Two Tough Questions...

Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates.

Candidate A -
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B -
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in
college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.

Candidate C -
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks
an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.

Which of these candidates would be your choice?


Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Candidate B is Winston Churchill.

Candidate C is Adolph Hitler.

And, by the way, the answer to the abortion question: If you said
yes, you just killed Beethoven.

BadBlue OfficeSurfer Help Center

Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy

Increasingly hi-tech nations need informed citizens, making scientific literacy a human right and scientific illiteracy a disability
12/22/2003

I recently put a painting on my fridge door by my six-year old son, Lucas. In this particular composition, Lucas portrays a scientist diligently working in his "nanotechnology lab," operating what appears to be (to me anyway) a molecular assembler. When I asked Lucas if he knew what nanotechnology was, he replied, "Sure, Daddy, it's technology and robots that work at a microscopic size."

The kid's in grade one and has already picked sides in the Drexler-Smalley debate. He can also already describe the human digestive system in detail. And he knows that humans evolved from apes, that the fastest that anything can travel in the Universe is the speed of light and that hypotheses aren't set in stone—he acknowledges that the current theory of how the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago is just that, a theory. So passionate is he for science that once, at an observatory open house, he overheard an astronomy professor teaching a class and felt compelled to correct him about how many moons orbit Saturn.

In addition to his insatiable appetite for all things scientific, Lucas has the advantage of a scientifically inclined father and exposure to excellent educational programs such as Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Magic Schoolbus, as well as Websites such as BrainPops.

With all this, I don't have to worry that Lucas will grow up scientifically illiterate. It's good to know that he'll be able to count off facts and figures, and even more comforting to know that he'll grow up with the broader, softer skills that science teaches, namely skepticism, empiricism and a dedication to formal methodologies. In other words, through learning about science, my son is becoming a critical thinker.

But he's probably in the minority. Ignorance of how science and technology works is rampant in our society, leading to a stunningly dependent, suggestible and ill-informed populace.

We all need to know about science. Without this knowledge we are powerless, forced to live in a fog about how things work. Without it, we are utterly dependent on others to form our opinion. Without it, we cannot properly participate in society as informed, critical and responsibly opinioned citizens. Moreover, in today's hi-tech information age world, democracy cannot work without a scientifically literate society.

On my way to work each day I pass a bus shelter ad that reads, "Literacy is a Right." Well, I'd take that further and declare that today scientific literacy is a basic human right. As with the inability to read, the inability to understand science and scientific methodology is nothing less than a disability.

Embarrassing ignorance

Most of those who live in the West, particularly North Americans, are guilty of an anti-intellectual bias. Scientists are supposed to be nerds, right? And who wants to be a nerd? This sentiment, combined with a general suspicion of science and the predominance of aggressive theological and pseudoscientific memes, has resulted in much of the scientific illiteracy that now pervades our society.

It doesn't help that the educational system is in shambles and without focus, and that fatuous postmodernism and its insistence that nothing can truly be known now dominates many disciplines at most universities. Consequently, too many people wear their ignorance like a badge of honor, as if being clueless about science is something to be proud of.

Well, there's nothing noble about ignorance, and if anything scientific illiteracy should be considered downright embarrassing. A 2001 poll conducted by the National Science Foundation in the US revealed the pervasiveness of the problem. Results showed that only 48% of Americans knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as the dinosaurs, and that only 22% could properly define a molecule. The survey also showed that only 45% knew what DNA was and that lasers don't work by focusing sound waves, and that 48% knew that electrons were smaller than atoms.

Just as significant, only 21% of those surveyed were able to explain what it means to study something scientifically. Slightly over half understood probability, and only a third knew how an experiment is conducted.

Cognitively disabled

The trouble with ignorance is not so much what people don't know but what this causes them to believe.

There is a direct correlation between scientific illiteracy and a propensity for belief in superstitions, religion, the paranormal and pseudoscience. Those unacquainted with science also tend to be more prone to scam artists, unwise investments, fiscal schemes and bogus health and medical practices. On this last note, a number of opportunistic hucksters are beginning to take advantage of the hype created by pending life extension technologies and stem cell research, making grand promises to hopeful people that can't possibly be fulfilled; the scientifically illiterate make for easy targets.

It's safe to suggest, therefore, that those with a deficiency in scientific comprehension have underdeveloped critical thought faculties. In other words, they might as well be suffering from some kind of cognitive disorder.

A consequence of this disability is that some will be left behind. As neuroscientist Steven Pinker has noted, "As our economy comes to depend increasingly on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented choices—in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political commitments—a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind."

Crippling society

The late Carl Sagan similarly worried about the effects of a scientifically illiterate society. "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology," he lamented. "We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

Indeed, scientific illiteracy cripples culture, justice, democracy and society in general. When you have misinformed individuals you get unhealthy societies.

The way the media works today, with its problematic approach to "balanced" reporting instead of accurate reporting and its propensity for sensationalism, it is guilty of much of the misinformation and frequent fear-mongering that imbues news and pop culture.

Similarly, the judicial system is not immune to the problems posed by a scientifically illiterate populace. Judges and jurors, with little background in the hard sciences, tend to be easily swayed by so-called expert witnesses who, despite taking sworn oaths, spew weak and bogus science to help lawyers defend their case.

Scientific illiteracy also has political implications, resulting in such things as the rise of the religious right in the Bush administration and the prominence of orthodox office holders at all levels of its government. A misappraisal of science has also resulted in backwards legislation in the US, Canada and Europe for stem cell research, cloning and genetically modified foods. A recent Eurobarometer poll revealed that 60% of Europeans believe that ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes while genetically engineered tomatoes do, while 50% believe that eating genetically modified fruit can cause a person's genes to become modified.

As early as the 1950s, scientist and novelist C.P. Snow was already sounding the alarm about increasingly ignorant electorates. Snow coined the term "two cultures" to refer to the growing divergence between those in society who understand science and technology sufficiently to make informed choices and those who do not.

Biologist and education critic Stephen Schneider recognizes the threat that a scientifically illiterate society poses to a functional democracy. "We all share a strong belief in democracy," he notes, "but it can only function well when the people understand the choices they need to make and are in a position to make trade-offs rationally." He believes that as issues get increasingly complex, "ignorance decouples the people from the knowledge they need to help guide policy choices that can shape our future."

Psychologist Barry L. Beyerstein agrees. He contends that it is essential for a well-functioning democracy that "we all be conversant with the basics of science so that we can cut through political rhetoric and the daily news when these issues arise."

Science fuels democracy

Like the right to vote, those living in a democracy should demand the right to scientific literacy so that they may become informed and discerning citizens. As Carl Sagan noted, "Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works." A central lesson of science, argued Sagan, is that to understand complex issues, people must try to free their minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, contradict and experiment. He strongly believed that arguments from authority were unacceptable.

Skepticism is one of the greatest tools that a person can have, and science teaches this as a matter of course. But the business of skepticism can often be dangerous. As Sagan observed, skepticism challenges established institutions. "If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of skeptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees," wrote Sagan, "Maybe they'll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they'll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?"

Science helps us to be free of gross superstition and gross injustice. "Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove," Sagan argued. "It is no surprise that political revolutions, skepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science."

Indeed, as Schneider has observed, science literacy is not just about the "facts"—knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology or economics per se. "More important for non-specialists," says Schneider, "is to understand the process of science, and how science interacts with public policy issues and gets communicated via the media."

What can be done?

All this begs the question: What can be done?

First and foremost there must to be a push for education reform. According to Pinker, most high school and college curricula have barely changed since medieval times mostly because "no one wants to be the philistine who seems to be saying that it is unimportant to learn a foreign language, or English literature, or trigonometry, or the classics." He worries about how classroom practices are set by "fads, romantic theories, slick packages, and political crusades." To alleviate the problem, Pinker believes that a scientific mindset needs to be applied to the educational process and a renewed commitment to the sciences, including the fields of economics, biology, probability and statistics.

Education reform also rests with the scientists themselves. Education critic Neal Lane, the former assistant to the US president for science and technology, has proposed the idea of the "civic scientist." "What we need," says Lane, "is the science community's leadership to educate the nation about the value of science and technology to our national well-being." Neal envisions a proactive and socially active scientific community.

We also need educational systems that are accountable—ones that respect the human right to a liberal education and high academic standards. It's preposterous that Creationism is still taught in some schools. This issue has nothing to do with freedom of religion and everything to do with one's right to be free from religion. Otherwise, schools might just as well teach that the Earth is flat and that the Moon is made out of cheese.

And finally, we all need to promote science as an attractive discipline and as a means to personal empowerment and social betterment. As science educator Nye has said to children across North America, science is cool.

