By way of Secrecy News, A federal court on Friday issued an injunction disabling the internet domain name of Wikileaks.org,  The injunction stems from a complaint  by  Bank Julias Baer, a Swiss bank, for posting  "confidential bank records". which according to Wikileak's Julian Assagne, expose trust structures allegedly used for tax evasion, asset hiding and money laundering by the ultra rich,"  

Now I'll be one of the first to fight for personal privacy and would deplore any publication of personal data unless said information was publically available.   However, if there is evidence of wrongdoing, then that information should be passed on to the authorities to resolve the matter, unless those (*Cough) authorities are involved in the same dealings, which requires a more drastic action and civil disobedience must occur.

The real interesting point is the attempt of the Federal Court to silence the web site by removing the domain name from the registry, which only begins to show their ignorance of the technology.   OK so the average Joe/Jane  isn't going to be able to type http://wikiLeaks.org and get a web site and the root servers are the "Main" phonebook of the internet, but there are other routes to take.  A simple search on Google and you'll find other posts that mention the injunction, as well as links to the actual IP address of the wikiLeaks.org   The DNS entries are gone and WhoIs may not work, but the information remains.

People like me (aka: fellow conspiracy theorists) who seek out this type of information , will invariably find it by other means.  Wikileaks will resurface, perhaps as a modified name or even through TOR DNS.  The information will not, cannot be silenced. 

The Child Online Protection Action (COPA) is being challenged in court again by the ACLU in Philadelphia.  The COPA, originally passed in 1998 hasn't been able to be enforced because of challenges against it as well as a federal appeals court ruling that it was unconstitutional.  The DOJ hasn't stopped pushing for it.  If the Internet were a book, I'm sure the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, would have it at the top of the burning pile.

While there is certainly inappropriate material on the web that children shouldn't have access to, the COPA is too broad and ambiguous as well as being a nightmare to manage.    There are already obscenity laws  that govern a large portion of what the COPA is trying to stop, but  the COPA goes too far.    The COPA also suggests Credit Cards as being one method to limit access to Adults. Well, my 5 year old already knows what a credit card is and that it is in Daddy's wallet.  I can just imagine having to lock up my wallet at night like a gun in a gunsafe.  I just might do that, but I'm going to wait till she's a teenager and wants to actually use it.

Here's an excerpt about Subsection 231(e) in a letter from the DOJ regarding the COPA and what can be considered "harmful to minors"

Take the book "Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" published in 1748, which was at one time a banned book and is considered Erotic Fiction by the Library of Congress.  Easily orderable from Amazon, the book is sexual in nature, and though a bit dated in the vernacular and certainly not of contemporary community standards as identified in paragraph A , might apply to paragraph B based on an interpretation.    This book is available as eText from many universities.  These sites would have to resort to some sort of adult identification scheme to view such content if it was considered harmful to minors.

CBC reported that Axing sex, swearing from films violates copyright: court in a lawsuit by 16 U.S. directors against three Utah based companies that scrub films.

I found the quote from Michael Apted interesting in regards to "Unauthorized editing" and "passion about protecting our work ".  So, if a TV station edits a film to "fit" a time-slot, do they get permission from the copyright holder?  If they cut short a film or start it already in progress due to a sport time-shift, does that constitute an unauthorized edit?  Based on the quote, shouldn't the same copyright holders be concerned about this type of editing? oh wait, they're getting paid to have it shown, so I guess it's all right if the film is chopped to heck so a few more commercials can be added.  I'm not privy to the contracts between copyright holders and TV stations, so I'm just guessing.

I really want to read the court decision, which wasn't posted.  I'm hoping that the major fault on the scrubbers is that they were copying the media and returning back a different copy of the scrubbed media.

 Now if the scrubbers were able to return the original media (nigh impossible with DVD format), but with VHS format, they should be allowed to blank out portions of the original tape and return it.

An owner of a copyrighted piece end product, should be allowed, other than copying (lets not get into public display, how many is public), to do whatever they want with that physical content, even to the extent of destroying that content.

Let's say I was a private library owner and decided to rip out anything I found objectionable in my collection of books and then lend those books out.  I'm sure the copyright owners would object, but wouldn't that be my right as the owner of the books to do so as I please.  Don't get me wrong, I'm against book burning and such and have the right to voice my opinion, but so do the book burners have the same right in burning their  books in the first place.

What do we truly own, or do we license everything?  "Before hanging this painting on your wall, you agree to....

Most of the concerns I've seen regarding net neutrality are the jocking of position of the communication carriers over encroaching services and cross-offerings such as cable providers providing telephone service and popular websites eating up enormous traffic.

We've had a sort of n-tier INTERNET for awhile.  I've got Broadband, I've had it since 1996, different services, sure, such as ISDN, ISDL, Wireless Broadband, and Cable, but I've paid extra for that service.  I expect to be able to use up to the limit of bandwidth that I've paid for each month that my contract allows.  What I shouldn't have to pay for is different rates for different traffic.  And neither should certain traffic be limited.  I'm paying for the pipe and what I want to send through it is my concern, assuming I'm not breaking any laws doing so.  This should also apply to Google and the like, who have already paid enormous sums to maintain their 0C3's.

There is also another, more sinister look at what could happen when carriers can control what goes and how fast it goes through their pipes based on content.

