6.9.2005
Washington Post
"Cash, Charge or Fingerprint?"
By Ellen McCarthy
The finger scan used at the shop in Sterling, known as a biometric payment system and made by a Herndon, Va., firm, is just starting to be installed at convenience stores and supermarket chains around the country, another step in a revolution that is turning the human body into the ultimate identification card . . .
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy rights group, is concerned about the biometric payment trend. He worries that the technology could be compromised, exposing huge databanks of personal information. Systems can always break, he says, either because of malicious or accidental causes, but the information stored by biometric companies is in some ways far more valuable than that held by credit card firms.
"You can always get a new Social Security number, but you certainly can't get a new thumbprint. ... If things mess up, I could be hurt much more badly by a mistake," Lee said. And week after week, headlines scream of data breaches putting thousands of individuals at greater risk of identity theft, a crime that can ruin personal credit and take months or years to clear up.
Baltimore Sun
"Worker to serve probation for signing up boss for e-mails"
By Anica Butler
An Essex man was placed on probation this week for harassing his former supervisor by signing her up for e-mail subscriptions, flooding her inbox with unwanted messages from dating services and job lines, the state attorney general's office said yesterday . . .
Such "spamming by proxy" is not uncommon, said Annalee Newitz, policy
analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group."Anecdotally, I've heard about it all the time," she said. "Usually it's just to harass someone you don't like. You sign them up for a bunch of porn sites." . . .
Newitz said the way more Web sites manage their e-mail subscriptions might make it more difficult to harass people by signing them up for messages. Because companies fear being accused of spamming, she said, many use a "double opt-in," meaning that when someone signs up for a subscription, the site sends a confirmation e-mail. The recipient must respond to become a subscriber.
"E-mail harassment will not go away, but we're not likely to see this become more common," Newitz said.
6.6.2005, Forbes
"Sex Sells"
By Seth Lubove
. . . Zadeh is the plaintiff in five lawsuits alleging unauthorized reproduction of the magazine's photos on the Internet. In his latest, filed in Los Angeles federal court, Zadeh accuses Google of ripping him off by storing and posting his photos on the big search engine's image search index and by linking to Web sites that are also stealing his photos . . .
In its answer to Zadeh's lawsuit, Google says it is only acting as a transmitter of data and that it is not intentionally linking to stolen material . . .
Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues Zadeh and his ilk cause Web sites and search engines to reflexively pull data rather than face the wrath of a lawsuit. "Kudos to Google for standing up to the suit and not being chilled," says Seltzer.
6.3.2005, Technology Review
"Waiting for Grokster"
By Eric Hellweg
Sometime before early July, when the current Supreme Court term ends, the justices will hand down their decision on the MGM v. Grokster case, which will decide if a peer-to-peer technology company can be held financially liable for an illegal activity taking place on its network . . .
Wendy Seltzer, attorney and special projects coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who was involved with crafting Grokster's argument before the Supreme Court, cautions that it's "hard to bet on a pending Supreme Court case," but Seltzer is also "encouraged at the hearing by the number of questions focusing on innovation. That suggests that the justices understand that the issue is bigger than piracy and file sharing."
For the EFF and other supporters, a ruling against Grokster would be a blow for technology innovation. If innovators have to worry about any and every use their invention may be put to, they argue, it will stifle the desire to create . . .
6.2.2005, UK Guardian
"May the source be with you: BitTorrent"
By Quinn Norton
. . . Publishing via BitTorrent normally requires someone to set up a technically difficult "tracker" telling downloaders where to find each other, which the MPAA targets for shutdown. Cohen also recently created a new trackerless BitTorrent to make publishing easier: it is now possible to have a torrent up in minutes, with a file, a website, and no understanding of how it works. The MPAA interprets the trackerless effort differently, raising questions about BitTorrent's legality.
So far, it has proven impossible to build powerful publishing without piracy. That's nothing new, says Jason Schultz, lawyer with Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American internet civil liberties group. "Piracy has contributed to BitTorrent's adoption, but it has also contributed to the success of Xerox machines, CD burners, the iPod and so on," he says . . .
