http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71726-0.html
Judge Throws Out Cell-Phone Case
Associated Press 17:00 PM Sep, 05, 2006
BAY CITY, Mich. — A federal judge threw out conspiracy and money laundering charges Tuesday against three Texas men who originally were accused of planning terrorism, saying there wasn't enough evidence to bring them to trial.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Charles Binder released Louai Othman, 23, his brother Adham Othman, 21, and their cousin Maruan Muhareb, 18, all of Mesquite, Texas, after a preliminary hearing.
The three were arrested Aug. 11 after buying large numbers of prepaid cell phones at a Wal-Mart store in rural Caro, about 80 miles north of Detroit. Michigan charges against the men were thrown out last month.
"I guess their ordeal is done," said defense lawyer Abed Ayoub of Dearborn, who represents the three men.
Tuscola County authorities said they were alarmed by the hundreds of cell phones they said were found in the men's van and by images of the Mackinac Bridge on their digital camera.
But the FBI and state police later said there was no imminent threat to the 5-mile-long span linking Michigan's two peninsulas and no information linking the Othmans and Muhareb to known terrorist groups.
The federal complaint said the men defrauded consumers, TracFone Wireless Inc. and Nokia Corp. by buying the prepaid phones and removing TracFone's proprietary software, making it possible to use the handsets with any cellular provider. [Similar to removing Microsoft's operating system and making the computer work? Bob] But lawyers for the men have said the three, who are Palestinian-American, were victims of ethnic profiling.
A message seeking comment was left with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit.
We can, therefore we must!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060905/181224.shtml
Is It The Job Of HP's Chairperson To Spy On Other Board Members?
from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept
Earlier today there were reports coming out that HP would not renominate director George Keyworth, though the reasoning was a bit weird, suggesting he was being kicked off the board for leaking info to the press. However, Newsweek has the full details. It appears the story goes back a few months to when well known VC, Tom Perkins, resigned from HP's board for no clear reason. It turns out that Perkins had quite a reason, and he's been pushing to get the SEC to publicly state those reasons. Back in January, News.com published a story outlining HP's vision for the future that apparently included some "inside info" that was only known by board members. Chairperson of the board, Patricia Dunn, was so furious about the leak that she hired some private investigators to track down the personal phone records of every board member -- ignoring, of course, that it's illegal to access such phone records. Of course, with phone records so easily available online (and the phone companies blaming the government rather than tightening their own security), it wasn't long until Dunn tracked down Keyworth as the guilty leaker. She accused him at a board meeting, at which point Perkins questioned Dunn's methods, wondering why she didn't just ask the board member who leaked to admit it. He noted that spying on fellow board members was "illegal, unethical and a misplaced corporate priority."
When the rest of the board refused to back him in this position, he resigned, though the reason was never stated publicly. Perkins claims that the reason should be on the public record -- and, now, thanks to (look at that) leaks to the press, it is. As the Newsweek article makes clear, this raises all sorts of issues about corporate surveillance. We were just talking about how the tools were getting better, but we meant for watching customers, not other board members. HP maintains that using false pretenses to obtain others' phone records is not, technically, spying -- and therefore Dunn has done nothing wrong. However, now that this story has become public, it seems like Dunn may discover that the distinction is lost on HP shareholders who might wonder why she spent so much effort spying on other board members instead of helping guide the company.
Here's an interesting precedent...
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/52830.html
Google to Comply With Brazilian Court Order
By Erika Morphy TechNewsWorld 09/05/06 3:43 PM PT
After being threatened with hefty penalties, Google has agreed to turn over some of its stored user data to Brazilian authorities. The information, which relates to pornography, pedophilia, racism and other criminal activities, came from postings on Google's Orkut social networking site in Brazil.
Google has announced that it will comply with a Brazilian court's order to turn over data that could identify users of its social networking site, Orkut, who are suspected of illegal activities such as child pornography.
A Brazilian judge hearing the case had threatened to levy a US$23,000 for each day Google refused to comply.