And indeed it is—and more so than ever before. Today, scientists are busy discussing the possibility of infinite universes, microscopic robots that will operate in the body, cyborg and artificial citizens, plants that can clean toxic waste in the soil and a manned expedition to Mars.

While exciting, however, all these things are prone to misunderstanding and apprehension. Unless we have a populace that can fully understand and assess these and other pending issues, we risk squandering what should be wonderful opportunities for individuals and the species. We also risk creating the "two cultures" envisioned by Snow—the intellectual haves and have-nots.

The time to act is now, for those who fail to grasp the scientific issues of our time will find the future truly incomprehensible.

Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites

Song trading still popular despite suits

Sunday, February 22, 2004 · Last updated 11:09 a.m. PT

PHILADELPHIA -- Greg Kullberg first started downloading free music off the Internet as a college freshman in 1996. He stopped - mostly - after the recording industry started filing lawsuits against file-sharers last year.

"Right away when I heard about it I actually went home and uninstalled my software," the 25-year-old Boston software consultant said. But like many users, he still downloads: "I'd say one song a week instead of before, it was maybe 20 a day."

The music industry, which filed suit against another 531 Internet users last week, says its tactics are slowing the tide of free downloads, citing cases like Kullberg's.

A study released in January that surveyed 1,358 Internet users in late fall found the number of Americans downloading music dropped by half from six months earlier, with 17 million fewer people doing it nationwide.

But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued 1,445 people since September, with the latest batch of 531 coming this month against people in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., and Trenton, N.J. Most of the earlier cases have been settled, for an average of $3,000 each.

"I think the RIAA's campaign is clearly and demonstrably having a tremendous effect, I'm just not sure to what end," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, an online media tracking firm.

Graham Mudd, a researcher at comScore Networks, said the number of consumers visiting pay music sights like Apple's iTunes and Napster pales in comparison to the file-sharing sights like Kazaa. But he says the lawsuits are decreasing free downloads.

"The faucet is still absolutely on," he said. "I just think the flow may have been slightly limited."

Mitch Bainwol, the chairman and chief executive of the RIAA, said the record 2 million songs legally sold last week, mostly on iTunes and Napster, prove the lawsuits are educating users.

"There will always be piracy - there is on the physical side, there will be on the online side - but most people won't do it when they understand the legal consequences," Bainwol said.

The January study from comScore and the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 52 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds downloaded music last spring, but only 28 percent did after the lawsuits were filed.

Like Kullberg, others say their habits have changed.

Marissa Sinclair, a 22-year-old Philadelphia school teacher, said she and a half dozen friends stopped downloading because of the lawsuits.

Jeremy Spurr, 26, a financial planner in Boston, said the suits, which were filed only against people who share music, have stopped his friends from sharing songs with each other, but not downloading it for themselves.

Kullberg and Spurr both say the suits have driven file sharers to private servers or anonymizing services that mask Internet users' identities.

"I think people realize that, hey, if we're going to do this, we have to be quiet," Kullberg said.

BigChampagne's Garland said he thinks the January study - which did not measure computer use but surveyed users only about their habits - shows the lawsuits' biggest effect was educational: People now know file sharing is illegal so they lie about doing it.

"They have effectively put music downloading in the same stigmatized category as teen smoking," Garland said. "People know when they should be shy about an issue."

Garland said that while Apple hopes to sell 100 million 99-cent songs in one 12-month period, "10 billion, or more than 100 times that, will be downloaded in MP3 form for free."

Industry numbers can be confusing. The NPD Group found the number of songs downloaded increased from September 2003 to November 2003, when it was 166 million. Nielsen/NetRatings, though, found the number of unique users on Kazaa dropped by half to 7.3 million users in December 2003 from a year earlier.

Still, many point out, that's 7.3 million users compared with 1,445 lawsuits.

"No matter what they do, it's not going to work," Spurr said. "To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing."

Protection From Pornography Week, 2003

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Pornography can have debilitating effects on communities, marriages, families, and children. During Protection From Pornography Week, we commit to take steps to confront the dangers of pornography.

The effects of pornography are particularly pernicious with respect to children. The recent enactment of the PROTECT Act of 2003 strengthens child pornography laws, establishes the Federal Government's role in the AMBER Alert System, increases punishment for Federal crimes against children, and authorizes judges to require extended supervision of sex offenders who are released from prison.

We have committed significant resources to the Department of Justice to intensify investigative and prosecutorial efforts to combat obscenity, child pornography, and child sexual exploi-ta-tion on the Internet. We are vigorously prosecuting and severely punishing those who would harm our children. Last July, the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Predator, an initiative to help identify child predators, rescue children depicted in child pornography, and prosecute those responsible for making and distributing child pornography.

Last year, I signed legislation creating the Dot Kids domain, a child-friendly zone on the Internet. The sites on this domain are monitored for content and safety, offering parents assurances that their children are learning in a healthy environment. Working together with law enforcement officials, parents, and other caregivers, we are making progress in protecting our children from pornography.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 26 through November 1, 2003, as Protection From Pornography Week. I call upon public officials, law enforcement officers, parents, and all the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-eighth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Man arrested in ‘spam rage’ case

Penis enlargement ads drive man to threaten torture

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21, 2003 - Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.

In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made “road rage” famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on $75,000 bond for making repeated threats to staff of an unnamed Canadian company between May and July, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Northern California said on Friday.

Booher threatened to send a “package full of Anthrax spores” to the company, to “disable” an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said. He used return e-mail addresses including Satan@hell.org.

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Booher acknowledged that he had behaved badly but said his computer had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail.

Booher threatened to send a “package full of Anthrax spores” to the company, to “disable” an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.

“Here’s what happened: I go to their Web site and start complaining to them, would you please, please, please stop bothering me,” he said. “It just sort of escalated ... and I sort of lost my cool at that point.”

Booher, of Sunnyvale, California, now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month. He said he did not own any guns or have access to anthrax.

Booher said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.

The object of the Californian’s anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the “Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement.”

“This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this,” Mackay said from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. “He seemed like a guy just crazy enough with nothing to lose that might actually do something.”

He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

In other cases, Internet vigilantes have bombarded spammers with both unsolicited e-mail and regular mail and phone calls, launched attacks on spammers’ computers and posted spammers’ personal information on the Internet, according to reports.

Doctored Kerry photo brings anger, threat of suit

Software, Net make it easy to warp reality

Friday, February 20, 2004

The photographer who snapped John Kerry attending a 1971 anti-war rally says he and his photo agency intend to track down -- and possibly sue -- whoever doctored and circulated a photo that made it appear that the then 27-year-old Vietnam veteran was appearing alongside actress Jane Fonda.

Ken Light, now a UC Berkeley professor of journalism ethics, says he photographed Kerry at an anti-war rally in Mineola, N.Y., on June 13, 1971. The decorated Vietnam veteran was preparing to give a speech at the rally -- but Fonda was never at the event.

Light's photo gained prominence when someone took it and merged the shot of the now Democratic presidential front-runner with another separate photo of Fonda -- one taken by photographer Owen Franken as the actress spoke to a 1972 rally in Miami Beach, Fla.

The fabricated Kerry-Fonda photo was circulated with an identifying logo of the Associated Press and became the subject of talk show fodder after it was placed on many Web sites as evidence of Kerry's "anti-American" activities after his war service.

Light said this week that the use -- and misuse -- of his copyrighted photo might result in legal action.

"(We're) doing everything possible to track down who it was and bring them to justice,'' said Light, who said the Associated Press also intended to examine the issue of who would use the agency's copyright for fraudulent purposes.

A spokesman for Light's photo agency, Corbis, said its photographers' work and copyrights are treated seriously.

The agency will "investigate this matter and take appropriate action as necessary,'' the spokesman said.

Light, who teaches at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, said he regularly instructed his students on matters of law and photo ethics. But ironically, this year, "I've become the lesson,'' he said, referring to how easy it has become to produce sophisticated and potentially damaging photos via computer.

"With modern technology, anybody can do it,'' he said of the doctored photo of Kerry, now a 60-year-old, four-term Massachusetts senator. "Someone has to be really motivated and understand what they're doing.''

Still, "it's one thing to (create) an image and another to try to make it look like it came right from a newspaper,'' Light said. The addition of the Associated Press logo suggested that whoever fabricated the photo was "definitely more than someone having fun. ... People just see it, and it creates this impression that it really happened."

Light said he was outraged by his almost 33-year-old photo's popping into the news and becoming the subject of such Internet chatter.

"I was completely shocked and a little disappointed there would be this type of fakery in a political campaign,'' he said.

"You become very concerned for democracy when you realize people are so angry, they're desperately trying to find anything to tilt the direction of what people are thinking,'' he said.

