One BoingBoing reader writes: ” I am visiting Beijing on business, and staying at a hotel that caters to Westerners. There have been reports that China was loosening controls on the media ahead of the Olympic games, in order to give visitors the impression that the media is unrestricted, but that is not the case in the last day. While watching CNN in my hotel room, the station goes dark during the top-of-the-hour news flash on the riots, then returns when the synopsis of “what’s to come” is given about other stories, and then goes dark again while the coverage switches to Lhasa.”
NSA: Domestic Spying Increase
Wall Street Journal: “WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.
The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.”
FCC considers taking action (finally) against Comcast
CNet:Â “The Federal Communications Commission is edging toward taking action against cable operator Comcast for monkeying with its customers’ peer-to-peer traffic, according to several news reports.
On Friday FCC Chairman Kevin Martin indicated during a speech at Stanford University’s Law School that the commission may take action against the cable operator, which has been accused of blocking or slowing down the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent on its broadband network.”
Proposal to Investigate Spying
House Democrats are proposing a bill to investigate the rampant spying by the gov’t since the 9/11 attacks: “Not only shouldn’t companies that helped the government’s warrantless spying on American citizens be given retroactive amnesty, the government should establish a national commission — similar to the 9/11 Commission –to subpoena documents and testimony in order to find out — and publish — what exactly the nation’s spies were up to during their five year warrantless, domestic surveillance program.” (link)
Mixi claims rights on all content
Japan’s hugely popular social networking site Mixi is in hot water this week after news [ja] that a proposed revision to its Terms of Use (ToU), to become effective as of April 1st, will force its users to agree to grant Mixi no-royalty, non-exclusive rights over all content published on the site, retroactively applicable to all content uploaded before the changes to the ToU. This means that Mixi can potentially use any content on its servers (including messages sent through its messaging service), ignoring access controls on such content, and potentially profit from it. (link)
Phorm
Open Rights Group:
Over the last few weeks, the story that BT, Virgin and TalkTalk are signed up to trial a new technology called Phorm, which tracks users’ online surfing habits in order to target ads at them, has caused a storm all over the internet.
Here’s what we’ve been told about the workings of Phorm so far. Phorm assigns a user’s browser a unique identifying number, which, it is claimed, nobody can associate with your IP address, not even your ISP. It then uses information about your surfing habits, gathered by searching the URLs you request and the websites you visit for key words, to assign that unique number to various “channels†(for example “golfâ€, “travel†or “handbagsâ€). When you visit a website which has a “Phorm please put an ad in here†tag, Phorm serves an ad from a channel where your unique number appears.
When is Internet Traffic delay OK?
the NYtimes: “The Federal Communications Commission is considering new rules and enforcement decisions that would force the cable and telephone companies to more clearly disclose to consumers the circumstances in which they might delay some traffic.”
File “sharing” or File “stealing”: the semantic debate continues
The LA Times: “The first salvo was fired by the original Napster, which defined itself as a file-sharing network. That won the semantic high ground by defining unauthorized downloading as “sharing,” not “copying” or “duplicating.” The implication was that users of these networks were merely being generous with something they possessed, not usurping the rights of copyright holders.
Record labels, music publishers and movie studios contend that copyrights are indeed property, entitled to the same protection as a home or a car. To counter the notion of “sharing,” they’ve advanced an equal powerful metaphor: downloading as theft.”
British gov’t to punish ISP providers in a bid to curb illegal downloading
The Financial Times: “The government will on Friday tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films.Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted.”
blogging to stop terrorists: the TSA’s evolution of security blog
the blogherald: “In this post-9/11 world, transportation security remains a major global issue.In light of that fact, The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in America has launched a blog in order to inform the public of future initiatives and give frustrated travelers a place to air their grievances.
The TSA’s Evolution of Security blog aims to explain to the public, in non-political terms, why certain processes work the way they do. At some time or another, many upstanding citizens have felt violated, as the air travel process has shifted from a luxury to an inconvenience.
Is the blog nothing more than propaganda to justify intrusive security checks and long delays?
According to the blog, “Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part.â€