Differing Views
Google cooperated with some of the initial requests by the Public Attorney's Office, but declined to hand over other information, arguing that since the data is based in servers located in the United States, the Brazilian government should go through the U.S. court system to get it.
The judge hearing the case rejected that point of view. However, the argument might have held water in the U.S. court system, said Chip Babcock, a partner with Jackson Walker in Houston and Dallas, and a specialist in First Amendment issues.
Judges have found in several cases that jurisdiction is governed by where the information in question resides. Such precedents, of course, hold little sway in foreign courts.
"If you are going to do business in a foreign country you will be subject to its laws for better or worse," Babcock told TechNewsWorld. "Not every country views these issues as we do."
U.S. courts are highly protective of the concept of free speech, for instance, he noted. Some other countries do not give as much weight to this issue.
Over the past year, search engine providers have challenged various governments' requests for data with different degrees of success.
Google resisted a U.S. Justice Department subpoena seeking search term data and was partially supported by a court decision. In China, both Yahoo and Google complied with government requests for user information -- requests that were in compliance with local law, they said.
China used the information to arrest at least one individual, prompting an outcry against the companies in the United States.
As more such incidents occur -- few governments are likely to resist the gold mine of data available to them via search engines' servers -- the debate over how much, if any, user data search engines should retain will likely intensify.
This has been a hot topic among privacy advocates and in the blogosphere in general.
Awareness is growing among Internet users that they are at risk, not only from government intrusion -- a view that Google itself holds -- but also from search engines that are careless with consumer privacy.
To patent or not to patent, that is no longer the question... I have an idea for replacement words. We'll call them BAWs – Bob's Alternative Words... GPL of course. Perhaps we could atent-pay ig-pay atin-lay...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/05/2344247&from=rss
Microsoft [to patent] Verb Conjugation
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday September 06, @01:30AM from the [to-give]-me-a-break dept. Patents
streepje writes "Here [to be] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be] [to apply] for a patent for [to conjugate] verbs. Future postings [to look] like this."
Imagine what a well funded government effort, using ALL the available data, could tell you.
http://michaelzimmer.org/2006/09/04/amateur-data-mining-in-google-calendar/
Amateur Data Mining in Google Calendar
Posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
The Dumb Little Man blog reveals how easy it can be to figure out who a person is, where they live, and what their daily routine & activities are by simply searching through public online calendars (like Google Calendar) and some simple searches or 411 calls.
This probably ain't it.
NYPD Launches Third Phase Of Data Warehouse Project
Eric Lai September 04, 2006 (Computerworld)
The New York City Police Department is launching a third update of a massive data warehouse that officials hope will one day become a hub for data from dozens of area law enforcement agencies.
Officials said that when the latest update is completed, the warehouse will add real-time alerts and links to several new data sources while boosting capacity from 80GB to about 400GB. [This is trivial. I captured almost 2TB (2,000GB) for a client preserving data for litigation in what I would consider a very small case. A 500GB drive costs less than $400 Bob]
The next update of the IBM DB2-based data warehouse will also add a link for the first time to the department's 12-year-old Computerized Statistics crime-mapping tool, known as CompStat.
City CIO James Onalfo said the city has spent $300 million over the past three years on the technology. "We're in a war, so we need to give our guys in the front lines the best tools possible," he said.
Nice, but good luck doing this before you have a privacy disaster... (Remember, businesses exist to take risks.)
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/52817.html
The Operational Risk Management Rules of the Road
By Kristin Gallina Lovejoy www.EcommerceTimes.com Part of the ECT News Network 09/06/06 4:00 AM PT
Operational risk, the new buzzword, is an emerging field driven by regulations such as the Basel II Accord and Sarbanes-Oxley, and by the desire to implement risk measurement and risk management practices in order to protect or enhance shareholder value. In layperson's terms, operational risk represents the losses that follow from acts undertaken -- or neglected -- in carrying out business activities.