Teen finds his picture on missing children's Web site

Wednesday, February 18, 2004 Posted: 9:53 AM EST (1453 GMT)

The teen discovered he was allegedly abducted after finding his childhood picture on a missing children's Web site.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Authorities arrested the mother of a 17-year-old boy who saw his picture on a missing children's Web site and discovered that he was allegedly abducted from Canada 14 years ago.

Acting on a Canadian-issued warrant, U.S. marshals arrested Giselle-Marie Goudreault, 45, at her home in the San Fernando Valley. She was being held without bail until Canadian authorities can extradite her on child abduction charges, authorities said.

Goudreault "was shocked and very emotional" during the February 11 arrest, said Jimell Griffin, a deputy U.S. Marshall in Los Angeles. The boy's father had custody of his son, and Griffin said Goudreault did not return him after a court-ordered visit.

The teen, whose identity was not released, was immediately put in a foster home.

The boy spotted his own photo, taken when he was 3, on a Canadian missing children's Web site a few months ago and told a teacher about it, authorities said. The teacher contacted police, who then confirmed the story with Canadian authorities.

Griffin said although it was Goudreault's son who initiated contact with authorities, the youth was upset at his mother's arrest and tried to comfort her while she was being led away.


The missing boy's father, Ron Steinmann, lives in Canada.

Goudreault initially took her son to live in Mexico, authorities said, and she moved to the Los Angeles area in 1995. She has been remarried twice.

"They were taking her child away and she did what she had to do," Melissa Goudreault, her sister-in-law, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday from her home in Red Deer, Alberta. "The family is behind her and is trying to raise money for her legal defense."

Student suspended over SI swimsuit issue

Wednesday, February 25, 2004 Posted: 11:06 AM EST (1606 GMT)

Justin Reyes, a sixth-grader at Belpre Middle School in Belpre, Ohio

BELPRE, Ohio (AP) -- A sixth-grader started serving a three-day suspension Tuesday because he refused a lesser punishment for bringing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to school, the school superintendent said.

Justin Reyes had the magazine in the gymnasium at Belpre Middle School before classes February 18, and Principal Kathy Garrison cited him for violating school policy on nonverbal harassment and possession of lewd or suggestive material, Superintendent Tim Swarr said.

Garrison ordered the 12-year-old boy to spend two days at an alternative school where students from several area districts are sent when they get into trouble.

But Swarr said Justin and his mother, Nicole Reyes, refused to accept the alternative school punishment, so the penalty was increased to three days of out-of-school suspension.

"Last time I checked, we were in charge of running the schools," Swarr said.

Nicole Reyes said the alternative school was too harsh a punishment.

"It's not like it was Hustler, Playboy or Penthouse," she said. "The punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Swarr said he had never seen SI's swimsuit edition before.

"I was shocked," he said. "It doesn't belong in public schools."

Belpre Middle School, about 90 miles southeast of Columbus, serves some 550 students in grades four through eight.

Sports Illustrated is a unit of Time Warner, as is CNN.

New scholarship created for whites only

Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 8:16 AM EST (1316 GMT)

BRISTOL, Rhode Island (AP) -- A student group at Roger Williams University is offering a new scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action.

The application for the $250 award requires an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness."

"Evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants," says the application, issued by the university's College Republicans.

Jason Mattera, 20, who is president of the College Republicans, said the group is parodying minority scholarships.

"We think that if you want to treat someone according to character and how well they achieve academically, then skin color shouldn't really be an option," he said. "Many people think that coming from a white background you're automatically privileged, you're automatically rich and your parents pay full tuition. That's just not the case."

The stunt has angered some at the university, but the administration is staying out of the fray. The school's provost said it is a student group's initiative and is not endorsed by Roger Williams.

Mattera, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is himself a recipient of a $5,000 scholarship open only to a minority group.

"No matter what my ethnicity is, I'm making a statement that scholarships should be given out based on merit and need," Mattera told the Providence Journal.

His group took out a full-page ad in last week's issue of the university's student newspaper to tout the scholarship, which was for $50 until two donors came forward to add $100 each during the weekend, Mattera said.

It's not the first brush with controversy for the group. The school temporarily froze the Republicans' money in the fall during a fight over a series of articles published in its monthly newsletter. One article alleged that a gay-rights group indoctrinates students into homosexual sex.

Lawsuit filed against Sony, Wal-Mart over game linked to shootings

Thursday, October 23, 2003 Posted: 11:58 AM EDT (1558 GMT)

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A $246 million lawsuit was filed against the designer, marketer and a retailer of the video game series "Grand Theft Auto" by the families of two people shot by teenagers apparently inspired by the game.

The suit claims marketer Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., designers Take-Two Interactive Software and Rockstar Games, and Wal-Mart, are liable for $46 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages.

Aaron Hamel, 45, a registered nurse, was killed and Kimberly Bede, 19, of Moneta, Virginia, was seriously wounded when their cars were hit June 25 by .22-caliber bullets as they passed through the Great Smoky Mountains.

Stepbrothers William Buckner, 16, and Joshua Buckner, 14, of Newport, were sentenced in August to an indefinite term in state custody after pleading guilty in juvenile court to reckless homicide, endangerment and assault.

The boys told investigators they got the rifles from a locked room in their home and decided to randomly shoot at tractor-trailer rigs, just like in the video game "Grand Theft Auto III."

In a suit filed Monday in Cocke County Circuit Court on behalf of the victims, Miami lawyer Jack Thompson and local lawyer Richard Talley alleged the game "inspires and trains players to shoot at vehicles and persons."

"These kids simply decided to take the thrill of that game out to Interstate 40 and started pointing at cars," Thompson said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Thompson, who said he sent letters to Sony and Wal-Mart to drop the game before the shootings, said, "It's not like this is coming out of the blue, they chose to ignore this danger."

San Mateo, California-based Sony and Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart did not return calls for comment Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges the retail giant sold the game to the Buckners about a year before the shootings.

Douglas Lowenstein, president of the industry Entertainment Software Association, called the shootings "an unspeakable tragedy" but said blaming a game played by millions for the boys' actions was "misguided and counterproductive."

"There is no credible evidence that violent games lead to violent behavior," he said. "While video games may provide a simple excuse for the teenagers involved in this incident, responsibility for violent acts belongs to those who commit them."

Thompson has made similar claims in the past and lost, notably a $33 million lawsuit against video game makers stemming from the 1997 school shooting near Paducah, Kentucky, by a 14-year-old boy.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case last year that it was "simply to far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen to shooting people in a classroom."

Harvard approves student sex magazine

Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Posted: 11:39 PM EST (0439 GMT)

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Harvard University has approved a student magazine about sex that will feature art, sex advice and fiction -- as well as photographs of undressed Harvard undergraduates.

"We are aware of the fact that some segments of the population would find the contents distasteful," said Associate Dean Judith H. Kidd, a member of the 14-person board that approves all student organizations. "However, the committee considered this to be an issue of freedom of speech."

The committee, made up of faculty, staff and students, approved "H Bomb" magazine Tuesday with a 12-0 vote, with two abstentions. The vote lets the magazine's publishers apply for funding but does not guarantee money; when it would be published is uncertain.

The magazine cannot take its photos on university property, a policy that applies for all of the school's undergraduate publications.

Vassar and Swarthmore colleges also have sex-themed magazines, though H Bomb is the first such publication for Harvard.

The students proposing the magazine, Katharina C. Baldegg and Camilla H. Hrdy, have unlisted phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press.

A Harvard Crimson newspaper story described H Bomb as a "porn magazine," but Baldegg and Hrdy dispute that description in a statement released by a Harvard spokesman.

"What we are proposing is an outlet for literary and artistic expression that is both desired and needed, not a pornographic magazine," it read.

Track your staff using their mobiles

2003.1225

Only you better tell them first, as Mapaphone and 192.com point out...

Several web-based services have been announced this week that allow the tracking of mobile phones across the UK. The idea is that keeping tabs on a phone invariably allows someone to keep tabs on its owner, whether that's a teenage child out for the evening or a delivery driver late for his next pick-up.

Mapaphone marries tracking with online maps at www.mapminder.co.uk that also feature hotels, restaurants and other places of interest. The maps alone are of a high quality.

Meanwhile directory enquiries stalwart 192.com has brought out Phone Track, which is billed as "a simpler, more portable and lower cost alternative to GPS satellite location systems".

Both systems rely on triangulating positions using the GSM cellular network of operators O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Such offerings have been talked about for some time - often alongside tabloid hype of 'monitoring where any mobile phone user is' - but the providers claim to have covered off legal loopholes.

For example, employers must get written permission from employees they wish to monitor, consent which is then double checked via a text message to the phone in question in Mapaphone's case.

