One to follow?
Class-Action Lawsuit Unfolding in Boston Against Webloyalty, Fandango, Priceline, and Various Web Retailers Alleges Widespread “Coupon Click Fraud”
Seth Shulman 12/19/07
It is every online shopper’s nightmare (that is, if you awake to know it has even happened). You’re at the computer buying movie tickets, flowers, or pet food and, after completing your purchase, an enticing pop-up comes on the screen offering a $10 rebate. You type in your e-mail address to take advantage of the offer and the next thing you know, wham! You just unwittingly transferred your credit card number to a company you’ve never heard of and enrolled yourself in a dubious “rewards” program charging you $10 per month in perpetuity.
... No matter the outcome, the case is being watched closely in both legal and financial circles. Lawyers say the suit could help shape the way laws governing online transactions are interpreted and enforced. Investors note that Webloyalty’s type of business, known as part of the so-called “lead generation” field, is a tempting and profitable branch of e-commerce. But, they say, any revelations from the case about deceptive practices would certainly give many would-be investors pause.
To the “If you're not guilty...” agruement, we should add “If you are totally clueless...”
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071219121635905
Se: Klüft touts computer chip implants
Wednesday, December 19 2007 @ 12:16 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Non-U.S. News
Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm have caused a stir on the home front by proposing radical measures to ensure that top level competitors refrain from taking performance-enhancing drugs.
Klüft and Holm, reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events, both agreed that competitors at the highest level should either have computer chips implanted into their skin or GPS transmitters attached to their training bags to help keep track of their movements at all times.
Source - The Local
Video guidelines.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-privacy-tips-video-series.html
New privacy tips video series
12/19/2007 11:30:00 AM Posted by Jane Horvath, Senior Privacy Counsel
In order to give you the best possible information about the privacy settings for our products, we asked the engineers and product managers who actually designed them to explain how they work in a series of new videos we released today on our YouTube Privacy Channel. These videos feature Googlers sharing privacy tips, like how to use Google Chat’s “Off the Record” feature, how to limit the number of people who can view your Picasa photos, how to unlist your phone number from Google search results, and how to make the details of your Google Calendar entries private.
If you wanted to alter votes in an election... or if you wanted to hide the fact that you already had...
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/election-softwa.html
Election Software Lost in Transit
By Kim Zetter EmailDecember 19, 2007 | 5:21:41 PMCategories: E-Voting, Election '08
More than a hundred computer chips containing voting machine software were lost or stolen during transit in California this week.
Two cardboard shipping tubes containing 174 EPROMs loaded with voting machine software were sent via Federal Express on December 13th from the secretary of state's office in Sacramento to election officials in nineteen California counties that use optical-scan voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems. But on Monday, two shipping tubes arrived empty to one of these counties.
Thank God the logic doesn't extend to political ads.... (Perhaps this is to make up for the fine the US had to pay the EU for an illegal trade practice?)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071219/162808.shtml
Why Should Google, Microsoft & Yahoo Have To Pay Fines For Casino Advertising?
from the makes-no-sense dept
The pointless US campaign against online gambling has snared another bunch of innocent victims. A few years back, the DOJ started a new program: rather than trying to stop online gambling directly (since all were operating outside of the US), it would simply go after websites that ran ads from casinos. The problem is that this would appear to be a free speech violation. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the folks in the Justice Department from applying pressure to companies -- and it looks like the three big search engines have caved. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed to pay a combined $31.5 million for running ads from gambling sites in the past (the fines are to be paid as a mixture of cash, donations to charity and public service announcements). The companies aren't admitting guilt -- which seems reasonable because they're not guilty of anything. None of these companies was involved in illegal online gambling. None of these companies even embraced or endorsed illegal online gambling. As platform providers for ads, they simply allowed others to buy ads on their sites for online gambling sites. There shouldn't be any liability directly on those search engines -- but it's tough to fight the US gov't, and since the amounts are relatively small, it's not a huge surprise that the companies settled. It is unfortunate, though. No matter whether you are for or against online gambling, there's simply no reason to go after the search engines. If the ads themselves were illegal, go after those who bought the ads.
