders to protect it by all means, however illegal. It has been proof against Islamic expansionism since the 17th century. It is not at risk.
The American president and the British prime minister have spent half a decade exploiting Bin Laden for political ends, in thrall to their security/industrial complex. They have relied on terrifying their electorates with new and bloodcurdling threats, with what Runciman calls “spook politics”. But they will pass. The half-baked “message” laws passed by Britain’s limp parliament last week will fall in disuse. The vitality of British and American democracy has always been its ability to produce antibodies when truly challenged by an internal or external menace. The West will rediscover its self-belief and restore the liberalism, properly defined as freedom, that it once exemplified to the world.
Bin Laden is not going to win and never was. But Bush and Blair are giving him an astonishing run for his money."
"There never was a “terrorist threat” to western civilisation or democracy, only to western lives and property. The threat becomes systemic only when democracy loses its confidence and when its leaders are weak, as now. Terror attacks are for the police. For George Bush and Blair to demand a “long war” against Bin Laden and, by implication, a long suppression of civil liberty is ludicrous. Western civilisation is not some simpering weakling that cowers before a fanatic ’s might, pleading for leaders to protect it by all means, however illegal. It has been proof against Islamic expansionism since the 17th century. It is not at risk.
The American president and the British prime minister have spent half a decade exploiting Bin Laden for political ends, in thrall to their security/industrial complex. They have relied on terrifying their electorates with new and bloodcurdling threats, with what Runciman calls “spook politics”. But they will pass. The half-baked “message” laws passed by Britain’s limp parliament last week will fall in disuse. The vitality of British and American democracy has always been its ability to produce antibodies when truly challenged by an internal or external menace. The West will rediscover its self-belief and restore the liberalism, properly defined as freedom, that it once exemplified to the world.
Bin Laden is not going to win and never was. But Bush and Blair are giving him an astonishing run for his money."
Feedburner RSS feed problems
I seem to be having problems with my RSS feed which doesn't appear to be automatically picking up new posts here. I'm having to go to Feedburner and update manually. If anyone's newsreader is not picking up B2fxxx readings as regularly as previously could you let me know. It's certainly a problem with the Firefox Sage newsreader and it would be useful to see which others it affects too. Thanks.
The Secrets of Harry Potter
As a long since lapsed Catholic I'm reminded that Fr. Roderick of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, in the Netherlands was the kind of priest that my friends and I could relate to growing up. He runs the Catholic Insider podcast, which includes a series of interesting podcasts on the mythology and symbols in the Harry Potter books and the Star Wars films.
It's a much neater way of communicating with a young audience than trying to get the books banned and convince them that J.K. Rowling's engaging works are somehow evil and dangerous, as the Christian Right in the US have been doing for years.
It's a much neater way of communicating with a young audience than trying to get the books banned and convince them that J.K. Rowling's engaging works are somehow evil and dangerous, as the Christian Right in the US have been doing for years.
Monbiot on RFID tags, ID cards and sheeple
George Monbiot has been worrying about the creeping erosion of civil liberties that will be facilitated by technology and the apathy of the general population to such developments, such as biometric ID cards and implanted RFID tags.
He's right, if a little dramatic in the interest of telling a story but as has been repeated ad nauseum by various respected historical figures, constant vigilance is the price of liberty. If we don't have the energy or interest to shape our own society, then other forces will do so.
He's right, if a little dramatic in the interest of telling a story but as has been repeated ad nauseum by various respected historical figures, constant vigilance is the price of liberty. If we don't have the energy or interest to shape our own society, then other forces will do so.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Schneier on ID cards and slightly fatter wallets
Bruce Schneier, with his usual clarity, has been explaining why ID cards will not cure Fat-Wallet Syndrome.
"..neither a national ID nor a biometric system will ever replace the decks of plastic and paper that crowd our wallets.
For starters, the uniqueness of the cards provides important security to the issuers. Everyone has different rules for card issuance, expiration and revocation, and everyone wants to be in control of their own cards. If you lose control, you lose security...
Another reason is reliability. Your credit card company doesn't want your ability to make purchases to disappear if you have your driver's license revoked.Your airline doesn't want your frequent-flier account to depend on a particular credit card. And no one wants the liability of having their application depend on someone else's infrastructure, or having their infrastructure support someone else's application.
But security and reliability are only secondary concerns. If it made smart business sense for companies to piggyback on existing cards, they would find a way around the security concerns. The reason they don't boils down to one word: branding.
My airline wants a card with its logo on it in my wallet. So does my rental car company, my supermarket and everyone else I do business with...
The companies give you their own card partly because they want complete control of the rules around their own system, but mostly because they want you to carry around a small piece of advertising in your wallet...
That's why you still have a dozen different cards in your wallet. And countries that have national IDs give their citizens yet another card to carry around in their wallets -- and not a replacement for something else."
"..neither a national ID nor a biometric system will ever replace the decks of plastic and paper that crowd our wallets.
For starters, the uniqueness of the cards provides important security to the issuers. Everyone has different rules for card issuance, expiration and revocation, and everyone wants to be in control of their own cards. If you lose control, you lose security...
Another reason is reliability. Your credit card company doesn't want your ability to make purchases to disappear if you have your driver's license revoked.Your airline doesn't want your frequent-flier account to depend on a particular credit card. And no one wants the liability of having their application depend on someone else's infrastructure, or having their infrastructure support someone else's application.
But security and reliability are only secondary concerns. If it made smart business sense for companies to piggyback on existing cards, they would find a way around the security concerns. The reason they don't boils down to one word: branding.
My airline wants a card with its logo on it in my wallet. So does my rental car company, my supermarket and everyone else I do business with...
The companies give you their own card partly because they want complete control of the rules around their own system, but mostly because they want you to carry around a small piece of advertising in your wallet...
That's why you still have a dozen different cards in your wallet. And countries that have national IDs give their citizens yet another card to carry around in their wallets -- and not a replacement for something else."
Latest EDRI-gram available
The latest EDRI-gram newsletter has been published, including this from Ian Brown:
"DVD circumvention device released in Ireland
SlySoft, a company registered in Ireland, has released software that allows users to convert their own DVDs to formats they can watch on mobile phones, Playstation Portables, video iPods and similar devices.
This is one of the first examples seen in the wild of a "circumvention device" which bypasses the copy restriction technology contained in the DVD format - something that is illegal under the Irish law transposing the European Union Copyright Directive of 2001.
Those publishing DVDs now have the right to sue SlySoft for copyright infringement. Will they risk the bad publicity and possibility that Irish courts might set a precedent not to their liking?"
"DVD circumvention device released in Ireland
SlySoft, a company registered in Ireland, has released software that allows users to convert their own DVDs to formats they can watch on mobile phones, Playstation Portables, video iPods and similar devices.
This is one of the first examples seen in the wild of a "circumvention device" which bypasses the copy restriction technology contained in the DVD format - something that is illegal under the Irish law transposing the European Union Copyright Directive of 2001.
Those publishing DVDs now have the right to sue SlySoft for copyright infringement. Will they risk the bad publicity and possibility that Irish courts might set a precedent not to their liking?"
Kazaa back in court down under
The Kazaa Australia case is back in court today and the hearing could last 5 days.
Copyright and Access to Knowledge
The Consumers International Asia Pacific Office in Kuala Lumpur has issued a report, Copyright and Access to Knowledge, assessing the state of copyright law in 11 Asian countries. It is a sobering study and IMHO gets to the heart of some of the key difficulties with copyright today.
Amongst other things the report compares the relative costs of books in Indonesia, Thailand and the US. Relative to average incomes, a student paying $80 for a book in Indonesia would be the equivalent of a US student paying nearly $3200 for the same book in the US. As the Executive Summary states,
"Access to knowledge is critical for developing countries that seek to educate their masses. Educational materails therefore need to be made accessible to the public. Unfortunately the international copyright regime has developed in a manner to increasingly curtail access."
We have been blind to this massive economic barrier to access to information for generations because it has mainly been a problem for developing nations, out of sight and out of mind. Some people (a small minority in the scheme of things) are only really waking up to it now because of the work of folks like Larry Lessig and James Boyle on the impact of developments in intellectual property policy in our embryonic knowledge society. But these barriers will become increasing problems in our digital society unless we get serious about developing a balanced IP landscape.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation come in for some serious stick in the report too, with the conclusion that WIPO's technical assistance to the countries that were the subject of the study was "thoroughly inadequate" leading the countries concerned to provide far more protection to copyright owners than the treaties which they signed up to required.
Amongst other things the report compares the relative costs of books in Indonesia, Thailand and the US. Relative to average incomes, a student paying $80 for a book in Indonesia would be the equivalent of a US student paying nearly $3200 for the same book in the US. As the Executive Summary states,
"Access to knowledge is critical for developing countries that seek to educate their masses. Educational materails therefore need to be made accessible to the public. Unfortunately the international copyright regime has developed in a manner to increasingly curtail access."
We have been blind to this massive economic barrier to access to information for generations because it has mainly been a problem for developing nations, out of sight and out of mind. Some people (a small minority in the scheme of things) are only really waking up to it now because of the work of folks like Larry Lessig and James Boyle on the impact of developments in intellectual property policy in our embryonic knowledge society. But these barriers will become increasing problems in our digital society unless we get serious about developing a balanced IP landscape.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation come in for some serious stick in the report too, with the conclusion that WIPO's technical assistance to the countries that were the subject of the study was "thoroughly inadequate" leading the countries concerned to provide far more protection to copyright owners than the treaties which they signed up to required.
Simon Davies steps down from NO2ID Board
Simon Davies has stepped down as chairman of the NO2ID campaign advisory board because he was concerned that the government might use him to discredit the campaign, just as they have been doing in their attempts to discredit the LSE Identity Project.
What I had not realised was how much the government attacks have cost Simon Davies personally. He has lost a lot of consultancy work and had a huge drop in income as a result of the attacks. He has also had to move house and give away his dog. I'm not surprised he is considering legal action against government ministers. It's an appalling state of affairs.
What I had not realised was how much the government attacks have cost Simon Davies personally. He has lost a lot of consultancy work and had a huge drop in income as a result of the attacks. He has also had to move house and give away his dog. I'm not surprised he is considering legal action against government ministers. It's an appalling state of affairs.
