Government Net censorship Plan Facing Backlash in Australia

As opposition grows against the Government's controversial plan to censor the internet, the head of one of Australia's largest ISPs has labeled the Communications Minister the worst we've had in the past 15 years. Despite significant opposition from internet providers, consumers, engineers, network administrators and online rights activists, the Government is pressing ahead with its election promise of protecting people from unwanted material, this week calling for expressions of interests from ISPs keen to participate in live trials of the proposed internet filtering system. Michael Malone, head of iiNet, Australia's largest ISP, said he would sign up to be involved in the "ridiculous" trials, just to show how impractical it is. more»

Internet Black Boxes to Record Every Email and Website Visit in Britain

Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database. The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week. It is further evidence of the Government's desire to have the capability to vet every telephone call, email and internet visit made in the UK, which has already provoked an outcry. more»

EFF Challenges Telecom Immunity Law in Court

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Thursday challenged the constitutionality of a law aimed at granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in President Bush's illegal domestic wiretapping program. In a brief filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. Signed into law earlier this year, the FAA allows for the dismissal of the lawsuits over the telecoms' participation in the warrantless surveillance program if the government secretly certifies to the court that either the surveillance did not occur, was legal, or was authorized by the president. Attorney General Michael Mukasey filed that classified certification with the court last month. more»

China to Photograph Internet Cafe Customers

According to the latest rules, all internet cafes in Beijing must install cameras to record the identities of their internet users, who must by law be 18 or over. There are more than 250 million internet users in China, approximately 10 times more than there were in 2000. By the end of the year, all of the city's 1,500 Internet cafés will be equipped with a camera and an ID card scanner. The cafes will be required to take photos and swipe the IDs of first-time visitors before they are allowed to surf the Internet. Once acquired, the information will be passed to Municipal Law Enforcement Agency of Beijing, which is in charge of the monitoring work. Repeat visitors would get a net café user number which they can input to log in the computer. more»

New DPI Technology Allows ISPs to Inspect Every File, Image, and Movie Transmitted by Users

MSNBC reports that an Australian company, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Ltd., is marketing a new controversial deep packet inspection technology called CopyRouter in the U.S. cable of allowing ISPs to check every file passing through their network. More specifically, this technology can check "every image, every movie, every document attached to an email or found in a Web search," to see if it matches a list of illegal images from a law enforcement agency. more»

U.S. Counterterrorism Data Mining Measures Questioned by New NRC Report

An extensive report released today by The National Research Council (NRC), titled "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Assessment", examines the balance between security and privacy. According to the report, all U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data -- such as phone, medical, and travel records or websites visited -- should be required to systematically evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. more»

Investigation Reveals Massive Security and Privacy Breaches Affecting Chinese Version of Skype

Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers have released a report on the extensive surveillance system in China that monitors and archives text conversations that include politically charged words. The research group, called Information Warfare Monitor, is a joint project of The SecDev Group, and the Citizen Lab, at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. The following are introductory excerpts from the study... more»

GNU Founder Richard Stallman Warns Against Cloud Computing

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, says cloud computing is essentially a trap that will eventually pressure more people into buying locked, proprietary systems that will continue to cost them more over time. "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," says Stallman. Bobbie Johnson, Guardian's technology correspondent says 'his comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticized the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".' more»

EFF Says Stop Illegal Surveillance; Sues NSA, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the alleged illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who have ordered or participated in the domestic surveillance. more»

Rising Concerns Over UN Anti-Cyberattack Plan: Could End Internet Anonymity

Recent reports suggest that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency, is "quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government," aimed at preventing Internet attacks which could also put an end to anonymity on the Internet. At an up coming ITU meeting in Geneva next week, telecommunication experts will be discussing draft recommendation of "IP Traceback" use case and requirements, looking at ways to identify the source of packets sent across IP (Internet Protocol) networks. more»

Google Cuts Back on Retaining User Data

Google is cutting the time it stores users' personal search data into half in response to continued pressure from the Europe and the US over its privacy policy. The company says it will anonymize identifiable IP addresses on its server logs after nine months. On Saturday, Germany's Information Security officials issued a national warning against the use of Google's new Chrome browser. The following is part of the official announcement from Google's blog... more»

Google Changes Chrome License Terms

Some of the harshest criticisms concerning Google's newly released Chrome browser related to its very broad license agreement. Consequently on Wednesday, Google said that it was planning to change Chrome's User License agreement where it appeared to give Google a perpetual right to use anything a user entered into the browser. As of Wednesday 2 p.m. PT, the terms were indeed changed with Section 11 now reading simply: "11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." more»

ISP Deep Packet Inspection Remains a Probable Option, Despite Controversies

A US firm was among ISPs operating in Argentina that recently received orders from the country's Department of Justice to put a stop to all local traffic visiting a particular gambling website operating without a license. An anonymous source, according to Ian Lamont of The Industry Standard, has said that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) was floated as a possible option to accomplish this task although later not implemented due to high costs. Lamont reports: "The DPI approach would be troubling on a number of levels. First, any ISP using DPI is going beyond a government mandate to simply block traffic to a particular site. The ISPs would actually be peering inside their customers' Web traffic without their knowledge." Although DPI wasn't used in this particular case, "it will probably be considered in the future as a way to take offensive or illegal sites offline." more»

UK Government Wants to Log Every Call, Text and Email

Britain's local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies may soon have the ability to access details of all personal text, emails and internet usage under UK's Home Office proposals published yesterday. According to a report from the Guardian, "ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety." The Home Office says keeping communications data is critical in order to fight against terrorism. more»

Internet, Broadband Companies Admit to Tracking User Behavior Without Explicit Consent

According to a letter released recently by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, several Internet and broadband companies have admitted to using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports: "Google, in its letter to committee Chairman John Dingell, Markey, Stearns and Rep. Joe L. Barton, stressed that it did not engage in potentially the most invasive of technologies -- deep-packet inspection, which companies such as NebuAd have tested with some broadband providers. But Google did note that it had begun to use across its network the 'DoubleClick ad-serving cookie,' a computer code that allows the tracking of Web surfing." more»