“Copyright is as copyright does.” F. Gump
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071219/020622.shtml
Copyright, Defamation, Bloggers, DMCA, Safe Harbors, Cease-And-Desists And Anonymity... Oh My!
from the we've-got-it-all-in-this-case dept
Well, here's a lawsuit that's got all the hot button issues going around these days, and yet has received very little publicity. Both Eric Goldman and Sam Bayard provide detailed legal breakdowns of what happened (and it may take a couple reads to grasp all the details), but let's try to summarize (some of it's good, some of it's bad). Basically, there was a site that has a few anonymous bloggers posting about politics. One of those anonymous bloggers, going under the name "Tom Paine" posted something accusing the CEO of a company of something that the CEO believed was defamatory. The company sent the blog a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that Paine's post be removed. That cease-and-desist letter was then posted to the blog by a different anonymous blogger, using the name "d2."
Here's where things get interesting. The company had registered the cease-and-desist with the copyright office, and then claimed that d2 was violating the copyright. We've seen a few other companies try to do this, and the idea that a boilerplate cease-and-desist letter is copyrightable is highly questionable -- and, even if it can be covered by copyright, there are strong fair use arguments for a blogger being able to post it. Unfortunately, though, the court felt otherwise, and decided that just because the company had registered the copyright on the document, that's all the evidence it needed to say the document was covered by copyright, and posting it could be considered infringement. If that stands, it could be disastrous to plenty of other bloggers (and the Chilling Effects archive) who post the ridiculous C&Ds they receive. Indeed, this ruling may prove to have a true "chilling effect" itself. Hopefully, though, a few more high profile cases of this nature will eventually have it made clear that posting a C&D is perfectly legitimate.
But, wait... there's more! In claiming copyright infringement, the company didn't just go after d2, but used the DMCA to subpoena for information on both d2 and Tom Paine -- even though Tom Paine had absolutely nothing to do with posting the cease-and-desist, and was accused of defamation, not copyright infringement. Luckily, the court saw right through that one, and decided that there was no reason to identify Tom Paine over the copyright issue. And, of course, we don't even get to touch on the questions concerning the rights to anonymity, as well as the safe harbors provided by the company that runs the blog concerning the speech of its users -- all of which are a part of the case as well. So, if you've got some time and want to dig through all the gory legal details, go ahead. But the summary is that there's a bit of good (in that a company that tried to misuse the DMCA to unmask an anonymous blogger was denied -- even if it's a bad sign that the company even thought to use the DMCA in this manner) and there's a lot of bad (in suggesting that it may be infringement to post a generic cease-and-desist). I would imagine this is not the last we'll be hearing of this case.
“Surprise surprise!” G Pyle
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071218/014045.shtml
SEC Computer System Not So Great For Catching Insider Trading
from the whoops dept
Well if the FBI can have a terrible computer system that's useless at catching terrorists, should it really be much of a surprise that the SEC has a computer system that isn't particularly useful at catching insider trading? That, at least, is the word from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its latest report to Congress. Apparently the GAO found that the SEC's computer system can't even search referrals from its own investigators concerning insider trading. Of course, what's not clear (at least from the article) is how much the SEC paid for this computer system... and how much more it will cost to get one that's actually useful.
No wonder we can't catch Osama, all our resources are devoted to listen to the phone!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/fbi-recorded-27.html
FBI Recorded 27 Million FISA 'Sessions' in 2006
By Ryan Singel EmailDecember 19, 2007 | 6:36:32 PMCategories: Privacy, Sunshine and Secrecy
At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.
Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.
Who'd a thunk it?
http://www.techmeme.com/071219/p45#a071219p45
At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.
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