Cowardly to attack Christianity and not Islam
Nick Cohen directed his typical brand of insightful polemic at the international uproar caused by a Danish newspaper printing of cartoons featuring the profit Mohammed. I have no time for violence excused by perpetrators claiming their religious sensibilities have been disturbed and Cohen has a very important point to make about UK media in relation to this situation. His argument is that Catholics, Jews, politicians and British troops are safe targets for journalists because they won't resort to violence (against those journalists) but in the current political climate some extremists, who claim to be acting in defence of Islam, will.
"Newspaper editors will print pictures of servicemen beating up demonstrators in Basra, which may place the lives of British troops in danger, but not Danish cartoons, which may place their own lives in danger.
You can't be a little bit free. If you are not willing to offend Islamists who may kill you, what excuse do you have for offending...British troops who won't?"
"Newspaper editors will print pictures of servicemen beating up demonstrators in Basra, which may place the lives of British troops in danger, but not Danish cartoons, which may place their own lives in danger.
You can't be a little bit free. If you are not willing to offend Islamists who may kill you, what excuse do you have for offending...British troops who won't?"
HBO call for ban on DVR copying
HBO have apparently called for a total ban on digtal copying of "Subscription Video On Demand" services. No comment.
Secure Flight Suspended
The latest US passenger screening programme, Secure Flight, has been suspended due to security concerns. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit discovered that the "TSA may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information."
The US government's own 'Secure Flight Working Group on Privacy and Security' had already determined as much and more, as had another GAO report. The Working Group's report was originally posted on the TSA website but got removed and replaced with an "Executive Summary" which failed to mention the group's main findings. Bruce Schneier, who was a member of the working group, has more to say on the subject of Secure Flight and aircraft security.
The US government's own 'Secure Flight Working Group on Privacy and Security' had already determined as much and more, as had another GAO report. The Working Group's report was originally posted on the TSA website but got removed and replaced with an "Executive Summary" which failed to mention the group's main findings. Bruce Schneier, who was a member of the working group, has more to say on the subject of Secure Flight and aircraft security.
Ndyio in Bangladesh
The first Ndiyo-based Community Information Centre has opened in Bangladesh: a four-screen internet cafe with internet connectivity via a mobile phone. Let's hope it's the first of many, not least because of the coming energy crisis. One of Ndyio's many positive qualities is that it is significantly less energy intensive that the widely accepted Wintel alternative.
Stiglitz: US the elephant in the room on global warming
Nobel prize winner and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, believes that the way to get the US to start acting responsibly on global warming is to get the WTO to sanction them for breach of international trade rules. It's a clever argument - that the US government's refusal to actively engage in reducing carbon emissions constitutes a de facto subsidy to US industry. Such subsidies are illegal under the WTO's trade rules. It's a great pity it is unlikely to happen, not that the current simplistic focus on carbon emissions is sufficient to tackle the complex systemic problem of environmental degradation, but it would be a start.
The Lion Sleeps
'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' is apparently one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century. There were nearly 180 versions, and it was also included in 14 films and a very popular West End/Broadway musical. Yet the original creator, Solomon Linda, never benefited from its success. Linda recorded the song sometime in the 1930s in Johannesburg, a time when blacks were not allowed to receive roylaties. He and his band were given a small amount of money for the rights to the song, which became an instant hit in South Africa. The Weavers popularised the song in the US in the 1950s and a version recorded by The Tokens in 1961 went to number one in the US charts. Solomon Linda died in poverty less than a year later.
Linda's family, however, have now settled a legal dispute with Disney and other US rights holders agreeing to pay compensation in the six figure bracket, including "back payments for royalties as well as future payments."
Nice to see copyright serving the underdog for a change.
Linda's family, however, have now settled a legal dispute with Disney and other US rights holders agreeing to pay compensation in the six figure bracket, including "back payments for royalties as well as future payments."
Nice to see copyright serving the underdog for a change.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Proposed law targets tech-China cooperation
Declan McCullagh reports: "Proposed law targets tech-China cooperation."
After Senate hearings where the big US tech cos. including Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Cisco were criticised for facilitating the abuse of civil liberties in China, there is now a bill, called the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006, being proposed to limit these activities. Don't bet on it surviving too long, particulary not in its reported current state.
After Senate hearings where the big US tech cos. including Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Cisco were criticised for facilitating the abuse of civil liberties in China, there is now a bill, called the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006, being proposed to limit these activities. Don't bet on it surviving too long, particulary not in its reported current state.
325000 names on US terrorism list
The Washington Post says that there are 325000 names on the US National Counterterrorism Center database of terrorist suspects.
More drm security woes
From Heise online: "Two German Video-DVDs use a new copy protection scheme which creates a security risk on Windows machines. The copy protection mechanism called Alpha-DVD was developed by Settec, a Korean company spun off from electronics giant LG."
Searchable digital archives
The Stanford Technology Law Review has an interesting article, No Analog Analogue: Searchable Digital Archives and Amazon's Search Inside the Book by Jonathan Kerry-Tyerman, of the University of San Francisco.
He argues that the Amazon "Search Inside" the book feature actually infringes current copyright law but that because it serves the purposes of copyright law, as stated in the US Constitution, that it should not create liability for the providers of such programs. It's a neat argument and it has been made before but it doesn't always persuade the courts. Google v the publishers, in the Google Book search case, has the potential to provide a clear line in the law. It remains to be seen whether the opportunity is grasped.
He argues that the Amazon "Search Inside" the book feature actually infringes current copyright law but that because it serves the purposes of copyright law, as stated in the US Constitution, that it should not create liability for the providers of such programs. It's a neat argument and it has been made before but it doesn't always persuade the courts. Google v the publishers, in the Google Book search case, has the potential to provide a clear line in the law. It remains to be seen whether the opportunity is grasped.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
ID cards in the UK within two years
The ID card bill got through the Commons yesterday. It's a shame that Gordon Brown, no lover of the ridiculous scheme to say the least, has now decided as part of some handover deal with the Prime Minister, that he will be a leading public advocate for it. In recent days he's been uncharacteristically energetically dishing out all the tired and baseless soundbites about how ID cards will combat terrorism and benefit fraud etc. He's no doubt been convinced that it will be a convenient "he opposed ID cards, he's soft on terrorism" soundbite to throw at Tory leader David Cameron when the campaign for the next election comes along in three years or so. It's a decision he'll eventually come to rue, though, as this is one expensive white elephant of an information system, which will almost certainly cause at least as many political problems for the New Labour government, as the poll tax did for the Tories. With a £19 billion price tag (the most trustworthy estimate has got to be the LSE's) that will only grow, and the hassle it will cause so many people.
On the bright side, this one information system will provide technology academics with a hugely rich source of "how not to do it" case study material for years. Though I'd seriously prefer it if they somehow, even at this late stage, found some excuse to extricate themselves, in advance, from the predictable political disaster to come.
Update: Ian Brown, as usual, has some useful things to say on the subject.
On the bright side, this one information system will provide technology academics with a hugely rich source of "how not to do it" case study material for years. Though I'd seriously prefer it if they somehow, even at this late stage, found some excuse to extricate themselves, in advance, from the predictable political disaster to come.
Update: Ian Brown, as usual, has some useful things to say on the subject.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation
The EFF are warning that a new "feature" of the Google desktop software is a serious privacy risk.
Agreement Reached on Patriot Act Changes
With neither the Democrats nor the Republicans wanting a debate on the renewal of the PARTIOT Act to be an issue in this year's elections, (particularly those opposing its renewal due to concerns about civil liberties), it looks like they have reached an agreement on implementing changes to the Act.
Spyware warriors call for action
From the BBC, Spyware warriors call for action.
"Computer users whose machines have been hijacked by potentially dangerous software are being asked to add their tales of woe to an online campaign.
Security experts say that growing numbers are being conned into paying for fake anti-spyware programs.
Now grassroots online security activists in the UK hope testimonies can raise awareness of the problem. "
Good idea. IF you'd like to get a decent understanding of malware and this kind of cybervandalism, we run a 10 week online course on it at the Open University. Details of how to sign up etc can be found here.
"Computer users whose machines have been hijacked by potentially dangerous software are being asked to add their tales of woe to an online campaign.
Security experts say that growing numbers are being conned into paying for fake anti-spyware programs.
Now grassroots online security activists in the UK hope testimonies can raise awareness of the problem. "
Good idea. IF you'd like to get a decent understanding of malware and this kind of cybervandalism, we run a 10 week online course on it at the Open University. Details of how to sign up etc can be found here.
Stimulating privacy awareness
Leslie Shade, an Associate Professor at Concordia University, recounts On the Identity Trail the results of a wonderful exercise she had her students engage in to stimulate their general awareness of privacy issues in the modern era.
"This semester in an Issues in Information Society fourth year undergraduate class at Concordia University’s Department of Communication Studies, one of the assignments I gave students was for them to create a project detailing ‘Surveillance in Everyday Life’: “Students are asked to provide a portfolio of their everyday interactions and how they are impacted by surveillance. Be as creative as possible! This can include photo documentation, monitoring of public discourses on surveillance issues, fiction, a play, podcasting, the creation of a CDROM or….”
Readings by Foucault, Lyon, and O’Harrow Jr., on privacy and surveillance were meant to stimulate the students and add to the other scholars we had been studying: Bell, Castells, Mosco, Huws, Schiller, Black, etc.,"
The students, it seems, surprised even themselves. One student wrote:
"I took a couple of photos of the eye-in-the-sky. I was being discrete thus I was more than a little surprised when less than two minutes after the first photo I was approached by an employee and asked to stop. Honestly, I only thought those systems were monitored in Vegas. I expected that these cameras were only connected to VCRs, and perhaps they are, I don't know if it was someone from upstairs or an employee on the floor who noticed me. In any case I was asked to stop. The double standard always shocks me – the business can monitor the consumer, but the consumer can not monitor the business. I promptly left, but not before snapping a couple of shots of the stickers that are used to gauge height in the instance of a robbery."