While the 192.com service looks to the consumer as much as the business user - one piece of advertising reads: "Is your daughter still at her friend’s house? Because the service is discreet she will not be embarrassed with her peers thinking you are checking up on her" - Mapaphone is firmly in the business space.

It integrates with Outlook contact details and there are group facilities for teams in the field and web-to-mobile text messaging, at 7p each SMS, for contacting colleagues.

Mapaphone costs £10 per phone per month, including five free 'polls' per month (20p each thereafter) and mapminder.co.uk separately costs £2.95 per month.

192.com's offering costs £5 per month plus VAT, including 10 free polls, with a minimum six-month sign-up and extra credits for polls at 20-50p each.

Girl expelled for writing story about killing teacher

Saturday, October 25, 2003 Posted: 12:58 AM EDT (0458 GMT)

Rachel Boim

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A high school freshman expelled for writing a fictional account of a student who falls asleep in class and dreams of killing a teacher can return to school Monday while officials reconsider the disciplinary action.

Rachel Boim, 14, who lived in the Denver area at the time of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, that left 15 dead, was expelled Wednesday from Roswell High School in this Atlanta suburb under the Fulton County School District's "zero tolerance" policy.

Rachel said Friday her story was not intended as a threat -- it was strictly a work of fiction -- and her father, David Boim, said he would challenge the decision as a violation of "the right to think and feel."

He said he understands the concerns of school administrators about even the most remote possible threats to teachers and other students, but "we also expected common sense to kick in at some point."

"A piece of literature is a piece of literature," David Boim said. "The question I asked the administrators the first day is, 'You're going to suspend my daughter because of something she wrote?'"

Rachel wrote the story in her personal journal and was showing it to a classmate. Her art teacher noticed, confiscated it and turned it over to school officials the next day.

"It was a story about a girl who falls asleep in class, dreams she kills her math teacher, then wakes up and nothing happens," she said.

Rachel was suspended her for 10 days for "inappropriate writings that describe the threat of bodily harm toward a school employee," school system spokeswoman Susan Hale told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and she was expelled after a hearing her father described as a travesty.

However, Hale said Friday that acting school superintendent Mike Vanairsdale temporarily rescinded the expulsion and Rachel will be allowed to return to class Monday. Hale said Vanairsdale will review the case and then recommend to the Fulton County Board of Education on whether to reinstate the expulsion.

"The interim superintendent, just came into office last night and wants to make sure he has all the facts in the case," Hale said.

Rachel said she plans to stay at Roswell High if allowed to. "I have a lot of really good friends that go to Roswell," she said.

Corrupt audio discs, aka "Copy-Protected CDs" causing permanent damage to equipment

30-Jun-2003

As maintainer of the corrupt-disc campaign pages on ukcdr.org, I see a steady stream of corrupt-disc problem reports, and over recent months I have noticed a marked increase in the severity of the reported problems from people playing these so-called "copy controlled CDs" in their equipment. I have been hearing a lot more complaints about skips, pops and clicks on all kinds of devices (not just computers), and about cases where drives behave strangely after having been used to play a corrupt disc.

I believe that Macrovision (who now own Midbar) have stepped up the level of corruption on their Cactus-200 and Cactus-300 formats, and that this is what is causing the increase. I believe that they have found this necessary because of the large number of CD-ROM drives that can now deal with the corruption used in the previous versions of these formats. Unfortunately, with increased corruption, there is also a much greater risk of unpleasant side-effects, which in some cases means permanent damage to the equipment playing the disc.

Up until recently, we have heard of only a few cases of permanent damage to the drive, and often this was with older players. We guessed that the extra strain of handling a corrupt disc just pushed these old players over the edge.

However, we have now had a number of reports of relatively new drives which have been failing as a result of attempting to play a corrupt CD (see below for examples). It is well known that intentionally bad data on the disc can be used to cause additional drive strain or even total drive failure, for example by causing the head to attempt to seek off the edge of the disc, or by causing other abnormal usage patterns which drive mechanisms were never designed to handle.

Whilst in theory it is possible to write the drive firmware to protect the drive mechanism from 'malicious' data encoded on the CD like this, this would be similar to protecting a web server from crackers -- it is very hard to anticipate every possible form of attack in advance. This is made worse by the traditional approach to drive firmware, which assumes that CD manufacturers are not malicious and that they will only create discs according to the accepted CD standards.

However, this is obviously no longer true, with record companies all over the world now releasing discs specifically designed to cause problems for any computers that attempt to read them. I think it would be fair to compare the Midbar and Macrovision engineers to 'crackers' attempting to find weaknesses in our computer CD and DVD drive firmware that they can exploit in their disc formats, with the record industry sponsoring and actively encouraging their efforts.

Please note that I am not suggesting that Macrovision is intentionally trying to destroy drives (although damaging equipment was one of the benefits claimed in Midbar's original patent). They quite possibly see it more like collateral damage: "If we are going to make a disc which fails to copy in 70% of drives, then we have to accept 0.1% of them blowing up", or something like that. As they make their formats more unpleasant, it becomes more and more likely that there will be 'casualties', i.e. drives which get too confused with the invalid data and keel over and die with the strain.

This is a most unfortunate state of affairs, to say the least. However, now that it has got to the point where it seems that permanent and costly damage is being caused to consumers' equipment, I really think that we need to put a total stop to this. It is time to tell the record companies once and for all that we are not going to take any more of this nonsense.

We want our genuine original standard audio CDs back.

So, what can we do about it?
The most obvious thing is simply to not buy corrupt CDs any more, and to return corrupt CDs bought accidentally -- and to make sure that the label knows about this. We want them to know that there are plenty of people out here who will not consider buying "copy controlled" discs ever again.

It is also important to push for the online retailers to give full warnings on their websites for all the corrupt discs. At present many do not include warnings at all, or only if forced to by customer complaints. I have been trying to improve the situation with our 'retailer' campaign page here:

http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/retail/

We really do need plenty of consumer pressure to make these online retailers wake up and give us proper warnings before we order the CD. If you regularly use an online retailer to buy your CDs, then send them an E-mail and let them know that you are a regular customer and that you need to see full and clear warnings about all "copy controlled" discs before you will buy any more music.

If you have suffered a drive failure as a result of using a corrupt disc, then please see if it is possible to demand compensation from the retailer for the replacement drive. In some countries this may be possible through the small claims courts. You may need to find a local CD drive repair engineer to look at the drive to back up your case. Retailers would very soon think twice about stocking intentionally faulty CDs if they started having to pay for the damage they cause.

Apart from that, there are very many non-computer users out there who are buying CDs and who still don't understand the problem. We need to get the information out there to them (and get the news into more mainstream channels). Many of our pages and leaflets (e.g. this one) might be of use as supporting information.

I really think that we need to finish with "copy controlled CDs" for good. Right at the beginning of this problem, Philips predicted that "copy controlled" disc formats would not last beyond a year, and yet here we are nearly two years on still putting up with this nonsense. It is time to tell the record companies to put an end to this once and for all.

-- Jim Peters, ukcdr.org CD Campaign Coordinator


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reports
Here are some of our recent reports. We have heard from a number of people who have found that normal CDs won't play correctly in their drives after attempting to play a "copy controlled CD". In some cases the effect is temporary and after some period of time the drive does recover and play normal CDs once again. In other cases the damage appears to be permanent and the drive does not recover.

Often the person reporting has said "maybe this is just a coincidence, but it would be a very large coincidence", and I agree. Given that people often notice their drive making unusual noises when a corrupt disc is inserted, it seems clear to me that this is not a coincidence and that corrupt discs are indeed causing these failures.

For example:

The DVD ROM drive in question was less than a year old and was
working fine up until the time of playing Tubular Bells 2003 with
the copy protection.

Since playing that particular disc, it developed problems reading
other discs and a short while later, it finally locked and wouldn't
eject on trying to read a disc.

I noticed a burning 'electrical' type of smell emanating from the
drive itself. I promptly switched off the computer. I've since
replaced the drive and took the copyprotected disc back to the local
Virgin store where I purchased it, backed up with the original
receipt. I explained to them what had happened and also produced
the invoice issued for the new DVD ROM drive, to which they gave me
a refund. [Ed: The refund was on the disc, not the drive.]

What I particularly feel miffed about is the sheer contempt with
which these record industries treat their customers and what is sad,
is that this particular CD is a great piece of music. Incidentally,
I've subsequently purchased a non-copy protected version of this
album.
And here is another:

Well, it's a Pioneer DVD-116 drive, and it used to work fine, up
until I tried to play the Tubular Bells 2003 disc. The drive spent
a long time, up to a minute, trying to "pick up" the disc, where it
spun up and down again repeatedly, and made rather disturbing
clicking noises. (Which it does not normally do.)