Here's a purely hypothetical example;

Let's say Dick Cheney doesn't like a particular, perhaps popular website that is against the U.S. efforts in Iraq.  He decides to talk to his friend Kenneth Derr, CEO of Chevron, who sits on the board of directors at Haliburton and also sits on the board of AT&T, and Citigroup.  Let's say that Kenneth is friends with C. Michael Armstrong, who also sits on the board of Citigroup as well as Comcast.

Now lets go a little further.  William R. Howell, who sits on the board of Haliburton and Exxon Mobile, talks to  Walter V. Shipley, who sits on the board of Exxon as well as Verizon.

So here we have a nice little group of very influential individuals who have connections to big oil as well as some of our largest communication providers.  A little whisper here, a handshake there and wow, an n-tier INTERNET structure works in their favor.   

I'm not saying the companies would completely block the site, but maybe slow it down a little.  It would be very hard for the website to resolve slow access issues, since the communication companies could then point to the n-tier structure and state that other sites were being given preferential treatment.

Oh, If you want to research some of the big company connections on your own, go to http://www.theyrule.net

While reading an article on BBCNews regarding the government conflicts with "The Pirate Bay", a site that provides Bit Torrent links, I took particular interest in the section regarding the Swedish government accidentally seizing the servers of Game Switch, which provides servers for on-line gaming.  To draw an analogy, this is like a SWAT action where they raid the wrong house and flashbang  the innocent occupants, or in the case of a shared hosting environment, burning down the entire apartment complex.

Such an action leaves the agency responsible for causing the seizure liable for any losses occurred, and depending on the site wrongfully shutdown, this could range into the millions due to lost sales simply because the raiding agency took down the wrong rack in their zealousness, meanwhile, the company that was wrongfully shutdown has to activate their disaster recovery plan (if they have one) and overcome any customer satisfaction issues caused by having their servers shut down.

Pogo has an interesting article on FY 07 House Intelligence Authorization Bill, Section 432, which would allow CIA and NSA personnel to make arrests without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing a felony offense. 

One of the interesting points here is that the CIA charter only provides for intelligence gathering abroad.  This bill would allow the CIA to make arrests on U.S. soil, effectively becoming an uber government police organization, having jurisdiction over local and state authorities and probably even the FBI.   Just consider the CIA's past.  Fortunately, the CIA does have to answer to the GAO somewhat, but the very nature of their organization (as well as the NSA)  brings up concerns of possible future police actions by secrecy based organizations.

If you're in the U.S. check out this example of Google Censorship.

Then ask yourself why would a video be available in other countries but not in a country where Free Speech is part of the very foundation of our country.

Sometimes I get so immersed in programming, I miss the important things.  The above link appeared on Slashdot today as part of an article on the CIA reclassifying documents.

Oh, its a "HomeLand Security" thing, or "It's For The Children". 

Yeah, right....

 Old news by now, but I think my title is more appropriate in regards to the Jack Abramoff story.

Have you ever been sitting at a traffic light, looked out the window and seen one of those little yellow/orange flags that say something to the effect "Caution: buried fiber optic cable" and wondered who would be affected if it were cut?  With the recent arrival of new terrorism threats, I wonder how much is being done to protect our infrastructure of networks, power grid, water, etc.

If you've ever done any long distance driving in your day, I'm sure you've seen those largely unprotected stretches of major power lines, and even some of those signs indicating buried cable.  And with resources on the web such as as the Sprint Fiber Optic Network Map being available you can see that it wouldn't take much to cause a major hit on the infrastructure, which would have a major effect on the economy.  Even a few hours of downtime causes a fair amount of economic damage.  Check out this report on what happened when the fiber was accidentally cut on the Sprint network.  Purposely causing a power cascade failure could be even more catastrophic.  Here's an old report from 2003 regarding the danger of a power grid attack.  Also check out these maps of the U.S. Infrastructure overlay.

While I'm a believer that "Information wants to be free", I'm also conflicted with the idea that some of this information should require login access and that I've also pointed out this information as being available, considering that I've gathered the above information within the last 10 minutes alone.

I mean, take a couple of people, throw on some orange vests, give them a backhoe, and they LOOK official, don't they?

It's been reported in the Mercury News and other publications about Apple's response concerning privacy issues on how iTunes tracks you by a unique id and suggests purchases compatible with your lifestyle.  Before, it wasn't obvious on how to turn off this "Mini-Store", but the new changes Apple has made has makes it much more obvious.  I applaud Apple on this move.

I'm a little mixed on the whole privacy issue of purchase history.  On one hand, I like a store that caters to my needs and uses my purchase history to make recommendations and maybe even mails me coupons and promotions tailored specifically to me.  I like to think that such a store might decide to carry more of what I like rather than what national polls and averages dictate. 

On the other hand, I worry about where that information might go.  A store could be forced to give up information on a subpoena.  When you start realizing the immense power of large data warehouses all being able to linked together, the amount of data that can be gathered on an individual is staggering. 

So when you make purchases, you need to decide, does that purchase fit the wholesome citizen that you want people to perceive you as, or would those 10 bottles of Everclear show a little smudge on the record.  Then decide if you want to use that shopper card, credit card, or just pay in cash.