Another, a Starbucks employee had this to say:
"So what do my experiences with employee surveillance say about the work-place culture we have become accustomed to? Is there now such little trust that employees must be monitored and tracked? The problem is that such cultures of fear are being used to the benefit of the corporations we work for or governments we belong to. I feel justified in pondering whether the bomb threats that occurred at my government offices – these regular occurrences - were a way of keeping us on our toes? If we a population perceives itself as constantly under threat, it is more likely to bend to increasing control over their lives. But are there also benefits to these monitors? As the good employee, I benefit greatly from some of them. Free access to a car all summer. Free Internet use. Those extra minutes I came in early and stayed late at Starbucks add up over time – at least I’m getting paid for them right? Who cares if the trade-off for all of these things is a little surveillance? But therein lies the problem: surveillance only benefits conformists. It is made to oppress and subjugate a people, not to help them rise up. The real problem with surveillance is that it tries to eliminate the individual – the thing we all strive so hard to be – and it is individuals that change a culture, not conformists."
You can't beat hands on experience to get a real feel for the issues.
"This semester in an Issues in Information Society fourth year undergraduate class at Concordia University’s Department of Communication Studies, one of the assignments I gave students was for them to create a project detailing ‘Surveillance in Everyday Life’: “Students are asked to provide a portfolio of their everyday interactions and how they are impacted by surveillance. Be as creative as possible! This can include photo documentation, monitoring of public discourses on surveillance issues, fiction, a play, podcasting, the creation of a CDROM or….”
Readings by Foucault, Lyon, and O’Harrow Jr., on privacy and surveillance were meant to stimulate the students and add to the other scholars we had been studying: Bell, Castells, Mosco, Huws, Schiller, Black, etc.,"
The students, it seems, surprised even themselves. One student wrote:
"I took a couple of photos of the eye-in-the-sky. I was being discrete thus I was more than a little surprised when less than two minutes after the first photo I was approached by an employee and asked to stop. Honestly, I only thought those systems were monitored in Vegas. I expected that these cameras were only connected to VCRs, and perhaps they are, I don't know if it was someone from upstairs or an employee on the floor who noticed me. In any case I was asked to stop. The double standard always shocks me – the business can monitor the consumer, but the consumer can not monitor the business. I promptly left, but not before snapping a couple of shots of the stickers that are used to gauge height in the instance of a robbery."
Another, a Starbucks employee had this to say:
"So what do my experiences with employee surveillance say about the work-place culture we have become accustomed to? Is there now such little trust that employees must be monitored and tracked? The problem is that such cultures of fear are being used to the benefit of the corporations we work for or governments we belong to. I feel justified in pondering whether the bomb threats that occurred at my government offices – these regular occurrences - were a way of keeping us on our toes? If we a population perceives itself as constantly under threat, it is more likely to bend to increasing control over their lives. But are there also benefits to these monitors? As the good employee, I benefit greatly from some of them. Free access to a car all summer. Free Internet use. Those extra minutes I came in early and stayed late at Starbucks add up over time – at least I’m getting paid for them right? Who cares if the trade-off for all of these things is a little surveillance? But therein lies the problem: surveillance only benefits conformists. It is made to oppress and subjugate a people, not to help them rise up. The real problem with surveillance is that it tries to eliminate the individual – the thing we all strive so hard to be – and it is individuals that change a culture, not conformists."
You can't beat hands on experience to get a real feel for the issues.
Cheney authorised Libby to release classified information
From the National Journal,
"Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records."
"Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records."
FDA says ADHD drugs could be linked to 25 deaths
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are looking into the possibility that popular drugs like Ritalin used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may be linked to the deaths of 25 people.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Felten on VEIL and the analog hole bill
Ed Felten has again raised concerns about plan to a require, by law, that all devices that accept analog video inputs must implement a secret technology.
"This process cannot be “open and public”, and an agreement on how the VEIL technology should be changed cannot be published, if the VEIL technology is secret. You can’t have a negotiation about how VEIL might be fixed, if the parties to that negotiation have promised not to disclose how VEIL works. And you can’t meaningfully invite members of the public to participate in the negotiation if they aren’t allowed to know about the subject being negotiated.
But that’s not all. The rulemaking will happen if somebody files a petition that convinces the Patent Office that VEIL “has become materially ineffective in a way that cannot be adequately remedied by existing technical flexibility in the embedding function” of VEIL.
The embedding function of VEIL is the gizmo that puts VEIL watermarks into video that is going to be distributed. It is separate from the detection function, which detects the presence or absence of a VEIL watermark in video content. The bill mandates that all analog video devices must include the detection function, so it is the detection function that one could learn about by paying the fee and taking the secrecy pledge.
But the embedding function of VEIL is entirely secret, and is not being revealed even to people who pay the fee and take the pledge. As far as I know, there is no way at all for anyone other than the VEIL company to find out how the embedding function works, or what kind of “existing technical flexibility” it might have. How anyone could petition the Patent Office on that subject is a mystery.
In short, the rulemaking procedure in Section 105 is entirely inconsistent with the secrecy of VEIL. How it got into the bill is therefore a pretty interesting question. Reading the bill, one gets the impression that it was assembled from prefab parts, rather than reflecting a self-consistent vision of how a technology mandate might actually work. "
"This process cannot be “open and public”, and an agreement on how the VEIL technology should be changed cannot be published, if the VEIL technology is secret. You can’t have a negotiation about how VEIL might be fixed, if the parties to that negotiation have promised not to disclose how VEIL works. And you can’t meaningfully invite members of the public to participate in the negotiation if they aren’t allowed to know about the subject being negotiated.
But that’s not all. The rulemaking will happen if somebody files a petition that convinces the Patent Office that VEIL “has become materially ineffective in a way that cannot be adequately remedied by existing technical flexibility in the embedding function” of VEIL.
The embedding function of VEIL is the gizmo that puts VEIL watermarks into video that is going to be distributed. It is separate from the detection function, which detects the presence or absence of a VEIL watermark in video content. The bill mandates that all analog video devices must include the detection function, so it is the detection function that one could learn about by paying the fee and taking the secrecy pledge.
But the embedding function of VEIL is entirely secret, and is not being revealed even to people who pay the fee and take the pledge. As far as I know, there is no way at all for anyone other than the VEIL company to find out how the embedding function works, or what kind of “existing technical flexibility” it might have. How anyone could petition the Patent Office on that subject is a mystery.
In short, the rulemaking procedure in Section 105 is entirely inconsistent with the secrecy of VEIL. How it got into the bill is therefore a pretty interesting question. Reading the bill, one gets the impression that it was assembled from prefab parts, rather than reflecting a self-consistent vision of how a technology mandate might actually work. "
Institutions, History, and Economic Development
Interesting article from Professor Kenneth Dam on Institutions, History, and Economic Development. Abstract:
To gain insight into how the developing world can attain the Rule of Law and thereby further economic development, a good place to start is to ask how countries in today's developed world did so. Western Europe, for example, did not enjoy the Rule of Law in the Middle Ages but successfully achieved it over a number of centuries, at least in the economic sphere of enforcing contracts and protecting property rights. The events in England culminating in the Glorious Revolution illustrate the importance of legal institutions and, especially, of public law. The private law of contract and property were not sufficient. The problem of the "predatory ruler" had to be overcome, and England did so by vesting control in Parliament over the King's revenues from public sources and his expenditures and by assuring the independence of the judiciary. The French revolution, in contrast, resulted in high quality unified private substantive law under the Napoleonic codes, but the public law system suffered from the subordination of the role of the judiciary.
Fascinating stuff though not for the fainthearted.
To gain insight into how the developing world can attain the Rule of Law and thereby further economic development, a good place to start is to ask how countries in today's developed world did so. Western Europe, for example, did not enjoy the Rule of Law in the Middle Ages but successfully achieved it over a number of centuries, at least in the economic sphere of enforcing contracts and protecting property rights. The events in England culminating in the Glorious Revolution illustrate the importance of legal institutions and, especially, of public law. The private law of contract and property were not sufficient. The problem of the "predatory ruler" had to be overcome, and England did so by vesting control in Parliament over the King's revenues from public sources and his expenditures and by assuring the independence of the judiciary. The French revolution, in contrast, resulted in high quality unified private substantive law under the Napoleonic codes, but the public law system suffered from the subordination of the role of the judiciary.
Fascinating stuff though not for the fainthearted.
Librarians protecting terrorists?
Disturbing attack on a librarian and the American Library Association (ALA) in the Boston Globe. It's basically a rant about needing to give up civil liberties for some extra security, whilst at the same time accusing librarians of protecting terrorists, or one in particular who apparently made a "credible terror threat to Brandeis University" on a library computer.
Good Fences Make Bad Broadband
Public Knowledge have produced a new white paper on network neutrality, Good Fences Make Bad Broadband.
CAFTA (TRIPS-plus for Central America) in peril
With the elections in the Costa Rica too close to call and the the two candidates taking pro and ant- stances on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), Andres speculates that the US exporting of DMCA-like intellectual property provisions mike be in jeopardy.
Diebold to get out of evoting?
Diebold's new CEO is thinking of getting rid of the company's much criticised electronic voting machine division.
Energy costs of digital information
It seems that I'm not the only one who has been thinking about the energy costs of digital information.
All the big computing and dot com companies are concerned about their energy bills. Sun have even hosted a two day conference on the issue recently.
"The problem arises from the large amounts of electric power needed to cool the tens of thousands of microprocessors at today's data centers.
Indeed, the cost of electricity to cool these server farms account for about half of the power bill of these centers, said Jon Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University's civil engineering department"
Like the untility guy quoted in the report I can't see the technology industry curbing its thirst for energy any time soon, though with the impending world oil shortage, their attention will be more and more drawn to rapidly increasing energy bills. The second law of thermodynamics says more efficient technologies ultimately won't solve the problem of increasing consumption, though they can slow down the rate of deterioration. So in the short to medium term these companies need to be looking at significantly less energy intensive computing architectures, as does the rest of the commercial world that has bought into Bill Gates' "PC on every desk" vision.
All the big computing and dot com companies are concerned about their energy bills. Sun have even hosted a two day conference on the issue recently.
"The problem arises from the large amounts of electric power needed to cool the tens of thousands of microprocessors at today's data centers.