Eventually I gave up and punched the eject button. Since then, the
drive has never worked properly. It *does* still read CDs, just,
but now it takes a very long time to recognise that you have put a
CD in, and will sometimes "drop" a CD, and have to spin it down and
up again before it will continue to read.

It is of course quite possible that this is all coincidence, and
that it stopped working just before I tried the Tubular Bells 2003
CD, but that would be an awfully large coincedince.

The CD has since been returned for a refund.
And another:

My copy of Dido, No Angel (with bonus track, Take My Hand),
purchased through cd-wow.com, appears to be a classic copy-protected
cd. When inserted into my matsushita dvd/cd-rom drive, non of the
tracks are recognised, but even more insidiously, after the failed
playback of this cd, the cd-rom drive itself will not recognise ANY
music cds for a random lenght of time. When I posted a question on
the subject on to the Dell Community Forum, identifying your website
and simply asking if any other users had experienced the same
problem of time-locking, my post was censored. And a post from Dell
stated 'dell does not permit users to post hacks or other 'not
exactly legal' methods on its boards. A second post I made that
responded to another users problem with non-playing audio cd's, by
suggesting copy-protection may be the cause, was also deleted.
And another (a standalone DVD player):

Hi, I found your site after having problems trying to record Audio
Bullys album "Ego War" I then found it to be "copy controlled" with
a sticker on the case and some information on the back of the
sleeve. The main problem I am a tad p****d off about is that my DVD
player now refuses to play any of my old cds properly!

Now this could just be a coincidence, but is it? When I play a cd it
will play maybe 3 - 4 tracks and then loose all data and it cannot
find the toc or any info to play. The DVD player is a Marantz
DV4100 and I am in the process of trying to figure if the player is
faulty or has it been corrupted by this ridiculous copy control.
When I finally manage to get in touch with marantz I hopefully will
find out.
Also see this Mike Oldfield discography site which has been monitoring the situation with the "Tubular Bells 2003" disc specifically.

Slouching toward Big Brother

January 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PT

Last week the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department's right to secretly arrest noncitizen residents.
Combined with the government's power to designate foreign prisoners of war as "enemy combatants" in order to ignore international treaties regulating their incarceration, and their power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without charge or access to an attorney, the United States is looking more and more like a police state.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department has asked for, and largely received, additional powers that allow it to perform an unprecedented amount of surveillance of American citizens and visitors. The USA Patriot Act, passed in haste after Sept. 11, started the ball rolling.

In December, a provision slipped into an appropriations bill allowing the FBI to obtain personal financial information from banks, insurance companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the U.S. Postal Service, jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships without a warrant--because they're all construed as financial institutions. Starting this year, the U.S. government is photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors coming into this country from all but 27 other countries.

The "Big Brother is watching you" style of total surveillance is slowly becoming a reality.
The litany continues. CAPPS-II, the government's vast computerized system for probing the backgrounds of all passengers boarding flights, will be fielded this year. Total Information Awareness, a program that would link diverse databases and allow the FBI to collate information on all Americans, was halted at the federal level after a huge public outcry, but is continuing at a state level with federal funding. Over New Year's, the FBI collected the names of 260,000 people staying at Las Vegas hotels. More and more, at every level of society, the "Big Brother is watching you" style of total surveillance is slowly becoming a reality.

Security is a trade-off. It makes no sense to ask whether a particular security system is effective or not--otherwise you'd all be wearing bulletproof vests and staying immured in your home. The proper question to ask is whether the trade-off is worth it. Is the level of security gained worth the costs, whether in money, in liberties, in privacy or in convenience?

This can be a personal decision, and one greatly influenced by the situation. For most of us, bulletproof vests are not worth the cost and inconvenience. For some of us, home burglar alarm systems are. And most of us lock our doors at night.

Terrorism is no different. We need to weigh each security countermeasure. Is the additional security against the risks worth the costs? Are there smarter things we can be spending our money on? How does the risk of terrorism compare with the risks in other aspects of our lives: automobile accidents, domestic violence, industrial pollution, and so on? Are there costs that are just too expensive for us to bear?

Rarely do we discuss how little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of everyone doesn't really prevent terrorism.
Unfortunately, it's rare to hear this level of informed debate. Few people remind us how minor the terrorist threat really is. Rarely do we discuss how little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of everyone doesn't really prevent terrorism. And where's the debate about what's more important: the freedoms and liberties that have made America great or some temporary security?

Instead, the Department of Justice, fueled by a strong police mentality inside the administration, is directing our nation's political changes in response to Sept. 11. And it's making trade-offs from its own subjective perspective--trade-offs that benefit it even if they are to the detriment of others.

From the point of view of the Justice Department, judicial oversight is unnecessary and unwarranted; doing away with it is a better trade-off. They think collecting information on everyone is a good idea because they are less concerned with the loss of privacy and liberty. Expensive surveillance and data-mining systems are a good trade-off for them because more budget means even more power. And from their perspective, secrecy is better than openness; if the police are absolutely trustworthy, then there's nothing to be gained from a public process.

When you put the police in charge of security, the trade-offs they make result in measures that resemble a police state.

This is wrong. The trade-offs are larger than the FBI or the Justice Department. Just as a company would never put a single department in charge of its own budget, someone above the narrow perspective of the Justice Department needs to be balancing the country's needs and making decisions about these security trade-offs.

The laws limiting police power were put in place to protect us from police abuse. Privacy protects us from threats by government, corporations and individuals. And the greatest strength of our nation comes from our freedoms, our openness, our liberties and our system of justice. Ben Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Since the events of Sept. 11 Americans have squandered an enormous amount of liberty, and we didn't even get any temporary safety in return.

Piracy on wireless Internet raises legal challenges

As the recording industry pursues illegal music traders, how does it prove who was actually doing the stealing?

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Think twice the next time you access the Internet at home on your wireless laptop.

Your next-door neighbour, even passersby outside your home, could be tagging along for the ride and leave no trace of their online adventures, such as sharing music files, something the Canadian Recording Industry Association is intent on prosecuting.

CRIA's attempt last week to get names and addresses of suspected heavy music traders from the country's top Internet-service providers underscores the difficulty of telling the good guys from the bad guys over the Internet.

Routers that cost less than $100 not only let many computers share one Internet connection, they create a firewall to protect the identity of every connected computer. That makes it difficult to track down who exactly is copying music illegally, an argument the ISPs used to delay a court hearing to March 12 on the recording industry's request.

"It's like them asking us to give them the key to the front door to catch a suspect who doesn't even live there," said Shaw's president, Peter Bissonnette.

Canadian ISPs are not required to log their customer's Internet traffic and most don't.

"What CRIA will get is an address that could lead to hundreds of other addresses," said Michael Whitt, patent and trademark agent and technology group chairperson at law firm Borden Ladner and Gervais. "If you have a wireless router for laptop computers, you don't have a chance of proving identity."

ISPs say they co-operate with the law and, with a proper warrant, do log suspect customers' Internet traffic. But, "we can't accurately log a computer that is behind a router's firewall," said Mike Black, director of product management for Telus's consumer division.

Richard Pfohl, general counsel for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, wouldn't identify the technologies the association is using to identify copyright infringers, or discuss their accuracy. But, he said, "we are confident in our actions."

But even if you can identify the computer used to copy music illegally, is the Interne-account owner responsible for what others might have used it for?

They are, according to Pfohl. "The infringers whom we identify will be the service subscribers, who are almost certain to be adults. Subscribers need to know that they are responsible for illegal activities committed using their personal computers and accounts."

Other industry observers say CRIA will have to go beyond the owner of an Internet subscription.

"It's not enough for our cyber-crime prosecutions to trace the activity back to the computer," said Alberta's special crown prosecutor, Steve Bilodeau.

"We have to find whose hands are on the keyboard to figure out who did it."

Adding to the confusion is a December ruling of the Copyright Board of Canada saying it is legal to download music, but allowing others to download it from your computer to theirs probably is a copyright infringement.

Sony pulls terrorist segment from video game

MONTREAL -- A last-minute ceasefire has ended a Canadian role in a fictional cyber-war to protect Toronto's subway tunnels from Quebec separatist terrorists. Following complaints, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced yesterday that it's removing any reference to the Toronto fantasy mission from its video game Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain, scheduled for release in February.

"The production version worldwide will contain no component related to the Quebec separatist adventure," said John Challinor, spokesman for Sony Canada. "We deeply regret any misunderstanding this may have caused."

DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA

The decision was made after the America-based games division received complaints from the public and Sony Canada, Challinor said. He said he didn't know why the game, which was designed in California, included the Quebec reference.

In Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain, players take on the roles of recruits in an agency that's trying to uncover a conspiracy that has unleashed the deadly Syphon Filter virus. It's the fourth in a series of games by the global video game giant.

In one proposed mission, the Quebec Liberations Front took control of one of Toronto's subway tunnels. Players had to kill terrorists in a fortified a position near a stopped train.

The terrorist group was an apparent reference to the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ), whose kidnapping and murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in 1970 led to the imposition of the War Measures Act.

Before Sony agreed to withdraw the game, the Toronto Transit Commission strongly objected to the way the TTC was to be used in the game as a scene for hostile activities.

"The fact is someone is putting the Toronto subway as a terrorist site, that is a very dangerous thing to do," TTC spokesman Marilyn Bolton said in an interview.

Case of Piracy Overkill?

02:00 AM Oct. 27, 2003 PT

Critics of proposed Federal Communications Commission rules designed to prevent consumers from redistributing copies of digital television shows on the Internet say the move won't stop piracy but will curtail technological innovation and the "fair use" of content.

The new rules, expected to win approval this week, mandate that devices capable of receiving digital signals -- including TVs, digital recording devices or computers containing a broadcast card -- be able to detect a broadcast flag encoded in the bit stream. The flag would allow users to copy and view digital content on any system in their home network, but would not allow them to upload the content to the Internet.

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the movie industry fought in court for eight years to try to make it illegal for users to copy TV shows with their VCR. He said the industry is simply trying to find new ways to encroach on fair use, an individual's right to use copyright material in a reasonable manner without the consent of the copyright owner.

"They know that trying to take that fair use away from millions of Americans is way too unpopular, even though they would if they could," von Lohmann said. "So what they want to do is freeze things so that consumers don't get any new fair-use capabilities in the future."

If such restrictions had been in place in the early 1970s, von Lohmann said, there would be no VCR today.

"As they made clear through eight years of litigation with Sony, the industry never would have given you the opportunity to make copies in your home if it had been up to them."

Fritz Attaway, the Motion Picture Association of America's executive vice president for government relations and Washington general counsel, said the new rules are needed because Internet piracy has the potential to cut into the syndication market for shows abroad. According to the MPAA, total foreign TV revenues for the industry were approximately $4 billion last year.

"Those ancillary market revenues in foreign syndication are critical to the ability to recover costs," he said. "Foreign syndication, cable casting (the re-selling of broadcast shows to the cable market) and home video are important to the economic foundation of television production."

However, Attaway admitted that there were currently no recorded losses from piracy of broadcast shows.

"Because so few people are capable of trafficking in these large audiovisual files today, the economic impact today is probably fairly low," he said. "But we are trying to provide for the future."

Von Lohmann sees a problem with the MPAA requesting protection for a problem that doesn't currently exist and probably won't for four more years, if ever.

"What they're saying is we might have a piracy problem in several years' time, so we would like you to bail us out in advance," he said. "There is absolutely no benefit to this."

He also said "the broadcast flag would still be completely and utterly useless at addressing the problem. The thing leaks like a sieve."

The mandate, for instance, would not affect numerous devices already on the market, such as digital tuners and broadcast cards for PCs. This means that anyone who currently owns these products will still be able to trade digital content over the Internet even after the mandate is implemented.

"We're talking about hundreds of thousands of devices already in the field that can receive digital TV and save it to a hard drive with no protection at all," said von Lohmann, who predicts there would be a run on such devices in stores before the mandate goes into effect. "There will be a great market for PC broadcasting cards on eBay," he said.

Attaway acknowledged that this "will be a legacy problem for us until those TVs migrate out of the marketplace."

Even then, Attaway said in a March address to Congress, the flag would not completely solve the problem of Internet trafficking, since users could always bypass the flag restrictions by making a digital copy of content, converting it to analog, and then reconverting it to digital.

In a press release following his address, Attaway said the solution in that case would be "to close the analog hole," implying further restrictions on consumers down the line.

He said the mandate would not prevent a consumer who owns a "flagged" digital TV from recording a home copy of a program. The problem lies with one person sharing their copy with 10 million others.

"There is a very big difference between you making a copy of Friends and mailing a copy to 10 million people in Europe. We don't think you're going to do that. We do think that if you have the ability, you might take that copy of Friends and make it available to 30 million people in Western Europe over the Internet. That has an adverse effect on the economic foundation of producing that program," he said.

Von Lohmann charged the FCC mandate would curtail technological innovation, since technology companies would have to ask permission before they could design a new product.

"The mandate comes with all kinds of obligations about what kinds of features you're allowed to offer with your product and how they must be implemented, and the people who control those requirements are the Hollywood movie studios and other technology and consumer electronic companies," he said. "It creates an environment where small innovators who are not willing to compromise for someone else's business model essentially get shut out."

He pointed to DVD technology as an example of what happens when technology is controlled by a particular group.

"In order to interoperate with DVD, you have to sign on with a bunch of agreements and private licensing arrangements under the auspices of the DVD forum," he said. "There's been no new feature added to DVD players since their introduction. And that's exactly the way Hollywood likes things to go."

As for Attaway's argument that the industry stands to lose income from foreign sales if shows are traded over the Internet, von Lohmann said the copyright act is not designed to guarantee profitability for all time in all markets.

"The same argument applies here that we gave to the railroad industry when the auto industry emerged. It's a market economy: Adapt."

Von Lohmann pointed out that the industry was hardly suffering economically.

"Last year was the most profitable year that the movie industry had, and broadcast TV is doing a very healthy business in DVDs," he said. "The bottom line is that there is lot of money being made by the industry today, and there is no evidence to show that this is going to change if high-definition broadcasts are not protected."

Foes Assault Passenger Screening

02:00 AM Feb. 12, 2004 PT

Privacy groups, business travelers and members of Congress asked the federal government this week to reconsider its plans to implement a passenger-profiling system because agencies have not adequately addressed privacy concerns or shown effectiveness in detecting potential terrorists.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California), joined by 25 other Democrats, sent President Bush a letter Wednesday asking his administration to protect passenger privacy. The group also proposed that airlines should tell passengers exactly what information they pass along as travelers make reservations.

"Before the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening Program (CAPPS II) is implemented, we urge the adoption of a specific policy that makes clear the role of airlines in sharing consumer information with the federal government," wrote the legislators.

Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Barbara Lee (D-California), along with other legislators, went even further in their own letter sent to David Stone, the acting director of the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, which manages airport security.

"Members of Congress and the public have no real assurances that the system will not rely upon medical, religious, political or racial data," wrote the representatives, who also questioned whether the system would even be effective.

CAPPS II will require passengers to give more personal information when buying airline tickets, information that will then be checked against mammoth commercial databases, watch lists and warrants to screen for suspected terrorists and people wanted for violent crimes.

An ideologically diverse group of public-interest groups -- including Common Cause, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation -- joined the letter-writing campaign, asking Congress for hearings.

This third letter, addressed to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, asked the committee to look into Northwest's and JetBlue's transfer of passenger data to federal agencies without notifying their passengers, and to investigate the potential for future abuses.

The flurry of correspondence comes just days after the program's point man, Ben H. Bell III, announced his resignation (to be effective April 3).

Bell, a former Marine Corps officer with extensive computer experience, headed the Office of National Risk Assessment, a little-known component of the TSA that is responsible for developing a replacement for the current profiling system.

The current version, known as CAPPS I, flags travelers who buy one-way tickets, pay with cash or have names similar to known terrorists. Both privacy activists and the government describe the system as outdated and inefficient. It has flagged far too many people who have no connection to terrorism, and it has flagged others who suspect they were singled out because of political beliefs.

The TSA hopes CAPPS II would flag fewer travelers for intensive screening. Currently, 15 percent of all passengers are flagged.

The letters and calls for hearings also come as government security officials are testifying in Congress this week, and just days before the General Accounting Office releases a report on CAPPS II's effectiveness and privacy protections.

A report mandated by Congress is scheduled to be released Friday afternoon, just before a three-day weekend. A highly critical report could lead to increased congressional opposition and a possible showdown between the White House and legislators over Congress' authority to curtail the program.

The Associated Press, which said it obtained a draft copy of the report, said Wednesday that the GAO gave the system a failing grade on seven of eight criteria.

Civil liberties activists, who believe the report will be severely critical of the program, were disappointed about the timing of the release, fearing it could dilute the report's impact.

The Patriot Act Is Your Friend

02:00 AM Feb. 24, 2004 PT

Viet Dinh has been called a "political pit bull" and "a foot soldier" for Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the 36-year-old author of the Patriot Act prefers to be called an "attendant of freedom."

