Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Center for Democracy and Technology: Spyware

Only a week after my home computer got infected (grrr!!), the House yesterday passed H.R. 4661: The Internet Spyware Prevention Act. The measure would impose criminal penalties for entities that secretly deploy the software, which tracks consumers’ Internet habits.

The Senate Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Subcommittee on Communications has also passed S.2145, an anti-spyware bill. At the state level, CA governor Schwarzenegger signed into law on Sept 28, 2004 the Consumer Protection Against Spyware Act

WIPO Announces Plans to Support Public Domain, Open Source

This is really big. This is the first time EVER that the World Intellectual Property Organization has recognized that the public domain has a place in intellectual property law. As a matter of fact, WIPO has spent a considerable amount of energy (and $$$) to make sure that this issue wouldn’t even come to the table. Score one for the public domain!

Check out the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization

Said Cory Doctorow, EFF’s European Affairs Coordinator, “The growing presence of non-governmental pressure organizations like CPTech and EFF at WIPO’s meetings has begun to take its toll. The ridiculous IP-at-any-cost position of WIPO has been laid bare and revealed for a sham. Now the organization is taking its first baby-steps towards balance. In the coming months and years, the nonprofit presence at WIPO will broaden and deepen — we won’t let them fool us any longer.”

[Thanks Electronic Frontier Foundation!]

Washington > Inspector’s Judgment: U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90’s” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/politics/07intel.html?ex=1254801600&en=48d79cbf21216c36&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland”>The NYT: Inspector’s Judgment: U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90’s

Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld and now this. It’s been a busy week for the Bush administration as they try to plug the ever increasing holes in their political dike. The report, released yesterday, found that IRAQ HAD NO WMD, and had no ability to produce them.

However, VP Cheney STILL holds to his twisted sense of reality by saying that the report justified the US going to war?!?! All I can say is WHAAAA?

Read the report in its entirety:

Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) on IraqÕs WMD 30 September 2004
Read the rest of this entry »

‘Google With Judgment’ (washingtonpost.com)

I’m not quite sure what to think of this one so if anyone has comments or ideas, please email me. Basically, Charles McLean has taken marketing concepts, combined them with data mining tools, and is able to predict, or “discern the tonalities”, of global politics. His technology is being used at Access|Middle East which monitors and translates news on the Middle East automatically.

Charles M. McLean has created just such a database. His consulting company, Denver Research Group Inc., monitors more than 7,000 sources on a constant, real-time basis — giving him a window on what he estimates is about 80 percent of all original political content around the world. Using a combination of computer algorithms and human analysis, he sifts this mass of information to discern the “tonalities” that shape global events. This approach has identified key political trends one to two weeks before those changes appear in traditional poll numbers, he says.

beSpacific

Here’s the BOTM for October (ok I’m sort of like First Monday who’s proper name should be “First Monday-ish”!). BeSpacific gives updates on issues including copyright, privacy, censorship, the Patriot Act, ID theft, and freedom of information. It’s run by Sabrina Pacifici, one of the creators/editors for LLRX.com, the web zine on legal issues. Sabrina has blogged interesting GAO and CRS reports, legislation and links to information on copyright, e-voting, privacy, etc.

Is Network Outage Information a Terror Threat?
By Caron Carlson. eWeek,
October 4, 2004.

After more than a decade of making reports of telecommunication outages available to the public, the FCC in August ruled that the information will be kept secret.

The policy reversal reflects a larger practice in post-9/11 Washington of demanding an ever-increasing amount of data from corporate America while holding back information from the public. The government will know what’s happening in the networks, but for businesses seeking to compare network performance and service availability, there no longer will be objective data to consult.

The New Bloglines Web Services by Marc Hedlund
09/28/2004,
O’Reilly Network.

This article is pretty technical, but includes several
important bits of news of interest to everyone who
is interested in blogs, RSS, and Web Services.

• Bloglines is an online aggregator that provides a wonderful, free service for folks who read blogs. They aggregate blog posts for you. You set up a free account and then use a web browser from any machine anywhere to see the news you want, the way you want it. No news reader required. Nothing difficult to do to synchronize your news reading at home and office.
• Bloglines also has announce an API so that developers can write programs to query the Bloglines database. This means we’ll start seeing new applications that provide news in new and interesting ways. As the article notes,
  Bloglines maintains a database of RSS feeds in the same way Google maintains a database of web pages.
• All this is possible because of Web Services which will do for the Web what the Web did for the Internet.

Already some of the folks who create news-reader software are on board
and will make their software work with this service, according to the
announcement at Bloglines. This means it will be easier than ever for you to keep up with news at home and office.

Private Company to Oversee Database on Public Contracts
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times.
October 1, 2004. Part A; Pg. 15.

The General Services Administration, which maintains government databases on federal contracts, will turn over control of all contractor data to a Virginia-based company today. The agency says the new arrangement will provide information about contracts to Congress, the news media and the public more efficiently, cheaply and accurately.

Some members of Congress and independent experts have criticized the change, saying it could increase costs and eliminate direct public access to information about billions of dollars in federal contracts.

More information:
Procurement data to be free to most
by Michael Hardy. Federal Computer Week
Aug. 30, 2004.