Indeed, the cost of electricity to cool these server farms account for about half of the power bill of these centers, said Jon Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University's civil engineering department"
Like the untility guy quoted in the report I can't see the technology industry curbing its thirst for energy any time soon, though with the impending world oil shortage, their attention will be more and more drawn to rapidly increasing energy bills. The second law of thermodynamics says more efficient technologies ultimately won't solve the problem of increasing consumption, though they can slow down the rate of deterioration. So in the short to medium term these companies need to be looking at significantly less energy intensive computing architectures, as does the rest of the commercial world that has bought into Bill Gates' "PC on every desk" vision.
Microsoft fails to get another extension from the EU
Microsoft have run out of time to explain why they have failed to comply with the requirements of the antitrust ruling and now face more fines.
French Court says p2p file sharing is legal
The District Court of Paris has cleared a P2P user of copyright infringement despite accepting he had 1875 unauthorised MP3 and DIVX files on his computer. The court declared that uploading and downloading these files on P2P networks amounted to "private copying." (The decision was made before Christmas and the details have just been made available).
Google routinely filter searches on DMCA grounds
Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing has reminded us that Google routinely filters some searches to comply with DMCA.
"That's the bad news. And actually, it's not new news, as it's been going on for several years. The good news, however, which some may not know -- is that they're transparent about it, and each instance points to more case information at chillingeffects.org."
"That's the bad news. And actually, it's not new news, as it's been going on for several years. The good news, however, which some may not know -- is that they're transparent about it, and each instance points to more case information at chillingeffects.org."
Intel accuse SCO of untruths
SCO are potentially in hot water in a Utah court, according to Pamela Jones:
"Well, *now* SCO's really gone and done it. They got used to IBM's restraint, I guess, and told a story to the Utah court, and now they are being called on it. First, we saw Oracle dispute SCO's story about the subpoenas in its motion to quash in California, and now Intel has filed in Utah a Nonparty Intel's Response to SCO's Motion For Leave to Take Certain Prospective Depositions [PDF], and they are hopping mad. Mad enough to tell Judges Kimball and Wells that what SCO said about Intel is "unfair and untrue":
And for the killer blow, Intel ends like this:
"Well, *now* SCO's really gone and done it. They got used to IBM's restraint, I guess, and told a story to the Utah court, and now they are being called on it. First, we saw Oracle dispute SCO's story about the subpoenas in its motion to quash in California, and now Intel has filed in Utah a Nonparty Intel's Response to SCO's Motion For Leave to Take Certain Prospective Depositions [PDF], and they are hopping mad. Mad enough to tell Judges Kimball and Wells that what SCO said about Intel is "unfair and untrue":
Although Intel takes no position on whether SCO's Discovery Extension Motion should be granted, Intel is compelled to respond to SCO's misrepresentations about Intel's conduct.Intel won't stand by and let itself be maligned...
And for the killer blow, Intel ends like this:
Intel takes discovery obligations seriously. SCO's attempt to blame Intel for creating SCO's need for more time simply ignores the facts.Here's the bottom line. It isn't just IBM now telling Judge Kimball and Judge Wells that SCO doesn't always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is going to cost them. Remember when your mom told you not to lie? She was absolutely right. And in a courtroom, once you've lost your reputation as a truth-teller, the game is so over."
Swedish Pirate Part aim to change copyright laws
A new political party in Sweden is aiming to get intellectual property laws changed.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Lord demands government apology to Simon Davies
In the latest debate on the government's ID card scheme in the House of Lords, the Earl of Northesk has asked the government to apologise to Simon Davies.
"Simon Davies, who the Government have consistently and repeatedly vilified for his involvement with the LSE Identity Project, has written to the Prime Minister indicating his possible intention to pursue the matter in the courts should such defamation be repeated. As his letter states, the fact is that:
"More than sixty academics and a further forty external experts have contributed to the LSE work".
That being so, is the Minister prepared to take this opportunity on behalf of the Government to retract the outrageous slurs perpetrated against Mr Davies and offer an apology?"
Lord Bassam of Brighton, in his response, neglects to take the opportunity to apologise, simply by ignoring the question.
"Simon Davies, who the Government have consistently and repeatedly vilified for his involvement with the LSE Identity Project, has written to the Prime Minister indicating his possible intention to pursue the matter in the courts should such defamation be repeated. As his letter states, the fact is that:
"More than sixty academics and a further forty external experts have contributed to the LSE work".
That being so, is the Minister prepared to take this opportunity on behalf of the Government to retract the outrageous slurs perpetrated against Mr Davies and offer an apology?"
Lord Bassam of Brighton, in his response, neglects to take the opportunity to apologise, simply by ignoring the question.
Burnham letter to MPs on ID cards
Andy Burnham, Home Office minister in charge of the ID card scheme has sent a letter to colleagues (1.2 MB pdf), which proports to be a "detailed note about the costs of the Identity Cards scheme."
It's actually nothing of the sort and goes nowhere near providing a detailed account of the costs. What it does do is heavily misrepresent the LSE Identity Project report, which has been such a thorn in the government's side on this issue. For example, he states that "The LSE also added an inflated £1 billion marketing budget..." There is simply no such allocation in the LSE estimates. This is a complete fabrication on Mr Burnham's (or, more likely, his advisers') part.
What is really interesting, however, is what it doesn't say. It does not provide detailed costs as it claims. Also, following Simon Davies' letter to the Prime Minister threatening legal action for defamation if he or his ministers continued their ourrageous claims that Davies was a biased, sole author of the LSE report, Mr Burnham's letter does not include a repetition of the slur.
It's actually nothing of the sort and goes nowhere near providing a detailed account of the costs. What it does do is heavily misrepresent the LSE Identity Project report, which has been such a thorn in the government's side on this issue. For example, he states that "The LSE also added an inflated £1 billion marketing budget..." There is simply no such allocation in the LSE estimates. This is a complete fabrication on Mr Burnham's (or, more likely, his advisers') part.
What is really interesting, however, is what it doesn't say. It does not provide detailed costs as it claims. Also, following Simon Davies' letter to the Prime Minister threatening legal action for defamation if he or his ministers continued their ourrageous claims that Davies was a biased, sole author of the LSE report, Mr Burnham's letter does not include a repetition of the slur.
Twisting the facts to fit the story - the media and BT Cleanfeed stats
Kieran McCarthy is also less than enamoured with the mainstream media hysteria over BT's latest report on it's BT Cleanfeed statistics. BT Cleanfeed is the company's child pornography software filter system.
The stories are all essentially reporting the same thing - that 35000 attempts to access child abuse pictures are blocked by BT every day. McCarthy says that the reality is somewhat different.
"It is a carefully engineered twisting of figures and facts to provide a dramatic story. Maybe that's just par for the course, but when you are talking about child pornography and building up an image of the Internet as a dangerous, lawless place, you would think media outlets like the BBC, Independent and Times would be a little more careful.
The facts
Here are the facts: BT runs a program it calls "Cleanfeed". This programme consists of blocking access to a list of websites provided to its by the Internet Watch Foundation. Anyone using BT as an Internet service provider will not be allowed to visit these sites, and BT keeps records of how often it blocks access.
BT released figures yesterday that showed Cleanfeed had picked up four million hits over the past four months. This has been reported as 35,000 attempts to access child porn site per day...
Definitions
A "hit" - is a single request for a piece of information from a web page - be that a picture, the text, a piece of code, whatever. As such a single web page that you view can account for a number of hits. In fact, because of how web design has developed, you tend to get, on average, 10 hits per actual page that you look at on the screen. However, if it comes to a webpage exclusively set up to show pictures, you get very easily get anywhere from 30 to 100 hits per page...
So what are BT's results? Well, we don't know, because BT refuses to tell anyone what its figures relate to...
Some calculations
So, we have 33,000 hits a day. Let's assume a figure of 50 hits per page. That equates to 660 page impressions a day. That's still alot of pages you say. Yes, except for the fact that this blog alone averages over 2,000 page impressions a day.
I can tell you that those 2,000 page impressions equate to 400 people. So assuming that the people click on this site as the same rate as someone looking frantically for child pornography - which is quite obviously not going to be true - that means that 130 BT customers a day try to find child porn. BT has over three million customers.
There are people looking for child porn out there, and you can assume that if they are willing to look for it, they will search extensively. So I think you can safely assume that there are approximately 20 people using BT that are looking for child porn.
Which means that across the UK, there are probably 150 people trying to access child porn on any every given day, out of a total population of 60 million. Suddenly it doesn't seem quite so terrifying, does it...
The real story is that the UK has the strongest anti-child porn system and laws in the world. That's a fact. The actual situation is that there is now almost no child porn at all stored on UK computers, that the number of people attempting to access it anywhere on the Internet from this country is tiny, and that figure is most likely going down.
So how come the media reports point to the exact opposite of the situation? How come the very, very clear implication is that there are 35,000 individuals attempting to download child pornography every day in the UK?
How come the media has knowingly ignored the whole furore that blew up last time BT Cleanfeed figures were misrepresented?
Because it is a better story if you ignore all the facts. Is it a story that should be written? No. Because it is spreading fear, and it is building an entirely false picture in people's minds."
I agree that the media has a tendency to sensationalise but the psychology is more complicated than that.
Firstly there is a kind of a lazy groupthink going on where one interpretation of a story is widely accepted without question.
Seondly, the fact that it is fear-inducing means it is attractive from a sales perspective.
Thirdly no one wants to be the person that points out that the story is not as bad as it seems because this risks being accused of being the public defender of child abusers. [This is no mere theoretical concern. It is a commonly used political and media rhetoric device (You don't support our brilliant anti-terror laws; you must therrefore support the terrorists) and at least one senior executive of a well known ISP was outrageously defamed in a broadsheet newspaper on similar grounds in the mid 1990s, as was the operator of an anonymous listserv.]
Fourthly from the journalists' perpective there is a certain internal warm glow to be had from believing you are exposing some widespread terrible crime that the government will then be forced to do something about.
Scare stories that override the reality of a serious crime situation do nothing to help authorities on the ground deal with the problem. In response to this kind of media scaremongering, governments of all creeds are more likely to engage in legislative gesture politics than to supply real extra resources to the hi-tech crime and child abuse units dealing with these crimes and that in the end is counterproductive.
The stories are all essentially reporting the same thing - that 35000 attempts to access child abuse pictures are blocked by BT every day. McCarthy says that the reality is somewhat different.