In May 2001, the professor of law at Georgetown University was tapped by the Justice Department to work for two years as an assistant attorney general, working primarily on judicial nominations for the department. But three months later the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and Dinh was drafted to work on the USA Patriot Act, a bill that would give the government some of its most controversial surveillance powers. The bill, coupled with the government's subsequent treatment of immigrants and native-born citizens, prompted critics to charge the administration with overthrowing "800 years of democratic tradition."

Ironically, Dinh is an immigrant himself. The youngest of seven children born in Vietnam, he was 7 years old when communists took over the country and imprisoned his father, a city councilman, for "reeducation." Three years later, Dinh's mother escaped with him and five of his siblings to the United States. His father arrived eight years later.

Dinh graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He has had a hand in many high-profile issues, including the Whitewater investigation and the impeachment trial of former President Clinton. In 2000, he also wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for the Supreme Court on behalf of Florida voters who favored George W. Bush's win in the contested presidential election.

He once said that he was drawn to study the government because he "had seen government that did not work," and he was drawn to the Republican Party because of his hatred for communism.

Wired News spoke to Dinh about the Patriot Act and its effect on the liberties of American citizens.

Wired News: The Patriot Act was drafted and passed quite hastily in response to the crisis of 9/11. Do we still need it?

Viet Dinh: There is no question that the last 28 months of peace in America, where not another life has been lost on American soil to terrorism, would have been much more difficult without the USA Patriot Act. I do think we still need it. The terrorists are out there trying to reinvent themselves. It behooves us all to think about how we (could) better do our job to close the barn door for the next horse, not just for the last one, and to be proactive about ways to combat terrorism.

WN: An estimated 5,000 people have been subjected to detention since 9/11. Of those, only five -- three noncitizens and two citizens -- were charged with terrorism-related crimes and one was convicted. How do we justify such broad-sweeping legislation that has resulted in very few terrorist-related convictions?

Dinh: I've heard the 5,000 number. The official numbers released from the Department of Justice indicate approximately 500 persons have been charged with immigration violations and have been deported who have been of interest to the 9/11 investigation. Also, approximately 300 individuals have been criminally charged who are of interest to the 9/11 investigation. Of the persons criminally charged, approximately half have either pled guilty or been convicted after trial.

It may well be that a number of citizens were not charged with terrorism-related crimes, but they need not be. Where the department has suspected people of terrorism it will prosecute those persons for other violations of law, rather than wait for a terrorist conspiracy to fully develop and risk the potential that that conspiracy will be missed and thereby sacrificing innocent American lives in the process.
WN: In his recent State of the Union address President Bush pushed to have parts of the Patriot Act, such as section 215, renewed when their sunset clause kicks in next year. Did you intend for these sweeping laws and other powers granted in the Patriot Act to be remedial measures or long-standing legislation?

Dinh: I did not intend any of these provisions, nor did Congress intend the provisions, to be having such wide-sweeping effect that your characterization would make it out to be. I think that is a fundamental mischaracterization of both the meaning, the effect and the operation of the law and the interpretation of the law.

Section 215 only follows the long-standing practice of (allowing) criminal investigators to be able to seek business records that are relevant to criminal investigations. Section 215 gives the same power to national security investigators in order to seek the same records with very important safeguards. First, a judge has to approve such orders, not simply a clerk of the court, as in ordinary criminal investigations. Second, the Department of Justice is under a statutory obligation in section 215 to report to Congress once every six months on the manner and the number of times it has used that section. And third, it calls for special protection by requiring that the FBI not target an investigation based solely on First Amendment activities.

There has been a lot of hue and cry regarding specific provisions with USA Patriot Act that is predicated upon a misunderstanding. Once we engage in this national conversation that the president has called for, all the facts will come out, and we will see that the fears are unfounded.

WN: Hasn't a national conversation been lacking until now? The act was passed very quickly. There hasn't really been any national debate or any willingness by the government to debate this issue.

Dinh: The USA Patriot Act was passed after six weeks of deliberation by Congress. That is a very quick process in the normal legislative agenda, but then again the six weeks following Sept. 11 was a very unique time in our national history and also in the legislative process. For those six weeks, key members of Congress, including the members of the Senate and House judiciary committees, sat down and rolled up their sleeves. And while the process was very quick, it was also the most deliberate process that I have seen in Washington, D.C.

With respect to the ongoing national conversation, I think it should be noted that the administration and the Department of Justice has, within the last six months to a year, given incredible amounts of information to Congress regarding how the USA Patriot Act has been implemented, to provide to Congress the information that Congress needs in order to do the proper oversight and debate for the next level -- that is, the reauthorization debate in 2005.

WN: In October 2002 you told The Washington Post that civil liberties were not being compromised. Do you still feel that way even after the Jose Padilla case?

Dinh: I do feel that way. I think right now at this time and this place the greatest threat to American liberty comes from al-Qaida and their sympathizers rather than from the men and women of law enforcement and national security who seek to defend America and her people against that threat. That doesn't mean that each and every single one of us agrees with everything that is done in the name of the fight against terror. While I would do things somewhat differently in minor aspects in the war on terror, I do recognize that our Defense Department officials have an awesome responsibility to play in not only prosecuting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq but also continuing to protect the American homeland.

WN: Is there anything that you would change about the Patriot Act in light of how it's been implemented?

Dinh: I think the overall answer is generally no. I do, however, recognize that the act has been mischaracterized and misunderstood and has engendered a lot of well-meaning and genuine fear, even if that fear is unfounded. The issue is not one of substance but one of perception. But perception is also very important because we do not want the people, however many of them, to fear the government when that fear is unfounded.

WN: But the government has mischaracterized how the Patriot Act can be interpreted. For instance, the government has told the American people that in many cases these laws cannot be applied to citizens and in fact some of them have been applied to U.S. citizens.

Dinh: There are a number of provisions within the USA Patriot Act that have a tremendous effect on our war against terror. However, they are tools that can be used in general criminal investigations as well. At no time do I think that anybody intentionally sought to elide the difference between the two. The reason why you need tools of general applicability is that terrorists do not go around wearing an "I am a terrorist" T-shirt, and these normal investigative tools are the ones that allow us not only to deter terrorism but also to investigate crimes.

WN: Some critics have called you the purveyor of the most sweeping curtailment of freedom since the McCarthy era. Is that an exaggeration?

Dinh: I think it is very easy to employ sweeping rhetoric and personal denunciations. I think it is much harder to back it up with facts and concrete examples. I seek to engage in this conversation by giving as much facts as I can and letting the efforts of the Department of Justice, the administration and my own to be judged by the people, by history and by eternity. Where I err, I obviously am not hesitant in recognizing my mistakes. I wish people who criticize me would just pick up the phone and ask me specific questions, like we are engaging right now, so that we can isolate the issues of difference, so that we can engage in a constructive dialogue rather than a destructive dialogue.

WN: Some Asian Americans have accused you of dishonoring your own struggle and background as a refugee and immigrant. What do you say to charges that the law you wrote is hostile to immigrants and noncitizens?

Dinh: I come to this country having known government that does not work, either through the chaos of war or through the repression of totalitarian communism. In each and every thing that I do in my life -- in the law and as my life as a public official -- I ask myself how can I better serve the cause of freedom and the cause of good government. And while some may disagree with the decisions I make, just as some may disagree with the overall strategy on terror, I hope that people will recognize that there is no dishonor, there is no disconnect, there is no irony -- just an honest effort of a person trying to serve his country at her time of greatest need according to his best ability, however limited that may be.

WN: You once wrote that the rule of government was to maximize the zone of liberty around each person. You said, "Security without liberty -- it's not an America I would want to live in."

Dinh: I firmly believe that liberty should not be traded off for some sense of security. I think the harder task is to determine our best tools we can have in order to protect our security, while at the same time ascertain the safeguards that will be necessary in order to protect against abuse of that tool and misuse of it at the expense of privacy or liberty.

WN: So what do you say to Americans who feel that the Patriot Act has shrunk their zone of liberty?

Dinh: If indeed that is your fear or that is your perception then engage in the democratic process. Back up your argument, back up your belief with facts, marshal evidence in order to convince those who are engaged in the process of governance.

I have the utmost respect for those who engage in this (national conversation), even when I am unfairly maligned because those persons are willing to engage in order to advance the national conversation and contribute meaningfully to our process of governance. Somebody once said that democracy is not a spectator sport. We should all applaud each other for getting into the game and risking injury because of it, because at the end of the day we all win if we do engage.




Did you catch that kiddies? One of the most blatent tools for increasing their power, and reducing your freedom, is your friend...

