Big Brother
Gregg Keizer
ComputerWorld.com
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:07 EST
Don't worry, company tells users; NSA involved only in security compliance standards
Microsoft today denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a
Computerworld story Wednesday.
On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 "to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide."
Comment: So "The Clipper chip" raised to many alarms. But then, that was back in '93.
"I can't imagine NSA and Microsoft would do anything deliberate, because the repercussions would be enormous if they got caught.."
What could tech companies come up with, silicon/chip or software wise, especially in the 8+ years since 911? Speaking of which, the bigger the lie..
Nick Allen
Telegraph
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:12 EST
A police officer used a Taser stun gun to subdue a 10-year-old girl in her own home.
The officer had been called to the girl's home in Ozark, Arkansas, by her mother because she was behaving in an unruly manner and refusing to take a shower.
In a report on the incident the officer, Dustin Bradshaw, said the mother gave him permission to use the Taser.
When he arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming, and resisting as her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed.
"Her mother told me to take her if I needed to," the officer wrote.
The child was "violently kicking and verbally combative" when he tried to take her into custody and she kicked him in the groin.
Cory Doctorow
Boingboing.net
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:55 EST
© Unknown
The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
Stephen Dufrechou
News Junkie Post
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:00 EST
© Unknown
We have a "right" to exercise free speech in the US, but that does not mean we fully exercise that right. In fact, we tend to do everything to ensure that free speech - with all its implications - does not really exist. But if we continue to tell ourselves that we do have free speech, then we'll only be operating in the spirit of that old joke, about a husband who gets caught cheating: Lying in bed beside his naked mistress, the husband tells his wife, "I'm not cheating! Don't believe your lying eyes!" In other words, we'll only be telling ourselves to label something other than what it actually is (or, in this case, what it is not).
Indeed, public discourse in America is not typified by free speech, despite our insistence that it is. And also, our discourses have increasingly become hallmarked by "invisible repression", which makes the US, in one sense, as oppressive as authoritarian societies. Coincidentally, the very nature of this repression - its "invisibleness", itself - does not stop us from being affected by it. Even though we do not perceive it, "invisible repression" still threatens us, controls us, and perpetuates our lack of free speech and action. And all of this occurs, largely, on a level of which we are unaware.
Invisible repression, to be understood, needs to be contrasted with its "visible" counterpart. And Cuba provides a recent example.
"Visible repression" is the blatant, state-sanctioned repression of dissent. We see it in authoritarian societies, when the government shuts down universities, or when it bans newspapers. When these measures fail to abolish opposition, we see it in police brutality against dissenters. This is kind of repression is a systemic element in authoritarian countries. And it is what occurred to Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose blog is famously known for its pacifist dissent against the Cuban government.
Eric Fortney
examiner.com
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:21 EST
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sent correspondence last week to Hubbard High School requesting that school officials stop punishing a student for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Seventeen year old Roxanne Westover, an atheist, believes the Pledge of Allegiance opposes her beliefs.
"I'm an atheist, and I believe the pledge isn't something toward our nation," she told the Youngstown Vindicator. "It's more like a religious oath, and I believe that if I stand I'm still participating in it."
Henry Porter
The Guardian
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:13 EST
Full marks to the students who complained to their headteacher about the intrusive taking of fingerprints in their school
The brilliant new documentary about privacy by David Bond,
Erasing David, has a telling scene in Chipping Campden School, Gloucestershire, where the headteacher shows off a new fingerprinting system that allows pupils to register and take their meals by pressing a pad.
The headteacher, Annette France, demonstrates the £25,000 system in front of a classroom of kids, most of whom look pretty underwhelmed. Possibly France was put off by the camera and the kids smirking behind her back but I sensed a shiftiness in her attitude, as though she was beginning to realise that collecting biometrics from children and dismissing parents' concerns was actually rather weird behaviour.
In south Devon, the kids and parents are made from sterner stuff. Students at Kingsbridge community college
have rebelled against this pernicious practice of taking fingerprints and have won the support of the Totnes MP Anthony Steen, who has written to schools secretary Ed Balls. At St King Edward Vl community college, also in Devon, parents have protested about a similar system.
Corporate Watch
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:34 EST
The culture of fear and distrust that has grown up around this century's terror culture and its associated wars has created vast new markets for anything that can be branded with the words security or defence. In April 2010, London's Kensington Olympia will play host to a Counter Terror Expo, put on by DSEi's infamous events' organiser, Clarion, and sponsored by French arms company, Thales. Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security associations, the expo will showcase over 250 security, surveillance and specialist logistics companies; state agencies including NATO and the MoD; and anyone else claiming to provide protection against terrorism for both the armed forces and civilian populations. Joining the fray are a number of corporations involved in creating identity verification technologies. The biometrics and database management companies whose invasive products, based on the recognition of physiological characteristics, are finding voice as futuristic 'solutions' in, what is deemed, an 'increasingly dangerous world'.
Charlotte Gore
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28 EST
The internet is such a huge part of life that Mandelson's plans to cut people off for copyright breach is a clear restriction of liberty
At 33 years old I'm more Generation X than Generation X-Box. I'm too old to be one of the new wave of "digital natives" who've never known life without the internet, but I'm just about young enough (and geeky enough) to consider myself an enthusiastic immigrant. I moved in about 13 years ago, and if I could swear an oath of allegiance to some Head Of The Internet State, I wouldn't hesitate.
Sadly there is no president of the internet, which is a shame because it means I'm stuck with my British passport instead. And relations between Britain and the internet have been strained of late.
Lord Mandelson is seeking to grant himself significant powers in the fight against copyright infringement - the ability to do just about anything so long as it's in the interest of protecting copyright, and without having to go through parliament.
SpyBlog
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:10 EST
Although we are slightly relieved that no Communications Data Bill has been sneaked into the Queen's Speech, as originally threatened by the disgraced former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, this Labour Government simply cannot resist producing some more useless and repetitive legislation, as a public relations diversion to hide their failure to control aspects of modern technology.
Chris Williams
The Register
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:24 EST
Peering inside your packets
Ofcom has held talks over a monitoring system that would peer inside filesharing traffic to determine the level of copyright infringement, in preparation for new laws designed to protect the music, film and software industries.
The Digital Economy Bill, to be published by Lord Mandelson tomorrow, will require the communications regulator to measure how filesharers who exchange copyright material respond to a regime of warning letters.
If the overall level of infringement is not cut by 70 per cent in a year, further provisions will be triggered, compelling ISPs to impose speed restriction after warnings. Internet access will be suspended for the most persistent infringers.
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"I can't imagine NSA and Microsoft would do anything deliberate, because the repercussions would be enormous if they got caught.."
What could tech companies come up with, silicon/chip or software wise, especially in the 8+ years since 911? Speaking of which, the bigger the lie..