I don't think this would have happen in the US. Would it?
http://www.gigalaw.com/news/2006/09/canadian-man-gets-16-months-in-jail.html
Canadian Man Gets 16 Months in Jail for Hate Website
A Canadian man was sentenced to 16 months in jail followed by three years of probation for spreading hatred against Jews via the Internet. The sentence came in the first Internet hate crime to go before a criminal court in Canada.
Read the article: Jewish Telegraphic Agency | Posted: 9/05/2006 03:30:00 PM
This would.. Wouldn't it? See the diference?
Web designer jailed for 8 years over Bali bombings
Tue Sep 5, 2006 2:08 PM ET
DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - An Indonesian who set up a militant Web site on behalf of the alleged mastermind of last year's deadly bombings in Bali was jailed for eight years on Tuesday.
The sentence is the first linked to the Oct 1, 2005 bombings, in which three suicide bombers blew themselves up killing 20 people at three restaurants on the resort island's beaches of Jimbaran and Kuta.
Judges from the Denpasar district court found Abdul Aziz broke anti-terrorism laws by setting up a now shutdown militant Web site, www.anshar.net, which contained diagrams of several locations and explained why they would be ideal for attacking people and how to escape after the attacks.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012352.html
September 05, 2006
White House Releases National Strategy on Combatting Terrorism
September 5, 2006 Fact Sheet: The President's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, September 2006 (29 pages, PDF)
Contents:
Overview of America's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
Google to Offer Print-Archives Searches
By JOHN MARKOFF September 6, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 — Google plans to announce on Wednesday that it is offering a service that will permit Internet users to search through the archives of newspapers, magazines and other publications and uncover material that in some cases dates back more than 200 years.
The new feature, to be named Google News Archive Search, will direct Google searchers to both paid and free digital content on publishers’ Web sites, but will not directly generate revenue for Google.
Google would not state how many publishers were taking part in the new service, for which Google has independently indexed material from online databases and will display the results both as part of standard searches and through a new archive search page (news.google.com/archivesearch). However, it announced a number of partners including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Guardian Unlimited, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, HighBeam Research and Thomson Gale.
In contrast to Google’s book scanning project, which has led to legal skirmishes with some publishers over copyright issues, some of the partners involved with the new service said they had been pressing Google to offer access to their archives for several years.
The databases included in the service are part of what some have called the “dark Web” because they cannot be “spidered,” or indexed, by standard search engines and so have not been accessible through them.
“We have been asking Google and other search engines to please spider our content for some time,” said Patrick Spain, chief executive of HighBeam Research, a digital content library based in Chicago.
Some of HighBeam’s 3,300 publications and 40 million documents will be available free, while in other cases users will see just the headline and the first 600 characters of a document. To see the whole thing, users must be subscribers to the firm’s service, which costs either $20 a month or a $100 annual fee.
“This symbolizes a major moment,” said Allen Weiner, a research director at Gartner, a market research firm. Google has reached an accommodation with the content companies that will benefit both sides, he said.
In a number of cases the entire archive of publications like Time and The Washington Post will be reachable via a Google search. Time’s entire database is already freely available and supported by advertising. The magazine made its archive, consisting of 4,300 issues and 300,000 articles dating back to 1923, available free through www.time.com last month.
With some publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, searchers will be sent to Web sites where they will be able to buy individual articles.
Google executives said that the archive service would not generate revenue directly and that the company did not yet know how it would make money from it.
“We’re not focusing on monetization yet,” said Anurag Acharya, a distinguished engineer at Google who helped develop the service. “This is new territory for us.”
The new service is not encyclopedic, Mr. Acharya said, but instead presents users with a representative list of relevant articles that are arranged in a timeline fashion. The service tries to offer a pointer to the time period that is most relevant to the search query. For example, in the case of the search phrase “moon landing,” an arrow points the user to 1969.
Mr. Weiner of Gartner said he expected Google to link the archive service to its Google Checkout payment system. In the future, he said, video archives are almost certain to be added.
“They have to convince CBS News to make Edward R. Murrow available,” he said.