"It is a carefully engineered twisting of figures and facts to provide a dramatic story. Maybe that's just par for the course, but when you are talking about child pornography and building up an image of the Internet as a dangerous, lawless place, you would think media outlets like the BBC, Independent and Times would be a little more careful.
The facts
Here are the facts: BT runs a program it calls "Cleanfeed". This programme consists of blocking access to a list of websites provided to its by the Internet Watch Foundation. Anyone using BT as an Internet service provider will not be allowed to visit these sites, and BT keeps records of how often it blocks access.
BT released figures yesterday that showed Cleanfeed had picked up four million hits over the past four months. This has been reported as 35,000 attempts to access child porn site per day...
Definitions
A "hit" - is a single request for a piece of information from a web page - be that a picture, the text, a piece of code, whatever. As such a single web page that you view can account for a number of hits. In fact, because of how web design has developed, you tend to get, on average, 10 hits per actual page that you look at on the screen. However, if it comes to a webpage exclusively set up to show pictures, you get very easily get anywhere from 30 to 100 hits per page...
So what are BT's results? Well, we don't know, because BT refuses to tell anyone what its figures relate to...
Some calculations
So, we have 33,000 hits a day. Let's assume a figure of 50 hits per page. That equates to 660 page impressions a day. That's still alot of pages you say. Yes, except for the fact that this blog alone averages over 2,000 page impressions a day.
I can tell you that those 2,000 page impressions equate to 400 people. So assuming that the people click on this site as the same rate as someone looking frantically for child pornography - which is quite obviously not going to be true - that means that 130 BT customers a day try to find child porn. BT has over three million customers.
There are people looking for child porn out there, and you can assume that if they are willing to look for it, they will search extensively. So I think you can safely assume that there are approximately 20 people using BT that are looking for child porn.
Which means that across the UK, there are probably 150 people trying to access child porn on any every given day, out of a total population of 60 million. Suddenly it doesn't seem quite so terrifying, does it...
The real story is that the UK has the strongest anti-child porn system and laws in the world. That's a fact. The actual situation is that there is now almost no child porn at all stored on UK computers, that the number of people attempting to access it anywhere on the Internet from this country is tiny, and that figure is most likely going down.
So how come the media reports point to the exact opposite of the situation? How come the very, very clear implication is that there are 35,000 individuals attempting to download child pornography every day in the UK?
How come the media has knowingly ignored the whole furore that blew up last time BT Cleanfeed figures were misrepresented?
Because it is a better story if you ignore all the facts. Is it a story that should be written? No. Because it is spreading fear, and it is building an entirely false picture in people's minds."
I agree that the media has a tendency to sensationalise but the psychology is more complicated than that.
Firstly there is a kind of a lazy groupthink going on where one interpretation of a story is widely accepted without question.
Seondly, the fact that it is fear-inducing means it is attractive from a sales perspective.
Thirdly no one wants to be the person that points out that the story is not as bad as it seems because this risks being accused of being the public defender of child abusers. [This is no mere theoretical concern. It is a commonly used political and media rhetoric device (You don't support our brilliant anti-terror laws; you must therrefore support the terrorists) and at least one senior executive of a well known ISP was outrageously defamed in a broadsheet newspaper on similar grounds in the mid 1990s, as was the operator of an anonymous listserv.]
Fourthly from the journalists' perpective there is a certain internal warm glow to be had from believing you are exposing some widespread terrible crime that the government will then be forced to do something about.
Scare stories that override the reality of a serious crime situation do nothing to help authorities on the ground deal with the problem. In response to this kind of media scaremongering, governments of all creeds are more likely to engage in legislative gesture politics than to supply real extra resources to the hi-tech crime and child abuse units dealing with these crimes and that in the end is counterproductive.
Blair in a security bubble
Kieran McCarthy, after spending an evening on a cold Oxford street outside a venue where Tony Blair was said to be making an important speech, worries about the Prime Minister's isolation from reality.
"So it's 6pm, pitch black, on a cold February night and I'm sat on a wall at the back of St Anthony's College in Oxford waiting for the prime minister to appear having given a speech on Britain's future role in Europe.
I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not even supposed to know this event is taking place - despite the fact that the meeting - and what Tony Blair is going to say at it - has been plastered all over the newspapers and on the radio this morning.
Downing Street had told me I wasn't allowed to know the time or venue. And I wasn't allowed to attend. Oxford University had told me Downing Street has told it to refer all requests back to Number 10. I had found out anyway and called the college but was told there were no spaces.
To make matters worse, the prime minister had eluded my efforts to photograph him as he arrived by taking a back entrance that I believe I am now sat on the wall facing.
All I really wanted was proof that Tony Blair was actually in the building. Since what he was going to say in his speech had already been given to lobby journalists, who had already written it up, and since lobby journalists were the only representatives of the public allowed into the college, it seemed all too plausible that Tony Blair needn't turn up at all...
So, beaten by the intensive security put around our country's leader, I retired to the pub to thaw out, go to the toilet (having needed to for an hour) and consider the evening.
And it was then that it struck me: the leader of this country is living entirely within a bubble of his own making.
Tony Blair has no reason to doubt that his life is under constant threat. He was whisked in a car to an underground car park to deliver a speech that had been made public but had had a ring of steel put around it. He addressed a group of the assembled and he was then whisked off again, with a full escort until he was safe back in Downing Street.
But if this man, who so entranced the nation only 10 years ago, had allowed himself to move outside this paranoia, he would have found not crazed terrorists waiting for him outside but rather a motley crue of students excited to see their leader, a lonely old woman, a man with a limp, and a freelance journalist with a camera.
He would have found that the Britain that he has lost track of is still there. Quiet indignation, good humour and a dislike for people that get above their station. That is the world that he should have been standing in, at least for a while. That would have given him something bigger and wider to consider as he winged it back down the M40 to London."
"So it's 6pm, pitch black, on a cold February night and I'm sat on a wall at the back of St Anthony's College in Oxford waiting for the prime minister to appear having given a speech on Britain's future role in Europe.
I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not even supposed to know this event is taking place - despite the fact that the meeting - and what Tony Blair is going to say at it - has been plastered all over the newspapers and on the radio this morning.
Downing Street had told me I wasn't allowed to know the time or venue. And I wasn't allowed to attend. Oxford University had told me Downing Street has told it to refer all requests back to Number 10. I had found out anyway and called the college but was told there were no spaces.
To make matters worse, the prime minister had eluded my efforts to photograph him as he arrived by taking a back entrance that I believe I am now sat on the wall facing.
All I really wanted was proof that Tony Blair was actually in the building. Since what he was going to say in his speech had already been given to lobby journalists, who had already written it up, and since lobby journalists were the only representatives of the public allowed into the college, it seemed all too plausible that Tony Blair needn't turn up at all...
So, beaten by the intensive security put around our country's leader, I retired to the pub to thaw out, go to the toilet (having needed to for an hour) and consider the evening.
And it was then that it struck me: the leader of this country is living entirely within a bubble of his own making.
Tony Blair has no reason to doubt that his life is under constant threat. He was whisked in a car to an underground car park to deliver a speech that had been made public but had had a ring of steel put around it. He addressed a group of the assembled and he was then whisked off again, with a full escort until he was safe back in Downing Street.
But if this man, who so entranced the nation only 10 years ago, had allowed himself to move outside this paranoia, he would have found not crazed terrorists waiting for him outside but rather a motley crue of students excited to see their leader, a lonely old woman, a man with a limp, and a freelance journalist with a camera.
He would have found that the Britain that he has lost track of is still there. Quiet indignation, good humour and a dislike for people that get above their station. That is the world that he should have been standing in, at least for a while. That would have given him something bigger and wider to consider as he winged it back down the M40 to London."
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Open access and the weather
Why doesn't Europe offer open access to weather data as is done in the US?
Harper Collins to offer textbooks openly online
Harper Collins are experimenting with offering the full text of textbooks openly online. Good for them. It will be interesting to see what they learn.
Torvalds on DRM
Linus Torvalds has been outlining his views on digital rights management.
" I would suggest that anybody who wants to fight DRM practices seriously look at the equivalent angle. If you create interesting content, you can forbid that _content_ to ever be encrypted or limited.
In other words, I personally think that the anti-DRM clause is much more sensible in the context of the Creative Commons licenses, than in software licenses. If you create valuable and useful content that other people want to be able to use (catchy tunes, funny animation, good icons), I would suggest you protect that _content_ by saying that it cannot be used in any content-protection schemes.
Afaik, all the Creative Commons licenses already require that you can't use technological measures to restrict the rights you give with the CC licenses. The "Share Alike" license in particular requires all work based on it to also be shared alike, ie it has the "GPL feel" to it.
If enough interesting content is licensed that way, DRM eventually becomes marginalized. Yes, it takes decades, but that's really no different at all from how the GPL works. The GPL has taken decades, and it hasn't "marginalized" commercial proprietary software yet, but it's gotten to the point where fewer people at least _worry_ about it.
As long as you expect Disney to feed your brain and just sit there on your couch, Disney & co will always be able to control the content you see. DRM is the smallest part of it - the crap we see and hear every day (regardless of any protection) is a much bigger issue.
The GPL already requires source code (ie non-protected content). So the GPL already _does_ have an anti-DRM clause as far as the _software_ is concerned. If you want to fight DRM on non-software fronts, you need to create non-software content, and fight it _there_.
I realize that programmers are bad at content creation. So many programmers feel that they can't fight DRM that way. Tough. Spread the word instead. Don't try to fight DRM the wrong way."
" I would suggest that anybody who wants to fight DRM practices seriously look at the equivalent angle. If you create interesting content, you can forbid that _content_ to ever be encrypted or limited.
In other words, I personally think that the anti-DRM clause is much more sensible in the context of the Creative Commons licenses, than in software licenses. If you create valuable and useful content that other people want to be able to use (catchy tunes, funny animation, good icons), I would suggest you protect that _content_ by saying that it cannot be used in any content-protection schemes.
Afaik, all the Creative Commons licenses already require that you can't use technological measures to restrict the rights you give with the CC licenses. The "Share Alike" license in particular requires all work based on it to also be shared alike, ie it has the "GPL feel" to it.