Man Accused of Stealing .25 Cents of Power

Thu Feb 26, 9:13 AM ET

BERLIN - German prosecutors said Thursday they are investigating a student for stealing electricity after he plugged his laptop into a train station electrical socket and used 0.2 euro cents, or a quarter of a U.S. cent's worth, of power.

The 23-year-old man, whose identity wasn't released, was seen by police officers connecting the computer at the station in the central city of Kassel late one evening last November. Suspecting that he had stolen the laptop, officers arrested him after he boarded a tram outside.

He proved the computer was his own, but prosecutors still opened an investigation on suspicion of "removing electrical energy."

"The officers had no choice. They must investigate if there is suspicion of an offense," said Kassel prosecutor Manfred Jung. "However, these proceedings will most certainly be stopped."




Not only do they waste far more that $0.25 taking care of the "problem", but they are being blatently unreasonable anyway. Shouldn't your taxes cover such things?

Bogus Dictionary Lands Tourists In Trouble

Thursday December 4, 2003

A practical joker has stirred up trouble by publishing a Japanese-to-English phrase book with incorrect definitions for every phrase!

Now thousands of Japanese tourists who've painstakingly studied the bogus dictionary in preparation for trips to America are arriving on our shores only to encounter blank stares, hysterical laughter or even brutal beatings as soon as they open their mouths.

"The man who compiled this dictionary clearly went out of his way to wreak havoc," says New York hotel concierge Jacqueline Porseman, who arranges tours for many VIP guests from Japan.

"For instance, when the Japanese think they're asking 'Can you direct me to the rest room?' the book actually has them saying, 'Excuse me, may I caress your buttocks?'

"And, the phrase for 'I am very pleased to meet you' is given as 'My friend, your breath could knock over a water buffalo.'"

At least 50,000 copies of the book have been sold in Japan in the past year and while the Japanese government has pulled the plug on further sales, copies still turn up in used bookstores and bargain-hunters snap them up.

"This is not a funny matter to us," says Hiro Suzuki of the Japanese embassy. "Our citizens who look forward to a pleasurable time in America are being laughed at, spat upon, roughed up and humiliated without knowing what they said wrong. Tourists have been found beaten to a pulp on street corners with this terrible phrase book still in their hands."

Among the nearly 2,300 incidents reported to the embassy:

A 29-year-old Tokyo man visiting San Francisco for the first time meant to ask a female store clerk, "May I please have film for my camera?" But what he actually said was, "Would you place your copious breasts in my mouth?" He was slapped in the face, then got tossed out by the manager.
Four family members from Osaka were thrilled see their favorite American singer coming out of a ritzy store in Beverly Hills. While waving frantically, they shouted out what they believed to be, "We love you so much." Unfortunately, what they really said was, "We're here to take your head." The four were arrested and detained for six hours by police.
A 45-year-old tourist from Okinawa looking for the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem thought he was asking a group of young men, "I am lost. Which way is uptown?" In reality, he said, "I know martial arts. May I kick your ass?" He was chased five blocks before being rescued by police.
No one knows who's behind the elaborate hoax. Some suspect the editor-publisher of the book, identified only as "M.L. Tanaka," is a disgruntled former Japanese tourism official. Others insist the culprit is a U.S. autoworker who lost his job to Japan in the '80s.

Says Porseman, "If it's an American, I wonder how 'funny' he thinks it would be to visit a Sumo wrestling gym in Tokyo and think he's saying 'You guys are the best, keep it up,' when he's really saying, 'You have fat butts. Sit on my head.'

"It's not so amusing when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?"




The problem here is that this really shouldn't be a problem.

Track your staff using their mobiles

2003.1225

Only you better tell them first, as Mapaphone and 192.com point out...

Several web-based services have been announced this week that allow the tracking of mobile phones across the UK. The idea is that keeping tabs on a phone invariably allows someone to keep tabs on its owner, whether that's a teenage child out for the evening or a delivery driver late for his next pick-up.

Mapaphone marries tracking with online maps at www.mapminder.co.uk that also feature hotels, restaurants and other places of interest. The maps alone are of a high quality.

Meanwhile directory enquiries stalwart 192.com has brought out Phone Track, which is billed as "a simpler, more portable and lower cost alternative to GPS satellite location systems".

Both systems rely on triangulating positions using the GSM cellular network of operators O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Such offerings have been talked about for some time - often alongside tabloid hype of 'monitoring where any mobile phone user is' - but the providers claim to have covered off legal loopholes.

For example, employers must get written permission from employees they wish to monitor, consent which is then double checked via a text message to the phone in question in Mapaphone's case.

While the 192.com service looks to the consumer as much as the business user - one piece of advertising reads: "Is your daughter still at her friend’s house? Because the service is discreet she will not be embarrassed with her peers thinking you are checking up on her" - Mapaphone is firmly in the business space.

It integrates with Outlook contact details and there are group facilities for teams in the field and web-to-mobile text messaging, at 7p each SMS, for contacting colleagues.

Mapaphone costs £10 per phone per month, including five free 'polls' per month (20p each thereafter) and mapminder.co.uk separately costs £2.95 per month.

192.com's offering costs £5 per month plus VAT, including 10 free polls, with a minimum six-month sign-up and extra credits for polls at 20-50p each.

NY considers women's restroom rights

2003.1205

Go ahead, make fun of the fact that several City Council members introduced a bill Wednesday to have more restrooms set aside for women than men in most buildings. To women -- and one male law professor -- it's a matter of gender equity.

"Women need more restroom facilities simply because women take longer," John F. Banzhaf III, a public interest law professor at George Washington University Law School, said Wednesday.

Banzhaf, who has filed several court complaints, wrote recently that these legal cases show that women are standing up for their rights "even if they can't stand up while exercising those rights."

"We would never tolerate a system where women would routinely have to wait five times longer than men to have their blood tested, even if men's and women's blood were tested for different things," Banzhaf argues. "And we shouldn't tolerate a system where women routinely are forced to wait five or more times longer than men to perform a basic and necessary personal function."

So why might women take longer in the bathroom? Because they often have small children to tend to, they wear more clothes, and, as Councilwoman Yvette Clarke put it, there's that anatomical difference.

"We don't have the same type of equipment that men have," Clarke said.





While on it's face unreasonable, even silly, if you consider the "good points" of the argument, that women's clothing are harder to deal with, that they often have small children (a societal issue at stake their as well, it shouldn't be that way), and that they usually have to sit rather than "go & go", then there's something to be said for it... That is, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily burden smaller places where putting in an extra restroom fundamentally changes how the place is laid out

Feds Doing More Secret Searches

2003.1205

A record number of searches and wiretap orders granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2002 underscores a growing trend of reliance on the secret court in government investigations, privacy advocates say.

The number of FISA orders jumped more than 30 percent to 1,228 last year, compared to 934 the year before. The FBI uses the warrants in investigations of suspected terrorists and spies to eavesdrop on communications and conduct physical searches.

Since FISA's inception in 1978, the court has approved every FBI application it has received, despite disclosing last year in a report (PDF) that the agency had misled FISA judges in 75 cases.

"Increasingly, FISA is becoming the surveillance weapon of choice," said Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty program.

Steinhardt and others point to the fact that the increase in FISA orders corresponded with a 9 percent dip in the number of Title III wiretaps authorized by federal and state courts in 2002.

Last year, state and federal judges approved 1,359 wiretap applications, compared to 1,491 in 2001, according a report (PDF) published by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

"The main thing we're seeing is a greater reliance on FISA procedures for surveillance in the United States, and that doesn't bode well for civil liberties or government openness," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The FBI couldn't be reached for comment.

Applications for FISA warrants receive less scrutiny than Title III wiretaps despite the fact that they are much more intrusive. While Title III wiretaps allow investigators to eavesdrop on the oral and electronic communications of suspects, FISA orders include these wiretapping techniques as well as physical searches of residences, automobiles and belongings.

Furthermore, while the government publishes a yearly report detailing how Title III wiretaps are employed -- including types of surveillance, resulting arrests and convictions, and reasons for the intercept orders -- the corresponding FISA report is a dry two-paragraph summation of the number of orders that the secret court granted.

The FISA court, comprised of seven district court judges appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, meets every two weeks inside a windowless room at the Justice Department to review the department's warrant applications.

The FISA records are sealed and the court's proceedings secret; even people who are prosecuted using those orders cannot access the material used against them.

"It's ridiculously opaque to figure out what it all means," said Beryl Howell, who served as general counsel for the Senate judiciary committee from 1993 to 2003 before retiring to become a security consultant. "Whereas the government prepares elaborate reports for wiretaps, when it comes to FISA, there are virtually no reporting requirements."

A bipartisan bill introduced in February would increase congressional oversight of FISA and require the court to disclose more information about the surveillance activities it authorizes.