Governments frequently move slower than writers imagine. Only now is England moving into 1984... Perhaps next they will ban Soccer Hooligans, Muslims, and the Labour Party... Won't tourists be impressed when they have to be fingerprinted in each pub they visit. I suspect this would not be allowed in Ireland – it would delay that first drink too long.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/22/050218&from=rss

England Starts Fingerprinting Drinkers

Posted by Zonk on Sunday October 22, @01:37AM from the you-are-not-free-to-drink-the-beer dept. Privacy

dptalia writes "In an effort to reduce alcohol related violence, England is rolling out mandatory fingerprinting of all pub patrons. If a pub owner refuses to comply with the new system, and fails to show 'considerable' reductions in alcohol-related crimes, they will lose their license. Supposedly the town that piloted this program had a 48% reduction in alcohol-related crime."

From the article: "Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time - usually a period of months - by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offenses are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a 'psychological effect' on offenders."

...of course, that could never happen here!

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/21/2333218&from=rss

Feds Start Small on Smart IDs

Posted by Zonk on Saturday October 21, @08:12PM from the small-start-leads-to-big-ending dept. Security Privacy Politics Technology

jcatcw writes "Some government employees will be getting smart ID cards beginning this week. The unfunded mandate to have all employees and contractors use Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards is part of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. The U.S. General Services Administration is providing enrollment centers that can verify the identities of employees, fingerprint and photograph the workers, and issue PIV cards to them. The deadline for getting cards to all employees and contractors is the end of September 2008."

If nothing else, the list of past data loss events is impressive...

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/20/2250246&from=rss

Why Not Use Full Disk Encryption on Laptops?

Posted by Cliff on Saturday October 21, @06:33PM from the mitigating-risk-of-data-leaks dept. Encryption Portables Security

Saqib Ali asks: "According to the 2006 Security Breaches Matrix, a large number of the data leaks were caused due to stolen/missing laptops. Mobile devices will be stolen or lost, but one way to easily mitigate the harm is to use Full Disk Encryption (FDE) on all mobile devices. So, why don't we encrypt all our HDDs?"

"Cost, and performance impact are the usual arguments.

Analysis shows that the access time increases by 56%-85% after FDE. As HDDs fills up the fragmentation increases and so will the file access time. With FDE, the swap file (system's virtual memory) gets encrypted as well. This will impact the system's performance noticeably [but how much “intensive” computing is done on remote laptops? Typically they are used to display data or for word processing and email. Bob] when the virtual memory is being used more often.

Encryption key & password management blues follow. What happens when the user forgets his/her new FDE password? How to manage the encryption key backup files? Who has possession of the backups of the encryption keys? What about when the users quits and does not hand over the password / encryption keys? Who can access the system and its encrypted files? How frequently does the password need to be changed? How to prevent the user from writing the passwords down? Using hardware token (RSA Token, smartcard etc) can alleviate many of the password management issues. But these hardware tokens are costly!

Cost for Full Disk Encryption solutions ranges from $0-$300. [Note that encryption costs start at ZERO. Can you afford NOT to spend that much to secure your data? Bob]

Is it not worth using Full Disk Encryption on mobile devices after all the data leaks we have seen in the last few years?"

Here's one tax we've avoided, For God's sake don't tell your Congressman!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/22/053201&from=rss

Germany's New Internet License Fee

Posted by Zonk on Sunday October 22, @03:30AM from the enjoy-your-privelages dept. The Internet Television The Almighty Buck

PapayaSF writes "Beginning January 1st, Germany will require payment of a license fee of 5.52 euros a month on computers and mobile phones that can access TV and radio programs over the Internet. Like the current TV and radio license fees, the money will support national and local public TV and radio stations. German companies with many computers are predictably upset."

I'm not sure if this is the same story we discussed in 2004. Did this original fee go through, and this is another fee on top of the original?

Watch TV on your computer before the government starts taxing it!

http://digg.com/software/Democracy_the_free_and_opensource_Internet_TV_platform_New_Version

Democracy: the free and opensource Internet TV platform - New Version

webtech submitted by webtech 21 hours 32 minutes ago (via http://www.getdemocracy.com/downloads/ )

You've probably watched hundreds of tiny videos on websites. It's tedious. Democracy Player makes video on the internet way less frustrating and way more enjoyable. You can subscribe to channels of internet video, download videos, and watch them fullscreen, one after the other, all in one application. Internet video becomes internet TV. It's free.

I told you video was popular on the Internet. (So popular this site has crashed!)

http://digg.com/tech_news/Digg_For_Torrents

Digg For Torrents!

matthall28 submitted by matthall28 12 hours 26 minutes ago (via http://www.torrop.com/ )

Another Digg Clone, With It's Own Unique Use. This One Is For Torrents!

Anyone got any ideas?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546327,00.html?=duggin?

The Next YouTubes

After Google's deal, dotcoms are bubbling hot. What you need to know about Web 2.0

By JEREMY CAPLAN Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006

For budding internet entrepreneurs, the moral of Google's $1.65 billion purchase of video start-up YouTube is simple: Build a real, functioning company, then sell it to a bigger one.

... They know Google's not the only shopper. Yahoo! has spent close to $100 million for start-ups Flickr and Jumpcut, among others. Facebook may be next, with Yahoo! said to be mulling a $1 billion offer. With investors on track to inject $500 million into new Net firms this year--twice last year's total, according to a Dow Jones VentureOne report--this may be the start of a golden hunting season.

There are more than 1,000 start-ups--referred to these days as Web 2.0 companies--using a new set of tools to quickly and cheaply create sites and services that would have taken years--and millions--to build in the '90s.

Well, it's a start. (They forgot “howdy!”)

http://digg.com/tech_news/Learn_To_Say_Hello_In_Over_800_Languages

Learn To Say "Hello" In Over 800 Languages

ndm007 submitted by ndm007 13 hours 58 minutes ago (via http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/hello.htm )

This site contains lists of greetings such as hello, goodbye, and how are you from over 800 languages, including 14 versions of English and 42 versions of German.

[From the comments: I can't speak for everyone else but the one word that I want to know how to speak universally is "bathroom" ]