If enough interesting content is licensed that way, DRM eventually becomes marginalized. Yes, it takes decades, but that's really no different at all from how the GPL works. The GPL has taken decades, and it hasn't "marginalized" commercial proprietary software yet, but it's gotten to the point where fewer people at least _worry_ about it.
As long as you expect Disney to feed your brain and just sit there on your couch, Disney & co will always be able to control the content you see. DRM is the smallest part of it - the crap we see and hear every day (regardless of any protection) is a much bigger issue.
The GPL already requires source code (ie non-protected content). So the GPL already _does_ have an anti-DRM clause as far as the _software_ is concerned. If you want to fight DRM on non-software fronts, you need to create non-software content, and fight it _there_.
I realize that programmers are bad at content creation. So many programmers feel that they can't fight DRM that way. Tough. Spread the word instead. Don't try to fight DRM the wrong way."
Monday, February 06, 2006
Government shame on ID card abuse
Spy Blog rightly lambasts the government over their shameful treatment of LSE academic, Simon Davies, in their attempts to spin the criticism outlined in the LSE's Identity Project report.
"With the Third Reading of the controversial Identity Cards Bill 2005 in the House of Lords tomorrow, and its return to the House of Commons scheduled for next Monday13th February, the likelyhood is that the NuLabour public relations machinery will be in full swing again, briefing newspapers and the broadcast media.
It is an intolerable abuse of power, when powerful politicians, with unlimited resources paid for by the taxpayer, focus their spin and disinformation machinery onto a single named individual, who is not a professional politician, who happens to disgree with some detailed Government policy.
If the Government disgree with the well respected LSE Identity Project report, then they should simply publish their own detailed system architecture and their detailed cost benefit analyses, and their project risk assumptions, to justify their proposed multi-billion pound expenditure of public money, on a scheme which will literally change the relationship between the Government and every person in the United Kingdom.
"If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear".
The Government should not attempt to discredit either the London School of Economics, or the hundred or so experts who have contributed to the report, which is now required reading all over the world, by everyone who is working on e-government projects
They should definately not focus on a single named individual, who does not have the opportunity to speak out under the protection of Parliamentary privilige.
Shamefully, this is what the NuLabour government has been doing to Simon Davies, who is now considering taking legal action against individual politicians, for their repeated campaign of defamatory statements to the press and media...
It would be an embarassing shame for the Government to continue with its ad hominem attacks on Simon Davies, which are unfair and which threaten the time honoured tradition of academic freedom in the United Kingdom."
Well said.
"With the Third Reading of the controversial Identity Cards Bill 2005 in the House of Lords tomorrow, and its return to the House of Commons scheduled for next Monday13th February, the likelyhood is that the NuLabour public relations machinery will be in full swing again, briefing newspapers and the broadcast media.
It is an intolerable abuse of power, when powerful politicians, with unlimited resources paid for by the taxpayer, focus their spin and disinformation machinery onto a single named individual, who is not a professional politician, who happens to disgree with some detailed Government policy.
If the Government disgree with the well respected LSE Identity Project report, then they should simply publish their own detailed system architecture and their detailed cost benefit analyses, and their project risk assumptions, to justify their proposed multi-billion pound expenditure of public money, on a scheme which will literally change the relationship between the Government and every person in the United Kingdom.
"If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear".
The Government should not attempt to discredit either the London School of Economics, or the hundred or so experts who have contributed to the report, which is now required reading all over the world, by everyone who is working on e-government projects
They should definately not focus on a single named individual, who does not have the opportunity to speak out under the protection of Parliamentary privilige.
Shamefully, this is what the NuLabour government has been doing to Simon Davies, who is now considering taking legal action against individual politicians, for their repeated campaign of defamatory statements to the press and media...
It would be an embarassing shame for the Government to continue with its ad hominem attacks on Simon Davies, which are unfair and which threaten the time honoured tradition of academic freedom in the United Kingdom."
Well said.
Could Future Subpoenas Tie You to 'Britney Spears Nude'?
With the publicity surrounding the US government's attempt to get access to Google search data, Could Future Subpoenas Tie You to 'Britney Spears Nude'? wonders Fred Von Lohmann (though he hastens to add that the title wasn't chosen by him).
Microsoft Security Chief Criticises UK on Hi Tech Crime
Microsoft's security chief, Ed Gibson, was critical of the UK government last week over "the lack of effective channels for cybercrime reporting."
Can anyone tell me if it is still the case that the government has more people working on the ID card system than there are police officers involved in combatting high tech crime? I know it was the case as recently as last year and haven't seen any evidence to suggest the situation has changed. As far as I'm aware the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit's budget has been repeatedly cut in real terms, as Gibson says. Police officers involved in this kind of work must get incredibly frustrated at such a state of affairs.
Thanks to Steve Hedley for the link.
Can anyone tell me if it is still the case that the government has more people working on the ID card system than there are police officers involved in combatting high tech crime? I know it was the case as recently as last year and haven't seen any evidence to suggest the situation has changed. As far as I'm aware the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit's budget has been repeatedly cut in real terms, as Gibson says. Police officers involved in this kind of work must get incredibly frustrated at such a state of affairs.
Thanks to Steve Hedley for the link.
NHS replies to request to opt out of electronic records
Ian Brown has finally had a reply to his request to opt out of the NHS electronic patient records system. He says the response "contains much useful information about the National Care Records Service, but does not provide any reassurance that the NHS will comply with my request. I will reply to ask again for that guarantee."
Ian's blog has become required reading for those interested in digital rights and related issues.
Ian's blog has become required reading for those interested in digital rights and related issues.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Duke Copyright Comic
Keith Aoki of the University of Oregon, and James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of Duke University have co-written a copyright comic, "Bound by Law?"
What a great idea.
What a great idea.
iPods for Senators Campaign
Just in case you missed it in the comments from earlier in the week, IPAction have launched an iPod for Senators campaign. Thanks to Ren Bucholz for the alert.
Director of British Library concerned about drm
A director of the British Library, Dr Clive Field, has expressed concerns about the deployment of digital rights management(drm) technologies. In a written submission to the All Party Internet Group enquiry into drm, he says drm must not "exert excessive control on access to information.
This will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege and undermine, or even prevent, legitimate public good access."
He told the BBC: "We have genuinely tried to maintain that balance between the public interest and respecting rights holders
We are genuinely concerned that technology inadvertently may be disturbing that balance, and that would be unhelpful ultimately to the national interest."
I've been thinking about this in the context of the second law of thermodynamics, which, as described in minute detail by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, basically underpins the entire economic process (though most people don't realise this and sometimes I think we've made a unique artform out of scientific ignorance). Materials and energy transformations always generate some waste (or, for the scientifically literate, increase entropy). This has fundamental implications for the enonomic process in a world of limited resources. Now intellectual property does not suffer from the same problem as material resources in that it is technically non rivalrous, so it theoretically won't run out. However, there are a number of issues/problems/opportunites raised in this context:
Firstly digital information fundamentally depends on energy, which is a limited resource.
Secondly intellectual property, it has been argued, is also getting locked up and controlled to an unprecedented degree through laws and drm technologies. This raises fundamental questions about the future of the knowledge society.
Digital information is also getting locked up in technological formats that fairly rapidly become obsolete and inaccessible to later generations, which is what Mr Field is rightly concerned about.
There must theoretically be an optimum cost associated with implementing the laws and technologies that folk like Larry Lessig worry about, that limits the process. Even though theoretically once it is done the supply well of a particular piece of intellectual property would be infinitely deep; and though dipping into that well to sustain a supply chain could be done at vitually no cost to the owner, the cost of the process of locking up the information (through laws and technologies as Larry argues) could form a significant economic constraint, particularly given the finite nature of the atoms (material resources) that are required to generate the energy to keep the information bits flowing.
I probably need to work out the idea in an academic paper when I get the time but this seems like an area worth exploring.
This will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege and undermine, or even prevent, legitimate public good access."
He told the BBC: "We have genuinely tried to maintain that balance between the public interest and respecting rights holders
We are genuinely concerned that technology inadvertently may be disturbing that balance, and that would be unhelpful ultimately to the national interest."
I've been thinking about this in the context of the second law of thermodynamics, which, as described in minute detail by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, basically underpins the entire economic process (though most people don't realise this and sometimes I think we've made a unique artform out of scientific ignorance). Materials and energy transformations always generate some waste (or, for the scientifically literate, increase entropy). This has fundamental implications for the enonomic process in a world of limited resources. Now intellectual property does not suffer from the same problem as material resources in that it is technically non rivalrous, so it theoretically won't run out. However, there are a number of issues/problems/opportunites raised in this context:
Firstly digital information fundamentally depends on energy, which is a limited resource.
Secondly intellectual property, it has been argued, is also getting locked up and controlled to an unprecedented degree through laws and drm technologies. This raises fundamental questions about the future of the knowledge society.
Digital information is also getting locked up in technological formats that fairly rapidly become obsolete and inaccessible to later generations, which is what Mr Field is rightly concerned about.
There must theoretically be an optimum cost associated with implementing the laws and technologies that folk like Larry Lessig worry about, that limits the process. Even though theoretically once it is done the supply well of a particular piece of intellectual property would be infinitely deep; and though dipping into that well to sustain a supply chain could be done at vitually no cost to the owner, the cost of the process of locking up the information (through laws and technologies as Larry argues) could form a significant economic constraint, particularly given the finite nature of the atoms (material resources) that are required to generate the energy to keep the information bits flowing.
I probably need to work out the idea in an academic paper when I get the time but this seems like an area worth exploring.
LSE boss writes to prime minister on ID cards
The Director of the London School of Economics has written to Tony Blair about the latter's claim that the LSE identity project report was written by a lone academic with a long term history of opposing ID cards.
He points out that he has made it clear to government ministers making this claim in the past that it is false and that he is disappointed they have not passed on that information to the Prime Minister's office.
Update: Simon Davies who has been disgracefully and repeatedly maligned by the government over the LSE ID card report, has threatened to sue ministers attempting to undermine the LSE report through damaging his reputation. "Mr Davies has written to the prime minister, warning that if the claims are repeated by him or any of his ministers he will proceed with legal action on the basis of statements made outside parliament.
