A bid by the US government to force a child porn suspect to surrender his encryption password has sparked fierce debate about whether the move violates constitutional protections against self-incrimination.

On one side of the issue are civil libertarians from such groups as the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They argue the Fifth Amendment, which protects suspects from government demands to testify against themselves, extends to passwords because they're stored in a suspect's head.

"The last line of defense really is you holding your own password," Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the EFF, said.

Can the act of file sharing take place "passively," without the users' direct involvement; and if so, can they no longer be held liable for copyright infringement? That's the question a US district court is preparing to consider.

Next week, an Arizona district court will hear arguments in the ongoing case of the Howell family of Scottsdale, who last August was found to be illegally distributing 2,329 MP3s in violation of copyright. At that time, the judge in the case ruled that the fact that those MP3s appeared in Mr. Howell's shared music folder for his Kazaa program was proof enough that he had intention to share them, and that no evidence needed to be uncovered of actual subsequent file transfers.

With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute.

Watermarking offers copyright protection by letting a company track music that finds its way to illegal peer-to-peer networks. At its most precise, a watermark could encode a unique serial number that a music company could match to the original purchaser. So far, though, labels say they won't do that: Warner and EMI have not embraced watermarking at all, while Sony's and Universal's DRM-free lineups contain "anonymous" watermarks that won't trace to an individual.

Still, privacy advocates were quick to point out that the watermarking is likely to produce fresh, empirical data that copyright material is ping-ponging across peer-to-peer sites -- data the industry would use in its ongoing bid to tighten copyright controls, and to browbeat internet service providers to implement large-scale copyright-filtering operations.

"It gives them the ability to put pressure on policy makers and ISPs to do filtering," said Fred Von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney.

The woman linked to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl who was tormented through MySpace could be charged with fraud after the case sparked worldwide outrage.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has subpoenaed the MySpace records of Lori Drew, the Missouri woman who created a false account on the social networking website to communicate with her daughter's friend, sources told The Los Angeles Times.

f Ms Drew is charged with defrauding MySpace by creating a fake profile, the case could have serious implications for internet privacy.

"The right to speak freely online is hugely important. Whistle-blowers create pseudonyms," an attorney for legal advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Times.

The controversy surrounding a fake MySpace account that allegedly drove 13-year-old Megan Meier to commit suicide in October 2006 is raising new questions about the use of pseudonyms and false identities on social networking sites.

Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), said that there is a long history of anonymous speech in the United States, stretching all the way back to the Federalist Papers in 1787. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius" to advocate ratification of the United States Constitution, which was in danger of being rejected by New York state.

"If a prosecutor can maintain a case against a citizen who is merely using a pseudonym online, without more, it can have a chilling effect on free speech," Opsahl argued. "People can and should be responsible for their online actions, but one should address the actions, not the pseudonym."

The record industry got a surprise when it subpoenaed the University of Oregon in September, asking it to identify 17 students who had made available songs from Journey, the Cars, Dire Straits, Sting and Madonna on a file-sharing network...

"People get pushed into settlements," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. "The Oregon attorney general is showing what a real fight among equals would look like."

One might argue that China and the Internet are both like high-speed trains. Both are growing at an extremely rapid pace, and both are apparently unstoppable global economic forces that are reshaping the economic landscape. Unfortunately, one might also argue that they are on a collision course.

The intense world scrutiny could help "cast a spotlight" on China's policies, Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation , told the E-Commerce Times. On the other hand, "my fear is that it will also lead to more careful and secret repression, now that there's such strong pressure on the Chinese authorities to look 'cleaner than clean.'"

What Kory Dunton saw last week from behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, Tina Winslow will soon be able to access from her Mac Pro.
Ms. Winslow is intrigued by the prospect, but also a bit worried.

Stephen Chau, Google products manager, said Street View is an efficiency tool, allowing users to preview an unfamiliar neighborhood, judge whether parking will be a problem, even refresh their memories about what a restaurant or office building looks lik

But Rebecca Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the online privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation, still has concerns.

"People are used to a certain amount of anonymity as they go about the day. They may be going to AA meetings, clinics, even hospitals," she said. "There are things you want to keep private."

In a free-speech case that has drawn widespread attention, a New Jersey judge has upheld the right of a blogger to criticize county officials anonymously by telling those officials to take their subpoena seeking the author’s identity and put it where the sun don’t shine.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been front and center in keeping Manalapan Township officials off the throat of this lonely pamphleteer. You can read all of the EFF’s legal filings about the case here.

"We're grateful that Judge Flynn upheld the First Amendment rights of our client and recognized that anonymous speakers should not be intimidated into silence through the discovery process," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman in a press release. "Now 'daTruthSquad' can continue to discuss township business without fear of government reprisal."

Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.

The company said it does not determine the emergency requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations.

Last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group in San Francisco, obtained records through a FOIA lawsuit showing that the FBI sought data from telecom companies about the calling habits of suspects and their associates, The New York Times reported.