He told the FT that he had taken legal advice after seeing that ministers were continuing to question the validity of the report in a way that sought to damage his reputation, despite Sir Howard writing to Mr Blair 10 days ago urging him to correct a "quite wrong" statement made to MPs."
He points out that he has made it clear to government ministers making this claim in the past that it is false and that he is disappointed they have not passed on that information to the Prime Minister's office.
Update: Simon Davies who has been disgracefully and repeatedly maligned by the government over the LSE ID card report, has threatened to sue ministers attempting to undermine the LSE report through damaging his reputation. "Mr Davies has written to the prime minister, warning that if the claims are repeated by him or any of his ministers he will proceed with legal action on the basis of statements made outside parliament.
He told the FT that he had taken legal advice after seeing that ministers were continuing to question the validity of the report in a way that sought to damage his reputation, despite Sir Howard writing to Mr Blair 10 days ago urging him to correct a "quite wrong" statement made to MPs."
EDRI-gram
The latest EDRI-gram has been published. Contents:
Commission refuses to do an impact assessment on the data retention
OECD Conference on the Future Digital Economy
German Wikipedia back on the Internet
A CD should work on any device, says French court
Debates on draft directive on Television without Frontiers Directive
EU Visa Database under scrutiny of the European Data Protection
French anti-terrorism law not anti-constitutional
Combating Racism on Internet
Irish ISPs to give File-sharers details
Slovenian Intelligence Agency performed illegal eavesdropping
Big Brother Award for Dutch immigration minister
UK Passenger Travel Data in Advance
Recommended reading: Security Policies in Europe
Agenda
Microsoft accuse EU of withholding documents
Microsoft have accused the European Union of holding back documents important enough to contribute to their anttitrust defence.
Broadcasters lock up of spectrum thwarts wi-fi
David Bollier's Broadcasters' Lockup of "White Space" Spectrum Thwarts WiFi is recommended reading.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Minister's claim of £1.7billion identity fraud questioned
Spy Blog is skeptical about Home Office minister Any Burnham's claim that identify fraud has cost the UK economy £1.7 billion.
RIM wins two rounds
RIM has won a couple of small victories in its ongoing patent disputes over the Blackberry handheld device. Having prevailed against InPro in Germany recently, they've just had a similar ruling from the UK High Court. Meanwhile, across the pond where they have been taking a beating in the courts, the US Patent Office have just issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the NTP patents at the centre of the dispute.
Open courts or open season on privacy
Thoughtful piece by Carole Lucock on whether publishing court decisions on the Internet has personal privacy implications we should be thinking more about.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Kazaa Australia
It seems Kim Weatherall was wondering what happened at the Kazaa hearing earlier in the week too. And she's managed to find out.
"David tells me that the question of contempt has been reserved for the Full Court hearing in the case: an order has been made (available in the ESearch facility of the Federal Court's database, CaseTrack), to this effect:
'Pursuant to s 25(6) of the Federal Court of Australia Act (Cth) 1976, reserves, for the consideration of the Full Court constituted to hear pending appeals in this matter, the question whether, having regard to the nature and terms of order 4 made on 5 September 2005, a determination of contempt of court may be made in respect of the contraventions of that order alleged in the statement of charge.'
So this adds to the long list of things that Branson, Lindgren, and Finkelstein JJ will be pondering in the week commencing 20 February 2006 (soon!)"
"David tells me that the question of contempt has been reserved for the Full Court hearing in the case: an order has been made (available in the ESearch facility of the Federal Court's database, CaseTrack), to this effect:
'Pursuant to s 25(6) of the Federal Court of Australia Act (Cth) 1976, reserves, for the consideration of the Full Court constituted to hear pending appeals in this matter, the question whether, having regard to the nature and terms of order 4 made on 5 September 2005, a determination of contempt of court may be made in respect of the contraventions of that order alleged in the statement of charge.'
So this adds to the long list of things that Branson, Lindgren, and Finkelstein JJ will be pondering in the week commencing 20 February 2006 (soon!)"
Oppose drm and get fired
Inga Chernyak, a legal clerk with a New York law firm, as well as president of the New York chapter of the Free Culture movement, has apparently been fired for expressing her distaste for drm.
"On January 10th 2006, the Village Voice ran an article called Code Warriors, detailing the efforts of the Free Culture movement, and those of the NYU chapter in particular. The reporter, Carla Blumenkranz, quoted FC co-founder Fred Benenson explaining that our efforts are about “harm reduction”; she noted, quite aptly, that our mission is to aid in “minimizing penalties and maximizing opportunities, for artists and audiences alike.” But what about the muckrakers? The conscientious objectors? The free culture activists? What protection from penalty do we have? What opportunity?
On Thursday, January 26th, I was fired from my job as a legal clerk at a medium sized IP law firm in midtown, NYC. When I inquired as to the reason, I was shown the Code Warriors article and told that my views about what the firm does were incompatible with…what the firm does. In so many words, I was told that the firm could no longer employ me due to my aberrant views on copyright law—although I was feverishly reassured of my right to hold those views. This assurance had relatively little value, however, as I was still fired for expressing the views in question. "
"On January 10th 2006, the Village Voice ran an article called Code Warriors, detailing the efforts of the Free Culture movement, and those of the NYU chapter in particular. The reporter, Carla Blumenkranz, quoted FC co-founder Fred Benenson explaining that our efforts are about “harm reduction”; she noted, quite aptly, that our mission is to aid in “minimizing penalties and maximizing opportunities, for artists and audiences alike.” But what about the muckrakers? The conscientious objectors? The free culture activists? What protection from penalty do we have? What opportunity?
On Thursday, January 26th, I was fired from my job as a legal clerk at a medium sized IP law firm in midtown, NYC. When I inquired as to the reason, I was shown the Code Warriors article and told that my views about what the firm does were incompatible with…what the firm does. In so many words, I was told that the firm could no longer employ me due to my aberrant views on copyright law—although I was feverishly reassured of my right to hold those views. This assurance had relatively little value, however, as I was still fired for expressing the views in question. "
How he stalked his girlfriend
More from Ben Goldacre in the Guardian today about how mobile phones can so easily be used as tracking devices.
Auditor shocked by Home Office's accounts
Important story in the Times:
"THE Home Office has lost control of its finances and its accounts are in a mess, according to a report published by the public spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office is so alarmed at what it has uncovered that it has refused to give its approval to the department’s flawed financial records.
The Permanent Secretary at the time the trouble developed was Sir John Gieve. He left the Home Office in December to join the Bank of England as Deputy Governor in charge of financial stability.
It is the first time in modern history that the nation’s Auditor General has delivered such an indictment on the financial records of a key government department. "
The auditor notes that part of the problem was the introduction of a new computer system to make finances more efficient. Yes the same Home Office wants to design and implement the most complex information system ever created - the ID card system - and they can't manage their own system to count their own money. Would that give anyone cause for concern by any chance?
"THE Home Office has lost control of its finances and its accounts are in a mess, according to a report published by the public spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office is so alarmed at what it has uncovered that it has refused to give its approval to the department’s flawed financial records.
The Permanent Secretary at the time the trouble developed was Sir John Gieve. He left the Home Office in December to join the Bank of England as Deputy Governor in charge of financial stability.
It is the first time in modern history that the nation’s Auditor General has delivered such an indictment on the financial records of a key government department. "
The auditor notes that part of the problem was the introduction of a new computer system to make finances more efficient. Yes the same Home Office wants to design and implement the most complex information system ever created - the ID card system - and they can't manage their own system to count their own money. Would that give anyone cause for concern by any chance?
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
DVD Jon considers suing Sony
Jon Johansen has been talking to a lawyer about the possibility of suing Sony BMG over their CD drm rootkit, which also infringed his copyright in some software he wrote for the VLC media player.
Kazaa Australia
Can anyone tell me what happened at the Kazaa hearing in Sydney yesterday? Or even if it went ahead? If you remember the music industry were pushing for them to be held in contempt of court for not enforcing the filters as the industry believes they should have done.
Researchers crack Dutch biometric passport security
John Lettice writes that a security company, Riscure BV, have cracked the security of the Dutch biometric passport and say the "attack can be executed only within a distance of 10 meters of a passport in use."
Meanwhile Lettice has also been making fun of ID card minister Andy Burnham again. He suggests 'RFID tag' are rude words which the minister refuses to say, since he has a better alternative, 'contactless, proximity chip vendors.'
"For over six months now Burnham, pursued doggedly by MP and ID card opponent Lynne Jones, has been peddling the bizarre conceit that RFID and 'contactless' or 'proximity' chips are entirely different beasts. So, in July, he confirmed that for the UK ID card to be used as a travel document in Europe, "the card will need to meet standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which require the card to be contactless".* Presuming the information will not be moving across the air gap between the card and the reader using, say, smell, it's pretty obvious how that works, isn't it?
The contactless chips that will be used in ID cards and passports are amazingly like RFID tags. Place an RFID tag in the vicinity of a reader, and the reader can read data from it. Place an ID card or a passport in the vicinity of a reader and... you get the idea. Proponents and vendors of biometric ID however have noted that the general public seems to have some kind of privacy issue with the term "RFID", for some reason fearing that RFID ID documents involve them becoming tagged and monitored crates in the homeland security industry's supply chain. So, as Wired explained last year, the strangely RFID-like chips in biometric ID are instead to be called contactless or proximity chips."
Meanwhile Lettice has also been making fun of ID card minister Andy Burnham again. He suggests 'RFID tag' are rude words which the minister refuses to say, since he has a better alternative, 'contactless, proximity chip vendors.'
"For over six months now Burnham, pursued doggedly by MP and ID card opponent Lynne Jones, has been peddling the bizarre conceit that RFID and 'contactless' or 'proximity' chips are entirely different beasts. So, in July, he confirmed that for the UK ID card to be used as a travel document in Europe, "the card will need to meet standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which require the card to be contactless".* Presuming the information will not be moving across the air gap between the card and the reader using, say, smell, it's pretty obvious how that works, isn't it?
The contactless chips that will be used in ID cards and passports are amazingly like RFID tags. Place an RFID tag in the vicinity of a reader, and the reader can read data from it. Place an ID card or a passport in the vicinity of a reader and... you get the idea. Proponents and vendors of biometric ID however have noted that the general public seems to have some kind of privacy issue with the term "RFID", for some reason fearing that RFID ID documents involve them becoming tagged and monitored crates in the homeland security industry's supply chain. So, as Wired explained last year, the strangely RFID-like chips in biometric ID are instead to be called contactless or proximity chips."
wibbi we understood privacy can reinforce security
William Heath has been asking Stefan Brands about egovernment.
"What does Stefan Brands have to say about Transformational Government? The same as what he has said for years: government needs multi-party security that preserves privacy. And it can be done.
I should point out that we have cast his pearls of wisdom in front of the UK Government several times before. And that it's not his problem if we screw things up in the UK - after all, he's a Dutchman living in Canada. But if we had to name three people whose views should be heard if we are to create in the UK the foundation of trust we need in e-government, he's one.
Stefan did set out his position pretty clearly here on Ideal Government in October 2004 and not much has changed. And he points me to a good and concise exposition of his thoughts called On E-Government Authentication and Privacy which appeared on the Anonymity Blog, in Nov last year. "
It is becoming critical for policymakers to understand that privacy and security are not opposing and mutually exclusive forces. As Brand says:
"Governments around the world are working to implement digital identity and access management infrastructures for access to government services by citizens and businesses. E-government has the potential of bringing major cost, convenience, and security benefits to citizens, businesses, and government alike. There are major architecture challenges, however, which cannot be solved by simply adopting modern enterprise architectures for identity management. Namely, these architectures involve a central server that houses the capability to electronically trace, profile, impersonate, and falsely deny access to any user. In the context of an e-government infrastructure, the privacy and security implications for citizens of such a panoptical identity architecture would be unprecedented...
On the legal side, the compatibility of modern enterprise identity architectures with data protection legislation and program statutes is highly questionable. Also, the adoption of enterprise identity architectures in the context of e-government would directly interfere with Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. Specifically, any interference with privacy rights under Article 8 must do so to the minimum degree necessary. Enterprise identity architectures violate this requirement: far less intrusive means exist for achieving the objectives of e-government.
Specifically, over the course of the past two decades, the cryptographic research community has developed an array of privacy-preserving technologies that can be used as building blocks for e-government in a manner that simultaneously meets the security needs of government and the legitimate privacy and security needs of individuals and service providers. Relevant privacy-preserving technologies include digital credentials, secret sharing, private information retrieval, and privacy-preserving data mining.
By properly using privacy-preserving technologies, individuals can be represented in their interactions with service providers by local electronic identifiers. Service providers can electronically link their legacy account data on individuals to these local electronic identifiers, which by themselves are untraceable and unlinkable. As a result, any pre-existing segmentation of activity domains is fully preserved. At the same time, verifier-trusted authorities can securely embed into all of an individual’s local identifiers a unique “master identifier” (such as a random number). These embedded identifiers remain unconditionally hidden when individuals identify themselves on the basis of their local electronic identifiers, but their hidden presence can be leveraged by service providers for all kinds of security and data sharing purposes without introducing privacy problems. The privacy guarantees do not require users to rely on third parties - the power to link and trace the activities of a user across his or her activity domains resides solely in the hands of that user.
In the context of e-government, security and privacy are not opposites but mutually reinforcing, assuming proper privacy-preserving technologies are deployed. In order to move forward with e-government, it is important for government to adopt technological alternatives that hold the promise of multi-party security while preserving privacy."
"What does Stefan Brands have to say about Transformational Government? The same as what he has said for years: government needs multi-party security that preserves privacy. And it can be done.
I should point out that we have cast his pearls of wisdom in front of the UK Government several times before. And that it's not his problem if we screw things up in the UK - after all, he's a Dutchman living in Canada. But if we had to name three people whose views should be heard if we are to create in the UK the foundation of trust we need in e-government, he's one.
Stefan did set out his position pretty clearly here on Ideal Government in October 2004 and not much has changed. And he points me to a good and concise exposition of his thoughts called On E-Government Authentication and Privacy which appeared on the Anonymity Blog, in Nov last year. "
It is becoming critical for policymakers to understand that privacy and security are not opposing and mutually exclusive forces. As Brand says:
"Governments around the world are working to implement digital identity and access management infrastructures for access to government services by citizens and businesses. E-government has the potential of bringing major cost, convenience, and security benefits to citizens, businesses, and government alike. There are major architecture challenges, however, which cannot be solved by simply adopting modern enterprise architectures for identity management. Namely, these architectures involve a central server that houses the capability to electronically trace, profile, impersonate, and falsely deny access to any user. In the context of an e-government infrastructure, the privacy and security implications for citizens of such a panoptical identity architecture would be unprecedented...
On the legal side, the compatibility of modern enterprise identity architectures with data protection legislation and program statutes is highly questionable. Also, the adoption of enterprise identity architectures in the context of e-government would directly interfere with Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. Specifically, any interference with privacy rights under Article 8 must do so to the minimum degree necessary. Enterprise identity architectures violate this requirement: far less intrusive means exist for achieving the objectives of e-government.
Specifically, over the course of the past two decades, the cryptographic research community has developed an array of privacy-preserving technologies that can be used as building blocks for e-government in a manner that simultaneously meets the security needs of government and the legitimate privacy and security needs of individuals and service providers. Relevant privacy-preserving technologies include digital credentials, secret sharing, private information retrieval, and privacy-preserving data mining.
By properly using privacy-preserving technologies, individuals can be represented in their interactions with service providers by local electronic identifiers. Service providers can electronically link their legacy account data on individuals to these local electronic identifiers, which by themselves are untraceable and unlinkable. As a result, any pre-existing segmentation of activity domains is fully preserved. At the same time, verifier-trusted authorities can securely embed into all of an individual’s local identifiers a unique “master identifier” (such as a random number). These embedded identifiers remain unconditionally hidden when individuals identify themselves on the basis of their local electronic identifiers, but their hidden presence can be leveraged by service providers for all kinds of security and data sharing purposes without introducing privacy problems. The privacy guarantees do not require users to rely on third parties - the power to link and trace the activities of a user across his or her activity domains resides solely in the hands of that user.
In the context of e-government, security and privacy are not opposites but mutually reinforcing, assuming proper privacy-preserving technologies are deployed. In order to move forward with e-government, it is important for government to adopt technological alternatives that hold the promise of multi-party security while preserving privacy."
More defeats for ID cards in the House of Lords
The House of Lords inflicted further defeats on the government's ID cards scheme yesterday.
Oxford students contract to attend lectures
This is idiotic.
"Students starting degrees at the University of Oxford this year could be asked to sign a legally binding contract requiring them to attend lectures."
Being responsible on an annual basis for anything between 1600 and 3000 technology undergraduates over the past eleven years, I've seen my fair share of students presenting the University with difficult issues which might have required legal process intervention [but didn't,fortunately, in the end]. Some of these cases were genuine failures on the University's part, which I hope we were able to put right; some were baseless. These cases relate to an absolutely tiny minority of the students I've been privileged to support and the type of contract Oxford are proposing would not have stopped the litigious ones being difficult. It merely serves notice on the vast majority of decent honest students that they will not be trusted.
Like drm, this approach is about keeping honest people honest and will be similarly received.
"Students starting degrees at the University of Oxford this year could be asked to sign a legally binding contract requiring them to attend lectures."
Being responsible on an annual basis for anything between 1600 and 3000 technology undergraduates over the past eleven years, I've seen my fair share of students presenting the University with difficult issues which might have required legal process intervention [but didn't,fortunately, in the end]. Some of these cases were genuine failures on the University's part, which I hope we were able to put right; some were baseless. These cases relate to an absolutely tiny minority of the students I've been privileged to support and the type of contract Oxford are proposing would not have stopped the litigious ones being difficult. It merely serves notice on the vast majority of decent honest students that they will not be trusted.
Like drm, this approach is about keeping honest people honest and will be similarly received.
Adobe phones home
From DocBug,
"Here's a tricky little privacy hole: Adobe PDF Reader 6.0 and later will automatically (and silently) execute Javascript that's been embedded in a PDF file, and LWN reports that a company called Remote Approach uses this "feature" to tag a PDF so it'll phone home to their servers whenever it's opened. Their customers can then go to a special webpage to track when the PDF was opened and at what IP address.
I'm sure you can think of your own scenarios where this would be a Bad Thing™, but the case that brought it to my attention was from a supposedly-anonymous reviewer of an academic paper who discovered Remote's website in his firewall logs.
The simple moral of the story is that content formats should not be able to run arbitrary code, but the more general point is one of setting limits and expectations. End-users need to be able to limit what's run on their own computers, and when the actual limits are broader than what a naive user might expect (such as when their supposedly-static PDF document can actually access the network) it's extra important for the system to alert the user what's happening and get permission first.
To their credit, Adobe seems to have heeded the moral: the current version of Acrobat Reader (at least on the Mac) gives a pop-up warning saying the PDF is trying to access a remote URL, and allows you to save your security settings on a site-by-site basis. I don't know when they added this alert or whether it was in response to problems like those I mentioned, but regardless it's nice to see the feature."
"Here's a tricky little privacy hole: Adobe PDF Reader 6.0 and later will automatically (and silently) execute Javascript that's been embedded in a PDF file, and LWN reports that a company called Remote Approach uses this "feature" to tag a PDF so it'll phone home to their servers whenever it's opened. Their customers can then go to a special webpage to track when the PDF was opened and at what IP address.
I'm sure you can think of your own scenarios where this would be a Bad Thing™, but the case that brought it to my attention was from a supposedly-anonymous reviewer of an academic paper who discovered Remote's website in his firewall logs.
The simple moral of the story is that content formats should not be able to run arbitrary code, but the more general point is one of setting limits and expectations. End-users need to be able to limit what's run on their own computers, and when the actual limits are broader than what a naive user might expect (such as when their supposedly-static PDF document can actually access the network) it's extra important for the system to alert the user what's happening and get permission first.
To their credit, Adobe seems to have heeded the moral: the current version of Acrobat Reader (at least on the Mac) gives a pop-up warning saying the PDF is trying to access a remote URL, and allows you to save your security settings on a site-by-site basis. I don't know when they added this alert or whether it was in response to problems like those I mentioned, but regardless it's nice to see the feature."
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